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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

RACHEL

“We could sit outside,” Taylor said, her voice garbled around a spoonful of ice cream. “Get some air in the yard without running into anyone.”

I lolled my head toward my sister. Since my conversation with Gayle, tense and short despite all the years I’d been her star writer, I’d camped out on the couch, my head already making an indent on the top of the back cushion.

I’d let Taylor serve me ice cream once I’d been able to swallow something, but I hadn’t moved from the time I’d plopped onto the couch.

The words “have to let you go” echoed in my head and turned my stomach each time. I’d expected to hear them eventually since, as Auden had pointed out, it had only been a matter of time before one of us slipped.

If we hadn’t been outed so publicly, I might have had some recourse. If I had just come clean and explained how this was a real, loving relationship and not the home-wrecking scandal that had made them write the damn clause in the first place, getting caught wouldn’t have been such a risk, even if it would have had the same results.

If I had confessed already, I would have been able to visit Silas wherever the team was playing and sit in the stands to cheer them on, not hide out in a bar and take a separate elevator to his hotel room.

The deep despair was twinged with a little bit of relief. I wouldn’t have the stress of reading the room before I said that I was a romance author. Silas and I could walk up my block holding hands and not worry about it getting back to my job.

Because it had gotten back to everyone. We just had to deal with people gawking at us and asking inappropriate questions.

I’d shoved my phone away in the end table drawer next to the couch when scrolling became too much. The summary of the comments was how I was a hack of an author, why is Silas with a “plus-sized” girl, and one cute inquiry asking if I bought my dress from “hookers r us.”

I’d been a published author for long enough to be familiar with keyboard warriors, miserable people who grew the balls behind a computer screen they lacked in real life.

Maybe I wasn’t a skinny girl and the dress I’d worn was snug enough to show it, but Silas looked at me as if I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen from the first moment we’d met—after he’d recovered from my jab to his stomach.

We needed to talk, but I was just so tired from the drop of my hours-long adrenaline spike ever since I’d walked through my door. Tired, worried, and sad. I was sure this hadn’t looked good for him either, and I prayed no one mentioned their sponsorship of Taylor’s team this past season in anything that was circulating today.

I curled up on the couch in my grandmother’s old quilt. I’d put our air conditioner on high to make the room as cold as possible just so I could burrow myself in a blanket without a layer of sweat.

I’d worry about how to pay for the air conditioning, softball camp, and everything else tomorrow.

“I’m sorry, Tay,” I finally said, my voice hoarse with exhaustion. “I didn’t want this for you.”

“Some creep took your picture and blasted it on Instagram. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Taylor came up next to me, crossing her legs under her. “You’ve been so happy. Don’t let idiots take that away.”

She laughed when I pinched her chin.

My wise baby sister. I’d tried to make life as easy as possible for her, but maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I had to let my sister experience some of the shit in the world so she knew how to fight against it.

And I was in a lot of shit right now.

“The Bats won,” Taylor said as she scrolled through her phone.

“Good,” I said, exhaling a little relief that Silas didn’t have to deal with two problems today.

“Silas just texted me. He said to turn on the channel the Bats usually play on.”

I sat up, reaching into the end table drawer for my phone. A flurry of texts from Silas littered my screen. He’d probably had the same awful day as me, and I’d made it worse by causing him to worry about me. I was about to reply when I heard his voice through my TV speakers.

“Good afternoon,” Silas said, still in uniform as he spoke to reporters. I scooted to the edge of the cushion to get a good look at the man I’d left this morning before both our lives had been turned upside down. He seemed okay, but as I took a closer look, I spotted the hard set of his jaw, his tell when he was angry and holding himself back.

“Nate Becker is out for the rest of the season with a shoulder injury, but he’ll be back next year after surgery and some therapy. We’ll miss him, but we look forward to seeing him come back and break his home-run record next year.”

He paused, glancing down at the podium before he continued.

“His friends won for him today. And I’m hopeful that we can still take it all the way and clinch that wild card spot this month. They’re an amazing group of guys, and I’m proud to be leading them this season.”

He sucked in a long breath, his chest jerking as if he were laughing to himself.

“That should have been where my statement ended, but I have one more thing to add. Pictures were posted of me and my girlfriend this morning, and those pictures exposed her identity and where she works—or worked .”

Shit, he knew. He’d probably figured, but Gayle had mentioned a call with Kent before she’d told me HR would be contacting me with termination papers and hung up.

“I know that a life in professional sports means there is no such thing as true privacy, but there should be. Rachel Manning is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and she’s had to deal with a lot in the past few hours. Please leave her and her family alone.”

He smiled at the camera, and it was as if he were standing in my living room. The reporters, my furniture, and even my sister faded into the background.

“I’m lucky to have found the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, but I’m asking you to let us do that in peace. I owe you all the best season I can give you, and if you want to post my ass on social media from fifty different angles, go ahead. But my girl is off-limits.”

“Oh my God!” Taylor squealed, pressing her hands against her cheeks. “This is like one of those old movies you make me watch sometimes. By that guy John Hayes.”

“Hughes,” I said, my voice cracking as tears streamed down my cheeks. The first good tears of the day.

“Yes! He’s telling the world he loves you,” she said with a big sigh, clasping her hands under her chin. “And that he wants to spend the rest of his life with you.”

“It’s a local channel, Tay,” I said, wiping at my eyes.

“But I bet it gets streamed.” Taylor pulled on my arm. “This is so cool.”

“So the girl in all those pictures this morning is your girlfriend?” an out-of-sight reporter asked.

“Yes, and I’m all hers.” His lips stretched into a smile, his jaw finally relaxing as he found the camera again. “If she’ll still have me.”

Silas waved and walked off, the flash from the cameras still flickering as he stepped away.

My phone vibrated in my hand, hot against my palm as if the ton of notifications I was getting right now would make it explode along with my heart.

If I’d still have him? When he’d started talking about us, I’d thought it was a fuck-you to whoever had posted our picture and my identity, but why would he think I didn’t want him anymore?

I’d been an active participant in all of it, and I’d made the decision to go to Boston to see Silas. What had happened after sucked, but how could he think I blamed him for that?

“Now Auden is calling me,” she said, eyeing me as she pressed her phone to her ear. “She’s right here.”

Taylor waved her phone in my face before I took it.

“Hello.”

“Don’t you answer your damn phone? Everyone here watched the press conference and is swooning their hearts out. That was like a movie.”

“I know.” I pressed my palm to my forehead. “I haven’t even talked to him since this morning. I’ve been on my couch since I was laid off.”

“Well, don’t be surprised if they take it back. If word gets out they fired you because you were with Silas, and he just went public to tell everyone he wants to spend the rest of his life with you, that’s bad PR for a PR agency.”

“I won’t get my hopes up. I just need to see him.”

“Your next book is going to be epic. You’re living in a fucking romance novel. This is the best resolution ever.”

I laughed, my chest so much lighter than a few hours ago. I couldn’t call it a resolution as I was still unemployed. In all the years I’d known Gayle, she’d double down before she’d admit she’d been wrong. If they did rescind my termination, they’d probably give me a smaller job just to save face.

I didn’t want to work anywhere that I couldn’t be with Silas out in the open, and it was on me for tolerating it far longer than I should have.

I had faith that it would work out because, for the first time in my entire life, I wasn’t alone.

That was what I’d gotten from Silas’s grand gesture or declaration or whatever he’d intended it to be. He’d told me that many times, but that was the moment it had finally sunk in enough for me to believe it.