Page 55 of Sports and Sinners Box Set

CHAPTER 29

OLIVIA

I drop my head in my hands, fighting back the tears. I swear I never used to be this emotional. It's funny what pregnancy can do to you.

Pregnancy plus a furniture kit is an absolute recipe for madness. I'm not far along enough yet to be showing, but I’m trying to get as much preparation done as I can now before I’m huge and can’t do anything at all.

So here I am, sitting all alone on my bedroom floor, trying desperately to construct a crib and failing completely. I swear they design these things to be as difficult as possible for a normal person to follow. Sometimes you look at the weird illustrations and the parts in your hands and feel like you need a degree in engineering to follow any of it. That, and the way that none of the screws are ever the right size for the holes. Makes you wonder why we keep buying any of this stuff.

This is not my first existential crisis of the day, and I doubt it will be the last. But at least the morning sickness has passed. For now, anyway.

I’ve read various worrying things that say it can come straight on back when you get further along. That’s something I could really do without.

Carefully, I take a deep breath and calm myself enough to try again. I can’t be defeated by this. I can do anything. I pick up a plywood slat and a screw and start trying again to wrap my head around how they all go together.

I stare at it for five minutes before throwing it to the ground again, defeated. With a groan, I get to my feet, my knees aching. I’m going to find my phone. I need help with this. And I know exactly who to ask. Tali is like a legend for this kind of thing. It all makes sense to her. She always laughs at me and Elena for complaining about how difficult the instructions are to follow.

“It’s not difficult,” she always says. “It's written right there for you.” One day I’d love to agree with that.

My phone is in the kitchen, abandoned on the counter. I pick it up to a whole bunch of unread messages from Tim. I swipe to open them and nearly drop it when I read the texts. Big news. Miles coming back to Macaws. Call me.

I have to read it again to make sure I’m not just reading what I want to see, then, with shaking hands, I hit dial.

He picks up almost straightaway. “Olivia, hi. How are you?”

“Great,” I lie. “How are you?”

“I’ll cut to the chase. He’s coming back to us. It’s not settled yet, but we want him, and I doubt the Canaries are going to throw up too many barriers to us buying him,” says Tim, and I can just see his little grin now.

“Since when has this been happening? I mean, how is it happening? Why ?” My head is swimming. I stumble to a chair, my legs too wobbly to support me for much longer.

“Well, it’s been a week or so in the planning, so this is fresh, but not long after he left, we got a call from Croydon asking if we’d like to negotiate a more permanent contract for him in Miami. We said yes, obviously. We’ve never played better than when he’s been here. As for when or why? Impossible to say. We’re still in the early stages of discussion. Technically, this is a complete secret, and I shouldn’t be telling you at all. So, fingers on lips, yeah?”

I can’t form even a single word in my confused and dumbfounded state. Miles is coming back to the Macaws for good? I know he enjoyed being here, but to move here full-time?

The part of me that hoped he cared flares back into life, burning again just after I’d managed to dim it to embers. It’s dumb to imagine he’s coming back for me, but him being here means I’ll see him again. It means he’ll find out about the baby.

For a second, I panic that he knows about the baby and that’s why he’s coming, but I haven’t told a soul at work about it yet. Only Elena and Tali know, and maybe the work receptionist if she’s been paying attention lately. I haven’t told her, but she’s smart, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s put the pieces together.

“Why are you telling me?” I ask when my ability to speak comes back. “If it’s a secret.”

“We’ll need you primed and ready to help him settle in,” says Tim like it’s obvious.

“Why me?” I ask. “Why tell me now instead of waiting?”

“You helped before,” he says. “I figured you’d want to help again. And I didn’t want you to be surprised at the press conference. You’re subtle, Olivia, but not that subtle.”

My whole face burns hot and I sink down into the chair. “You knew? This whole time?”

“I had my suspicions,” he says, his grin visible in his words. “We’ll get him back for you. Don’t worry.”

“Thank you,” I say quietly, my chest tight as I try to process this.

Tim hangs up, leaving me in the silence. If even Tim could see it, that means there must be something between us, right? It’s not that insane to imagine that at least a tiny part of Miles coming back is for me. It should be, but I can’t stop thinking it now. Miles is coming back for me.

Miles is coming back to be a father — and he doesn’t even know it.

I stare up at the ceiling, one hand on my belly, the other on my forehead. I have to live in hope that Miles will want to hear this news. Now I know he’ll be back, I don’t think I can do this without him.