Chapter 7 #2
Miserable as it was to watch them all having fun, Erin couldn’t provide Maisie with this much entertainment on her own.
Apparently satisfied that they were all occupied, Lia jogged back over to where Erin sat and reached for the bag she’d discarded near Erin’s feet.
She crouched and pulled out a bottle of water.
“Thank you,” Erin said begrudgingly. “I know this isn’t how you planned on spending your afternoon, but Maisie loves you. She’ll be talking about this for months.”
“She loves you.” Lia played with the lid of her bottle. “She hasn’t stopped talking about how good you are.”
“Well, she spent the whole game on Sunday singing your praises.”
“Kids can have more than one favourite player, you know.”
Erin needed to do better at remembering that.
“Hell, I had about five when I was younger,” Lia added.
Thinking about their conversation in the hall the day Gerrard had escaped, Erin pressed a hand to her chest. “And here I thought I was special.”
Lia’s cheeks flushed scarlet, and she glanced toward where the kids were still passing the ball.
Interesting. Was she embarrassed that she’d revealed she used to admire Erin, that she remembered so many details from a game that—as far as Erin was concerned—had been a blip in the rest of her career?
At first, Erin had thought Lia had said those things to suck up to her, to get her onside. But her discomfort spoke volumes—she had grown up watching Erin play. And Erin had made a terrible impression, too envious and jealous to bother saying more than a handful of vicious words to her.
Despite all that, Lia had still taken time out of her day to run around a park with Maisie when she was probably exhausted from a full day of training. If their positions were reversed, would Erin have done the same?
She already knew the answer was no.
“How are you settling into the team?”
Lia turned back to face Erin, a look of disbelief on her face. “Are you really pretending you care? Or maybe you’re hoping that my answer will be I’m not and I’ll be asking for a January transfer to another team?”
Okay, Erin had earned that hostility fair and square.
But she didn’t know how to defuse it. Did she want to?
Just because Lia seemed like a nice person didn’t mean that Erin needed to be friendly with her.
Plenty of their teammates were good people.
Erin still kept her distance. “I was trying to be polite.”
“Well, don’t bother.” Lia pushed herself to her feet, tossing her water bottle back into her bag. “I know you don’t mean it.”
Without another word, Lia jogged back over to the kids to join back in with their game. Erin scoffed, though she deserved Lia’s attitude. Maybe it was for the best. She and Lia were never going to be best buddies, after all.
Maybe the rivalry would make them better players.
* * *
Lia was curled on the couch watching Mean Girls for the thousandth time when her phone buzzed several times in quick succession.
Knowing that usually meant something was happening in the team group chat, Lia reached for the offending device. When she opened the message thread, Lia nearly dropped her phone.
Have you seen the news about Wanderers???
I can’t believe it! Did she really think she’d get away with it?
Shit. Heart in her throat, a quick Google search revealed a dozen news stories. Wanderers had concluded their investigation—Carol Evans had been fired with immediate effect after her relationship with one of her players was discovered.
The player wasn’t named. Historically, players were usually protected in situations like this, where the manager would have been in a position of power—no matter how willing the other party.
But there would be endless speculation about the unnamed player anyway.
And as people tried to narrow it down, Lia’s own name would likely come up as part of the story.
Sure enough, more buzzes were quick to follow as Lia’s social media accounts went crazy. She knew what they would say. They would point out her abrupt departure from Wanderers, and wonder if it was related to Carol’s scandal. They might wonder if she was the player involved.
She wanted to crawl out of her own skin.
Instead, she turned off her phone and set it on her coffee table as if it were a bomb close to detonating. And in a way, that’s what it felt like. The media buzz around Lia’s transfer had finally died off, but now? Journalists would be having a field day.
A vicious part of Lia wanted to name Hannah, to let the whole world know that it was her who had ruined everything.
How was it fair that after everything Hannah had taken from her, Lia was going to be the one to suffer?
Have her name dragged through the mud? To suffer anew when, in her new teammates, in being back on the pitch, she was starting to put herself back together?
At least Carol had lost her job and Lia would hopefully never have to see her again. At least one person had gotten their comeuppance. That was something, even if Hannah was still out there, getting away with it scot-free.
Even if Lia would have to face her on the pitch at least two times that season.
The thought made her shudder.
Hoping that if she kept her head in the sand, this whole thing might blow over without impacting her too much, Lia carried on with Mean Girls.
Wishful thinking, maybe, but it was all Lia had.
A knock on her front door startled her. For one wild moment, Lia feared it was a reporter, but then she shook it off. That was ridiculous. She wasn’t important enough for that. No one would know her address.
“Lia?” Cerys’ voice sounded on the other side of the door. “If you’re in there, open up.”
Surprise bloomed in Lia’s chest. She crossed to the door and pulled it open. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might need a friend.” Cerys was dishevelled—her shirt was on backwards, and she had on odd socks, suggesting she’d dressed in a hurry. She famously needed ten hours’ sleep every night to be at her best and had no doubt been in bed when the story had broken. “Your phone was off.”
“I needed a breather.” Lia crossed her arms across her chest, like she could hold herself together. But she knew that with Cerys’s sympathetic eyes on her face, she was seconds away from opening the floodgates. From sinking into all of the things she’d tried so hard to bury.
“It was Hannah, wasn’t it?”
Lia couldn’t manage a nod before the first of the tears fell.
In an instant, Cerys was on her, pulling Lia into a hug and closing the apartment door behind her.
“I’m sorry.” Lia buried her head in Cerys’s shoulder. “I know I should have told you in New York, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t want to talk about it. Think about it. Please don’t hate me.”
“Oh, baby.” Cerys held her tighter. “I could never hate you.”
Lia’s tears soaked into Cerys’s worn T-shirt, but she refused to let Lia go when she tried to move away. She held her close and let her sob. Cerys’s warmth comforted her, as did the thud of her friend’s heartbeat beneath her ear.
“What can I do?” Cerys said once Lia’s tears had dried and she’d dragged her over to the couch.
Lia wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweatshirt before lolling her head back to stare at the ceiling.
“I just want to forget all about it. Not that that’ll be easy now.
Everyone will be talking about this at training tomorrow.
Probably for the next week. And they’re all going to ask me about it.
Maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut, not told the board. ”
“You did the right thing, Lia. Even if it doesn’t feel like it.”
“It’s not like I did it for the right reasons. I wanted to wipe that smug smile off Carol’s face.”
Cerys squeezed her leg. “It doesn’t matter why you did it. What matters is that she’ll never be able to do it again. And everyone knows how smarmy she is.”
“They didn’t even try to hide it. But it still took me weeks to see it.
Weeks to realise why Hannah didn’t want to spend any time with me.
Why she wouldn’t touch me. I thought there was something wrong with me.
” Ever since stumbling across the evidence of Hannah’s infidelity, Lia had kept this all bottled inside.
“And then I saw them together, and it all clicked.”
“No wonder you wanted to leave. I can’t believe you kept this all to yourself, Lia. It must’ve been so hard.”
With a shrug, Lia avoided Cerys’s concerned gaze. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. And that’s okay.” Cerys kept her voice soft. “If you need to take some time—”
“I don’t.” A break was unthinkable. “That is the opposite of what I need. I need to be busy. I need to play. And it’s not exactly affecting my game, is it?”
Cerys bit her bottom lip. “No, but it might not have hit you yet. Not really. And when it does…”
“I’ll be okay.”
Still, Cerys didn’t look convinced. “If you say so. For what it’s worth, I’ll try and keep the team off your back tomorrow. Shanice will help with that, too. Don’t worry about that as well as everything else.”
“Thanks, Cerys.” Lia rested her head on her shoulder. “You’re a good friend.”
“I know.”
Lia laughed. She felt better now that things were out in the open. And whatever happened over the next few days, she knew Cerys would have her back without question.