Chapter 14
14
Ella thought of little else all weekend and was still smiling at the memory of the kiss on Monday morning. She literally had a head full of far more X-rated images associated with Jake but, she couldn’t help it. That press of lips, so reminiscent of that other press of lips in Trently, so long ago, had her happy sighing like a goofball.
She should have known it wouldn’t last long.
It took about three minutes sitting at her desk to burst her bubble in the form of another yellow envelope from Donald freaking Wiseman.
Dear Ms. Lucas – blah blah . We note your numbers have dropped by a further six – blah blah . You need to present to the board in two weeks – blah blah . Show cause as to why Deluca shouldn’t be closed at the end of the year.
Blah, blah, blah. Blah.
Ella’s heart sank in her chest. No praise for her vastly improved truancy figures. No mention that the reason her numbers had dropped was that two of her families had parents who were in the armed forces and had moved to another post.
They couldn’ t do this. She wouldn’t let them. Not when Deluca had come so far. Not when Iris’s prediction of a favorable outcome hung like a shiny bauble in her mind’s eye.
Before she could fully think it through, Ella lifted the phone. “Bernie, can you find me a number for the Deluca Daily please.”
She’d promised Jake no press but this was just a free suburban paper. Popular with locals but not big enough to make a splash on a wider scale. It was time to tap the fledgling support the Demons had birthed within the school and get the wider community involved.
It was time to go public.
There’d be no need to mention Jake at all. It would be about the school and their battle with bureaucracy. And it wasn’t like his presence hadn’t been noticed despite the low riding ball cap and aviators.
As a schoolteacher, Ella had never been on social media but Bernie, whose screen time alone must surely have put him on dozens of watch lists by now, had shown her several posts featuring Jake. From Facebook to Instagram and TikTok he’d garnered quite a bit of attention but mostly from students or their families. None of the posts seemed to have gone viral, but people were talking about him.
He was on the radar. Whether he liked it or not.
As soon as the Daily was delivered to the school on Wednesday morning, Bernie brought it through. “I think you’re gonna love this.”
He smiled, holding it up to reveal the front-page headline. The Little School That Could said the bold black type and then under it in smaller print but still readable from across the room: Education Dept Threatens To Shut Down Local School .
“Front page?” Ella practically leaped off the chair. “Oh my God! Much better than I hoped for.”
Ella took the paper from Bernie and he departed. Her hand trembled a little as she cleared a space in front of her and laid it flat. The team’s official photograph – the one minus Jake and Pete – which she had emailed to Suzy Barton, the young reporter, took pride of place in the center of the article.
Devouring the piece, which spilled over to page three , Ella couldn’t have been happier. Suzy, who’d apparently spent a lot of time covering fluff pieces, had been most eager to really dig into something juicer.
And it was a very comprehensive article.
Everything she’d discussed with Suzy was there. The Education Department’s threats to close the struggling school and the desperate measures Deluca High was employing to stay open. She’d also summarized the Demons’ successes on the field concluding with Friday’s win which had put them in the playoffs.
Somehow, Suzy had managed to ferret out that Jake “ The Prince ” Prince was the coach but it was only one sentence among many from the hard-hitting story which raved about the school spirit and how the cheer squad, tutored by Trish Jones, herself once a professional cheerleader, had become a whole school project. There were also mentions of Cam and Miranda, to demonstrate how Deluca High was one big family and praise for Ella herself, for leading the charge and standing up to The Man.
The piece ended with a diatribe on heartless bureaucrats who were ripping the soul out of a severely depressed socio-economic area to pinch a few pennies. Phrases such as denying kids access to free education and discrimination leaped off the page.
It was exactly what Ella hoped it would be – a stirring piece of journalism to inspire even the most apathetic in the community to rally to the cause. It may not be Watergate but Ella hoped it’d have Donald Wiseman on the run.
Or silenced, at least.
She leaned back in her chair, reveling in the buzz of a job well done, until a loud knock on her door startled her out of the glow. Before she could open her mouth to say come in , the door was flung open and Jake strode in to her office.
He was wearing his standard jeans, jersey and ball cap. “What,” he asked, holding up the paper, his mouth a grim slash in his face, “the hell is this?”
Ella blinked and the buzz disappeared like a genie in a puff of smoke. She’d hoped it might last longer. And that this wouldn’t be their first interaction after their cheek-to-cheek moment on Friday night. Their kiss.
“I can explain.”
But he clearly wasn’t in the mood for explanations as he slammed his copy of the paper down. “Didn’t I say no press?”
Ella stood. “Yes, I know you did but?—”
His loud snort cut her off. “Damn it, Ella.” He ran a hand over the top of his head. “I think I was fairly specific.”
“I got another letter from the department. They’re demanding I show cause as to why they shouldn’t close the school at the end of the year. I just thought this might drum up some broader local support.”
“I don’t care what you thought,” he roared.
Ella blinked at the outburst, so far removed from the man who had kissed her so lightly not that long ago.
“Look, Jake, I know you didn’t want any media attention drawn to you, that you wanted to stay anonymous and I didn’t mention a word about you. Suzy obviously found that out by herself. But it’s hardly anything. I don’t think there’s any need to overreact.”
“Overreact?” He gaped at her. “You don’t have a fucking clue, do you?”
“Jake…” Ella frowned. “It’s the Deluca Daily . Not the Washington Post .”
He gave another snort and stalked over to the window, slapping his palm hard and high against the frame as he muttered, “I knew this was going to be trouble. Right from the beginning. I just knew it.”
He sounded so much like Iris, Ella would have laughed had he not been so angry.
“There’s no such thing as local, Ella,” he said after a beat or two, his back to her. “Every national paper, every TV and radio station will see this story. They pay people to comb independent newspapers looking for juicy tidbits like this. It’ll go viral before you know it.”
“I’ve already seen social media posts about your coaching the team, Jake. You didn’t really think it would stay a secret, did you? With every person in the world attached to their phones?”
“No. But I had hoped to keep out of the goddamn newspapers.”
“Your name’s barely mentioned,” she reiterated. “There’s like, two sentences in the entire article.”
Jake turned back, took two steps toward her desk, flipped the paper over and stabbed his finger at a headline that read, The Prodigal Prince.
“Wrong.”
Ella looked down to find a large picture of Jake beneath the headline. He was in the foreground in his Demons jersey, standing arms crossed on the sidelines. Sure, he was wearing his dark glasses and baseball cap, but it was clearly him. In the background were Trish and Ella, their blank gazes glued to the action. And beside them, Rosie and Simon.
“Okay.” That she hadn’t expected. “That’s more than a couple of sentences.”
“Ya think?” He glared at her. “Where were you hiding him?”
“Hiding who?”
“The photographer.”
Ella frowned. “I wasn’t hiding anyone . The reporter who interviewed was going to send someone to take some shots of you and the team at practice on Monday but then she called to say that, coincidentally, their sports photographer had snapped some pics at the game on Friday night and they’d use them.”
Jake scrubbed his hands over his face then dropped them to his sides, his blue eyes bleak. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
There was a bleakness to his tone as well which triggered Iris’s words from Friday night again. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. “Look… Jake?—”
Her phone rang and Ella was grateful for the reprieve from Jake’s accusatory stare and the eerie kind of shiver skating chills up and down her arms. “Yes, Bernie?”
Their gazes stayed locked as Bernie prattled away in her ear, Jake’s expression not helping with the chills. “Some radio station wants to talk to me,” Ella said as she replaced the receiver.
He shut his eyes briefly, nodding his head. “And so it begins.” A resigned expression came over his face. “Okay.” He nodded, then almost as if to himself, he said, “I quit.”
Ella’s pulse spiked. “ What ?”
“I told you I’d walk if the press became involved.”
“But…” Ella searched around for something to say that would fix this – ASAP. “I’m sorry if there’s going to be more attention in your life for the next little while but… isn’t this a little extreme?”
He looked at her, his eyes blazing with conviction. “It’s the only way I can think of to make the story about Deluca.”
“ Jake .” Ella couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You can’t do this to the team.”
“They have Pete,” he dismissed. “They’ll be fine.”
What? Oh hell, no. Ella walked around the desk and stood directly in front of him. “It’s not Pete they’re doing this for. It’s you. ”
The desire to curl her hands in his shirt and shake him – to make him see – was almost overwhelming.
But she didn’t.
“They look up to you. You can’t walk out on them now. Not with the playoffs in two weeks. You’ll devastate them.”
“Well…” He shook his head, his eyes shuttered. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you went to the press.”
He turned away, heading for the door and leaving Ella dumbfounded. Okay, she’d brought this on herself but the driving need to make him understand , forced her legs into action.
“Jake, please.” She put her hand on his shoulder just before he got to the door and he reluctantly turned to face her. “I really am sorry I went behind your back with this. But you can’t just walk away. You made these kids believe in you. Kids who didn’t believe in anything . Don’t walk out on them when the going gets tough like so many adults in their lives have done.”
He shrugged off her hand. “Go and do your radio, Ella. Milk the publicity for all you can. Just leave me out of it, okay?”
The indifference in his eyes was more devastating than his anger, clawing at her gut as he walked out, and she stared blankly at the back of the door as it closed. Her heart drummed wildly, thudding loudly through her head.
What had just happened? What had she done?
By the time the final bell of the day had rung, Ella was all talked out. Between conversations with Deluca businesses and community figures, two local radio slots and a chat with a journalist from a bigger Inverboro paper, it had been a lot. As requested, she’d avoided Jake’s name, but it did seem to be the one thing they were the most interested in.
So she’d downplayed it as much as possible, trying to recork the bottle, mentioning only when repeatedly pressed that Jake’s involvement was purely serendipitous. That it had evolved out of a chance meeting with an old school friend and wasn’t some orchestrated career move.
She hoped like hell, as she made her way to the field, that would satisfy both the media’s appetite and make some kind of amends to Jake. But he wasn’t on the field when she arrived.
There was only Pete.
Jake hadn’t been serious, had he? Surely, he wouldn’t really pull out on them? He was mad, she got that. But he wouldn’t do something so damaging, would he?
“Hey.” Pete nodded.
She forced a smile. “Jake running late?”
Pete returned her smile with a sympathetic one of his own. “He’s not coming, Ella.”
There was tenderness in Pete’s tone and she knew he was trying to let her down gently but it didn’t help. “He’ll be here tomorrow,” she said as the knot of nerves in her belly tangled tighter. “After he’s had a chance to calm down.”
“I think Chernobyl’s nuclear reactor has a greater chance of cooling down before Jake does.”
“He can’t just walk out on the team, Pete. Can you talk to him?” she implored. “Please?”
“If I thought it would make a difference, I would. But he won’t listen to me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but he can be stubborn AF when he wants to be.”
Ella nodded. Yeah, she’d noticed. “Okay.” She sighed, accepting defeat – for today anyway. “Just do me a favor? Tell the team he’s not well and he’ll see them tomorrow.”
“What happens when he doesn’t show?”
“He will,” she said, her confidence wafer thin.
Thursday was as ridiculous as Wednesday. More ridiculous. The phones ran hot. Everyone wanted a piece of her. She avoided all media but embraced all comers from the community as the conversations she’d had yesterday started to bear fruit.
There was a petition circulating and a letter-writing campaign – to the mayor, the governor and the district Board of Education – being organized. And the cherry on top came in the form of Donald Wiseman ringing to express his displeasure at the negative press she was generating for the department.
Ella relished it all, grateful for something to occupy her mind, to keep it off that afternoon’s practice session.
Would Jake be there?
He hadn’t returned any of the umpteen messages she’d left on his cell since yesterday afternoon and she’d barely slept for fretting about it.
Was it possible to develop an ulcer overnight?
A last-minute phone call kept her from being early to the field and she arrived with the team stragglers to find Jake another no-show.
“Coach still sick, Pete?” Cameron asked.
Pete glanced at Ella and she gave him a slight nod. “Yep. You know these old blokes. Can’t keep up. He asked me to work you guys extra hard though.”
The team grumbled but hit the field for their warm-ups in good spirits. “Thanks, Pete,” Ella said.
“They’re going to have to know sooner or later.”
Ella chewed on her bottom lip. “I know. I know. Did he tell you he wasn’t coming?”
“Couldn’t get hold of him. He hasn’t been in to work either.”
“At least we’ve got another two weeks before the game,” she murmured.
Last week the thought of waiting three weeks for the playoffs to start had been pure torture. Today Ella was prepared to get on her knees and praise the football gods.
Her life had officially gone to hell.
“What’s his problem, Pete?” she asked as she watched the team go about their drills. “Why’s he so damn media shy? His face was on practically every tabloid and magazine in the known universe during his career. He picked a really bad time to go all reclusive on me.”
Pete looked at her like she’d been dropped on her head. “You should ask Jake.”
“Yeah.” Ella nodded. “I will.”
But not before she’d google-fu’d the crap out of it first.
When Ella arrived home an hour later, her head and heart were heavy with the information she’d gleaned about Jake with just a few easy clicks. She was cranky that she hadn’t done even a cursory internet stalk of him before now. She might not be on any social media, but she knew how to fire up a search engine.
She understood why the furor surrounding his sacking from the Founders had escaped her notice. Apart from the fact that no one in their household followed football, it’d all happened around the same time Rachel had died and she’d gone to Trently to deal with all that. Which was obviously why he’d been there too, not anything to do with an old groin injury that he’d clearly recovered from just fine .
And then Cam had entered their lives and had consumed everyone’s time and attention.
Still, she should have been more curious a few months ago when they’d roped him in to coaching the team. Wasn’t that what everyone did these days with people coming into their lives?
But it wasn’t like he was new entity. And really, their reconnection had felt a little too woo woo to look at too closely. Like this unspoken… bond that had been forged in Trently had always been leading them to this point in time.
Him and her in Inverboro, saving her school.
Yeah, the less she thought about that and all its potential ramifications, the better.
She found the three Forsythe women sitting at the table on the back porch drinking. Daisy took one look at Ella’s face and poured a decent slug of bourbon from the half-empty bottle near the overflowing ashtray.
The sisters had stopped smoking in the house when Rosie and Ella had arrived and had never smoked in front of them but had resisted all attempts over the years to get them to quit.
“You look like you could do with this,” Daisy said, passing it over.
Ella gave a wobbly smile as she accepted the glass and had never been more grateful to be part of the Forsythe family. They may not be her blood but they’d opened their door and their hearts to her unconditionally, and Ella had felt loved and accepted from the second she and Rosie had walked through the front gate.
“Are you okay?” Rosie asked, her brow furrowed in concern.
God… where did she even start? “No.” Ella took her seat at the table and downed half the glass. “Jake’s quit and it’s all my fault.”
Daisy glanced at Iris then topped up everyone’s drinks as Rosie reached out and squeezed Ella’s hand. “Jake wasn’t impressed with the media coverage?”
Ella gave a half-laugh, half-snort. “That’s putting it mildly.” Rosie had spent the previous night at Simon’s and Ella hadn’t wanted to bother her bestie with the unfolding drama. “I couldn’t figure out why someone who’s had his picture out there more often than the Kardashians would be so rabidly media shy. Then I googled him.”
“Oh.” Rose grimaced. “Not good?”
Ella gave her friend a grim look. “There was this sexual assault scandal a couple of years back.”
Rosie gasped. “Jake raped someone?”
“No.” Ella shook her head quickly. “God, no!” She shuddered at the thought. “Apparently it was some guy called Tony Winchester?”
“Okay. So… who’s he?” Rosie asked.
“An ex-teammate of Jake’s. They did their rookie year here with the Sentries. A few years back, Tony was accused of rape. He protested his innocence and his club at the time backed him but then Jake made a statement in support of the woman claiming he knew Tony had almost raped someone else eighteen years prior when they were both playing for the Sentries.”
“Wow.” Rosie whistled. “Gutsy.”
“Yeah.” Ella nodded. “But because he refused to name the first woman, he was discredited amidst all the controversy. Then he was sidelined, then he was sacked.”
“What happened to the Winchester guy?” Daisy asked.
“Nothing. He retired and is now some hot-shot sports caster.”
Rosie blew out a breath. “That’s… a lot.”
“Did Simon not know?” Ella asked. Apart from Cameron, he was the biggest football fan she knew.
“I suppose so.” She shrugged. “If it was as big a scandal as you say, he probably assumed we already knew?”
Yeah, probably. Who’d have thought a subscription to ESPN would be more valuable than three university degrees?
“So, I’m guessing that Jake has bowed out because he’s worried media attention will rekindle the scandal?”
“Yup.”
Ella stared morosely into her drink as Rosie drummed her fingers on the table. She wished she could travel back two days and not have made that call to Suzy. Glancing at Daisy and Iris she asked, “What am I going to do? How do I fix this?”
The two older women had lived and seen much in their lives. And between Daisy’s pragmatism and Iris’s psychic ability they always seemed to know just what to do or say.
Daisy regarded her over the rim of her whiskey glass. “Go and talk to him.”
“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to talk to me. And even if he did, I doubt I’ll be able to change his mind.”
“So don’t try,” she said. “This must have stirred up a lot of crap from his past. Talk to him about what he’s feeling.”
Ella almost laughed at the suggestion. Jake had never struck her as a guy who talked about his feelings.
“He likes you,” Iris added. “He likes you very much.” She grabbed her cards and laid them out in a quick spread. Nodding briefly, she announced, “The cards are favorable.”
Ella sighed. Far be it from her to question the cards.