Chapter 15
15
To say Ella was intimated by where Jake lived was an understatement as she knocked tentatively on his apartment door an hour later. She’d called Pete, expecting him to refuse to divulge his boss’s address but he’d given it to her with his blessing and wished her luck as he disconnected.
She’d always assumed he lived somewhere nice but this was prime real estate. The luxury apartment block towered high over Greenmount Park Beach overlooking Lake Michigan and, up here on the forty-second floor, she was guessing he’d have a pretty spectacular view of said lake.
Ella knew in that vague kind of way she knew anything about football, that players earned a lot of money during their careers but she’d never thought about Jake’s bank account.
Nor had she thought to google it when she was checking him out earlier. She supposed because he’d never flaunted it?
Two years ago he’d been pulling beers behind The Rusty Nail in Trently. Two months ago he’d been pulling beers behind the bar at The Touchdown. Which he owned. And worked at. He wore jeans and T-shirts and seemed perfectly at home eating lethal home-made curry on the back porch of a southside bungalow.
He made sure an ugly stray had found a home and was volunteering his coaching services to save a school in one of the city’s most economically depressed suburbs. Yes, he drove a BMW but she was pretty sure from this apartment and its fancy AF lobby, he could have been driving a Lamborghini.
There was no reply to her knock so she repeated it, a little firmer this time. Pete had said he was home with no plans to go out anywhere which meant he was ignoring it. Or possibly her if he’d checked through the peep hole she could see in the center of the door.
“I know you’re in there, Jake,” she called, giving another knock. “Answer the damn door.”
Still nothing.
She thumped on the door. “I’m not going away and I’m only going to get louder.”
Of course, there was probably super fancy security to go with this super fancy building so if he called them, she’d be screwed.
“Jake! Stop being such a damn coward and talk to me.”
She pounded on the door this time, almost falling into his apartment as the door opened abruptly and Jake stood before her in a pair of jeans and nothing else.
Bare chest, bare feet, a Corona in hand.
He looked scruffy and disheveled and like he’d hadn’t slept in days. But he still looked better than any cleanly shaven, well rested guy she’d ever laid eyes on.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” he said belligerently, his gaze boring in to hers as he took a slug of his beer.
Ella swallowed hard, hoping Daisy was right. “Or maybe you do and you just don’t know it?”
He regarded her for a moment. “I have company.”
Company? Did he mean…?
She’d been trying not to ogle his shirtless chest but now its very presence made sense. His inference was like a rusty spoon scooping into the center of her brain.
“You’re… having sex ?”
Ella blanked for a moment as the thought of him doing to another woman the things he had done to her, scooped out more of her gray matter. She had no claim to him – she knew that. They’d had sex twice. Well, two sessions of sex, anyway. Yet in this moment, how quickly he’d moved on was deeply wounding.
“Everything is falling apart,” she hissed, the emotional whammy turning to an icy kind of rage. “And you’re… tumbling around between your sheets with a woman?”
“Jake? Who’s there?”
Ella tensed as a distant female voice reached them. Horrified, she glanced over his shoulder, every cell in her body preparing to flee. God. She did not want to come face to face with some bar hook-up who had perky everything .
As if he was taking some kind of sick pleasure from her obvious consternation, he didn’t take his eyes off her as he called, “Wrong number,” over his shoulder.
Suddenly though, Trish appeared from behind.
“ Ella ! Did Pete send you to talk some sense into him too?” Giving Jake a playful shove, she ordered, “Go put a shirt on,” as she grabbed Ella’s hand and ushered her inside.
On autopilot, Ella followed Trish through Jake’s open-plan apartment minimally decorated in what would be best described as industrial chic . Gun-metal gray rugs littered the cavernous floor space while ceilings with exposed ducting and sleek chrome fixtures, soared overhead. A staircase with wire railings and black metal treads lead to a mezzanine level.
They entered a massive black marble and stainless-steel kitchen. “You look like you could use a drink,” she said.
It was the second time today she’d heard that and it had been right both times.
Trish opened the fridge door and pulled out a bottle of white wine, placing it on the marble top of the central island. Next, she opened a cupboard, produced a glass that twinkled in the chrome down lights and poured a generous slug. The other woman clearly knew her way around Jake’s apartment which shot an itch up Ella’s spine.
Maybe Jake had been in bed with a woman? With Trish?
Confronted with her domestic familiarity, the questions Ella had always harbored about Trish and Jake’s relationship resurfaced.
“C’mon.” She handed Ella the glass. “We’re out front.”
Ella followed again, passing a theater room where she glimpsed black leather recliners and a TV screen that would have been right at home at an Imax. Ahead though, the unimpeded view dazzled as Trish led her into a sunken area that ran the length of the apartment, large windows showcasing the vastness of Lake Michigan.
“ Wow .” There were no other words.
Trish laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I said when he bought it at the beginning of the year.”
It was almost too much to take in as Ella wandered over to stand in front of the display, her head moving from side to side like a carnival clown just to absorb the scale of it. There was more leather and chrome scattered throughout the space but it was the greenery at one end that eventually caught her eye.
Crossing to it, Ella admired the way the wall had been turned into a vertical garden with all kinds of potted herbs splashing green against the austere graphite paint. Beneath them, sitting on the slate flooring, were several terracotta pots sporting a range of plants from a fiscus to a red chili to a dwarf lime tree groaning with dark green fruit.
Smart investment for someone who drank so much Corona.
It appeared to be the only corner of Jake’s apartment that hadn’t been decorated by the United Steelworkers Union.
“You like my handiwork?” Trish asked. “Miranda and I keep buying him plants. And of course tending them, otherwise they’d be dead.” She grimaced as she looked back into the sparse apartment. “If it wasn’t for the view I’d feel like I was in a factory.”
Ella drew in a deep breath as Trish’s words painted a cozy picture of the three of them in this apartment and it occurred to her for the first time that maybe Miranda was Jake’s daughter. Miranda never mentioned a father but she knew he and Trish went way back and it wouldn’t be the first time paternity was kept secret from a child.
“Yes,” she murmured, distracted by this latest conundrum. “It’s very… masculine.”
Trish laughed. “That’s one word for it. I prefer too much money, not enough give-a-shit.”
Ella laughed despite her racing thoughts. Damn it, she really wanted to dislike the ex-cheerleader but Trish Jones, who had been nothing but super lovely and supportive of the school and the Demons, was impossible to dislike.
“Is Jake Miranda’s father?”
She hadn’t planned on blurting it out. Hell, she hadn’t planned on asking the question at all. It just slipped out. And, given Trish’s shocked expression, it should have stayed unasked.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Ella’s cheeks burned. “That was terribly rude and none of my business.”
Trish finally spluttered out a laugh. “Good grief, no. Jake and I aren’t… we don’t have that kind of relationship. We’re friends. Good friends. But there’s never been anything romantic . Miranda’s father was someone I was with briefly who ran a mile when he found out I was pregnant.”
While embarrassed to be so wrong, Ella couldn’t deny the relief was overwhelming. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “It’s just you seem so… I thought?—”
Trish laughed again. “Don’t worry about it,” she assured, giving Ella’s arm a squeeze.
Which was the moment Jake, now in a black button-down shirt, decided to make an appearance. “Alright,” he announced, stepping into the sunken area, beer in hand. “Let’s get this over with.”
Plonking himself down in one of the leather chairs situated around a low smoky-glass-topped table, he glanced from one to the other. “So is this going to be good cop, bad cop?”
Trish, obviously already moved on from Ella’s gaffe, quirked an eyebrow at her. “You wanna be good cop?”
Ella shook her head. “Nope.”
“Looks like it’s just bad cop, bad cop,” she said as she took the seat beside him, gesturing for Ella to take the one on the other side.
Sighing, he took a quick hit of his beer. “Why don’t I just save you both the trouble. Nothing either of you say will change my mind about coaching the team.”
“Jake,” Trish chided. “Miranda’s going to be very disappointed in you.”
“Well, Miranda’s going to have to get used to being disappointed. It’s a big, bad world out there.”
Trish frowned. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Oh come on, Trish.” He shook his head. “You know why it has to be this way.”
Ella watched their back and forth, understanding that their couched language was for her benefit but impatient with it. Daisy had encouraged her to talk to Jake about the past so she’d rather cut to the chase.
“I know what happened all those years ago,” she announced. “About the sexual assault. I’ve been googling. And I’m really sorry I stirred it all up again for you.”
Jake closed his eyes and expelled a breath as his past rushed out, swirling around him in all its vivid, sullied glory. Somehow the fact that Ella’s loathing of football had kept her ignorant to his sordid decline had been refreshing. Almost twenty years later the shame still clung and a part of him hadn’t wanted her privy to all the murky details.
It had meant something that she didn’t know and he wasn’t sure if he could bear to see the judgment in her eyes. Because she was wrong – she didn’t know what happened.
Very few people did.
“I wish I could walk it back. I really do. But the team shouldn’t be punished for a mistake I made.” She turned pleading eyes on him. “Don’t you want to finish the job you started?”
Jake drained his beer and set the bottle on the table. Walking away from the team had been harder than he’d imagined. The boys were raw but they had that magical combination – balls and heart. And they were playing for much higher stakes than the other teams in the competition.
Hell, if he didn’t recognize himself in those kids. A misfit from a small town against what had felt like the entire world.
“This isn’t about me,” he said, his gaze flicking from Ella to Trish and back again.
He was in serious trouble with them both here, ganging up on him. Trish and their history. Ella and all their stuff – modern and ancient. There wasn’t enough Corona in all of Mexico to help him navigate this situation.
“When this all blew up two years ago, there was a lot of pressure on me to name the mystery woman, which was not then, nor is it now, an option. She’s been through enough without the media beaming her nightmare into every living room across the country.”
Jake watched as realization dawned over her face. “So you’re protecting her?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t say anything for a beat or two just nodded, her ponytail bobbing as she obviously absorbed the information.
“Pete will manage,” Jake added.
“Yes.” Ella’s brows beetled. “Of course.”
Trish plonked her glass down so hard on the glass top the wine sloshed precariously close to the rim. It was a wonder the fancy AF stem hadn’t snapped in two.
“No. Not of course.” She glared at him. “This is utterly ridiculous, Jake. It’s time.”
Jake shook his head despite Trish’s fierce face. “ No .”
“ Yes . If John Wilmott figures it out, then so be it.”
Ella looked from one to the other. “Who is John Wilmott?”
“A journalist,” Jake muttered. “He does features on issues in sports. He’s very persistent and he almost connected the dots. He just doesn’t realize it.”
“If it happens, it happens,” Trish dismissed. “Miranda’s older now and I’m not the same scared little mouse I was back then. And maybe it’s time I got to tell my side of the story and hang the confidentiality agreement.” She turned to Ella. “Jake is protecting me. I’m the one who Tony tried to rape.”
Ella’s eyes widened at the admission and she was momentarily speechless before recovering. “Oh, Trish… I’m so, so sorry. That’s awful, just… terrible.” Then her eyes widened again. “Oh God.” She put her glass down on the table with a light tap, sitting forward in the chair. “You were in the background of that picture. I’m so sorry.” Glancing at Jake, she said, “Will this John Wilmott guy see it?”
“Yep.” There was no doubt in his mind.
Ella shook her head, shooting an apologetic look at Trish. “I’m so, so sorry. I made a complete mess of everything.”
“No,” Trish denied. “You haven’t.”
But Ella was not going to be so easily assuaged of her guilt, turning her gaze to him. “After everything you went through to protect Trish?—”
Jake cut her off with a harsh laugh. “Don’t put me on a pedestal, Ella. Eighteen years ago, Tony Winchester tried to rape Trish while I stood by and did nothing.”
His words fell into the space between them like boulders into a shallow pond. Ella’s lips parted, shocked by his admission.
“No.” Trish shook her head vehemently. “That’s not what happened,” she said to Ella before looking at him again. “By the time you heard me screaming, I’d already gotten away. You need to stop blaming yourself. I’m the aggrieved person here. Not you. Let it go. I have.”
Jake picked up his empty bottle and absently rolled it between his palms, staring at the lime wedge. “If I’d been sober I might have realized what was going on.”
“He was my boyfriend, Jake. How could you have known?”
He shook his head. “I should have pushed past those goons at the door sooner.”
“You pushed past at the right moment. If you hadn’t busted through the door when you did he’d have caught up with me and I’m not sure I could have fought him off a second time.”
Trish switched her attention to Ella. “Jake was amazing. My dress was all torn and he wrapped me up in his jacket. He punched Tony in the face. He took me home.”
“Not to the police station?”
Jake could feel Ella staring at him but couldn’t bear the thought of what he might see in her eyes.
Anger? Distaste? Reproach?
There wasn’t any look she could give him that hadn’t stared back at him from the mirror for the longest time. Even after all these years the memories of that night still scratched deep into the murky swamp of his guilt, pulling at the crust, lifting the ugly scab a little, making it bleed all over again.
“I refused,” Trish said. “I didn’t want to. Not right then. I was a hysterical mess. I was crying… shaking so hard. I just wanted to get away, go back to my house where I felt safe. Jake called around the next day to take me to the precinct but… who was going to believe me, Ella?”
Trish’s question was beseeching, one woman to another, and it didn’t surprise Jake when Ella gave a resigned, “Yeah.”
“Tony and I were in a relationship. I went into the room with him more than willingly. Fooled around quite happily. I’d had a couple of drinks.” Trish ticked the points off her fingers. “I knew how these things went down. Still go down. It’s never the guy who ends up looking bad.”
Another resigned, “Yeah,” from Ella was such a searing indictment on the way things were Jake’s jaw clenched.
“I guess I was in shock,” Trish continued. “We’d only been going out for a month but I think I fell for Tony the first time I laid eyes on him. He was so big and strong. He had this curly blond hair – I swear he looked like an angel. I couldn’t believe he was capable of that. I knew he was impatient with my decision to wait before taking our relationship to the next level, but I never thought he’d try and force me.”
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Ella said, reaching across the table to give Trish’s arm a squeeze.
Trish gave a half-smile. “Thanks.”
“What happened after that?” Ella asked, looking between them. “Were there no repercussions for Tony?”
Shaking his head, Jake took over the story. “When Trish refused to go to the police, I went to the club. Told them everything . Demanded they get the police in to investigate. Demanded Tony be dropped from the team.”
Jake found it hard to believe he’d been that naive.
“I take it they didn’t quite see it your way?” Ella said.
“No, they didn’t.” Jake’s lips flattened. “They played hardball which resulted in Trish being offered cash to go away.”
“Which I took. I couldn’t face a protracted legal thing, all that media attention and” – she shook her head – “messiness. So I signed their NDA, took the money and walked away.”
“And I requested a trade.”
“I see,” Ella said although she was clearly clueless to how uncommon it was for rookies to be traded.
“Doesn’t it stick in your craw to know that Tony Winchester got away with it?” she asked Trish.
She nodded. “That’s why I couldn’t stand by two years ago and watch him walk over another woman. If I’d spoken up when he’d assaulted me, maybe it wouldn’t have happened to her but… there was the confidentiality agreement.”
“Ah,” she said and Jake saw the moment it all fell into place for Ella as she turned to him. “So you spoke up.”
“He did,” Trish confirmed. “The media were going on like Tony was this bastion of respectability. A happily married man, a great father, a stalwart of the community. Blah, blah, blah . I didn’t want to sit by and watch them crucify her without them knowing he had history.”
“But you couldn’t because of the NDA.”
“Right.” Trish nodded. “So Jake waded in all guns blazing. He went to the police and the media and told everyone what had happened all those years before at the Sentries. Which created a huge frenzy especially when he refused to identify me. The NFL closed ranks and after a shit ton of bad press, the Founders gave him an ultimatum. He could retire to great fanfare; after all, he was playing past the age a lot of players decide to hang up their cleats. Or he’d be let go.”
Old bitterness boiled to the surface and Jake was unable to sit still while all this old ground was being so casually turned over. He rose, heading for the windows, staring out at Lake Michigan and the dying rays of sunshine.
“Jake refused to retire, forcing them to sack him, forcing them to have to publicly defend their decision to get rid of one of the best tight ends the game has ever known. Someone who despite his age , was still playing brilliant football.”
“That was very honorable.”
Jake could feel the heat of Ella’s gaze between his shoulder blades. He opened his mouth to deny the charge because he didn’t think he should be lauded for just doing the right thing but Trish got in before him.
“It was magnificent,” Trish enthused. “I know you had a lot going on during that time with your mom and Cam but… you would have been so proud of him, Ella.”
“Sounds like it,” came her soft response.
“But it’s time for me to step up now.”
Jake whipped around. “No way.”
“Jake.” Trish shook her head.
Much to his surprise, Ella backed him. “I agree with Jake.” Her gaze briefly flicked to his, her ponytail swishing. “There’s no need. I understand why Jake quit and I have no desire to draw attention to what happened to you. You’ve been through enough. Pete’s good with the boys and they’re really motivated.”
In the face of Trish’s steely determination, Jake could have kissed Ella for siding with him. But he could hear more bravado than conviction in her statement.
“Nonsense.” Trish stood this time, her brow beetled as she stared him down. “There are some things bigger and more important than me and this is one of them. I’ve brought Miranda up to believe in fighting for what’s right, sticking up for the underdog. And that’s us . Deluca. It’s time to fight and I’m not going to be the one responsible for Deluca not putting its best foot forward which” – she bugged her eyes at him – “is you.”
Jake sighed. It was all very idealistic but Trish and Miranda were more important than any team. Even Ella’s and he was, God help him , falling hopelessly in love with her.
“What will happen, will happen, Jake, but you can’t walk out on those boys. Not now. You’ve got them this far – you need to take them the rest of the way. And I won’t let you use me as an excuse to hide away and lick your wounds anymore. You fading into obscurity means those assholes have won. Especially when this is exactly what you should be doing with your life.”
Trish had been very vocal this past year about him wasting his talent and pushing him to coach. It was the first time she’d essentially called him a coward , however.
Was it true? Had he been hiding away, licking his wounds?
“I have to go.” Trish picked up her wine glass and downed it in three swallows. Turning to Ella she said, “Convince him for me,” then she left.