Chapter Fifteen
Kendall
It starts with a buzz. Then another.
By the fifth notification, my phone screen looks like it’s having a seizure: Group texts, push alerts, gossip blog pings.
The headline hits like a slap:
Mystery Father Alert: Tarron McCoy’s ex-wife glows, Hints of Baby On Board
Below it, a photo of me leaving my prenatal clinic yesterday with my hand on my bump, sunlight catching my hair. It’s not scandalous, just intimate. I’m too far along to hide it now but this can’t be real news. No one’s reading this… right?
The image loops across every sports outlet within hours. Someone even zoomed in far enough to catch the hospital badge on the folder I’m carrying. By noon, the story’s everywhere.
I scroll through the comments because I’m a masochist.
Are they really back together?
It has to be Tarron’s right?
She’d really go back to her cheating ex? No way.
Wild theory—it’s someone on the Hawkeyes!
My stomach knots until it aches.
The comments don’t stop; they mutate. More photos. A slow-mo video of me stepping off a curb.The same zoom on the Hawkeyes logo. Then side-by-sides of Tarron in Seattle this week, shorts and a cut-off Sentinels tank at practice.
They’re trying to stitch a story out of scraps because the last photo of us together was months ago at a restaurant doorway. The mystery isn’t even who—it’s how. How did anyone know what clinic, what hour, which exit? Why care at all?
Then again: if I know anything about my ex and his agent—two men who can sniff out forms leverage in the back of a fish market’s dumpster—they’re either behind this or ready to profit from it.
The blog tone is half coy, half claws. Even if we were reconciling, the piece reads like bait.
Not the sunshine spin an agent usually buys.
The media is a monster that likes to be fed, and this morning they’ve been handed steak.
Tarron’s name always comes with drama: cheating with a cheerleader, totaling a rental house in New Orleans after a Super Bowl win, bankrupting himself after partying too hard, getting kicked out of two rehab clinics… which I’ve heard is actually hard to do.
There’s always a new headline, always a mess to clean up, and the press never misses a chance to cash in on it. So it’s no surprise that his ex-wife showing up pregnant after a very public divorce, and in the same city he just moved to, has the vultures circling again.
I set my phone face down on the desk in the trainers’ room and exhale. Theo glances over the top of his inventory sheet, pen between his teeth.
“That doesn’t sound good. Want to talk about it?”
Theo’s a steady teammate. We don’t hang out off-hours, but I’d trust him with my life on game nights.
“Only if you have the power to mute the world.”
He huffs a laugh. “If I had that power, I’d be using it already. So… what’s up?”
My phone buzzes, vibrating the wood. Then again.
Penelope Matthews, GM.
“I’d love to chat,” I tell Theo, “but the boss is calling.”
I step into my office, close the door, and swipe to answer. “Penelope?”
“Are you seeing this?” Concern lives under the even tone.
“The pictures at the clinic? Yeah. I have no idea how they knew I’d be there. It’s…” I hunt for a word that isn’t violating “... weird.”
“No,” she says, crisp. “The video the Seattle Sunrise got with Tarron this morning as he left practice.”
“Wait—what?” I’m already bracing. “What video?”
“Sending now.”
The link lands and I tap as if my whole life depends on it… and at this moment, it might.
A reporter jogs alongside Tarron as he heads across the lot toward his truck, sun bouncing off chrome and biceps. “Tarron—Alex with Seattle Sunrise. How’s practice going? Two years out of the league, do you feel ready to play again? Think you’ll do it here in Seattle?”
Tarron smiles for the camera like he’s done it since birth. “Just taking it one day at a time. Blessed to be here. My body feels good.”
“And do you want to clear up the rumors about your personal life? Fans are buzzing about the pregnancy rumors–”
“I’m going to stop you there,” Tarron says and I blow out a breath of relief. He’s about to defend me, I know it. “Just for the record, what me and my wife do or don’t do is nobody’s business but ours okay.”
My relief snaps in half. “Goddamn you, Tarron,” I mutter under my breath.
Penelope hears it and groans. “Oh, just wait,” she says. “Keep listening. I’ve never heard someone shove both feet into their mouth quite like this genius.”
The problem is… Tarron is a genius. He knows how to put on a show. How to act like the well-intentioned jock who’s just bad at interviews, but he knows exactly what he’s doing. Unfortunately, that smart, think-fast side of his is always what drew me in. He’s not dumb… not even a little.
The reporter blinks. “Your wife? You mean Kendall Hensen… the team doctor for the Hawkeyes? Sources tell us that you two are still divorced. Do you have a comment about that?”
Tarron chuckles, the kind of practiced laugh that’s meant to sound humble but lands smug.
“You know how people love to talk. Paperwork is paperwork, right? Sometimes life’s more complicated than whatever a headline says.
I’ll just say this—Kendall’s always going to be part of my story.
We’ve been through things that don’t disappear because of a signature. ”
He shrugs, a picture of charm and regret.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for her. She’s doing amazing things in Seattle.
I wish her nothing but happiness, and healthy, happy days ahead.
” He flashes a grin, nods to the camera, and walks away like he’s just delivered a public-service announcement instead of setting fire to my life.
Penelope lets out a sharp breath. “Jesus Christ.”
“He didn’t deny it,” I whisper, throat tight.
“He didn’t have to,” she snaps. “He just turned it into a half-truth and let every gossip site fill in the blanks. He basically confirmed you’re still involved and that the baby might be his. And he did it with that fake-boy-scout smirk.”
Tarron to a tee. But I still know the side before fame. I wish that man still existed.
My phone vibrates again—alerts, screenshots, captions multiplying like weeds.
Theo peeks his head through the doorway, pale. “Uh, Kendall… the video’s already on SportsCenter.”
“Of course it is,” Penelope mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Unbelievable. That man couldn’t keep his mouth shut if you paid him to.”
I sink into my chair, staring at the still image of Tarron’s easy grin frozen on the screen.
Aleksi’s name flashes across the top of my phone. A text bubble.
Aleksi: I just saw the clip. Tell me he didn’t call you his wife.
Aleksi: I thought you said he wouldn't say anything else and that he already got what he wanted.
I don’t know what to say, but I have to say something.
Me: I’m going to fix this.
“Aleksi just texted me. He’s not happy. What do I do?” I ask Penelope who’s still on the line.
“Okay. Damage control mode. We kill the story, we starve the oxygen. I still have a friend or two at Seattle Sunrise… I’ll see if I can convince them to take the story down.
Meanwhile, you are going to text that idiot ex-husband of yours and tell him to shut up before we super glue it shut with a restraining order. ”
And just like that, the sweetness of the last few weeks evaporates. The real world, the one full of consequences, contracts, and vultures, crashes back in. It figures that my little perfect bubble with Aleksi wouldn’t last.
“Okay, I’ll text Tarron. Let me know how the call with Seattle Sunrise goes.”
We hang up and then I pull up Tarron’s name.
I grab a bottle of water from the mini fridge of my office, sit on the edge of my desk, and open a chat.
Me: What the hell was that interview with the Seattle Sunrise about. We had an agreement, Tarron.
Tarron: Don’t believe everything you see online.
Me: You literally said “my wife” on camera. I’m not reading into anything… but now, everyone else will be.
Tarron: I was trying to shut him down without dragging you in.
Me: Congratulations. You just turned a rumor into confirmation. Half the internet thinks I’m carrying your comeback baby.
Tarron: I was protecting you, Kendall.
Me: You were protecting your image like you always have. Don’t twist this. Penelope’s furious, the team’s in damage control mode, and if the medical board decides to peek under the rug, my license is toast.
He doesn’t respond right away. Then the dots appear.
Tarron: I didn’t mean to make it worse. Those reporters cornered me. I panicked.
Me: You don’t panic. You perform. You always have.
Tarron: Let me fix it. Please.
Me: No. You’ve done enough.
Tarron: Just meet me. One hour. Luigi’s Pizza—back patio. I promise there won’t be any press and no cameras. It’s near your apartment so it’s neutral ground, right?
My stomach flips.
The same place Aleksi took me after the ultrasound appointment. The red brick patio, the string lights, the back door that opens straight into the alley. Tarron isn’t wrong—it’s tucked away enough that no one would think to look there.
Me: You’re using this as a way to get me to have lunch with you? Are you kidding me?
Tarron: Fifteen minutes. You can yell at me, throw pizza at me, whatever you need. I’ll even spring for the stuffed crust and I’ll order extra sauce in case you throw it at me. It’ll make a bigger mess.
Me: I’m not stupid enough to walk into your PR trap.
Tarron: Then call it closure. Just you and me. I give you my word.
Me: Your word hasn’t meant much lately.
Tarron: You want the truth about the clinic leak? Meet me. Otherwise, keep guessing at who sold you out.
Wait, someone sold me out? Who would do that? The breath catches in my throat.
I never found out who had made the complaint to the medical board years ago when I was working for Florida because the accusations turned out to have no merit to them.
No… He’s bluffing. He has to be bluffing.
Me: You don’t know anything.
Tarron: I know enough to make this right. Fifteen minutes, Kendall. If you hate me after that, you walk out the back door.
I stare at the message.
My heart is pounding, logic screaming don’t do it, but he’s chosen the one place that feels familiar, the one that’s already tied to something good. Safe, or at least it used to be.
Me: Fine. Back patio. Fifteen minutes. You show up alone, or I’m gone.
Tarron: Deal.
I drop my phone into my bag and rest my hands over my stomach.
Penelope’s warning echoes in my head—Don’t pour gasoline on this.
But if Tarron really knows who leaked that clinic photo, maybe this is how I stop the fire before it burns everything else down.