Page 68 of Look What You Made Me Do

“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.”

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