Page 36 of Passing the Red Line
I let out a snort. “Your dad has power, but not that much power. If I wanted a new contract, your dad isn’t who I would go to. I wouldn’t go to you either.”
Eliana doesn’t say anything, she just looks at me without any expression on her face. Not hearing her say anything makes me realize just how much I like it when she doesn’t shut up and she's full of sass and attitude.
“Then maybe I will take you up on that offer,” she says, moving her food around her plate. “If the time ever comes.”
I give her a nod. “If the time comes, you know where I will be.”
She nods, and goes back to her food and so do I.
We eat in silence for a few minutes and after she is done with her food, Eliana breaks the silence.
“I have to ask, did my dad tell you he had a daughter?”
Her question throws me.
I take my last bite and answer her question. “He’s told everyone. He doesn’t mention you often but he does mention you. He has a picture of you when you were a kid in his office.”
“Yeah apparently I’m the only one that didn’t know about that picture,” she grumbles under breath, but I ignore the comment and ask her a question instead.
“Is he supposed to keep you a secret or something?”
“No, I just never expected him to talk about me.”
Like that isn’t cryptic as shit. Because I’m nosey as hell, like Liam likes to call it, I keep pressing. “Why?”
Elaina looks up at me like she is trying to decide if she wants to have this conversation with me or not. Thankfully by the look on her face she decides to do so.
“My relationship with my dad is complicated. Has been for years. More since my mom died five years ago. Up until I got hired by the Knights, we didn’t really talk or see each other. Maybe once or twice a year. When we did, it always ended in a fight or one of us got angry about something stupid and we wouldn’t talk to each other for six months or more. When we lost my mom, I threw myself into traveling and work and he threw himself into the team even more than he already had. I always thought that my dad didn’t care about what I did or if he even told people about having a daughter because then they would ask where she was and he wouldn’t know.”
Her voice breaks a little. I can see it in her face and hear it in her voice that there is more to the story but I’m not going to push her to tell me.
“Is that why you have a different last name than him? Because it was complicated?” I ask, something that I’ve been curious about since last night.
“And here I thought you weren’t paying attention to me last night,” she says, throwing me a smirk.
“You were the only thing that I paid attention to last night,” I tell her the truth.
A small blush creeps up her cheeks but she tries to hide it and goes back to the topic we were just talking about.
She gives me a head shake. “No. My full name is Eliana Solis-Anderson. My mom is Puerto Rican, so I got her last name too. My dad filled out my birth certificate wrong and instead of making it Anderson Solis, he put my mom’s last name first. In the end it worked out. I use Solis in a professional setting, and my whole last name everywhere else.”
Puerto Rican.
That explains how she knows Spanish.
“So do you know how to make mofongo?” I say wiggling my eyebrows at her, trying to lighten the mood a bit.
I knew that our head coach didn’t have a good relationship with his daughter. I've heard things with my own ears and Liam has told me a thing or two.
Never did I think that I wanted to know more than what I already did, but I do. And I have so many questions that I want to ask, but I don’t want Elaina to run away from whatever this is between us.
She hasn’t told me she wants to stab me to death today, so I see that as progress.
“Is that your way of asking to make it for you?” she asks, a small smile spreading on her lips.
I give her a curt nod. “It is.”
“Well, I guess you’re in luck, because I do know how to make it.”
