Page 16 of Wildcat
“I’m sorry about how things ended with Rhyse, but I’m really glad you’re back and that you’ll be here to be Auntie Scar.”
“Me too.”
My phone pings in my bra, and I fish it out, earning a laugh from Cadence. “What else are you hiding in there?”
I stick out my tongue at her as I unlock the screen. For days I’ve jumped every time I’ve gotten a new text, hoping it was Leo. I felt something with him that I hadn’t felt in a really long time. Maybe ever. Then again, maybe I was so desperate for someone to give me attention, I imagined the connection. But it’s not Leo this time, just like it hasn’t been him any of the other times a new text has come in the past few days. Jade’s name displays on my screen.I got the job! They called right after I left your house. Can you come out for drinks tonight? Invite Hottie Leo!
“Oh, I know that smile.” Cadence tries to peek over my shoulder, and I sidestep so she can’t see the screen. “Who’s the new guy?”
“What did I say about not dating until your thirty?” Dad winks as he comes into the kitchen carrying his and Mom’s plates.
“It’s Jade. She got a job with a local magazine, and that rule went out the window when this one got married at twenty-three and knocked up at… How old are you these days? Twenty-nine?”
“I’mtwenty-six, and you know it.”
Cadence is not thrilled about creeping closer to the thirty mark, and I like to tease her about it any chance I get.
“You met a boy?” Mom asks. We’re now all crowded into the very space I came to escape.
“Boys are idiots,” Dad says. “Thirty. That’s about the time they start acting like men.” He’s still pissed at Rhyse. My parents only met him once, but he made a great impression. He always does. He puts on his media face—charming grin, saying all the right things, personable, likable. And it isn’t even fake. He loves his job and meeting people, being in front of a crowd. He was meant for a life in front of the camera.
Cadence laughs softly. “I need to get going. I’m so tired these days, and I have to be in court first thing in the morning. The gift bag has an adorableI heart my grandparentspicture frame in it with a photo from my first ultrasound.”
“Oh!” Mom rushes for the bag and her first glimpse of the little bean.
There’s a lot of oohing and ahhing over Cadence before she can get out the door, and then it’s just the parents and me again. Dad goes to his office with a promise that he won’t be long (We all know that’s a lie.), and I help mom clean up.
“Don’t forget we have the party for the team tomorrow,” she says as I start to leave the room.
“Do I need to be here?”
“I think it would be nice,” she says. Translation: yes. Most girls would be dying to attend a party with a bunch of pro hockey players, but I have had my fill of professional athletes. Besides, it’s too weird now that my dad is the coach of the Wildcats.
“Okay. I’ll be here, but I’m inviting Jade, so I have someone to talk to.”
I text Jade to wish her congrats on the job, decline her invite to go out tonight because I need to edit some photos I took for Mike to keep up his new visibility and promo online, but beg her to come to the team party at our house tomorrow.
The edits for Mike don’t take long. In fact, it takes me longer to select a few images from the hundreds I took than to do the actual editing. Either way, I’m happy to be doing something to work on my skills. I’m not sure Mike even cares about the photos that much. I think he just felt bad for not giving me more hours behind the bar. Since my first shift, I’ve worked two more afternoons, and they went about as well as the first.
After I send off the edited images, I fall into bed with my phone and scroll for jobs. There are a few places looking for photographers, but I don’t feel ready for that yet. I check my messages, you know, just in case one came in from Leo, and I didn’t notice (groan), and then since I’m already feeling sorry for myself, I go to Rhyse’s social media page.
Someone on his team posted a video from the race last weekend. He stands on the podium as handsome as I remember. It really doesn’t seem fair that he can go on living his life, winning, looking great, seemingly unaffected by our breakup, while I’m floundering with just about every aspect of my life.
I scroll through his old posts. It’s weird to see his life like this, knowing I was there but not being in any of it. Half of the photos are ones I took, but I’m not in them. Rhyse’s team thought it was best to keep the focus on him. When we first got together, he snapped a selfie of us at some event and posted it, tagging me as his girlfriend, and the backlash from his fans was immediate and awful.
He’d built an image—the hotshot Formula 1 racer and notorious playboy. He’d partied hard his first couple of years, dating women all across the globe. That’s who people wanted him to be. They didn’t want him to settle down and grow up.
They came for me in droves. I had to change my social media profiles to private. He might have been ready for a serious relationship, but after seeing the reaction, his publicist thought it was best if we kept it quiet for a while. At first, it was only going to be six months until the end of the season. I didn’t love being his girlfriend in private only, then in public watching him keep up his single, fun image, but it was better than being attacked.
And I was head over heels. I really thought it was temporary. Six months came and went, and I could see that he still wasn’t ready to risk his popularity taking a nosedive to really be with me. I held out hope for another six months, but on our one-year anniversary, I gave him an ultimatum.
And here I am.
I traveled all over the world with him, but there isn’t a single scrap of evidence I ever existed on any of his social media pages. If it weren’t for the ache in my chest, I could almost pretend it never happened.
7
SCARLETT MILLER IS YOUR DREAM GIRL?
