Page 67 of Girl Going Nowhere

It seems we never mean what we say to each other about walking away.

An hour into the long drive home, I find the courage to cover his hand with mine.

We stay like that for the remaining two.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Blake

Sabrina’s name popsup on my phone as I’m walking into the apartment, making nerves bubble in my stomach. The unknown calls have stopped over the past day and a half after Dover’s team released a statement denying any allegations made against him.

“Good, you answered,” she says chipperly. She called me yesterday to let me know that Dover’s team was going to do a press release about the articles, so I’d bitten my nails down to the quick waiting for the news outlets to publish it. I knew he wouldn’t out me because that meant harming himself. But that didn’t mean I was in the clear.

“Did something happen?” I ask nervously. She knows I’ve been a nervous wreck waiting to see if I was going to be served, which she told me countless times would never happen. Nonetheless, it didn’t ease the worry.

“I sent you a link in your email,” she says. “Did you see it?”

I’ve barely had time to eat my lunch today, much less look at my emails. “Sorry, it’s been a busy day. Is it something bad?”

“On the contrary,” she answers. Her tone is too happy to believe that it could be anything other than positive. “It’s good. For you, anyway.”

My brows pinch as I set my bag down on the kitchen counter. “Give me a second.” I pull my phone away and scroll through the random emails until I find her name and the link in question.

Mystery Woman Named in Jonathon Dover Cheating Scandal

Panic seeps in as I click the article and scan the first few lines. There’s no way she’d be sending me this unless it protected me, so there has to be some sort of catch.

“What the…?”

The woman claiming to be in the photographs with right fielder Jonathon Dover finally speaks out about their long-time affair.

Sabrina breaks the silence. “There are already three other women speaking up about their time with the baseball star, and that’s not all. One of them claims she has a son with him.”

My eyes widen. “He has another kid?”

“Keep reading!” she encourages.

Bethany Wright claims she met Dover at a sports bar in Cincinnati four years ago, where the two had a one-time affair that resulted in the birth of her son. Since these claims, two more women have spoken out about their time with the baseball player during his stints in their cities during the height of his season.

“But this Bethany woman isn’t the one in the pictures they printed,” I point out stupidly.

“They don’t need to know that,” she states. “I have seen this play out time and time again, Blake. Women like that are hungry for attention. They’ll do anything to stay in the spotlight and get whatever the media and public will give to her. Same with the others who have come forward since her.”

The only problem with that is if they decide to come clean. “What if Bethany eventually says she lied about being the person in the pictures?”

Sabrina laughs. “His team is going to deny everything to make him look like he’s being attacked, but there’s too much proof against him. They aren’t going to name anybody else because that’ll look bad on him no matter how they go about it. I think you’re missing the point here.”

What’s that supposed to be? My silence gives her ample time to answer.

“You weren’t the first one.”

I blink.

Then blink again as those words sink in.

“I have it on good authority that a DNA test was done on the child, and the results aren’t favorable enough for Dover to keep saying he’s innocent. He’s pulled this before on women. Probably more than we’ll ever know. It’s evident that he’s irresponsibly using his status to get women and pay them off for their silence and God knows what else. You and Bethany kept your kids. How many others didn’t because he paid them to?”

Anything is possible if you have the money. “What does that mean exactly?”