Page 81 of The Do-Over

As soon as she’d warmed up enough, she called Billy.

“Where are you?”

“Almost home. We’re half frozen. We were fine until we stopped to make a fire in the snow. Would have been better to keep moving.” His deep voice was always so reassuring. She felt herself relax even though nothing had changed, this was still a crisis in the making.

“Am I on speakerphone?”

“Yes, do you want to say hi to the boys?”

“Yes, but we have to talk later, Billy. It’s important.”

“Looking forward to it.”

The tone of his voice told her they’d definitely be doing more than talking.

She poured cheery energy into her next words. “Hey, my favorite snow lizards! How was your ski?”

The boys all talked at once, and her thoughts wandered back to the photos.

They kept running through her mind after she hung up the phone. The violation was a shock, and so was the fact that some of them had been altered. Someone had an agenda, and they’d roped her into it, and it felt terrible and disorienting.

But something else had jumped out at her from those photos. She looked…happy in them. So had Billy. They looked happy together, happier than she’d been in a long time.

Twenty-Five

Billy had known something serious was going on by the tension in Jenna’s voice. But still, the call from Pete right after he got the boys settled in with hot chocolate was a shock.

“Brace yourself. Someone’s posting shots of you playing the field. Not the baseball kind.”

“I’m not playing any fucking field. What the hell?”

“Then what are you doing? ‘Cuz they’re making it look real bad. I mean, real bad. I’m doing my best, but you can probably kiss Japan goodbye.”

Try as he might, Billy couldn’t bring himself to care about Japan right now. What if Jenna saw those photos?

“It’s a lie. I’m not doing anything. I’m hanging out with Jenna, that’s it.”

“Then you better hope she doesn’t see these, because wow. Billy Club is back, baby.”

A deep rage flooded Billy. If a bunch of lies torpedoed his career, he’d live with that. If they killed his relationship with Jenna… “Unless you want to get fired right this minute, you’ll never use that name again.”

“Got it,” Petey said after a minute. It was so rare that Pete’s motormouth ever slowed down that it took a moment for Billy to continue.

“Can you find out who’s doing this? I need to know who’s fucking with my life.”

“How would I…” he cleared his throat, changing course. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll put my tech guy on it. But you should watch yourself. Someone’s following you around with a camera and a nasty agenda. The good thing is that so far, The Dugout isn’t touching it.”

“Can you make sure they don’t? Tell The Dugout I’ll give them an exclusive first chance I get.”

“Got it.”

He hung up and went back to the living room, where the three boys were arguing over who had the best whipped cream beard. He should probably tell them not to play with their food, but he was too sick at heart to bother.

How could he put Jenna through this again? The blog headlines and social media posts had torn them apart last time. He couldn’t expect her to tolerate it now, when they weren’t even married anymore.

He had to take some kind of action. Otherwise he’d go crazy. His mouth was dry from fear, so he went into the kitchen to get some water. A movement from outside caught his attention. He rushed to the window and spotted the flash of a red cardinal against the snow.

Idiot. Afraid of a cardinal and not even the baseball kind.

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