Page 49 of In The Game

She timidly runs her fingers through her hair.

“Are there any more?” I ask, texting the screenshots to myself.

“No… That’s it.”

I force myself look at them one last time.

“These messages are disgusting.”

I understand her reaction to me now. Her anger may be old, but mine is fresh and new.I’m on the warpath.

“They are,” Raleigh agrees, taking a sip of her latte. I slide her phone back across the table.

“What were you saying about the restraining order thing?”

“After these messages, there was this small niggling doubt in my mind. The things you said were so…cruel. I don’t know why, but I needed tohearyou say you wanted nothing to do with us. I called your agent and the organization, and every time, I would get referred to your PR.”Julia.“Anyway, eventually this woman answered and told me that if I continued to attempt contact, that you were going to file an order of protection against me. I was twenty-two at the time, I believed her without thinking twice. I was pregnant and broke, it scared me. That was the last time I tried to contact you.” Her eyes fall to the table, and it destroys me.

I restrain myself from pulling her into my arms. My hand envelopes hers, but I crave more. Touching Raleigh feels as natural as holding a hockey stick. Her skin is warm and soft against my calloused fingers.

“There are no words big enough to apologize or make up for this, but I am so sorry.”

Her throat bobs and she nods with glossy eyes. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” She winces and frowns while shrugging. It’s clear she’s fighting her emotions. “We had our shot.”

She’s shutting down on me, and it pisses me off she’s giving up so fast. I still feel so much for her.

“Why did you walk out that night? Why didn’t you leave your number?”

“Why didn’t you try to find me?”

With a forearm resting on the table, I spring forward. “I did! The very next day, I searched for you. On and off over the years I would look for you. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find someone named Raleigh when you have no last name?”

She stares at me for a while, and I can see the hurt there. “Do you want me to forgive you? Is that it? I’ve accepted what happened and moved on.”She’s killing me.“It’s not worth the effort, we weren’t meant to be.”

“Bullshit. If we weren’t meant to be, you wouldn’t have come into my life again.Weare worth it.Our son is worth it.”

She flinches at my words, and I take a deep breath, trying to calm down. I’m devastated at what we lost and that I have to build trust with her and with Arthur when it should have been there all along. It feels like I’m losing her all over again.

“I’m going to see what I can do about these.” I wiggle my phone. “But as far as you and me…”

Our eyes meet and we study each other. I struggle to find the right words to say. Iwantto say I’ve never stopped thinking about her, that she’s a terrific mom, and more gorgeous than I remember. That I’ll never leave again and won’t stop until both of them are mine.That I want her more than I’ve wanted anything. I want my name on her back. On her driver’s license. On her lips.But those things will scare her away.

She’s delicate and fragile, and the damage we have to repair will take time. I’ve obsessed over her for so long. But for every second I’ve spent thinking about her, she’s spent those seconds hating me. It’s not going to happen overnight.

“Order number one-thirty-two, Barrett!”

I tap the table for a second, not wanting to leave this bubble. “Be right back.”

When I return from grabbing our lunch, she’s looking at the messages.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve read them. I sorta forgot.”

“You should forget. It doesn’t matter. None of those things are true and they were written by someone who envied how much I wanted you.”

“What do you mean?”

I sigh. “The person who set up that account pretending to be me, I think it’s the woman who managed my social media, it would have been the same woman that you spoke to in PR. I hated Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and all the other apps I was supposed to be tracking. There were so many rules on what we could and couldn’t post, I didn’t want to deal with it. So I let her manage everything. She had a thing for me, I never reciprocated.

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