“Hi,” I answer in a guarded tone.
“Hi!” She sounds happy. “I saw you called.”
“Yeah.”
“Everything okay?”
“Were you going to tell me about the money?”
“The money?” She sounds confused.
“The money DeMarco gave you.”
“He didn’t give me any money.”
“Don’t lie to me, Serena. You owe me the truth, if nothing else.”
“I’m not lying.” Her voice is suddenly defensive. “I didn’t take a dime from him.”
“Then how did you afford the new car you and Jayne just bought?”
“God dammit, it was supposed to be a surprise,” she huffs. “But I guess the cat’s out of the bag. Yes, I bought a new car because?—”
I don’t hear the rest of her sentence because there’s a shrill whistle and one of our assistant coaches, Derek Quinn, is trying to get us all together.
“Team meeting!” he yells. “All hands. Let’s go!”
What the fuck?
Team meetings are always announced via the team chat. I’ve never seen anything like this but I don’t have a choice.
“I’m sorry, Serena, I have to go. Coach just yelled for us to go into a meeting.”
“I heard.” She sounds almost as frustrated as I feel, but I don’t have time to talk right now.
“I’ll text you later.” With that, I disconnect and follow the direction everyone else is going.
I don’t know for sure what’s going on with Serena, but it seems like the writing’s on the wall and this time, I’m not going to sit around begging for the woman in my life to put me first. I can’t do it again.
I just wish it was anybody but DeMarco.
That’s the part that stings.
There’s a small part of me that wants to fight for her, but I don’t think I have it in me a second time. I can compete with DeMarco as a man but not as Joey’s father.
Because I’m not.
And I learned the hard way that blood really is thicker than water.
Chapter
Thirty-Six
Serena
The email on Anthony DeMarco’s behalf requesting my bank routing and account numbers comes from some fancy attorney, but I’m not giving out that information. And I don’t want any money from Tony unless and until we have some sort of court document enforcing boundaries. And assurance that he won’t try to get full custody of Joey.
I’m probably going to need a lawyer but if this thing with Dusty Peaks works out, I’ll be able to afford it. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll swallow my pride and ask West to help. I haven’t told him about the follow-up call from my agent yet because I wanted to surprise him, but after our argument yesterday, I’m both hurt and annoyed.