As she launches into a far more detailed response than I need, I down the shake in one breath and grab my laptop. I figure I can do some searching while she talks, since there’s no telling how long she’ll go on. Our different DNA is never more obvious than in our personalities; she’s a chatterbox, and I’m…not. Which is fine.
I’ve never cared which of my traits I got from my birth parents, but if all goes according to plan, I’m going to find out soon.
“Well,” Mum says with a flourish, practically out of breath. “I should let you go to bed. You can call us anytime, Logan.”
It feels like something squeezes my chest when she says that. I don’t talk to my parents enough, and I’m only going to have them in my life for so long. I need to be better.
I also need to find the woman who gave me life so I can go back to Australia with something to placate Mum and Dad and stop them from worrying about me. With little to no information to go on other than my date of birth and a Los Angeles County adoption record, finding my birth mum hasn’t been easy. I’ve found a few possible results, but nothing definitive enough to reach out. Especially not to those who have left California. It’s not like I can travel across the country on a hunch when matches are starting up next week. I have to play a solid season to ensure I have a place with the Wallabies when I go back.
“I know,” I tell Mum, murmuring something about telling Dad to take it easy until he’s feeling strong again. We end the call, and I sit in silence for a few minutes as the weight of everything settles heavy on my shoulders.
I can’t let my parents down. But I’ve been here for over a month with no promising leads. There’s a chance my temporary career shift will have been for nothing, and I’ll return home to disappointment.Theirdisappointment, specifically, which will hurt. A lot. I’m grand on my own, but my parents refuse to believe that.
My phone pings with a notification as I’m pulling up a social media site to look up the latest batch of names I dug up this morning, and I glance at the screen. It’s a text from Moxie with a screenshot of a different text conversation.
Moxie:
Logan Callahan might want in on the bet.
Bean:
You told him no, right?
Tink:
The dude’s made of money. Please tell me you said yes. I need that moolah.
French:
He’s a jerk with a repellent personality. No woman’s going to date him anyway, so he’ll win by default.
Moxie:
Give the guy a break. He’s not that bad. If he wants to join, he can join, and it’s like Tink said. More money in the pot.
Repellent? I frown, rubbing my chest. I wouldn’t call myself friendly—I haven’t changed all that much from seven-year-old Logan—but that assessment stings more than it should. My Aussie teammates like me just fine, so I can’t be that bad, like Moxie said. Besides, it shouldn’t matter what the Thunder think of my personality. It’s my skills on the pitch that matter.
Have you made any friends?She may not be my blood, but Nancy Callahan is in all ways my mum. And if she’s going to keep asking if I’m connecting to my teammates, I’m going to have to try harder to interact with them so I have an answer she wants to hear.
This bet could be a good way to do that. If nothing else, maybe throwing some money at them will ease the animosity.
Another text comes in from Moxie straight to me, asking if I’m serious about joining the anti-dating bet, and I start typing a response in the affirmative. But then my eyes catch on a notification at the top of my screen telling me I have a new email from the website I did my DNA test through in the hopes of finding my mum through relatives.
Sending the text, I tap on the notification and linger on the subject line that says I have a new connection. I’ve gotten a few of these since taking the test, and they’re always too far distant to be helpful. But I freeze when I see the headline in the body of the email.
Likely match: Parent
The air slides out of my lungs as I stare at those words, not sure I’m ready to see what’s waiting for me as soon as I click the link.
Chapter 4
Savannah
MostSaturdays,myfavoriteclient’s house is empty because the family always has a million things going on, which is why Mrs. Shafer gave me a key to her house and full use of her kitchen when I’m doing my weekly meal prep for her family. Her kitchen is so much bigger than mine, and it’s nice to get out of my cramped apartment without feeling like I should be out shaking down new customers.
After the stunt Beef Wellington pulled with the bookshelf two weeks ago, costing me a client I couldn’t afford to lose, our roommate situation has been strained.
When I got home from the clinic, Beef growled at me the entire time I reset my bookshelf, like fixing his disaster was inconveniencing him. I got wall anchors the next morning like Moxie suggested, and only minutes after I secured the shelf, I found my monstrous cat on top of it, trying to knock it over again by stuffing his paws down along the wall. The punk.
