Because she’d dedicated her life to the game. Nine months pregnant, she would be better than eighty-five percent of the women on the field.
I’d watched Nettie in championship games. I’d watched her play for the United States of America during the Olympics. I’d watched her fend off offers from Europe. I’d watched her sink her heart and soul into this game.
So yes, if anyone could come back and be just as good as she was pre-baby, it’d be this woman.
“How will that work with a baby?” I asked carefully. “Will you be taking her with you?”
She looked at me solidly then.
“I’ve negotiated a new contract,” she said softly. “With Oregon FC. In that contract, I’ve agreed to make two out of every five practices on site. The other three I’ve negotiated to do on my own at the state-of-the-art facility an hour away with a private coach with Oregon. When I need to be on site, they’ll send a private plane for me. I’ll do this for two years, where I’ll work with their young forward that’s in high school right now. She has three more years, and she refuses to leave high school before she graduates.”
“Oh, wow.” I blinked.
“They have a forward that’s retiring next year, so it works out perfectly,” she said. “And it works out great because that forward they’re hoping to bring to the team actually lives and plays here now.”
“Who? Bossy?” I asked, feeling like I already knew who.
She nodded her head in affirmation.
Nettie was a twin. Her twin sister was Eddy. Eddy was engaged to one of my club brothers, Weaver Grant. And Weaver Grant had a daughter that was a phenomenal soccer player. Berkley “Bossy” Grant.
I hadn’t realized that Bossy was that good.
To be honest, I hated soccer. So of course I wouldn’t pay attention to Bossy’s games.
I had an irrational hate for it because it’d stolen my life from me.
Maybe not in actuality, but that was what it felt like.
Each time she walked out of my door, it was because of the soccer game she needed to get back to.
It was impossible not to hate it.
“So where are you staying until you have to go back?” I asked carefully.
I fully expected her to say Miami, where her main residence was, and not the apartment that my father had bought for her and Eddy. The one he’d purchased for them when their parents had kicked them out when they’d found out that Nettie was pregnant.
My dad, the best man that I knew, was a softy.
He also hated my mother and would do anything he could to rile her up.
Like buying a couple of teen girls that he really liked an apartment building and letting them move into it when he knew it would piss his wife off.
“Here,” she said softly.
My entire being just…sighed.
“Oh, thank god.”
Her lips quirked. “But we have to set boundaries.”
I frowned. “What?”
“We can’t sleep in the same bed. We can’t be together, Boone. We will strictly be living together for the baby’s sake,” she stated. “I want you to be a father to this baby, Bart. Not on the periphery. When I start work again, I’ll have to leave and spend days away. I want the baby to have their life as uninterrupted as possible.”
Here.
She meant to live here.
