He nods, and gives me a side glance. “Mia’s sleeping with Jordan Sumner.”
“No, she’s not.”
He sneers at me. “How do you know?”
“Because I know. They’re just friends. And what you did last night was bang out of order. Jordan is your friend, and your teammate.”
Archie shakes his head, his hands waving through the air in front of him. “No, no, no. She’s sleeping with someone. I know it. I fucking know it. And Sumner’s been ogling her since they met.”
“For christ’s sake, Archie!” My voice thunders around the sunroom, and Archie freezes for a moment. “Stop it! You cheated on your wife! You did that. You do not come back here and threaten to beat up one of your teammates becauseyoufeel guilty.”
“Oh, so I’m just projecting, am I?”
“Very probably, yes. And you need to think about why that is.”
Archie falls silent, staring out the window at Barry’s garden. I watch him for a moment, wondering what happened to that funny little boy who’d sit in my car and bounce with excitement.Who proudly put my posters on his wall. Who had the world at his feet, and became so cynical that he threw it all away.
I give myself a shake, puffing out a short breath. “I’ll be calling a meeting of the Board, I’d suggest you be there to plead your case.”
“My case?” Archie turns around with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve breached your contract. The club needs to decide whether to keep you on or cut you loose.”
Archie lets out an uncertain laugh. “I-I thought you’d just…”
“What? Fix it?” I chuckle, tucking my hands back into my pockets. “Of course you did.” I turn around to leave the room. “You’ll get a call, they’ll tell you when to be there.”
“Dad!”
I hesitate at the door for just a second, but I push through it and leave the sunroom. I’m not fixing this for Archie. I’ve fixed too much for him, all these years. I’ve opened too many doors for him. He’s taken advantage of everything presented to him, and it made him entitled.
I can’t fix this.
Barry eyes me from over his coffee cup as I walk into the kitchen.
“I’ll have to pass on the coffee, coach.” I give him a nod. “I’ll call a meeting of the Board, I’ll see you there later.”
“Right you are.”
Back in my car, my phone is lit up with a million messages. I know this day is going to be rough. I know it’s going to upset my dad. I have no idea what my family will look like by the end of it.
But one message out of the hundreds I scroll past makes me smile.
It’s from Mia.
I had fun last night
20
DOMINIC
Archie doesn’t showup to the Board meeting, even though my father calls him, Barry calls him, I call him, Kasia calls him, even Jordan bloody Sumner calls him.
He doesn’t answer.
It’s just gone back to how things were while he was gone.
My father still tries to plead Archie’s case, but the Board members are angry. There’s no talking them out of it when the decision is made to suspend Archie for the remainder of the season and not renew his contract at the end of it.
