Warning Track (Callahan Family #1) - Carrie Aarons Page 0,78
waist to retrieve our phones from the floor. He hands me mine and takes his in one hand.
With his other, he reaches out, lacing our fingers. “Together, then?”
I know what he’s asking. The minute we unlock these and start to sift through the messages, we’re going to walk into the fire hand in hand.
I nod, because there is absolutely no one I’d rather go down swinging with. But hopefully, we can emerge on the other side, stronger than ever.
38
Hayes
To say that we’re in a shit storm would be an understatement.
Colleen and mine’s ethics, careers, and mental states have been called into question. Some people are calling for her job, while others think I should be traded immediately.
Of course, this is all happening in the midst of the playoffs, and the pictures of us kissing leaked while we were two games away from clinching the league and moving onto the World Series. I was asked, and complied, with sitting out the last two games, though I knew it might do damage to the team. Luckily, they won, and we are going to get a shot at the championship.
She and I have been in talks and meetings with the executives of the ball club for a week now. After deciding that we could no longer hide it, Colleen and I signed official paperwork declaring our relationship. The media got ahold of it, and the team was forced to make an official statement that we were involved and seeing each other.
At least now, we don’t have to hide. Sure, I’m hounded all over town and there are reporters sitting outside both of our houses, but we get to spend the nights together. I don’t have to drop her hand when we walk into a public space, though enduring the scathing looks in the locker room hasn’t been ideal. I know Colleen is getting way more flack, though. She came home crying the other day for what one of the executive assistants said about her when she thought she wasn’t listening.
And her uncle Daniel is being a real piece of shit. He’s all but pressing down on her windpipe, pressuring her to resign over this. Colleen is a nervous wreck most days, and sometimes I want to spare her that pain and end it, just like she did with me. I now understand her fear weeks back, because this kind of turmoil and nastiness should be thrust upon no one.
Interestingly enough, a lot of the news outlets aren’t comparing her to her father, which I know was a big hang-up of hers.
The more I think about it, the more I know I’m the one who has to make the statement here. I’m the one who has to step up to the plate, but I’m still debating how. We’re given a bit of a reprieve, with this week’s break before the World Series starts, to sort some of this shit out and let it die down. As it is, the coaches still haven’t given me the go ahead to remain a starter going into game one.
I’ll have to make my move soon, so that everything else can fall into place.
The only thing juicier than our kissing pictures leaking to every website imaginable is the fact that Shane Giraldi was booked on domestic abuse and battery charges and now awaits a trial. With Colleen’s help, Hannah was able to secure temporary housing, somewhere Shane couldn’t find her since he’d made bail within a couple of hours on the night he smashed her face into the side of their SUV.
It hasn’t been easy, but Colleen has been holding her hand every step of the way as she pressed charges. Shane was Hannah’s source of income, she’d given up her entire life to be a wife and a mother. He was pulling money and shelter away from his children to punish his wife, the one he’d beat up for years, apparently which absolutely killed me when it was finally reported by media who got a hold of the documents Hannah filed.
She and those little girls have a long road ahead of them, but they have a good support system behind them. I just hope Hannah can weather the storm long enough to put that bastard behind bars and stand on her own two feet. I’ve seen how hard it has been for others.
A couple days after the confirmation, in a statement given by the Pistons official PR, Walker and Clark show up to my house.