Peggy shook her head sadly. “Then I’m staying with you. You can’t push me away. If you insist on spiraling out of control, you’ll take me with you.” Jay shook her head, but Peggy smiled. “I’m changing my part of the story, and I’m not going away until you’re ready to change yours, too.”
She hung her head, afraid Peggy would see the gratitude in her eyes. As much as she wanted to have the strength to go on alone, she simply didn’t. As much as she wanted to pretend she was a loner, she wasn’t. And as much as it hurt to wonder if things could have been different if she’d allowed Sadie to stay beside her, she couldn’t stop herself. At least with Peggy here, she could tell herself not everything was the same as it had been before. Maybe she could pull strength from that difference to get through one more match without putting Sadie in any of the danger that came from being associated with her.
★ ★ ★
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
“The tennis world continues to be rocked by the recent scandal and insinuations coming out of Wimbledon, as Jay Pierce advanced yesterday by virtue of a forfeit,” the announcer said again and again and again. The TV in the executive lounge had been tuned to sports highlights at the top of every hour for the last four hours. Sadie once again looked around for another open spot, but seeing as how the lounge was packed with delayed travelers, they were lucky to have found seats at all. The high-back chairs and circle formation around a small table gave them at least a modicum of privacy and comfort. Giving them up now might require her to stand indefinitely, and since she hadn’t slept in two nights, she again chose the torture of reliving Jay’s match yesterday. After the commercial break, she’d get to relive her press conference.
She blew out a deep, steadying breath as the announcers went on.
“Pierce took the court to a sea of boos and harassment after suspicious comments from her seventeen-year-old doubles partner suggested inappropriate conduct of a personal nature.” The narration paused for viewers to hear the horrific taunts. Sadie ground her teeth to hold back the feeling that she could have stopped it all. Jay could have stopped it all, too.
“After winning the first set, Pierce’s opponent and reportedly longtime friend, Peggy Hamilton, began to complain of an elbow injury,” the announcer continued. “The two were later seen leaving the All England Tennis Club complex together.”
This comment had yet to pass without feeling like needles under her skin. Jay had allowed Peggy to stand by her, to escort her off the court, to stand between her and the press.
“People who follow the sport have pointed to Pierce’s reaction to Hamilton’s forfeit as a sign there may even have been a fix on.”
Sadie glanced up at the screen again in time to see Jay mouth the word no, as Peggy turned from the trainer to the chair umpire. Then Jay closed her eyes, and for a moment it looked as though her knees might buckle underneath her.
“No doubt there will be more scrutiny as Pierce faces Jillian Fradley in this afternoon’s quarterfinal match. That is, if the match is able to go forward at all. For more on that, let’s check in with our weather team, who are currently tracking a line of severe storms moving across Europe.”
Sadie sat back, her muscles melting more from lack of control than from any real relaxation.
She had a few minutes’ break before she’d be subjected to the replay of Jay’s press conference, though in some ways that video was worse than the first. At least when Jay was on the court, all the venom came from the crowd. Under the bright lights of the pressroom, Sadie could clearly see that more of Jay’s torment stemmed from internal sources. Then again, Jay wasn’t alone in that area.
She glanced across the small table to see Destiny still staring at the television, her complexion now a grayish green, and her eyes darker and more sunken than Sadie had ever seen them.
They hadn’t spoken since leaving London. At first Sadie didn’t have the strength to keep arguing with her. Then the anger had returned, but she hadn’t known who she was madder at, Destiny, Jay, or herself. After she’d calmed down enough to see the signs of her own struggle mirrored in each of their expressions, she wasn’t mad at anyone. Now she felt only sadness.
She sighed as the emotion rolled over her again. She was alone. Her daughter was in pain. Complex problems loomed like the clouds on the horizon. This was the time she normally sprang into action. She’d been in millions of hopeless situations throughout the years. She’d been looked down on and underestimated and stereotyped, and every single time she’d used her detractors to fuel her fire. Every time, she’d turned inward and found the strength to prove them wrong. And she’d triumphed by relying on herself instead of other people. She’d never needed anyone else. Until recently, she’d never even wanted anyone else. She’d never understood women who fell apart after a breakup.
A breakup.
The phrase floated through her mind. For the first time in her life, she’d been broken up with. Jay had told her she didn’t want her around. She’d been dumped.
For some reason the thought hit her in the chest. She’d always been the one to push people away. She’d always been the one to make the call. She’d always been the one to go it alone.
Alone.
Why did everything keep coming back to that?
“And we’re back to the Wide World of Sports, where this week, that wide world focuses on one word: Wimbledon.” The TV announcer cut back in after a blissfully mundane commercial break. “And at Wimbledon, all eyes are currently on Jay Pierce, who, I’m sure you all know by now, is refusing to comment on reports that she had an inappropriate relationship with her underage doubles partner.”
Sadie couldn’t take it anymore. Someone else could have her seat if they wanted it badly enough to sit through the audio torture of that press conference again. Pushing her heavy body out of the chair, she strode purposefully to the opposite side of the room and leaned her forehead on the cool glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the dormant runways.
She could no longer hear the television speakers, but somehow Jay’s words still followed her. Without meaning to, without wanting to, Sadie had memorized the chain of questions and answers and no longer had any control over her recall of them.
“I take full responsibility for my actions, both on and off the court,” Jay had said.
“So, you admit to wrongdoing with Destiny Larsen?” someone had asked.
“I admit I wasn’t the mentor or the tennis partner she wanted or deserved.”
“Were the two of you a couple?”
“No.”
“Did you ever pursue her romantically?”
“No.”
“Are you currently involved with anyone romantically?”
Jay’s voice gave only the tiniest waver. “No.”
“Are you going to tell us what you did that made Destiny Larsen so mad at you? What promises she says you broke?”
“No,” Jay said flatly. “I’ll only say the blame lies with me. She is a bright young tennis star and a fierce competitor. She and her entire team deserve the best on every level, and I think we can all agree that’s not me.”
Sadie had the sudden urge to put her fist through the glass holding her up. The attacks on Jay’s character still hurt. The fact that Jay was so quick to protect Destiny bothered her on multiple fronts. One, Destiny didn’t deserve that level of loyalty, and two, if anyone was meant to protect her daughter, that was a mother’s job. Perhaps most infuriating, though, was the fact that even while under attack, even in her clearly visible pain and humiliation, Jay would rather face everything alone than with Sadie by her side.
“Mom.”
The word barely registered through the hurt threatening to swallow her.
“Mom.” Destiny tried again, this time laying a hand tentatively on her shoulder.
She turned to look at her without really seeing, but Destiny pushed a thick slip of paper into her hand.
“I rebooked us on a different flight.”
The words didn’t make sense. The WTA had handled their travel arrangements. Destiny had never been involved in making those decisions. Sadie didn’t even know she knew how.
“You got us on a different flight to New York?”
“No,” Destiny said, then looked out the window almost sheepishly. “I got us tickets back to London.”
This time, as Sadie stared at her daughter, she actually saw her, saw the color return to her cheeks, saw the determination flash in her eyes, saw the grim line of her mouth.
Panic rose in her again, the same way it had the day before when the press had trapped her baby in their vicious circle. She couldn’t face that again. She wouldn’t. “No.”
“I have to,” Destiny said, with a flatness to her voice that echoed the numbness she’d heard in Jay’s.
“You don’t.”
“I made a mistake.”
“Yes, you did,” Sadie admitted, too frightened to feel any pride that Destiny had finally come to that conclusion on her own. “You shouldn’t have aired your frustration to the press, but you can’t take that back now.”
“That’s not the mistake I’m talking about.”
“What?”
“I made a mistake when I said Jay wasn’t good enough for you.”
“Oh.” Sadie didn’t know what else to say.
“I didn’t think she was good enough for you. I didn’t think she could be the kind of partner you deserved. I didn’t think she could love you the way you deserve to be loved. In the past, she has always run when things got hard. She’s always hidden. She’s never taken a serious stand in her life. I didn’t think she was capable.”
The words made all the air leave Sadie’s lungs.
“I was wrong.”
Sadie shook her head. “No, actually, you were right on that count.”
“She— well, I think anyway . . .” Destiny acted as if the words were stuck on the roof of her mouth and she had to force them out. “She loves you.”
“People fight for what they believe in, for what matters to them.”
Destiny looked over her shoulder at the television, and Sadie followed her line of vision to see Jay sitting, tired and broken and still taking a beating. “I think she is fighting for you,” Destiny said. “She’s standing there taking all the fire so that you can get away safely.”
Part of Sadie understood that. She realized Jay’s intentions were good, but that still left her on the outside looking in. “Maybe, but she made it clear she doesn’t want me by her side while she does it.”
“Did you know I asked dad once why he didn’t ever want to live closer and see my matches and travel with us more?”
Sadie shook her head again, unable to follow yet another twist in topics and tone.
“He told me not everyone can be a tennis mom, and that was lucky for me, because I already had one of those. He said he figured what I needed most, once those needs were met, was for someone to just quietly stand a little farther away and make the world safe enough for you to keep doing your job. He said he loved me as much as you did, but the two of you just loved differently.”
Sadie thought of Tad, and the truth of his statement. He did love them in his quietly steady way. She knew it as surely as she knew her own heart. She saw it every time she looked into those blue eyes of his. But, as she remembered the adoration in his eyes, her mind shifted to Jay’s, so similar in color and yet so different in the emotions they held. Fire, passion, a desire that had consumed every part of her. Where had it all gone when they’d needed those things most?
“Some people rage, and some stand beside the people they love in the middle of an angry mob, but maybe other people bring the whole mob down on themselves so the people they love have time to catch a flight back home,” Des said. Looking out over the rain-soaked runway, she added more quietly, “And some people make mistakes even when they are trying to protect the people they love.”
Sadie smiled sadly as some of the pride she’d been unable to summon earlier broke through her pain. She cupped her daughter’s face in one hand. “We all make mistakes. I love you—”
“Unconditionally. I know.” Des met her eyes. “You always told me that no matter what I did or how mad I made you, you’d never stop loving me.”
“It’s true.”
“Because you’re the mom, and Mommy knows things,” Des said, a hint of her own smile returning. “But you also told me that when I made a mistake, I needed to learn from it and make it right. I have to go back there to do that.”
Sadie stared at her little girl, who looked more like a woman now than she ever had. Destiny wasn’t the baby she’d held in the palm of her hand, or the sullen teenager she’d been days ago. She wasn’t even the angry child she had been yesterday. Something powerful and profound had shifted in her.
“I’m proud of you for wanting to make amends,” Sadie said emphatically, “but I’m not sure it’s what Jay wants from us.”
Destiny snorted. “Aren’t you the woman who screamed at both of us about how decisions about your life aren’t someone else’s to make?”
Sadie smiled sadly. That seemed like a lifetime ago.
Destiny put a hand on Sadie’s shoulder and squeezed before nodding toward the TV. “Look, Jay is up there fighting for us. Maybe that’s a mistake. Maybe she’ll think me going back there to fight for her is a mistake too. Or maybe she’s just never had anyone fight for her, so she doesn’t believe she’s worth fighting for.”
The truth of that statement hit Sadie like a hundred-mile-an-hour serve to the chest. No one had ever fought for Jay before. Everyone had either run or allowed themselves to be pushed away. She stared up at the screen. Jay certainly looked broken, alone, and resigned to her fate. Turning back to her daughter, she saw the same fear and resolve in her eyes. For once, both the women she loved were tugging her in the same direction.
The last piece of Sadie’s resolve cracked.
Destiny lifted her chin defiantly. “Whatever flight you decide to take is fine with me, but you raised me to take responsibility for my actions, and to fight for what I believe in. That’s why I’m going back to London.”
“No,” Sadie said resolutely, “that’s why we are going back to London.”
Chapter Fifteen
Something hit the windshield of the traditional London black cab with a thwap, and Jay looked up in time to see a tabloid newspaper lying flat across the glass before being unceremoniously brushed away by a quick flick of a windshield wiper blade.
To his credit, their cabbie had been the very picture of stiff upper lip in the face of the crowds trying to get at them, and he didn’t so much as twitch at this latest intrusion. Jay wished she had some hint of that British ability to carry on amid an attack, but if not for Peggy sitting next to her, she might have ordered him to turn around and drive her right to Heathrow Airport.
“Hey,” Peggy whispered, “look at me, not the headline.”
Jay shook her head. “I didn’t even notice which one it was.”
“Good,” Peggy muttered in a way that suggested she had, but Jay couldn’t imagine why it would matter. They all said basically the same thing. She was a predator and possibly a pedophile. It didn’t matter what catchy title anyone slapped over the accusations. She was once again the poster girl for the religious right’s funding campaigns to eradicate gay rights. As if it wasn’t bad enough, she had lost Sadie and her own career. Now she’d be used as a cautionary tale aimed at stripping away the rights of lesbians everywhere.
“Deep breaths,” Peggy urged, as the cabbie wound slowly down Somerset Road toward the players’ entrance of the All England Tennis Club, and their car once again got hit with a barrage of coffee cups and hurled insults. At least she couldn’t distinguish their words from inside the cab. Then again, they wouldn’t stay inside the cab.
The driver pulled inside the wrought-iron gate and in front of the players’ entrance, leaving them only a few steps to go to reach the sanctity
of the buildings surrounding Centre Court.
“Ready?” Peggy asked, as they came to a stop.
The answer was clearly no. She wasn’t ready for any of this, and yet at the same time she was as prepared as any person could reasonably be. She’d walked this path a thousand times in both memories and nightmares. She at least knew exactly what to expect. She didn’t know if the knowledge she’d gained from previous experience was a blessing or a curse. Still, she nodded resolutely and handed the cab driver a wad of cash more than large enough to cover the extra trouble of transporting them. Then she swung open the door and stepped into the firestorm.
“Dyke,” someone screamed, and the crowd erupted.
“Pervert.”
“Seventeen.”
“Go home.”
“Going to hell.”
All the words spilled out at once, and yet somehow she managed to hear them all individually as she unfolded her long frame from the car.
“Go,” Peggy shouted, scrambling out from behind her.
“Go,” Hank yelled from somewhere to her left.
She ducked her head and took two steps before she processed that she had actually heard Hank.
She whirled around to face the spot his voice had come from and was hit with the burst of light from a hundred flashbulbs.
Rubbing her eyes, she heard another voice call, “It’s Larsen!”
She blinked away the white spots from her vision in time to see Destiny sprinting toward her with her eyes low and her hands covering her head.
“Destiny, Destiny, Destiny.” The crowd clamored for her to look their way. She refused. “Was Jay your first? Are you a lesbian? Where was your mother when all this was happening?”
Hank came rushing up behind her with Sadie in tow as Peggy found her feet as well. Before she could process what was happening, Jay’s shoulder collided with Destiny’s as the two of them were encircled and pushed toward the door.
Love All Page 30