I shook my head and kept walking.
She was wrong. It was over, and once the shock of the news wore off, she’d realize it as well. With the article, the doctor’s signed confession, and Georgie’s video, Caroline had undone herself. She could trash me in the news all she wanted, but no one with half a brain would take her seriously after the reality of her insanity spread. She’d assumed that lies about infidelity and pregnancies would trump all, but it turned out truth burned far hotter than Caroline’s fiction. London socialite turned absolute whacko? I couldn’t have made it up better if I’d tried. Sophie Boyle had practically salivated over the phone when I’d started to lay out the story for her.
As I escorted Georgie out of the restaurant and toward a waiting cab, she glanced back at me. “How do you feel?”
I inhaled a breath of night air.
Free.
I felt free. For the first time since Henry’s death, I finally felt like I was ready to handle the responsibility of my title without caving to my mum’s demands. I could be Freddie Archibald, swimmer, duke, and normal bloke. She hadn’t thrown Caroline at me out of malice. She’d suffered in the last few years, more than she let on to Georgie and me. She’d lost her husband and her son and she wanted something to look forward to, she wanted an engagement and a wedding and future grandchildren. She wanted a new daughter-in-law she could welcome into the family and dote on, and when I’d broken the news about Caroline to her on the way to dinner, I’d promised her that soon enough, she’d have one.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Andie
A FEW DAYS after we’d returned to the States, life had returned to normal (as much as it ever would). We’d wrapped up our final interview as a team and parted ways in D.C. Everyone headed back to the lives they’d dropped upon getting called up to play for the Women’s National Team. For most of my teammates, it’d been a tough few months away from their families. For me, it had been ideal timing. Before the games, I’d wrapped up my final year of playing college soccer and had started planning for my life after graduation.
I had a few offers from club teams around the United States including Orlando, Seattle, and Houston, but I was more interested in the offers from soccer clubs abroad. Arsenal and Chelsea were the two I’d actually started to consider before the games had ramped up. They were both great teams, and Chelsea was in need of a goalkeeper immediately—which meant if I signed with them, I’d get to start right away. I’d get a ton of field time and I’d get the opportunity to hone my skills against international competition before the next World Cup in a few years.
Kinsley padded into the kitchen and sent me a sleepy nod that I half-heartedly returned. I’d been hard at work creating a list of pros and cons for the five club teams I was still considering. Currently, the list only included food. In Houston, I would get great BBQ, but in Chelsea, I’d get fish and chips.
“How’s the cereal?” she asked.
“Stale and gross,” I said, dipping my spoon in and taking another bite. It tasted like cardboard, but I was too hungry to care.
She laughed and looked in the fridge, though I knew she wouldn’t find anything inside. We’d cleared it out before we’d left for Rio, and unless she wanted to eat a pickle or a jar of mustard for breakfast, she was shit out of luck. I’d rifled through the pantry until I found a lone box of Cheerios that had expired two months earlier.
“Where’s Liam?” I asked.
“Sleeping.”
I nodded.
She shut the refrigerator door after reaching the same disappointing conclusion I had thirty minutes earlier: nothing inside was edible. I shook the box of Cheerios in the air and she rounded the kitchen island, pulling back the chair beside mine at the table. I didn’t hide my pros and cons list; Kinsley already knew I had a difficult decision ahead of me.
“Have you put any thought to what you’ll do now that the games are over?”
I tapped my pen on the notepad. “A little bit.”
“With Chelsea you’d be close to Freddie in London.”
Freddie.
She was watching me with a hopeful glint in her eye, like I would rip up the empty list and toss it in the garbage for Freddie. Freddie. Freddie. Freddie. What did she not understand about Psycho Caroline and her desire to murder me in my sleep? Did she really think I wanted to move to London and play for Chelsea, all so I could continue to deal with Caroline’s crap? It sounded like a nightmare, even with Freddie by my side.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure where I want to play yet, and I doubt anyone would want me on their team until after I’ve finished rehabbing my wrist.”
“That’s a copout and you know it.”
I stared up at her over my cereal bowl.
“Chelsea will sign you right now,” she continued. “Hurt wrist or not. You’re just scared of actually putting yourself out there.”
“Maybe I want to play for Houston.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah? Name one thing about that city.”