Loving a Man Who Forgot Me Novel Chapter 20
I had all the money, accolades, platinum records, sold out concerts, endorsement deals, and success one could dare dream of, but it was nothing compared to what I lost. It all meant very little when the biggest thing was missing.
I just didn’t know how to get it back. I thumbed the band on my finger. Tiny piece of metal, and yet it may as well have been a steel cage.
Abbi “Ms. Cross!” One of my students threw up his hand for a high-five as he ascended the stands past my row.
I smiled and smacked his hand. “Go Panthers!” His buddy shouted right behind him and they continued up before I could identify the student beneath the layer of blue and black face paint.
“Go panthers,” I echoed with a chuckle. The energy level of the crowd as we waited for the players to take the field was already at eleven.
First home game of the season, the Panthers were optimistic that this was our year, in large part because of our star quarterback, whose parents sat just on the other side of mine.
I surreptitiously scanned my eyes over the line of students and families still streaming into the stadium. He wasn’t among them. Yet. Maybe he wouldn’t show. Maybe the Boston PD had locked him up and lost the damn key. That was too much to hope for.
The buzz of the crowd announced his arrival before I ever laid eyes on him. “Oh my gosh,” gushed the girl directly behind me, “Jenny just texted me and said she saw Abel McCabe in the ticket line.” “No friggin way!” I craned my neck, forgetting discretion altogether.
“Do you think he’ll let us take pictures?” Slowly the news spread through the stands and there was a mass exodus of teenage girls from their seats. “I think our son is finally here,” Aunt Jax noted with some humor. “I remember when they used to react to you that way.”
Uncle Ky grunted unintelligibly, and a moment later added, “Looks like your dad made it too.” I’d yet to spot Abel, but the second Uncle Ky said it, my eyes landed on him, and then the man trailing after him. Tonight was really going to be a night for stirring up the crowd.
Between the McCabe fame and the Malloy infamy, their family couldn’t escape the spotlight if they tried.
Abel’s grandpa didn’t scare me, but maybe that was because I’d only ever known him as Abel’s Grandpa Jack who brought us kids sweets and toys, and never as Jack Malloy, the head of the Irish mob that terrorized and controlled Boston for years. The rest of the city had longer memories and were less forgiving of Jax’s dad than she wa