“You will,” he says, and he is going to continue, but we hear frantic footsteps coming upstairs.
“Okay, there are a shit ton of people here,” Allison says. “Matthew just ordered pizza, and Denise is on a rampage about shaving her head.”
“What?” I say, walking past both of them and running down the steps. She wasn’t kidding when she said there were a shit ton of people here. I look in the living room and see that the lawyers have started on whatever they are looking at.
I walk into the kitchen and see Jack is running after Denise as she goes to the bathroom. “By any chance, do you have clippers?”
“Umm, no,” I say and then Jack pulls her shirt.
“I don’t want you to,” he says quietly, and the three of us squeeze into the little bathroom.
She sits on the toilet bowl and opens her hands to get Jack to sit on her lap. He reaches out to grab a strand of her hair. “I like your hair,” he says, twirling it. “It’s so soft.”
“Would you love me less if I didn’t have hair?” she asks him, and he shakes his head. “Would you want me to wear a hat all the time?” And he shakes his head. “So how about we do this. I won’t shave my head, and you stop wearing the hats when you don’t want to.”
“But …” he says, looking at her. Her hair still in his hands.
“But nothing,” she says. “I love you from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes,” she tells him. “Hat, no hat, hair, no hair, blue eyes, brown eyes … I love you.”
“Okay, no hats,” he says, looking at her. “And you don’t cut your hair.”
“Deal,” she says, smiling and bringing him to her chest. “Now, I need you to take Michael up to your room and show him all the cool things that you have while your dad and I talk to all these people.”
“Okay,” he says softly, climbing off her lap. I open the door, and we walk back into the kitchen. There are about ten large pies on the counters.
“Is this a party?” Jack asks, and Max answers him.
“Yeah, buddy,” he says. “It sure is.”
He just shrugs and calls for Michael, who comes running into the room. “Want to see my dinosaurs?” he asks him, and Michael nods his head, and they turn and run up to his room.
“Let’s get this over with,” Denise says, and the six of us walk out of the kitchen and into the living room.
Doug gets up and comes to Denise. “We are going to fix this,” he says to her, and she just nods her head.
“What do we got?” I ask them, and Liliane is the first to speak.
“We got an NDA. That is what we got,” she says, smiling.
“Apparently, she just called people to see if they wanted an exclusive interview with her,” Olivier says. “Luckily, I called them first.”
“ZMT just broke another story that you shut her out as soon as they confirmed your son had cancer.” Doug looks at his phone. “There is a picture,” he says, turning his phone, and a picture of Jack in his hat is splashed across the screen.
“I want to get on the record that she was fucking Colton.” I turn to look at Olivier. “I want to scream it from the rooftops.”
“Zack,” Denise says, coming to me, and I shake my head.
“I have proof that she never attended one doctor appointment,” I say. “I made a record of it, and the doctor signed a letter when I knew we were getting divorced. I also have proof she and Colton continued after I left.”
“What?” Liliane asks.
“My father hired a private investigator, and well, I have a forty-five page report on when it started, where it started, right down to how many times a week they were having sex while we were still married. I want to leak it to the press.”
“Zack,” she says, and now someone I don’t know says something.
“The hospital stands behind Denise,” he says. “We just put out a press statement showing that his doctor isn’t Denise, and that what she does on her private time is her own.”
“Thank you, Ralph,” Denise says.
“We play Arizona on Monday,” Matthew says from the door. “We have to win.”
We all laugh at him. “What?” he says. “We can’t let her do this and then have her boyfriend win.”
“It’s a good thing you have your eye on the ball,” Karrie says, going over to him and hugging his waist.
“We play as a team; we fight as a team,” he says, looking at me. “Whatever you want to do, we do.”
“I just got an email that Jack’s blood work is coming back on Wednesday, so we start his treatment on Thursday.”
“Perfect,” Doug says. “You play Monday and then you’re off for two weeks.” I just nod my head. There is no way I would be able to play anyway.