Colt’s expression turned fierce. “Play my position, show no fear, and tonight we dine on the souls of our enemies!”
Ella leaned sideways and raised an eyebrow at me.
“What?” I shrugged.
She stood and straightened his uniform. “Off you go.”
“And keep your hands off the ball!” I shouted after him. He turned, throwing me a thumbs-up before racing toward his team.
“The souls of his enemies?” Ella questioned, holding back a laugh with her arms folded under her breasts. I didn’t look at the way the move pushed them up toward the scoop neck of her maroon shirt. Nope. Didn’t look.
“What? He’s basically a man.”
“He’s six.”
“Boys were trained as warriors at age seven in ancient Sparta.”
She laughed, the sound utterly intoxicating. “I’ll be sure to keep the Spartans off the invite list for his birthday party.”
“Just to be safe,” I agreed and was rewarded with another laugh.
This is exactly how her life should be, filled with soccer games and sunshine and smiles from both her kids. This was exactly what she deserved. I just wasn’t the person who deserved to give it to her.
Havoc jumped from the bed of the truck and kept me company while I set up the shade tent away from where the other parents were set up. The design let the fresh air in but kept the sun off Maisie while allowing her see the game. “Stay,” I commanded Havoc, and her rump hit the ground at the opening of the tent.
When I got back to the truck, Ella already had her wagon loaded with the folding chairs. Maisie sat perched at the edge of the seat, and that’s when I saw it—exhaustion. Man, she’d hid it well.
“Hey, why don’t you head over and set up Maisie’s seat, and I’ll bring her down,” I suggested to Ella. “That way she’s not in the sun for too long.”
Ella agreed and walked across the grassy expanse to the tent.
“You’re exhausted,” I said to Maisie, turning back to her.
She nodded, dropping her head a little. “I didn’t want to miss it. I miss everything.”
“I get that, but you also have to take care of yourself so you can do even more when you get better.”
Her fingers skimmed over the place under her shirt where her PICC line ran in her arm, protected by a mesh armband. “I know.”
It was the way she said it that made me take her hand. “I see a lot of soccer games in your future. Everything you’re going through right now will one day be this crazy story you get to tell everyone, and it’s going to look great on your college entrance essay, okay?”
“I’m six.” A small smile tilted her lips.
“Why does everyone keep saying that to me today?” I asked. “Now, would you like a ride to the game?”
Her smile erupted in a flash of joy, and I scooped her up, adjusting her long, pink wind pants and matching long-sleeve shirt to cover all of her skin, and then her giant, hot-pink floppy sun hat. “Okay, I’ll make you a deal,” I offered as I strode toward the tent with Maisie in my arms.
“What’s that?”
“I’ll agree not to drop you if you agree to keep your hat from blowing off.”
“Deal!” She giggled, a sound I decided was only outranked on my list of the best sounds ever by her mother’s laugh.
Some of the other team moms and dads called out greetings, and I answered with a smile that I hoped didn’t look forced, knowing I was damn lucky to have a place in Maisie’s and Colt’s lives, no matter how small. That role came with dealing with other parents, and I was working on it. Every practice the small talk got an ounce easier, the smiles a little less fake, and I started to see the other parents as individuals and not just…people.
I settled Maisie into the camping chair Ella had set up, and then propped her feet in a smaller one that served as a footrest. Seeing the small shiver that ran over her, I quickly pulled the blanket from the wagon and laid it over Maisie’s legs.
“You sure you’re okay?”
She nodded. “Just a little cold.”
I tucked the blanket around her, and we settled in to watch the game. Ella started out as one of those quiet moms, more than a little camera happy but reserved in her commentary. By the second half of the game, she was full-on shouting for Colt as he scored a goal.
The transformation was hilarious and sexy as hell.
Or maybe that was the view of those mile-long legs in her shorts. Either way, it took a great deal of my concentration to keep my hands off the soft skin just above her knee. Damn, I wanted her. Wanted every aspect of her—her laughter, her tears, her kids, her body, her heart. I wanted everything.
Lucky for me, my craving for her physically was second only to my need to take care of her, which kept my libido in check.
For the most part.
Yeah, okay, that was a lie. The more time we spent together, the closer I came to kissing her just to see how she tasted. I wanted to kiss her until she forgot everything that weighed her down, until she’d forgive me for the lie I was living.
And the longer I kept my secret, the further away it felt. The more I dreamed of the possibility that she might let me stay in her life as just Beckett.
Not that I wasn’t tempted to tell her who I really was. To tell her how her letters had saved me, that I’d fallen in love with her by her words alone. But then I realized how far I’d dug into her life—picking up groceries, taking Colt to soccer, hanging out with Maisie when she was too sick to go to the main house. The moment I told Ella who I really was, what I’d done, she’d kick me out and be on her own again, and I’d promised to show up for her and the kids. Keeping that promise meant not giving her a reason to throw me out. Telling her was selfish, anyway. It would only hurt her.
Chaos had no chance of helping Ella—of being there for her. Not after what had happened. I’d have to wait until Maisie was in the clear before coming clean to Ella. Then the choice would be hers.
“What is that kid doing? Isn’t that illegal? He can’t trip him like that!” Ella shouted.
“I think it was more of mutual clumsiness, there,” I countered.
“Oh my God, he did it again! Get him, Colt! Don’t you let him do that to you!”
“You know, he’s only six,” I said, sweet as cherry pie.
She slowly turned to me with a glare and an openmouthed scoff. “Whatever.”
I laughed and for the first time realized that I was utterly, completely content with my life. Even if I never got Ella, never tasted her mouth, never touched her skin, never kept her in bed on a rainy Sunday morning or heard her say the three little words I was starved for, this moment was enough.
Glancing back at Maisie in the shade, I saw her eyes closed, and the deep, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. She was asleep with Havoc curled up under her outstretched legs. If she was already this exhausted, how the hell was she going to withstand another round of chemo next week?
“Oh no…no, no,” Ella muttered, and I turned my attention back to the field.
The other team slipped past Colt, then the defense, and scored to win the game.
Well. Shit.
My heart ached when I saw Colt’s face, the way his shoulders fell. But he shook hands with the opposing team like the sport he was, and then sat on the bench long after the coach finished the post-game pep talk. Seeing some of the other dads cross the field, I looked over at Ella, who looked almost as disappointed as Colt.
“Well, that sucks.” She folded her arms across her chest, her long side braid brushing over her arm as she turned to look at me. “What do I say to him?”
“How about you give me a second with him?”
“Be my guest.” She motioned toward the bench. “I’ll pack everything up.”
I crossed the field with his cleat bag in my hands, then dropped do
wn in front of him to start untying the double knots he swore he couldn’t play without.
“Man, I loved watching you play,” I told him, slipping the first cleat free.
“I let him by. We lost because I messed up.”
I untied the second cleat and then took it off, too. “Nah. You win as a team, and you lose as a team. There’s no shame in that.”
“I didn’t want to lose,” he whispered, like it was a dirty secret.
“No one does, Colt. But I can tell you sometimes the losses are just as important as the wins. The wins feel really good and let us celebrate what we did right. But the losses, they teach us more. They teach us to see where we can improve, and yeah, they feel pretty darn bad, and that’s okay. As you get bigger, you’ll see that it’s not how you handle the wins that make you a good man, it’s how you handle the losses.”
I handed him the shoes he’d brought, and he put them on his feet as he thought, his little forehead puckered in the same lines Ella wore when she was working something out. Then he fastened the Velcro and hopped off the bench. “So it’s okay to lose.”
I nodded. “You have to lose sometimes. It keeps you humble, keeps you working harder. So yeah, it’s okay to lose. Sometimes it’s even good for you.”
He heaved a giant, melodramatic sigh and then nodded. “Will you come with me for a second?”
“Sure,” I answered without thought, following him past our bench to the away team’s, where he found the kid who had scored the final goal.
The kid saw Colt and stood up.
Colt walked straight to him. “I just wanted to say that you’re really fast. Good job today.”
The kid smiled. “You, too. That was an awesome goal!”
They shook hands like tiny men, and Colt grinned as we walked away.
“I’m really proud of you,” I said as we started to cross the field.
“Well, he’s really fast. But you know what? We play them again at the end of the summer, and I’m going to be faster. I can wait that long to kick his butt.”
I wanted to chastise him, but I was too busy trying my damnedest not to laugh. “Gotcha. Then we’ll dine on the souls of our enemies?”
“Bingo.”
He stopped midfield, and I had to backtrack a couple of steps. “Colt, what’s wrong?”
He looked up at me, blocking the sun with a hand, and then glanced around to the other parents walking back to their cars. “Is this what it feels like?” he whispered so quietly that I leaned down.
“What it feels like?” I asked.
“Having a dad?” He tilted his head slightly.
Words fled at the same rate every emotion assaulted me. His question flayed me open, leaving me raw and exposed in a way I’d never felt before.
I crouched to his level and said the only thing that came to mind. “You know, I’m not sure. I never had a dad.”
His eyes widened. “Me, either.”
I’m here now. The words were there, in my head, at the tip of my tongue. But they weren’t mine to say or to offer. Man, it was a slice of hell to fall in love with someone else’s kid when you couldn’t claim the love of his mother—or her mother. I looked across the field to see Ella sitting with Maisie under the shade, running their hands over the grass.
“What do you say we take the girls home?” I asked Colt as I removed my baseball hat and put it on his head to keep the sun off him.
“Good idea. Let’s tend to the women.” He strode toward the girls, and I didn’t hold back the laughter this time. How the kid could have me near tears one second and laughing the next was beyond me.
“We lost,” Colt told Ella as we walked back to the car. I had Maisie in my arms, her head against my chest, while Ella pulled the wagon behind us.
“Oh, man. Have to admit, I’m glad there aren’t any enemy souls for dinner tonight,” she joked, pulling him to her side. “I guess we’ll just have to settle for ordering pizza.”
“Pizza!” both of the kids shouted, then high-fived each other, Colt jumping to reach Maisie.
I got each kid locked into the booster seats I’d purchased for the truck and loaded the wagon and contents into the bed as Ella ordered pizza. Havoc jumped into the back between the kids. Ella had calmed down a ton since the oncologist told her Havoc was completely safe to Maisie as long as her levels weren’t bottomed out.
I drove us back through Telluride as Colt and Maisie debated the merits of cheese versus pepperoni.
“Do they ever have a conversation where they finish a sentence?” I asked Ella.
“Nope. It’s like they have their own language. They just know what the other is thinking before they finish, so they don’t.”
“Creepy, but cool.”
“Exactly.”
How natural it would be to reach over and take her hand, to brush a kiss across her palm. Everything about this felt effortless—right. The same as writing to her had been…not that she’d know about that anytime soon.
I pulled in front of the pizza shop and parked the truck. “A parking spot right up front? Looks like pizza was fated for tonight!” I declared.
The kids lifted their arms in victory, but Maisie’s weren’t quite as high. She was tuckering out again.
Both Ella and I got out of the truck, but I beat her to the sidewalk. “I’ve got it,” I told her.
“You’re not paying for pizza,” she protested.
“But I am.”
“Are not.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“Am, too.”
She stepped forward and stared up at me, all fire and stubbornness. My gaze dropped to her lips, parted and perfect. So kissable.
“I’m paying,” she said, all soft and slow, like she knew I was struggling to keep my damn hands to myself.
“In your dreams.”
Her expression went all soft, and I would have paid a million dollars to know what she’d just thought about. “Fine,” she said. “But only if you agree to have dinner with us.”
“Deal.”
“Are not!”
“Are, too!”
We both turned to see the twins mocking us through their open door, giant grins on their faces.
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Pipe down, you two, or I’ll put anchovies on yours,” I threatened without a straight face. “Should we grab another pizza?”
“I ordered three,” Ella said with a shrug.
We stood there and smiled at each other like idiots, both knowing she’d planned on me staying for dinner long before our little deal.
Havoc jumped down as I walked toward the store, and I turned around, dropping to scratch her ears. “Protect Maisie and Colt.”
She sprinted away, parking her rump just beneath their open door.
“Ella!” Hailey waved, and I walked into the shop as the two women started chatting near the bed of the truck.
Three pizzas and five minutes later, I walked out of the shop and nearly dropped the boxes.
An older, well-dressed couple, coming from the opposite end of where Hailey stood talking to Ella, had paused. It wasn’t the pause that triggered me, it was the look on their faces. Utter, abject shock as they looked at the twins.
Havoc stood—she’d always been a good judge of character—and I started moving.
The woman stepped forward, as if she didn’t have control over her own actions, and Havoc bared her teeth and began growling.
Ella turned at the growl, and when she sucked in her breath, I had all the info I needed. “No!” she snapped, not at Havoc, but at the couple. She marched straight up beside Havoc, bared teeth and all, and said it again. “No. Go. Now.”
I came up behind the couple, then to the side, sliding the pizzas onto the passenger seat as I walked by to put myself between them and Havoc.
“Don’t come any closer
. She’ll go for the jugular if you move one hand toward those kids.” I kept my voice low and even. The minute I got agitated, Havoc got dangerous.
“That dog is a menace,” the man said, sneering up at me.
“Only to people she sees as threats to the twins or Ella. Now, I believe Ella asked you to go.” I walked forward, forcing the couple to retreat, knowing Havoc would follow and give Ella the room to shut the door so the twins wouldn’t be exposed.
When I heard the door slam, I relaxed, and Havoc put her teeth away.
“Who, exactly, are you?” the woman demanded.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Those aren’t your kids,” the man seethed.
“They’re not yours, either,” I said. “But I’m theirs, and that’s all that matters. And I can tell you that if you ever come close to them without Ella’s permission, Havoc will be the least of your concerns.”
When the man started to stare Ella down, I moved into his line of sight, blocking her from the disgust aimed at her.
“Beckett,” Ella called softly, no doubt noticing the small crowd that was witnessing the exchange.
“Have a nice evening,” I told the couple, then turned around and walked back to Ella, putting my hand on the small of her back and urging her into the truck, then shutting the door behind her.
The couple was gone.
I passed Hailey, Havoc at my side.
“Jeff’s parents,” she whispered.
“I figured.”
“There’s tequila in the freezer.” She motioned toward the cab of the truck, where Ella sat in silence, stunned.
“Good to know.”
“Who was that?” Colt asked.
“No one you need to worry about,” Ella answered.
“Havoc was worried,” Maisie countered.
“Havoc is a good judge of character,” Ella muttered. “They were just some people I used to know.”
“They weren’t very nice,” Colt noted.
“Nope. They never have been.”
Ella was quiet as we drove back to Solitude and faked her smile through dinner. Then she got the kids to bed, and I sat on the couch, silently waiting as Havoc snoozed at my feet.
The Last Letter Page 15