“Wow.” Davon stopped in the doorway of the main floor arcade.
“Yeah. It’s legit.”
Cooper’s senses were assaulted by sugared-up kids whizzing past him, the tinny sound of arcade games and the smell of cheap pizza—a special kind of heaven that lost its luster for adults. But he was going to find that kid inside of him if it was the last thing he did. For Davon.
“Well?” Cooper snapped the boy out of his sensory overload. “What’ll it be first? Video games? Pizza? Putt-putt?”
Davon tilted his head back and measured Cooper up. “Anything, Mr. Cooper?”
Cooper nodded. “Anything. And it’s just Cooper to you, my man.”
“Go-karts!”
Cooper should have predicted that hybrid shout-laugh response. They encountered a long line—apparently the go-karts were the popular attraction. And since the name Cooper was more associated with destruction than charitable donation here, there was no skipping to the front of the line this time.
The wind had picked up, a touch cooler than it had been at the fair but still a few weeks away from hat-and-gloves weather. A hint of pungent exhaust from the go-kart motors tailed the breeze. Suddenly Cooper was twelve again.
Davon craned his neck past the line, eyes glued to the track as the cars whizzed past them with their chipped, bright paint jobs and grating engines.
Then a thought occurred to Cooper. Could Davon get hurt on one of those things? Should he have asked for Alicia’s permission first? Was the kid even tall enough to drive them? The height marker on the post next to a few people in front of them indicated Davon was a few inches taller than the minimum requirement. But Cooper was still wary.
Then his gaze moved to the right of the line. There was a separate corral of sorts, but the line was totally empty. Double Riders, it said in bold lettering with a checkered border. The perfect solution. Though he was pretty much making up the whole Big Brother thing as he went along, at least they had go-karts.
“Hey, what would you think about heading to the front of the line and riding shotgun with me?” He offered a high five, and Davon slapped it eagerly.
“Yeah!”
There were two double-occupancy go-karts and zero demand for them. So Cooper and Davon got to ride their shiny green one around and around again.
Cooper drove extra carefully at first, but once he got a little confidence, he took off with it, passing other drivers—not discriminating whether they were grown men or preteen girls—and narrating every move for Davon over the volume of the motor like a cheesy sports announcer.
After their sixth turn around the track, what Cooper assumed to be a group of fathers and sons was waiting for them at the beginning of the line.
“Want to wait in line and go again?” Cooper shook out his hands, trying to wring out the buzz of the engine’s vibration that still reverberated through his fingers.
Davon shook his head, lips pursed as he watched the pairs file past them. “Did your old man bring you here when you were a kid?”
The question sucked the air from Cooper’s lungs. “Yeah, he did.” Images filled his mind. Fighting with Owen over who got to ride with their dad—a very different version of their dad. Dividing up tokens. Gobbling pizza so they could begin their mad frenzy to spend those tokens.
Davon’s wilted posture and glazed expression put a halt to his trip down memory lane.
Cooper felt like the biggest loser to ever walk the earth. He might want to strangle his father sometimes, but at least his was still alive. “What do you want to do next?” He nudged the boy’s shoulder to get his attention.
“I think I’m ready to school you in basketball now.”
Cooper grinned. “School me? Please. Do you even know who you’re talking to?”
“Some washed-up white boy?” The tone of Davon’s voice deepened, giving him the chops of someone much older. A sly smirk spread across his face, but the message in his eyes was playful, good-natured.
So that was how it was going to be. Okay.
“Let’s go.” Cooper raised his eyebrows in challenge, biting back his urge to inform the boy that he was starting something with the person who set a Texas state scoring record in high school. He wasn’t ready to return the trash talk. At least not today. But when the kid was a little older, it was on.
He put a few bills in the coin machine and retrieved the gold tokens, handing some of them to Davon. The arcade-style basketball game was open, twin hoops corralled by netting. “Ready?”
Davon was already putting his coins in the slot. “That depends. Are you ready to lose, Mr. Coop?”
“Keep talking, Davon. Keep talking.” Cooper pushed his own coins through the slot and punched the flashing red button to start the game.
A lever flooded several basketballs through to the holding pin. Cooper picked one up, measuring its smaller grip and size in his palms so he could adjust his muscle memory.
But Davon got right to work. He missed the first one and then drained two in a row.
Forget the fact that he was a kid. Davon’s fluid shot was lights-out good.
Okay. Yup. Forget later. It was on now.
Cooper tried to concentrate on his own hoop, making good on most of his attempts. But it was hard not to notice Davon swishing shot after shot. The buzzer sounded half a minute later, and the score was lopsided.
He’d been beaten when he was actually trying. By an eight-year-old kid.
Davon’s mouth stayed clamped, dimples trenched in both cheeks. The triumph and gloat in his eyes said everything.
“Do you want to play again?” Cooper asked through his teeth. Could his pride even take another beating?
“Naw. I won’t do that to you, son.”
After a few different games—Cooper watching and cheering for Davon from a safe distance—they broke for some pizza. Better pizza. At a place Cooper had grown up eating that wasn’t too far away.
“So, how long have you known Miss Sloane?” Davon shielded a mouthful of cheese with his hand.
“Oh, a few weeks. You?”
“She’s been doing the classes since I was six.” Something flickered in Davon’s eyes. “Is she your girlfriend?”
Cooper almost choked on his water. “We work together.” The image of Sloane pulling her sweater up over her bare shoulder hijacked his mind. “We’re just friends.”
“But you want it to be more, right? I see you.”
He felt his face flush. “Has anyone ever told you you’re nosy, Davon?” Cooper made sure the tail end of his sentence was light. Because the front end had been a little stilted. Off his game.
Davon grinned and took another bite of pizza. “All the time.”
They went to a see a Pixar movie when they were finished eating even though Davon tried to finagle Cooper into a PG-13 one.
Alicia had insisted on picking her son up when she finished her study session at four, and her pale blue sedan was in front of the movie theater as they’d arranged.
“Thanks, Coop.” Davon retrieved his things from the Defender and then buried his face in Cooper’s side, stretching his arms around his torso. And Cooper could have sworn he heard the muffled words, “It was the best day of my life.”
As he drove behind them for a few blocks, the picture of the mother and son in front of him brought back the heart-churning conviction from earlier. The absence of Davon’s father.
Cooper made a vow. No matter what happened, Davon and his mother were going to be taken care of. Always.
Cooper replayed the day in his mind, the fun he’d never expected to have. What was Davon telling his mother about their time together?
Schooled by an eight-year-old. Geez.
At a stoplight, he eased off his brake when the signal turned green and Alicia’s bumper started to c
reep forward. He didn’t see it until the last moment, a green pickup truck hurtling through the intersection from the right.
Straight into the sedan’s passenger side.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE DOOR WAS locked when Sloane arrived at the restaurant, weighed down by a bag full of notebooks, another containing photography props and her camera. This was new. The lights were off inside, chairs overturned on the tables. Cooper was always there waiting for her.
“Where are you?” She spun around to look for him, but a small crowd of white-haired men and a pair of moms with strollers were the only people in sight.
Fifteen minutes later, the evening had seeped through her thin sweater to her skin. The sun had sunk behind the restaurant, bathing the entire street in shadow. With her shoulder now aching under the weight of the bag, Sloane set everything down and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Maybe she’d missed another text from him. She scrolled through her contacts for Cooper’s number.
“Hey, this is Cooper with J. Marian Restaurants. Please leave your name—”
She scowled and pressed the end button. Where could he be? He was always mindful of their time together.
Could something have happened to him? She felt the blood drain from her face. No. Something didn’t always have to be wrong. He was a busy man, working a hectic job and about to open a restaurant, for goodness’ sake. He’d probably forgotten or was stuck doing his father’s bidding or something.
She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing her shoulders to release some of their tension.
Another ten minutes later, she’d given up on Cooper and texted him that she’d be at the Starbucks a few blocks away from the restaurant. She set up shop with a latte and her tablet, brainstorming a pressed cranberry and Brie sandwich for the fall.
The door to the coffee shop opened, allowing a gust of wind in. Cooper’s voice startled her. “Sloane.”
She prepared her sternest expression for him, but her frustration quickly disappeared as he approached and his features sharpened into focus. He was uncharacteristically rumpled, his expression pained.
“It’s Davon. We gotta go.”
Sloane’s body tensed to protect itself from what he was about to say. Somehow it anticipated she was about to find out something terrible.
“Cooper...” She rose, fumbling for words. “What—what happened to him?”
“He’s been in a car accident.”
She stood paralyzed as Cooper picked up her notebook and tablet from the table and shoved them in her bag. “Oh, my word. Is he...” She swallowed cotton. “Is he okay?”
Davon’s face flashed into her mind. Whole, grinning, ornery like she liked him to be. She couldn’t picture him any other way. If she did, the fragile connections that held her life together would dissolve.
“They’ve taken him to Children’s. I was in the car behind them and saw the whole thing happen. A teenage girl, texting. At least Alicia made it out fine.”
Tears blurred Sloane’s vision at those words. Fine? Fine? She was pretty sure that description couldn’t be any further from how Davon’s mother was doing at the moment.
Cooper slung her bag across his shoulders. “Sloane? C’mon.” He grabbed her hand and led her across the street where the Defender was still running and crookedly parked, half sticking into the street.
She climbed into the front seat, clinging to the leather upholstery with a white-knuckle grip, distantly aware of the ache in her nail beds.
Shattered glass. Metal crumpled like aluminum foil. The smell of leaking gasoline. Fighting was futile as the images invaded. Cooper’s front seat felt like it would swallow her whole. Darkness slid from the periphery of her vision until she was transported to the accident.
To their accident.
“You’re going to be fine,” Aaron kept telling her, fisting blood from his nose. “Just don’t look at it.”
Both bones in her lower leg had broken multiple times just above the ankle. She was delirious and hysterical from the pain and the way her leg looked like contorted rubber twisted around the mangled undercarriage of her parents’ car.
And then there was fire.
“Sloane, are you okay?” Cooper’s voice ricocheted her to the present with whiplash intensity. He brought his hand up as if to grip her arm but let it drop to the console. “You’re shaking.”
She blinked hard—she didn’t even realize she’d closed her eyes—and slackened the tension in her muscles until she was no longer wedged against the seat.
“Yeah. Yes.” She set her jaw to project some semblance of confidence. Some illusion that she had it together.
Cooper sighed and covered her hand with his, spreading warmth up her arm. “He’s gonna be fine, Sloane.”
She wanted to believe him. But she’d heard that one before.
To wall off that dark place that threatened to consume her, Sloane turned on autopilot as Cooper navigated the hospital parking lot and leaned against the admitting counter to figure out what was happening to Davon. But her shield of numbness was no match for the piercing reality of the slump in his broad shoulders. The fingers that raked through his hair. The words that couldn’t be cushioned no matter how gently Cooper spoke them.
Her favorite kid in the world had been rushed into emergency surgery. And all they could do was wait.
They found Alicia, her chin bandaged, clinging to her sister Tiffany in the waiting room. When she saw them approaching, she rushed to Cooper and collapsed into him. “Oh, thank God you’re here.”
“We came as soon as we could.” Cooper wrapped his arms around the much shorter woman.
Alicia’s bloodshot eyes sent pain like an electric shock through Sloane’s chest. “Thank you for coming, too, Sloane.”
She nodded and studied the speckled tile at her feet. It felt like she’d swallowed rubber cement.
Tiffany nodded from her chair. “Oh, you’re all that child talks about.” Her full lower lip trembled. “Miss Sloane this. Miss Sloane that. I can’t believe you actually got the boy to eat some spinach. He never touches the stuff at home.”
Sloane opened her mouth then flashed a look of desperation at Cooper when nothing came out. A little help?
“He’ll be happy to know she’s here when he wakes up,” he supplied, rubbing Alicia’s shoulder.
“They said they’re doing exploratory surgery for internal bleeding,” Tiffany told them, the mauve upholstery squeaking under her shifting weight. Her tear-stained face was frozen in a shell-shocked mask.
At this fresh reminder, Alicia pried herself from Cooper and sank into the chair next to her sister, burying a new round of tears into Tiffany’s track jacket.
Cooper’s eyes were laced with pain. He motioned to the perpendicular row of chairs, and Sloane sat with him, enveloped in tension that was almost palpable. She bent forward, forked her fingers through her hair and then sat up again, forcing everything out of her mind—her thoughts, her worries, her awareness of Cooper next to her and the panicked sisters sitting across from them. Numbness was beginning to overtake her when something breached her force field and poured energy into her bones.
Fingers pressed into her skin, maneuvering and exploring until they were laced with hers. The hand she was now touching was undeniably masculine. Knobby-knuckled, fingernails clean and trimmed. A map of textured scars and old oven burns.
She slid a sidelong glance at Cooper. His eyes were closed, faint whispers escaping from his lips. It was as if he was unaffected by the fact that he’d grabbed her hand, maybe unaware. As if the move was some sort of reflex.
But Sloane was aware. Aware of a strange, comforting feeling that was a night-and-day contrast to the pain. To the numbness. Was this what peace felt like? It’d been so long that it was hard for her to recognize it wh
en it sneaked up on her.
Whatever it was, she wasn’t about to stop it.
After what must have been a few hours of dozing and praying and fetching coffee, a gray-haired man in scrubs who she assumed was the surgeon appeared, talking to Davon’s family with his back to Cooper and Sloane.
She’d been asleep, her head resting on Cooper’s shoulder as the last warm semblances of safety were overcome by the searing reminder of their current reality. She sat up and snatched her hand away from the place it’d been resting near Cooper’s knee.
He looked at her, something flickering in his eyes for an instant before it was gone. His focus, like Sloane’s, was on the hushed conversation taking place between Davon’s mom and the surgeon. From the way their hands were covering their mouths, Sloane couldn’t tell if the prognosis was good or bad. Temptation clawed at her to eavesdrop, but she forced herself to stay planted out of respect.
Alicia and her sister disappeared behind the heavy metal doors without a word to them or glance in their direction.
“Where are they going?” To say goodbye?
No. Don’t fear the worst, Sloane. Don’t even go there.
Cooper stared at the doors as if trying to see through them. “I’m sure he’s just waking up and they want to be there when he opens his eyes.”
Sloane’s head bobbed in agreement, but she was only half-cognizant of what Cooper had said. They stared at the door for a long measure before he snapped into motion. “Let’s get you some more tea,” he suggested. “They have a great little coffee shop in the basement. C’mon.”
They returned five minutes later, a throwaway cup of Earl Grey in Sloane’s hands and an order of strong black coffee in his. At the same time, the heavy double doors squealed open and there was Tiffany.
“Oh, good,” she said. “You’re still here.”
“Is he...?” Sloane didn’t dare finish her sentence.
“Awake? Kind of. They had to remove his spleen where the seat belt hit it.”
Sloane released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
“They’ll have to keep a close eye on him.” She took off her glasses and slipped them into a hard case from her purse. “But it could have been a lot worse, you know?”
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