“I’m sorry,” he said, without saying why.
“Me, too,” she responded. “I’m sorry this is so hard for you.”
He’d been feeling the same restlessness, maybe the same confusion, and he’d called. He’d called her. He wanted to talk. It was exactly what she’d hoped for, while she’d been telling herself and Mallory she wasn’t hoping for anything at all.
“You were amazing back there,” he said, “the way you went to the mat with Libby for Chloe…for me. I can’t stop thinking about it. I didn’t even thank you. You’re going to catch flak about it in the community. Libby will find a way.”
“It was worth it if it helps Chloe. Maybe her mother will settle down, knowing someone outside your family has called her on her drinking, even if there’s no proof.”
“She made another scene when I dropped Chloe off at the house. I told her to back down, get her act together, or…”
Kristen waited, but he didn’t finish the sentence. She understood. And she didn’t. It wasn’t exactly healthy, the way he’d let things rock on for so long with Libby. The way he’d let their problems hurt Chloe. But who was Kristen to instruct anyone on how healthy families should behave? The pause between them lasted so long, she was afraid she’d already said too much.
“It helped me, though,” he finally said. “Confronting her and drawing a line in the sand. I’d like to think I made headway tonight. I’d like to think Libby heard me, at least a little.” He grunted. “God, my life is a disaster.”
She clutched the phone closer. “Your life might just be starting to get better, you know.”
“Or things could be getting worse,” he warned.
“Some things have to get worse before they get better.” Jeez. She sounded as sappy as Mallory had.
“Better sounds more fun.”
“Better it is, then.” She remembered the touch of his fingers on her cheek, the brush of his lips. And suddenly, having sounded like her friend, when Mallory had talked about finding Pete, didn’t feel so sappy. There was another pause, an even longer one than before. “I should let you go…”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
“Okay,” she instantly agreed, unable to hold the word in, even though her fingers were once more pressed to her lips. The silence between them stretched out, for so long this time she checked the phone’s display to make certain he hadn’t hung up. “Law?”
“So can I call you again…even if it’s not about Chloe?”
Kristen nodded.
All they were doing was talking over the phone, for heaven’s sake. But that wasn’t really all this was. She’d been intimate with half a dozen men since her early twenties, and nothing with any of them had felt this close, or this terrifying.
“I…I’d like that,” she finally said.
“Me, too.” He didn’t sound any steadier than she did. “I’m glad I called. I don’t know why I did, except I needed…I needed to hear your voice again tonight.”
“I’m glad, too.”
“Good night, Kristen.”
“Good night,” she breathed, not begging him to keep talking, no matter how much she hoped he would.
The line went dead.
She hung up herself and looked around the quiet condo that she’d loved from the second she’d walked inside with her real estate agent. This was her sanctuary, nestled on a quiet residential street in a small town that had become the home of her dreams.
At the end of a long day—and there hadn’t been many days in her stint at Chandler Elementary that had felt longer than today—she was instantly at peace in this place. It was her retreat away from being the positive center for every situation her staff and students and ballplayers and basketball teams challenged her with. She cared about her community, but she could only take so much before she needed time away.
Except tonight, alone had turned out to be lonelier than she’d let it feel since she was a little girl and had first protected herself with solitude. And even though tonight’s scene with Law and Libby had been hideous and Kristen would hear about it tomorrow, regrouping on her own wasn’t what she needed.
More of Law’s touch was. More of Law’s voice. More of him wanting her just as much. The secret, lonely part of her was definitely falling for the man.
I’m not sure I know how to love like that, she’d told Mallory.
Now she wondered if she knew how to stop.
You’re a loser…
Law dribbled his soccer ball through the shadows, running another lap across Chandlerville’s park field. The voices in his mind followed him as he kept moving, covering the same ground over and over.
Change things up…
You’re out of control, lady…
Your life might just be starting to get better…
Dad?…
Years of playing—since he was a child—meant he didn’t have to see the ball to keep it rolling back and forth between his feet. Good thing, because even if he could make out the white and black of it through the darkness, the images that had joined him while he drilled, backlash from his day, were all he could focus on. The memories rushed with him through the night. And the past was there, too: the disappointment Libby had made the bedrock of their marriage from practically the moment he’d slipped a cheap, pawnshop-bought band of gold on her finger.
They’d been wild then. Drunk on their youth. Addicts, first and foremost, to the belief that they were invincible, and that calmer, safer, more conservative people like their parents and Law’s brother, and then his coaches and the professors at college, were all saps who didn’t know how to live life to its fullest. They’d both been arrogant and reckless. He’d played his part in life’s crueler realities crashing down on them so hard they were still reeling from the aftershocks.
He turned at the edge of the soccer field and kicked the ball ahead of him, sprinting to catch it. Music from the early days of his marriage was his sound track tonight. Things between him and Libby had turned darker and darker, beginning soon after the day they’d said “I do” at city hall and let their families know what they’d done. Followed swiftly by telling his parents that Law was in jail, that his record of driving under the influence meant there was no way to bond him out, and that he had a court date pending.
He lifted the soccer ball in the air in front of him and juggled it between his knees, continuing down the field, his lungs burning from the frigid night air. He’d been running nonstop for the last half hour. His heart was pounding, and not just from the damage he and Libby had done to each other. The worst was that he could have prevented all of it, including what Chloe was going through now, if at the very beginning he’d sobered up enough to not throw his life away.
Instead, he and Libby had been in a downward spiral since his conviction.
He stopped dribbling at the edge of the grass. He was nowhere near finished burning off the frustration and regret and confusion. He’d driven to the park after talking with Kristen. He’d wanted so much to make a U-turn and head to her house instead. Not for sex, he’d told himself. Just to talk some more. Just to be near her while she said more supportive, hopeful things about his chances to make things right for himself and his daughter and maybe even Libby, if his ex would stop thinking only of herself long enough to cooperate.
Libby’s demands that he stay away from Kristen weren’t idle threats. She might retaliate in the community, and he didn’t want to see that happen. But as soon as he’d heard Kristen’s voice over the phone tonight, and the compulsion to drink himself senseless had instantly receded, he’d accepted that he wanted her in his life somehow.
Not because he needed her help not to drink. He’d made the choice not to, before he’d called. He’d keep making that choice whatever Libby did next—for himself, not just for his daughter. But Kristen ... hearing her caring about him and his daughter was what he’d need
ed tonight, the same way he’d needed Dan’s help.
Both of them had challenged him today. Walter Davis, too. It was like Law was waking up from a lifelong sleep and realizing how lucky he was to have these people on his side, Kristen most of all, after years of not letting himself need anyone.
He flipped the ball high over his head, trying to shake the confusion he’d hoped a grueling workout would silence. He juggled the ball with his forehead. Doubts and memories and flickers of hope for the future remained as he worked his way back down the field, alternating heading the ball with juggling it between his knees, pushing his body and his mind, focusing on not letting the ball hit the ground until he’d reached the opposite end.
“That’s freaking amazing, man,” a young boy’s voice said from the sideline closest to Law.
Law trapped the ball beneath his right foot, breathing hard and soaked to the skin despite how cold it was. He shoved up the sleeves of his sweatshirt and stared through the moon-shot night to find Fin watching from the aluminum bleachers beside the field. The kid was dressed only in the jeans and T-shirt he must have worn to school that morning.
“Aren’t people looking for you?” Law asked.
Fin shrugged, as if it were no big deal that he was lurking about a public park well after dark, after disappearing for half the day.
Law didn’t like to think that the way he’d acted yesterday had made things even harder for the boy. His mind replayed the image of Chloe slinking off to her room tonight—away from Law and Libby, because he hadn’t handled that situation any better than he had Fin’s. But at least Chloe still had parents to despise and a home and her own room to disappear to.
Kristen had asked Law to help Fin because the boy didn’t seem to realize he was throwing away his chance to get the same security for his life. Law understood how impossible it could be to believe in a fresh start like that.
With his toe, he flipped the soccer ball into the air and toward Fin. The kid trapped it with his knees and feet without breaking eye contact. He stared across the playing field at Law, as if he might run again. Law wondered if he’d looked that scared himself when he’d been staring at Kristen after he’d first walked up to her tonight at Pockets, hoping she wanted him closer.
I’d like that, Kristen had said to the idea of his calling again.
And because she had, his world had felt good tonight, despite his memories. Good seemed possible again for him, mostly because of her. Could just spending time with Law and soccer really help Fin get to the same place?
“Let’s see what you got,” Law said to the kid. “Show me your best stuff, before I take you home.”
Fin flipped the ball into the air with the tip of his sneaker. He began to juggle it with his knees, the way Law had.
“I’m not going back if I don’t want to.” He side kicked the ball out of the air, sending it straight at Law’s face.
Law headed it away, keeping his eyes on Fin and letting the connection he felt to him settle deeper. Law had been in the same place. He’d thrown his own chances away. He’d made so many stupid mistakes he couldn’t count them all—all of them avoidable if he’d spent less time enduring and resenting his lot in life, and instead, early on, focused his energy on making something better happen.
“If you want to blow whatever you have with the Dixons,” he said, “and keep flipping Family Services the bird, I can’t stop you. Nothing anyone says is going to change your mind, if you refuse to listen. But you’ll have to get away from me tonight if you want to stay out here on your own. I hardly know you, and I care enough about you not to let that happen. And I’m pretty sure which of us is the fastest. So don’t waste my time, Fin. You’re not going anywhere, unless I want you gone. And I want you safely back where you belong, with good people who can make a good home for you if you give them half a chance. So I guess the only question is, do you want to have our first workout before I take you back?”
Fin took a step closer, scowling at Law. They stared at each other, measured each other, and then suddenly the kid smiled an eat-shit grin Law knew all too well—he could remember smiling the same way at Dan, when they’d been young and they’d first discovered the freedom of soccer together.
“Race you to the ball,” Fin said, taking off before Law could respond.
Chloe had been standing at the trees around the back of the soccer field for like half an hour. She’d wandered over to the park because it was close to her house—but it wasn’t her house, so maybe she could stay there for a while until she could stand being in her room again. And she liked the park and the fun she’d had there with her dad and the soccer teams she’d been on, even though she’d let her mom talk her into telling her friends and her dad she didn’t want to play anymore. She’d expected the park would be empty this late on a school night.
But the soccer field hadn’t been empty after all.
Her dad hadn’t turned on the lights, even though he’d had the key to the circuit box since he’d started coaching years ago. He and Fin didn’t need lights.
They were dribbling and juggling the ball up and down the field like it was the middle of the day, drilling like they knew exactly where the other one would be. Like she and her dad always knew what each other was going to do next. Sometimes, when he didn’t play with the guys he usually met up with at the park, she and her dad had spent entire Sunday mornings just running up and down with the ball. Chloe would get so hot and sweaty she thought she was going to die, even when it was cold like now. And she’d get so tired she’d want to quit. But she never did. Playing with her dad was too much fun to quit.
She’d let herself forget that. Mostly because her mom had said she should, that she’d never stay friends with Brooke and Summer if she didn’t change. Chloe had been so stupid, thinking that becoming like Brooke and Summer—trying to like cheerleading same as her girlfriends did—might make her mom happy enough to stop drinking.
And now, while she watched her dad and Fin have so much fun together, she realized she didn’t want to sit on the sidelines and cheer for boys while they played sports. She wanted to be out there, kicking their butts and playing with them, while people cheered for her. While her family cheered for her. And then suddenly, she was crying like a baby.
She’d been such a brat when her dad had tried to talk with her about soccer yesterday and this morning, like she’d been with Fin at lunch. And now they were out there on the field together, where she suddenly wanted to be more than anything. They looked so amazing together, running in the dark.
Her dad always looked amazing when he played. Like he sounded amazing when she’d heard him sing to himself in the shower, or in the mornings when he made breakfast and thought she was still asleep. Soccer and singing and when he took her to the zoo or for a milk shake were the only times she’d ever seen her dad smile.
Now he was smiling with Fin. And Fin was good. Really good, even though he wasn’t as good as her, or nearly as good as her dad. He would be in a lot of trouble for ditching school. But the kid could play, the way she’d been able to play better than all the other kids the first time Dad had gotten her to try. And her dad was having a blast out there with Fin now, not Chloe.
She’d been a natural, he’d said. He’d been so proud every time he’d coached her. She’d never seen her mom smile the way her dad did when Chloe played. Her mom, the one or two times last season that she’d come to soccer practice or games, had been too busy talking to the other moms about Dad to care what Chloe did.
Fin was having a blast doing what Chloe did best with her dad. She’d never seen Fin like that, happy and looking like she wanted to feel again. He laughed and stole the ball from her dad. Her dad stole it back and popped the ball over Fin’s head. Dad raced ahead to trap the ball, dribbling it already before Fin could get there. Of course the kid chased after him, laughing even though he’d been beat. She loved it, too, when her dad d
id that.
He’d slow down next and dare Fin to try to steal the ball back. And he wouldn’t let Fin do it, not at first. He’d keep playing as hard as always, making Fin try harder and harder to get the ball, until Fin learned something new about how good defense could win a game when the other team’s offense was better than your team’s was. That was something her dad said all the time.
He was so great when he coached and said stuff like that. Why had she stopped remembering that—or how proud she’d always been when he’d found something new to teach her, and then she’d done something great in a game because of it and made him smile even more?
Her dad’s smiles were the best thing she could remember about playing, and about her family, before her mom and her drinking had taken even Dad’s smiles away. Now Chloe wanted them back, the way she’d been wanting the rest of her life back for so long.
“Dad,” she yelled, forgetting that she shouldn’t be there and that he’d be mad at her and Mom. She rushed from the trees and onto the field. “Kick it to me…”
Marsha blinked at the ragtag band of sweaty ruffians standing on her front porch.
She couldn’t help but laugh. Leaning back into the strength of her husband’s body, feeling his hand settle comfortingly on her shoulder, she took in her first full breath since leaving school earlier that day. Fin was home. And he’d brought an unlikely duo of buddies with him.
Law and Chloe were a sight. They looked exhausted, and it was no wonder. It was after eleven o’clock at night. Marsha had nearly called the police twice already.
“Well, I guess quarter till midnight is as good a time as any to come home,” she said to Fin, hiding how freaked out she and Joe had been all night, and not mentioning how many laps around town Joe had made looking for the boy. “I don’t figure you finished your homework while you were playing truant, am I right?”
Love on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel) Page 14