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She takes a deep breath and slowly opens the top. Her shoulders shake when she sees what’s inside, and she whips her head up to stare at me.
“Dallas.”
“Maven.”
“Are these—” she pulls the tissue paper back and gasps.
“What is it?” June asks, peering around her arm curiously. “A doggie?”
“Cleats,” Maven whispers. “New soccer cleats.”
“I started going to therapy after my injury. My therapist thought I needed something to renew that love of the game. A fresh start to wipe the slate clean,” I explain. “He suggested I get new cleats because they weren’t tied to the past experiences. I know you aren’t sure where you want your future to go with soccer, but when you decide, you’ll have your own fresh start, too.”
She blinks, and I know she’s trying to stop the tears from falling, but they come anyway. Loudly and aggressively, until there’s snot hanging from her nose and her cheeks are bright red.
Fuck, I love her.
“Thank you,” she hiccups. “They’re beautiful. They’re perfect. What did I do to find a man like you?”
“The first step was accosting me at the field,” I murmur, and I pull her and June into my arms, hugging them tight. “The second was loving my daughter. The third was just being you, Maven. Because that’s enough.”
If someone were to ask me when I knew she loved me back, I’d pinpoint this moment, right here, with tears on her eyelashes. The way she looks up at me as if I hung the moon, and for her, I’d die trying.
FORTY-FOUR
DALLAS
Thirty seconds.
We’re thirty seconds away from saving our season and making the playoffs.
If our defense can hold the Bobcats to two more stops, we’ll live to see another day.
If they don’t, we’re out, and that’s it. No more football until September.
It’s been years since we’ve missed the playoffs, and I don’t want to start down that losing road again. It was a long grind to get back on the side of victory, and getting defeated today would be demoralizing.
“Come on, boys,” Jett yells, and he jumps up and down on the sidelines next to me. “What play do you think they drew up?”
“Quarterback sneak. I’ve watched enough film of these fuckers to know they have the highest success percentage with it too. They only need three yards, and they’d be idiots to run anything else.”
The whistle blows, and a gust of January wind rips through the stadium. Jett and I step closer, and I shiver under my Cape Coat. His fingers dig into my bicep, just below my shoulder pads,and if I wasn’t so fucking cold and so fucking nervous, it would probably hurt.
Everyone at UPS Field is on their feet. I spot Maven at the other end of the sideline, her camera at the ready and a beanie over her blonde hair. She’s too zoned in on the game to notice me, and I reluctantly drag my gaze back to my teammates to watch our fate play out.
The ball gets snapped, and the Bobcats quarterback grabs it. He’s a small guy and quick on his feet. An absolute hellion to defend, but he hesitates—something he never does—and one of our linemen barrels into him before he can take more than three steps.
The ball pops out of his arms and lands on the field, fair game for anyone to grab.
Both teams of coaches start screaming and pointing, then Odell Sinclair, the biggest guy on the field at two hundred and eighty pounds, scoops up the pigskin and starts charging toward the opposite end of the field.
“Holy shit,” Jett screams, and he runs down the sideline. “Go, Odell, you unbelievable mother fucker.”
The dude has the slowest 40-yard dash time in the league, and I’ve never seen him run more than ten yards at practice. But here he is, passing the fifty, then the forty, then the thirty. There’s block after block in the back field. Our defense prevents the Bobcats players from chasing him down, and he has nothing standing in the way of our end zone.
“He’s doing it. Mother of fucking god, he’s doing it,” I yell, and when he crosses the goal line, I throw my jacket off and storm the field with my teammates.
It’s pandemonium.
