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“If she comes, I’d talk to her.” Carter shrugged.

“Sweet.” Brooker made a little fist pump. “But dude, do you want us to watch some anime so you have somebody to talk to about it?”

“Do you have the attention span to watch a show in Japanese with subtitles?” he asked and Ricci threw his head back and laughed. While Ricci piled on with the razzing, I looked over to the table Niall was at. He was going through the donations like he did everything, with extreme care. Running his hands across the fabric, turning the shirt inside out, checking the hems. No torn shirt was getting past him.

“You know,” Brooker said, leaning closer to me to whisper. “Cap keeps looking over here with big puppy dog eyes, which is wild, ’cause I’ve never seen him all whimpery like that before. It's kinda funny to see.”

“What?” I said, maybe shouted, and jerked to look away from Niall. “No, he’s not.”

“Yeah, sure. And you haven’t been looking over there with a furrowed brow every two seconds.” He took a beat before asking, “Are y’all all right? Get in a fight or something?”

“No,” I said quickly and he raised an eyebrow. “I’m not lying, we didn’t fight.”

And we weren’t, we were in some imbalanced situation that was worse than a fight.

“Uh-huh. If you don’t wanna talk to me about it, I can trade spots with Kodi. But I will say, Cap is the most devoted guy I know and he sure as hell is devoted to you and the kid. If he’s not talking soccer, he’s talking about you. So if he fucked something up, he’ll do whatever it takes to make up for it. He just might need you to spell it out for him.”

When Kodi called this team a family, I’d brushed it off as them all being extra friendly coworkers. But they actually were family. They checked in on each other, gave each other shit, and it was … nice.

“He didn’t fuck up,” I said with a sigh, then chewed at my lip as I debated how honest I wanted to be. This whole team had invited me into their family and lying or brushing any of them off felt like a dick move. “I just— it’s easy to like him more than I want to. And that’s made things difficult.”

“Uh-huh,” Brooker mumbled thoughtfully. “Your no-relationships thing?”

I set down the shirt I was checking and sighed. Maybe explaining my relationship scares to Brooker would be easier than giving Niall all the details. Plus worst-case scenario, he feels awkward and shuts up for the rest of the event.

“My parents were pretty old when they had me and consequently died when I was young. I mean, college young, but still.”

“Shit,” Brooker said, sucking in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry. That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does. It was completely and utterly shitty. And since then I’ve … I dunno, self isolated so no one else could die on me. And Niall’s really testing that coping mechanism.”

“Damn, that’s some shit self-sabotage.”

I snorted, then shrugged. “Can’t be helped. Sometimes things just suck and you can’t do anything about it.”

“Sometimes,” Brooker agreed before pushing out of his seat. “But I don’t think this is one of those instances.”

He rushed over to Niall’s table, pulling the man up and taking his chair before Niall could understand what was happening. And when he did, Brooker just pointed over to the now-empty chair beside me. Niall sighed and headed my way, Brooker throwing me a thumbs-up over Niall’s shoulder. I rolled my eyes at him and turned back to my work. But for once, my shoulders weren’t stiff, I wasn’t braced to put up walls, I just accepted that in this group of people, they were going to nudge me toward something with Niall. And if there was any place to test if I could handle it, it would be around them.

The Pre-Shoot Jitters

Niall

Iwasn’t sure how to act around Leah after the call. We’d texted some throughout the week, but she was busy preparing for Thanksgiving break, so most of our messages were just little check-ins.

So when Brooker forced me out of my seat and over to Leah, I was nervous how she’d respond to us being pushed together. She’d been so adamant about us being friends and co-parents before but … lines were blurring.

“Are you ready for your big shoot?” she asked when I settled in next to her, nudging me with her shoulder. The ease of how she spoke, the physical contact, made my worries melt.

“I guess so. I don’t think they’re having me do anything too complicated, just folding laundry.” I shrugged and she nodded.

“Why’d you pick a woman’s shelter for your month?”

“My mom. She was part of a single moms’ support group and some of the women were residents at a shelter at some point. They went back to volunteer and my mom and I tagged along. Admittedly, I didn’t do much but draw cards back then, but it was the first thing that came to mind when Kodi brought this up.”

“Are you pretty close to your mom?” she asked, brow furrowing as she looked over the pants she was checking.

“Yeah, I—” I started to say yes, but then I realized I hadn’t called her in a while. When I first got in the league, I wanted to give her space, let her have a child-free life for a bit. I knew how much time she sacrificed for me and what became my career, so I thought it was the nice thing to do. And then I got caught up working as captain and picking up after Boyd’s slack, and I just … forgot to give her a call outside of holidays. “We actually haven’t spoken in a bit.”