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“Yes! Yes!” Leo screamed, running out of the goal and launching himself at Ollie. He caught him with ease and spun him around.
I peered up from over the top of my laptop. “There’s a whole new AstroTurf at the center and you’re here in this pokey little yard?”
Ollie put Leo down and grinned at me. “I’m sorry, are we disturbing the new editor of the White Peak Chronicle?”
“Actually, yes.” I couldn’t help but smile. I’d caught that save, and Leo had finally—finally—got the top corner save he’d been working on for weeks.
The fancy new gloves Chris had bought him for his birthday last week hadn’t hurt, if you asked me.
Or the boots.
But the boots were Ollie’s fault.
The FIFA game he’d asked for for an entire month that came from Mom? Let’s not mention that.
“I did it, Mom! I saved the goal!”
“I know, I saw.” I grinned at him. “Good job, monster.”
“Who saved what?”
“Dad!”
I turned to see Chris in my kitchen. “Please, come on in. Did you even knock?”
He laughed and accepted the running hug Leo gave him, too. “Hey, buddy.”
“I saved the goal! The top corner! Ollie kicked it at me like bam! And I was like, oh no! So I jumped!” He demonstrated the jump and nearly battered into my azalea plant. “And I was like bam! Saved it!”
“Wowww,” Chris said, appropriately amazed. “That’s amazing, good job!” He winked over Leo’s head at Ollie. “Are you ready to go?”
“Awww,” Leo said, his shoulders dropping. “Can you play some soccer with us, Dad?”
I looked at his suit and shiny black shoes. And laughed. A lot.
Chris looked at me, then unbuttoned his jacket. “I can play soccer in this. You watch.” He took off his jacket and undid his tie, loosened two buttons on his shirt, and went down onto the grass where Ollie was watching the exchange with amusement.
“Oh, I am so watching this.” I saved the article I was editing and got up to lean on the porch railings.
I was so watching this.
“So are we just kicking this at him?” Chris asked Ollie.
He laughed. “Yeah, they have the mini tournament this Sunday so we’re doing some drills.”
“Awesome. Take it in turns? Are we keeping score?”
“At how many times Leo kicks both your butts? You bet!” I leaned forward and grinned as both men glared at me.
This was fun.
Chris had been as good as his word and immediately put in a request for a transfer. The team in Idaho had been so impressed with him they’d accepted it, and he was now only a three-hour drive away from White Peak.
It was a trip he’d made every weekend for the last three weeks, since he’d moved here.
This was his week off, and he was about to take Leo for a few days to show him his new house so they could decorate Leo’s room.
After a game of football, apparently.
Soccer.
Fucking soccer!
“Ohhhh!” Ollie leaned forward, laughing, as Chris sent the ball way to the left.
“Damn!” Chris slapped his thigh.
“Swear jar!” Leo pointed at him. “One dollar!”
I smiled. Watching them was an amazing thing to witness. Not long after me and Ollie had started dating—right after Grandma’s heartburn that she swore to this day was one hundred percent a heart attack—Chris had made an effort to be friends with Ollie.
He told me it was because he knew he was the one for me.
I think he, as a soccer fan, just wanted someone who liked the game as much as he did.
Either way, I appreciated his effort. Ollie gave just as much effort as Chris did to his friendship with him and his relationship with Leo, and Chris had come to appreciate that Leo had a strong male influence in his life every day when he was working. I thought he’d be more threatened, but he wasn’t.
And, naturally, that’d brought he and I closer together.
We would never be best friends—there was far too much water under the bridge for that—but we could hold a conversation, alone, about just about anything and get along.
And I could laugh at him playing soccer.
It helped that my special edition of the Chronicle had gotten Ebony fired. Somehow—I blamed Sebastian—my boss had found out about her threatening me and decided it was the last straw.
Turned out, I wasn’t the only one she’d threatened. She’d gone after some of the interns, too.
I’d had the best time rearranging the team to what they wanted to work on, not what Ebony wanted them to work on, and had hired two of the interns part-time to cover local news.
And I was happy.
Happier than I’d been in a long time.
My phone buzzed on the table, and I went back to sit down. I picked it up and opened the message from Piper.
PIPER: Maverick Donovan was just in my bakery
I frowned. I knew that name. Why did I know that name?
