The Last Letter (Page 26)

“Well, that sucks.” She folded her arms across her chest, her long side braid brushing over her arm as she turned to look at me. “What do I say to him?”

“How about you give me a second with him?”

“Be my guest.” She motioned toward the bench. “I’ll pack everything up.”

I crossed the field with his cleat bag in my hands, then dropped down in front of him to start untying the double knots he swore he couldn’t play without.

“Man, I loved watching you play,” I told him, slipping the first cleat free.

“I let him by. We lost because I messed up.”

I untied the second cleat and then took it off, too. “Nah. You win as a team, and you lose as a team. There’s no shame in that.”

“I didn’t want to lose,” he whispered, like it was a dirty secret.

“No one does, Colt. But I can tell you sometimes the losses are just as important as the wins. The wins feel really good and let us celebrate what we did right. But the losses, they teach us more. They teach us to see where we can improve, and yeah, they feel pretty darn bad, and that’s okay. As you get bigger, you’ll see that it’s not how you handle the wins that make you a good man, it’s how you handle the losses.”

I handed him the shoes he’d brought, and he put them on his feet as he thought, his little forehead puckered in the same lines Ella wore when she was working something out. Then he fastened the Velcro and hopped off the bench. “So it’s okay to lose.”

I nodded. “You have to lose sometimes. It keeps you humble, keeps you working harder. So yeah, it’s okay to lose. Sometimes it’s even good for you.”

He heaved a giant, melodramatic sigh and then nodded. “Will you come with me for a second?”

“Sure,” I answered without thought, following him past our bench to the away team’s, where he found the kid who had scored the final goal.

The kid saw Colt and stood up.

Colt walked straight to him. “I just wanted to say that you’re really fast. Good job today.”

The kid smiled. “You, too. That was an awesome goal!”

They shook hands like tiny men, and Colt grinned as we walked away.

“I’m really proud of you,” I said as we started to cross the field.

“Well, he’s really fast. But you know what? We play them again at the end of the summer, and I’m going to be faster. I can wait that long to kick his butt.”

I wanted to chastise him, but I was too busy trying my damnedest not to laugh. “Gotcha. Then we’ll dine on the souls of our enemies?”

“Bingo.”

He stopped midfield, and I had to backtrack a couple of steps. “Colt, what’s wrong?”

He looked up at me, blocking the sun with a hand, and then glanced around to the other parents walking back to their cars. “Is this what it feels like?” he whispered so quietly that I leaned down.

“What it feels like?” I asked.

“Having a dad?” He tilted his head slightly.

Words fled at the same rate every emotion assaulted me. His question flayed me open, leaving me raw and exposed in a way I’d never felt before.

I crouched to his level and said the only thing that came to mind. “You know, I’m not sure. I never had a dad.”

His eyes widened. “Me, either.”

I’m here now. The words were there, in my head, at the tip of my tongue. But they weren’t mine to say or to offer. Man, it was a slice of hell to fall in love with someone else’s kid when you couldn’t claim the love of his mother—or her mother. I looked across the field to see Ella sitting with Maisie under the shade, running their hands over the grass.

“What do you say we take the girls home?” I asked Colt as I removed my baseball hat and put it on his head to keep the sun off him.

“Good idea. Let’s tend to the women.” He strode toward the girls, and I didn’t hold back the laughter this time. How the kid could have me near tears one second and laughing the next was beyond me.

“We lost,” Colt told Ella as we walked back to the car. I had Maisie in my arms, her head against my chest, while Ella pulled the wagon behind us.

“Oh, man. Have to admit, I’m glad there aren’t any enemy souls for dinner tonight,” she joked, pulling him to her side. “I guess we’ll just have to settle for ordering pizza.”

“Pizza!” both of the kids shouted, then high-fived each other, Colt jumping to reach Maisie.

I got each kid locked into the booster seats I’d purchased for the truck and loaded the wagon and contents into the bed as Ella ordered pizza. Havoc jumped into the back between the kids. Ella had calmed down a ton since the oncologist told her Havoc was completely safe to Maisie as long as her levels weren’t bottomed out.

I drove us back through Telluride as Colt and Maisie debated the merits of cheese versus pepperoni.

“Do they ever have a conversation where they finish a sentence?” I asked Ella.

“Nope. It’s like they have their own language. They just know what the other is thinking before they finish, so they don’t.”

“Creepy, but cool.”

“Exactly.”

How natural it would be to reach over and take her hand, to brush a kiss across her palm. Everything about this felt effortless—right. The same as writing to her had been…not that she’d know about that anytime soon.

I pulled in front of the pizza shop and parked the truck. “A parking spot right up front? Looks like pizza was fated for tonight!” I declared.

The kids lifted their arms in victory, but Maisie’s weren’t quite as high. She was tuckering out again.

Both Ella and I got out of the truck, but I beat her to the sidewalk. “I’ve got it,” I told her.

“You’re not paying for pizza,” she protested.

“But I am.”

“Are not.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“Am, too.”

She stepped forward and stared up at me, all fire and stubbornness. My gaze dropped to her lips, parted and perfect. So kissable.

“I’m paying,” she said, all soft and slow, like she knew I was struggling to keep my damn hands to myself.

“In your dreams.”

Her expression went all soft, and I would have paid a million dollars to know what she’d just thought about. “Fine,” she said. “But only if you agree to have dinner with us.”

“Deal.”

“Are not!”

“Are, too!”

We both turned to see the twins mocking us through their open door, giant grins on their faces.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Pipe down, you two, or I’ll put anchovies on yours,” I threatened without a straight face. “Should we grab another pizza?”

“I ordered three,” Ella said with a shrug.

We stood there and smiled at each other like idiots, both knowing she’d planned on me staying for dinner long before our little deal.

Havoc jumped down as I walked toward the store, and I turned around, dropping to scratch her ears. “Protect Maisie and Colt.”

She sprinted away, parking her rump just beneath their open door.

“Ella!” Hailey waved, and I walked into the shop as the two women started chatting near the bed of the truck.

Three pizzas and five minutes later, I walked out of the shop and nearly dropped the boxes.

An older, well-dressed couple, coming from the opposite end of where Hailey stood talking to Ella, had paused. It wasn’t the pause that triggered me, it was the look on their faces. Utter, abject shock as they looked at the twins.

Havoc stood—she’d always been a good judge of character—and I started moving.

The woman stepped forward, as if she didn’t have control over her own actions, and Havoc bared her teeth and began growling.

Ella turned at the growl, and when she sucked in her breath, I had all the info I needed. “No!” she snapped, not at Havoc, but at the couple. She marched straight up beside Havoc, bared teeth and all, and said it again. “No. Go. Now.”

I came up behind the couple, then to the side, sliding the pizzas onto the passenger seat as I walked by to put myself between them and Havoc.

“Don’t come any closer. She’ll go for the jugular if you move one hand toward those kids.” I kept my voice low and even. The minute I got agitated, Havoc got dangerous.

“That dog is a menace,” the man said, sneering up at me.

“Only to people she sees as threats to the twins or Ella. Now, I believe Ella asked you to go.” I walked forward, forcing the couple to retreat, knowing Havoc would follow and give Ella the room to shut the door so the twins wouldn’t be exposed.

When I heard the door slam, I relaxed, and Havoc put her teeth away.

“Who, exactly, are you?” the woman demanded.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Those aren’t your kids,” the man seethed.

“They’re not yours, either,” I said. “But I’m theirs, and that’s all that matters. And I can tell you that if you ever come close to them without Ella’s permission, Havoc will be the least of your concerns.”

When the man started to stare Ella down, I moved into his line of sight, blocking her from the disgust aimed at her.

“Beckett,” Ella called softly, no doubt noticing the small crowd that was witnessing the exchange.

“Have a nice evening,” I told the couple, then turned around and walked back to Ella, putting my hand on the small of her back and urging her into the truck, then shutting the door behind her.

The couple was gone.

I passed Hailey, Havoc at my side.

“Jeff’s parents,” she whispered.

“I figured.”

“There’s tequila in the freezer.” She motioned toward the cab of the truck, where Ella sat in silence, stunned.

“Good to know.”

“Who was that?” Colt asked.

“No one you need to worry about,” Ella answered.

“Havoc was worried,” Maisie countered.

“Havoc is a good judge of character,” Ella muttered. “They were just some people I used to know.”