“Coach Jackson?” June steps into the foyer under the chandelier that Tony used to claim he’d made from antlers he found himself. “Did you run out of firewood or get a clogged toilet? Sorry. You’ll have to handle those yourself for the next few days.”
Charlotte sucks her lips in.
“I’m checking in on your mom,” I tell the teenager.
“She has me. She’s fine.”
“If you need someone—”
“I just talked to my dad and my grandma. They’re both on the way. Thank you.”
I’m just off my game enough that I almost miss the subtle hint that she’s lying. And if she’d left it at My dad’s on his way, I might’ve believed it.
Definitely would’ve had some fun body twitches while I believed it too.
Or maybe I’m hoping she’s lying.
Does Maisey have a good relationship with June’s paternal grandmother? I haven’t heard anything about her.
“Your mom’s mom is on the way?” I ask.
“Yep.”
I frown at her.
She doesn’t budge in her story. “Isn’t she, Ms. Charlotte?”
Charlotte looks at me, then back at June. “Was that your mom calling for me? I think it was. Hold that thought, kiddo. I’ll be right back.”
She dashes deeper into the house.
June lets her pass, then takes a wide-legged stance in the entryway from the foyer into the living room, her expression telegraphing that she doesn’t appreciate being abandoned by the only other adult in the house.
I lift my brows at June. “You’re pissed at me.”
Her eyes narrow.
I slouch and lean in the doorway, going for nonthreatening, which is a challenge but necessary. “Not gonna flunk you or tell you that you can’t be our extra on the team if you don’t like me. Talk to me. What’s on your mind?”
“I don’t like it when you come to my house. My teachers never come to my house.”
Fair. I wouldn’t have liked it when I was her age either. “I live in your gatehouse. Used to come up here to hang out with your great-uncle all the time.”
“Did you look at him the way you look at my mom?”
I have a love-hate relationship with teenage brains. So much potential. So much intelligence. And when we want them to aim it at things like math and learning to drive and mastering the art of power tools, instead, they get up in our business. “Usually worse. He thought he was handy around the house, but unlike your mom, he tended to cause more problems than he fixed.”
“Abigail says she saw you two hiding out while you were supposed to be coaching practice a few weeks ago.”
Fuck. Also, phew. I have zero doubt if they’d seen us kissing, this story would be bigger than Someone saw you two hiding. “Ran into her right after she got off a call with your grandmother and wasn’t too happy about me overhearing any part of it.”
June freezes, and her dark eyes go momentarily wide, then narrow into tiny slits.
I lift my hands. “Not gonna do anything to hurt either one of you,” I say quietly.
Charlotte has to be listening in.
Not a soul in town that wouldn’t be.
“How would that hurt me?” June’s coiled tighter than a rattlesnake facing a honey badger.
“I ever tell you I was about your age when I moved here and had to finish high school in a new place too?”
“Back in the Stone Age.”
I almost smile. For all that teenagers can be brilliant, they’re also unoriginal at times. “Not quite the same—I’ll give you that. Had to carve my letters to my old friends in stone and roll them up the hill to the chiseled-message horse-and-buggy delivery service back then. None of this newfangled email and text technology twenty years ago.”
She rolls her eyes.
Fair. We had technology when I was her age, and I think she knows it.
“Moved in with my aunt, actually,” I add quietly. “And my parents never called to check on me either.”
“I just told you, my dad’s on his way.”
“Took me ten years to realize that just because I couldn’t count on my parents, it didn’t mean I couldn’t count on my friends.”
“So you’re slow. That doesn’t prove anything.”
She’s quiet at school. Does her work, turns it in, gets good grades.
At practices and games, she’s gotten bolder with speaking up when she thinks I’m calling the wrong play or putting in the wrong player.
She runs with the team. Helps when I ask her to. Doesn’t complain about refilling water bottles or cleaning the same balls over and over again. And all season, she’s been a quiet presence behind the bench, telling everyone else they’ve done a good job, or that everyone makes mistakes, or that she knows they can shake it off and get back in there, or what an opponent’s weakness is.
She’s not quiet in the cafeteria. I see her laughing with a small group of friends. Hear her telling stories or watch her flirting with a boy here or there when she passes in the halls sometimes.
But here?
Here, I’m on her territory.
Here, I get to follow her rules.
Teenager or not, this is her home, and she deserves to feel safe here.
I lift a shoulder. “I’d check on any parent who got hurt at one of our games.”
“I can vouch for that,” Charlotte says from the living room.
I want to go in and see what’s changed. If Maisey’s removed the dark leather furniture and the moose head mounted over the fireplace that weren’t included in the estate sale, or if she’s left a lot of Tony in there.
If the wool blanket he got on a trip to Scotland seventeen years ago is still there, or if she put it in a giveaway pile.
If she figured out there’s a secret compartment in the end table closest to the kitchen and that if you hit it just right, you’ll find a stash of butterscotch candies.
Or if she knew that all along, or if she knew it once upon a time when she’d visit and has forgotten now.
“And I’d check on any of my kids whose parents got hurt, or any of my students or players who got hurt,” I tell June. “So if you need anything while your mom’s recovering, I’m right down the driveway.”
“Mom’s fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine. Thank you. You can go.”
The dismissive phrase is so familiar that my gut aches in a way it hasn’t in years.
This is why I don’t get involved with parents.
It’s messy in ways that dating women without kids isn’t. But that dating pool is shallow in these parts.
Which isn’t the point.
Point is, I’m ridiculously attracted to Maisey, and I can’t be.
Not until June’s not my student or player anymore.
I slowly straighten. “Offer stands no matter what. Glad your mom’s doing okay. Glad you are too.”
She looks pointedly at the door, so I go.
Not happy about it, but I go.
I want to see Maisey. I want to know she’s okay. I want to tell her I’m kicking someone off the team so June can play next game.
I want—
I just want.
I want in ways I haven’t in years.
And I don’t know what to do with that.