Page 102 of Kiss Me Tonight

“There’s nothingwrongwith her, exactly,” Topher says, squirming in his chair, “it’s just that—”

“Don’t break the Bro Code!” Timmy hisses, lightly punching Topher in the arm again. “You promised Harry.”

“We don’t lie in this house.” I lift a brow, daring Topher to argue otherwise. “So you’re going to tell me why I’m looking at two signatures that have clearly been signed by the same person, and you’re going to tell me right now.”

Topher, recognizing my hard tone, visibly caves. Shoulders slumped, he whispers, “Mrs. Blackwater said she had to take care of something in Portland. That’s what she told Harry, anyway. She’s been gone two weeks.”

“And Harry’s dad?” I ask, even though I already know I’m not going to like the answer.

“He died a few years ago. Harry said he was real sick.”

I look at both boys, flicking my gaze between the two of them. “And where has Harry been staying for the last two weeks?”

“With me and Mom,” Timmy answers quietly, “and with Bobby, and also with Kevin. We ask our parents if he can spend the night and they say yes.”

They say yes.

Meanwhile, they have no idea what exactly they’re saying yes to.

I push my seat back. “C’mon, we’re going for a ride.”

Timmy blanches. “You’re not bringing me home, are you? I’m sorry we lied. But my mom . . . my mom—”

Not wanting to freak him out, I cross over to his side and pull him in for a quick hug. I may be a coach to these boys, but some of them need so much more than a person to tell them to do another round of push-ups. “I’m not sending you home, kid. Your mom is working late in Bar Harbor, I know. You can still sleep over.”

His frame relaxes immediately. “Thank you, Coach. No more lying. I mean it.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

I usher both teenage boys into my car with Topher settling in the passenger’s seat. Shoving his phone forward, so I can plug it into my dashboard, Timmy asks for me to play some random band that I’ve never heard of before.

Against the backdrop of what used to be called techno music and is now, according to the boys in my car, referred to as EDM, I put my plan into motion: “Now which one of you is going to tell me whose house Harry is staying at tonight?”

“Kevin’s,” they answer in unison.

“Great! Now buckle up, boys, and someone tell me where to go.”

I don’t know what I’m doing here.

I don’t know what my plan is, save for bringing Harry back to my place. That’s as far as I’ve gone in my head.

But all I can visualize are my friend Mariah’s three adopted children, all of whom were left to fend for themselves before they ended up in Pittsburgh’s foster-care system. I remember their hopeful faces the first time I met them, before the adoptions were finalized, when they tried as hard as they could to be invisible in Mariah’s house. Like if she didn’t hear them, if she didn’t see them, then maybe she wouldn’t send them away.

I can’t imagine leaving a random child that I don’t know to survive on their own, never mind one of my own players. It goes against everything I believe in. I coach because I want to teach these kids responsibility. I coach because I want them to have the life skills—football and otherwise—to reach for their dreams while simultaneously learning when to push hard on the gas pedal and when to ease up and enjoy the view. I coach because I love kids—their enthusiasm and their hopes and dreams—and because after Topher’s birth, Rick refused to have another baby.

Topher’s enough for me, he always said.

I think the truth is much more convoluted, though I know I stayed with him early on in our marriage because I hoped he would change his mind. And because I refused to believe that he had so blatantly lied to me when we first met.

What man marries a woman and vows to fill every day with happiness and love, only to take pleasure in tearing it all down?

Rick Clarke.

Who knowingly makes his wife miserable and then won’t even agree to sign the divorce papers, year after year?

Rick “the Prick” Clarke, that’s who.

It was only by chance that I found out one of my players at Hancock High needed to swap school districts because of a change in foster homes. Unwilling to let my player go without fighting for him to stay within Hancock town lines, I sought out Mariah’s contact with child services. The male social worker never touched me, nothing more than to shake my hand, but Rick came home to the two of us sitting at the kitchen table together and went off on a bender.

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