Page 105 of Kiss Me Tonight

I regret everything.

At the very least, I regret not having a beer to pop open once Harry sits down at the table and spills the beans.

“Harry,” Levi interjects, her pizza all but forgotten on her plate, “I don’t understand. Why would your mom leave in the first place?”

The football whisperer shovels pizza into his mouth like he hasn’t eaten in days. Which is entirely possible, given the fact that he’s been couch-surfing at all of his teammates’ houses. “I don’t think she left-left. She . . . she does this sometimes. But she always comes back.”

He glances at Timmy, as though looking for backup. Clearly wanting to help his buddy out, Timmy bobs his head in confirmation. “I think she’s sad. Ever since your dad . . . you know.”

Finding out Harry’s dad passed away from a heart attack the same year I retired from the NFL felt like a punch to the gut. For as long as I’ve been wandering the world, looking for something that makes me feel alive, this kid has been trying to find a safe place to call home. Red-haired, green-eyed, and pale-skinned, he’s the polar opposite of me in every single way.

And yet, when he looks at me, I see myself staring back. The eleven-year-old version of myself. The hunger. The fear. The desperation that led me to do stupid things because I wanted to fit in—to find a family—and also because I was so damn tired of being shuffled from house to house, San Francisco suburb to San Francisco suburb.

Until one day, a group of older boys asked me to rob a convenience store with them. They wanted the money from the register. I didn’t know what I wanted. Money didn’t sound like a bad idea. Money meant food, security, brotherhood—at least, it did if I ran with those kids.

They handed me a gun and I took it.

Like an eleven-year-old idiot, who thinks he knows everything there is to know about the world.

I stormed into that convenience store, trembling all the way down to my tattered shoes, and pointed the gun at the clerk. Like I was some big, bad baller who mugged people instead of the parentless, oftentimes homeless kid whose stomach growled late at night and who had only ever known the comfort of a couch and never a bed.

Unfortunately, waving guns around like I did is a surefire, guaranteed way to find yourself in juvenile detention. It’s also a first-step indoctrination to things like wearing ankle monitors because society deems you a criminal, skipping school when the “boys” need you to help them out with risky, stupid shit, and learning, the hard way, that making something of yourself after years of only making trouble will be a herculean task you’ll fail more times than not.

Feeling like there’s an anvil on my chest that I can’t shake off, I grind out, “You don’t want to be me, kid.”

Everyone at the table, including Levi, looks at me.

Grasping the glass of milk from beside my plate, I pretend it’s a Bud Light and drain it in one go. “My dad died, too.” Drug overdose, from what I understand. I found it in the San Francisco online newspaper archives when I was at LSU. “I was two at the time. I never knew him.”

“Coach,” Harry says, pizza slice hovering halfway to his mouth, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what that has to do with me.”

“Let him tell you this.”

It’s Levi who utters the words, and I search out her gaze diagonal from me.Thank you, I want to tell her. And sure enough, it’s like I can read her without speaking.I have you, those blue eyes of hers tell me.I have you and I trust you.

I swallow, hard. Drop my eyes to my untouched pizza before I push the plate away. “What little I know of my mother isn’t fit for mixed company. But she left when I was five and never came back.”

“My mom will come back,” Harry cuts in vehemently. “She always comes back. Sometimes she needs some time away to think—to, I don’t know, do whatever she does, but she never leaves for that long.”

I don’t beat around the bush. “Has she ever been gone for two weeks before?”

Slowly, Harry shakes his head. He whispers, “No,” like it’s the last thing he wants to admit.

“And I bet this time, when she was gone longer than expected, you stayed in your house alone, didn’t you?”

Harry’s eyes don’t waver from my face. “Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Six days. That’s . . . that’s the longest she’s ever been gone before.”

It takes me a moment to realize that Levi has gathered up Topher and Timmy and left the kitchen. Their plates are gone, along with one of the pizza boxes, and I want to thank her for giving Harry privacy. A cataclysmic moment like this isn’t easy to admit even to yourself, never mind in front of a group of people.

When I hear Topher’s familiar voice shushing someone, I know they haven’t gone far. The three of them are probably listening in, and that’s okay too. Harry’s gonna need people in his corner and he can’t go wrong in trusting Levi or Topher. Timmy, too. At practice, I’ve watched the younger boy take a page out of Topher’s book and talk to the teammates who tend to stick to themselves.

Taking off my ball cap, I toss it on the table and run a hand through my hair. “Harry, I don’t know how much you know about all of this, but you can’t keep crashing on your friends’ couches.”

“I know.” His ears turn a burnished red that matches the color of his hair. “And I know that you and Coach Levi are gonna need to tell the police about what’s going on.”

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