Page 7 of Arrogant Rucking Player

“I check on her too. She works hard. Stu– My dad doesn’t do much but piss her off.”

“Language,” I said absently. “Your Dad isn’t around, huh?” I cursed myself half a second later for asking.

“Nah. He’ll pick me up later in the week. Gotta look after mum. Hey!” Brady ran off to police one of the kids who had broken the rules of the game I’d set up a few minutes before our time out. The other kids scattered as he approached.

My attention diverted, I watched him work through the next set of drills, seeing a younger version of myself. Eventually, I pulled him aside as the games ended and sent the kids darting to the goal posts at the end of the field for a cool down run.

“Hey, Brady. You’re doing awesome out there today.” Giant brown eyes similar to his mother’s stared up at me. How did I know that exactly? I told myself not to ask myself stupid questions so I wouldn’t seek the wrong sort of answers. “But man, I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything, Mason.” The kid jigged on both feet, displaying a decent sense of balance.

I grinned. “I need you to practice the skills we did today.”

His face fell a bit. “I dunno if Mum will let me throw a ball about in the townhouse.”

A laugh ripped from my chest. “Yeah, I can understand that.” I fished in my pocket for some spare change. “How about you practice this for me? I want you to put a coin on your elbow, and catch it again. Can you do that?’ I demonstrated, placing the silver coin on my elbow, jerked my arm away, and caught it, then stacked another on top and did the drill all over again.

Brady’s eyes widened. “Hell yeah! I mean, yeah.” His voice dropped a few octaves when my eyes narrowed at his language. “I can do that, Mason.”

“Good man.” I ruffled his hair and dropped the coins into his palm. “I want you to do one other thing for me.”Several, actually, and the first is‘look out for your mum’.But I only met her a few days ago, and it wasn’t fair to put that on a kid who hadn’t hit his tenth birthday yet. But if his family situation was what I suspected, it was going to happen anyway.

“Sure.” Brady jiggled, clutching his coins.

I knelt to his level. At my height I still towered over him a bit, but at least we were closer to eye level this way. “Buddy, tomorrow I’ll need your help when we set up. Putting the circuit out, helping out packing up.”

“Maybe helping keep everyone in line?” He perked up.

I laughed out loud. “That might be my job. Don’t take it away from me, okay?”

He laughed too and scampered around me, clutching his handful of coins. “Mum!”

I pivoted on my heel to find Nyla standing behind me, her arms wrapped around herself. “I hope you haven’t been bothering your poor coach. He looks like he’s had his hands full as it is.”

“He’s been great, haven’t you buddy?” I grinned at Brady.

“I’ve been good. Promise.” He grinned and chowed down on the handful of snacks his mother handed him from apparently nowhere.

“Uh huh.” Nyla’s lips twitched as she suppressed a fond smile. Those pretty brown eyes slid my way. “I saw what you did there, when he was…” She bit her lip, glancing down at Brady, but the kid wasn’t listening, booting one of my spare footballs about.

“When he decided he’d take on the coach’s roll for me?” I said easily.

She nibbled her lip and slid her hands into her apron pockets. “That. Yes. He...does it at school, too.”

“Have the teachers talked to him about it?” I canted my head to one side, watching her reaction and had a good guess at what her answer would be.

She shrugged. “They don’t seem to care.”

“Mmhm.” I watched Brady kick the ball about for a while longer.

“What is that noise?”

I blinked at Nyla, nonplussed. “What noise?”

“That throat thing you just did.”

“Mhmm?”

“That one.” She pointed a cracked fingernail at me, noticed, and hid it away.

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