Page 9 of Silver Sanctuary
“All right, kids, let’s gather ‘round! Doesn’t matter if you’re on winning team ketchup,” Beau Ford, the other coach on the team, waved around the red vest in his hand. “Or on the losing mustard team, Coach Nash and I have some things we need to go over with you guys before tryouts start.”
Nash took over, his voice booming across the field even though the kids were right in front of him. “Just to be clear, if you are on team yellow, it does not mean you will be losing the scrimmage today. Coach Beau is a bit of a prankster and I’ll be keeping my eye on him this season to make sure he stays in line.” Beau’s chuckle filled the beat of silence before Nash continued. “It’s important that you give it your all today, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t want you to have fun.”
“Because at the end of the day, Coach Nash will make sure all of you make the team anyway.” Several kids laughed as Beau rolled his eyes. “Apparently, this is a participation trophyleague. But if you think we’ll go easy on you, you’ve got another thing coming!”
“And that other thing is a pizza party at the end of the season, no matter how well we do.”
“All right, enough of this positive chit chat! Let’s get to seeing what you’re made of! Players, make two lines behind the starting cones. We want you to dribble the ball across the field and back. This is a timed exercise!” Beau said before blowing into his whistle two times.
Christ, it was like having a younger version of Hawk out on the field with him.
The kids who came out were talented for their age. Embrie had an absolutely explosive kick—he could definitely work with that. The hour flew by and before he knew it, they were sending the kids on their way. He’d hoped Lacy and Embrie would hang around, but after he got talking to a couple of parents about the schedule for the season, he looked over to the tree she was sitting under to find it empty.
“Was that Lacy Graves I saw you talking to earlier?” Beau asked as they walked the field, picking up cones together.
“Yeah. Her daughter Embrie was the kid in pigtails on my team today. Why?”
“Are you friends with her?”
Nash’s head snapped up at the question.Was this guy really about to make a move on Lacy? Would she want that?
“Where the fuck is this going, Beau? You interested in her?”
“No. Nothing like that.” He laughed, his eyes drifting over to the woman talking to Mae. Since Nash knew Mae and Stone were together, despite them not really admitting that to anyone, especially Hawk, that meant whoever was talking to Mae was special to him.
“Just spit it out,” Nash grumbled.
“There’s a lot of history between people here in SilverSprings and Lacy’s family—a lot of deep wounds that haven’t healed.”
“And?”
“And… people were cruel to her growing up. Those same people, the ones who are still mad about what went down with her mom, aren’t happy that Lacy’s back.”
“Yeah, well, they should realize that Lacy isn’t her mom, and you don’t just punish someone because they’re related to someone else who committed a crime. She was a fucking kid when her mom caused that accident.” Lacy hadn’t told him the details, but he’d read the articles, the police reports. Fuck, after what happened with Sloane and Gage… their paths had become intertwined before they’d even met.
“Hey!” Beau held up his hands. “I’m on your side on this. This isn’t about her—not really. But just… I overheard some idiots we went to school with flapping their jaws at Davney’s the other night.”
“Saying what?” Nash froze, waiting for Beau to continue.
“Just that she shouldn’t be in town. That maybe someone needed to remind her of where she came from.”
Fuck. Talking out in the open like that, making threats where other people could hear them? That wasn’t a good sign. “Christ.”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for letting me know. Can you shoot me a text with their names? I’ll have Gage look them up, and I’ll figure out some way to let her know to be careful, especially around them.”
“Of course. Hey, next weekend, you wanna do sprinting drills with the kids before the scrimmage…”
Nash continued to chat with Beau, but his mind drifted to Lacy and Embrie. He hated the way Lace had looked when she realized all the other kids had gear. Why hadn’t he thought to make that a part of the program? The league fee was barelyanything, thanks to Sebastian’s sponsorship. Really, it was just a way to make sure parents committed to bringing their kids each week. Gear should have been covered too.
He pulled his keys out of his pocket and headed toward his truck, the bag of cones and soccer balls slung over his shoulder. It looked like he needed to take a drive into Dallas.
Four
Nash pushed the door to Petals open, the adorable bell chiming over his head, announcing his arrival. Lacy’s head popped up out from the door he assumed led to her office.
“Hey! You’re early today!”
