Page 36 of False Start

I held the door while five sets of booted feet stomped over the threshold.

Ellie and Addison practically bounced with excitement. Leo and Noah moped, and Rylee, well, her previous excitement seemed to have fled, leaving her with big round eyes and pale cheeks. The girl looked scared enough to poop.

I had my work cut out for me.

Maybe next time they could all agree on a shared mood. Too much to ask?

Probably.

Jackson came around the corner and skidded to a stop, his hand stilling on the towel he rubbed along the edges of his sweaty hair. “Hey Maze, I didn’t expect you again this week.”

“Last-minute decision. Marty had an appointment. Who needs a day off anyway?”

I did, but there was no way I was going to admit that and take the risk of the kids feeling bad.

Even if I was disappointed in two of them at the moment.

Plus, those childhood nuggets I pilfered vicariously through my little borrowed brood called my name. I’m pretty sure I needed them as much as they needed me.

I didn’t know all the details of their lives, but kids didn’t spend time at the youth center without damn good reason. Some had parents working two jobs to make ends meet and no one at home after school; some were foster kids, and some of them were like me. They lived in a group home devoid of hugs, love, and individual attention.

At least I’d had years of hugs before I ended up there. The queen of a good snuggle, my mom never let a day go by without letting me know how loved and wanted I was.

When I ended up at Bay Wilderness group home, I’d been older and a few years wiser than my little crew. I’d been lucky.

Well, other than having to deal with Tilly.

Or what Tilly had become after she doused our bond with lighter fluid and tossed a match on it.

Someone has to feel bad for her. After all, what does it say when your own mother has to go and die to get away from you?

I’d never know if she knew I stood behind her when she said those words. It didn’t matter. The fact that she could say it made her a merciless bitch. One I hadn’t seen clearly until that moment.

Crossroads eventually gave me an escape from her torment.

Tilly went too, but the dynamics changed inside the walls of the youth center. The adults paid close attention. All it took was one of them overhearing the poison dripping from Tilly’s tongue one time. From that moment on they kept us separated.

For those few hours a week, they protected me.

Pretty much the only peace I knew until I moved out of Bay Wilderness and left Tilly’s misery behind.

What if I were the one standing between these little humans and torment and I just didn’t know it?

I looked down at Rylee’s pale worried face dusted with freckles. Cupping her soft pointed chin, I smiled until my silent reassurance wiped away some of the fear lingering in her eyes.

These guys were too damn young to be feeling all of that uncertainty and hurt. The thought of them lying in their beds at night, sad, maybe hungry, or worse…scared—I knew that gnawing feeling in the gut. I knew it intimately. The uncertainty of tomorrow, and the next day, and the next after that.

What it was like to hear the muffled sobs of the girl in the next bed.

It never really went away. Not for me.

So, while they were with me, they had my undivided attention and much to Leo and Noah’s disappointment, consequences for their decisions.

“Well, you know the drill, the floor is yours. How about we get these little guys and girls fitted for skates?”

“Just the girls,” Noah muttered.

Jackson yanked his head back and glanced between Leo and Noah. “You guys don’t want to skate?”

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