The Last Letter(49)

I handed him the shoes he’d brought, and he put them on his feet as he thought, his little forehead puckered in the same lines Ella wore when she was working something out. Then he fastened the Velcro and hopped off the bench. “So it’s okay to lose.”

I nodded. “You have to lose sometimes. It keeps you humble, keeps you working harder. So yeah, it’s okay to lose. Sometimes it’s even good for you.”

He heaved a giant, melodramatic sigh and then nodded. “Will you come with me for a second?”

“Sure,” I answered without thought, following him past our bench to the away team’s, where he found the kid who had scored the final goal.

The kid saw Colt and stood up.

Colt walked straight to him. “I just wanted to say that you’re really fast. Good job today.”

The kid smiled. “You, too. That was an awesome goal!”

They shook hands like tiny men, and Colt grinned as we walked away.

“I’m really proud of you,” I said as we started to cross the field.

“Well, he’s really fast. But you know what? We play them again at the end of the summer, and I’m going to be faster. I can wait that long to kick his butt.”

I wanted to chastise him, but I was too busy trying my damnedest not to laugh. “Gotcha. Then we’ll dine on the souls of our enemies?”

“Bingo.”

He stopped midfield, and I had to backtrack a couple of steps. “Colt, what’s wrong?”

He looked up at me, blocking the sun with a hand, and then glanced around to the other parents walking back to their cars. “Is this what it feels like?” he whispered so quietly that I leaned down.

“What it feels like?” I asked.

“Having a dad?” He tilted his head slightly.

Words fled at the same rate every emotion assaulted me. His question flayed me open, leaving me raw and exposed in a way I’d never felt before.

I crouched to his level and said the only thing that came to mind. “You know, I’m not sure. I never had a dad.”

His eyes widened. “Me, either.”

I’m here now. The words were there, in my head, at the tip of my tongue. But they weren’t mine to say or to offer. Man, it was a slice of hell to fall in love with someone else’s kid when you couldn’t claim the love of his mother—or her mother. I looked across the field to see Ella sitting with Maisie under the shade, running their hands over the grass.

“What do you say we take the girls home?” I asked Colt as I removed my baseball hat and put it on his head to keep the sun off him.

“Good idea. Let’s tend to the women.” He strode toward the girls, and I didn’t hold back the laughter this time. How the kid could have me near tears one second and laughing the next was beyond me.

“We lost,” Colt told Ella as we walked back to the car. I had Maisie in my arms, her head against my chest, while Ella pulled the wagon behind us.

“Oh, man. Have to admit, I’m glad there aren’t any enemy souls for dinner tonight,” she joked, pulling him to her side. “I guess we’ll just have to settle for ordering pizza.”

“Pizza!” both of the kids shouted, then high-fived each other, Colt jumping to reach Maisie.

I got each kid locked into the booster seats I’d purchased for the truck and loaded the wagon and contents into the bed as Ella ordered pizza. Havoc jumped into the back between the kids. Ella had calmed down a ton since the oncologist told her Havoc was completely safe to Maisie as long as her levels weren’t bottomed out.

I drove us back through Telluride as Colt and Maisie debated the merits of cheese versus pepperoni.

“Do they ever have a conversation where they finish a sentence?” I asked Ella.

“Nope. It’s like they have their own language. They just know what the other is thinking before they finish, so they don’t.”

“Creepy, but cool.”

“Exactly.”

How natural it would be to reach over and take her hand, to brush a kiss across her palm. Everything about this felt effortless—right. The same as writing to her had been…not that she’d know about that anytime soon.

I pulled in front of the pizza shop and parked the truck. “A parking spot right up front? Looks like pizza was fated for tonight!” I declared.

The kids lifted their arms in victory, but Maisie’s weren’t quite as high. She was tuckering out again.

Both Ella and I got out of the truck, but I beat her to the sidewalk. “I’ve got it,” I told her.

“You’re not paying for pizza,” she protested.

“But I am.”

“Are not.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“Am, too.”

She stepped forward and stared up at me, all fire and stubbornness. My gaze dropped to her lips, parted and perfect. So kissable.

“I’m paying,” she said, all soft and slow, like she knew I was struggling to keep my damn hands to myself.

“In your dreams.”

Her expression went all soft, and I would have paid a million dollars to know what she’d just thought about. “Fine,” she said. “But only if you agree to have dinner with us.”

“Deal.”

“Are not!”

“Are, too!”