Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 130512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
I’d been surprised, a little relieved, and then worried. Because how many bullies did they deal with? Her comment about Maddy also concerned me, until I’d discovered what she was talking about when I was called to Maddy’s school. A group of girls had been trying to bully my daughter. Maddy turned the tide and ended up bullying them, or so they claimed. When the girls wouldn’t say what exactly Maddy had done to them, the meeting was dismissed, but I laid down the law when I got home. Maddy spilled the details. A girl tried to cyberbully her, so Maddy had befriended a hacker who got into the girl’s phone and shared all of her private messages publicly. I’d blanched when I heard that. Another girl tossed something in Maddy’s locker, and it destroyed some of her books. Maddy got even by going to that girl’s house, pretending she was a friend, and hooking up a hose in the nearest bathroom. She soaked the girl’s entire room.
To this day, I had no idea why that girl’s parents never said anything. We should’ve been on the hook to pay for the damage, but Maddy laughed when I shared that concern.
“She wouldn’t dare open that window,” she’d said. “Once the parents are involved, she knows I can get more dirt I’ll spill to her parents. She’d be so grounded she’d never see her friends until she was fifty. These kids nowadays, Mom. They aren’t all saints, not like they were when you grew up.”
“Maddy, I’m not that old,” I’d told her.
She’d rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Okay. But you’re so old, you can read a map that’s on paper.”
I stopped bringing up our ages after that conversation.
Nash shrugged at me now. “It’s nothing. I think they want me to start dressing for the varsity games.” At that moment some of his friends ran past. Nash yelled to them, giving me a rushed kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Mom. I’m going to sit with the guys. See you after!” He tore after them, and I was left with a strange wave of nostalgia.
He was so tiny. Or he should’ve been.
My little boy.
Now he was going to start dressing with the varsity team? I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be dressing and standing on the sidelines. They wouldn’t need to talk to us about that. They were going to start playing him.
My baby.
They grew up fast, too fast.
37
MASON
“Mason.”
After the game, I waited on the side of the field, near an exit that was off the path of everyone else. I was staying out of the way because a crowd started to form around me whenever I left my seat. It was only because it was my first time at a varsity game. It’d die down over time, but tonight, I caught the looks on my kids’s faces. They didn’t want pro-athlete dad. They wanted their dad tonight. Sam needed to stick around and talk to David and Malinda. Nolan kept insisting her and Nash needed to go with the grandparents for the night and weekend so I made myself scarce. We were flexible. We generally let them. The only time we wouldn’t was if they got in trouble, but that rarely happened with the twins.
Sam’s stepbrother was heading my way as the teams filtered past. Mark had his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hunched forward.
I moved farther to the side, ducking my head as a few of the visiting team’s players seemed to notice me. A couple recognized me, cursed, and shot forward into their locker room.
I wasn’t close to Mark.
It just never happened over the years, and I wasn’t sure why. He’d stuck around in the area, getting his real estate license a while back. Turns out, he was good at selling houses. He’d helped us with ours. He also owned and managed a few apartments in Fallen Crest and another town south of here.
He and Cass ended their relationship, and it looked more and more like it was going to be official this time. Evidently he’d been drowning himself in alcohol, and he’d been taking home a string of one-night stands.
“You’re sober?”
He stopped abruptly a few yards away. “What’d you say?”
“You heard me. I keep getting reports every night you stumble home.” I shook my head. “Sam’s worried about you.”
“Oh.” The fight left him as he rubbed his forehead, wincing. “I didn’t think about that. I’ll be fine. Just the usual post break-up thing. And yes, I’m sober.”
The crunch of footsteps came from behind us. Mark shifted to the side, revealing a giant fucking NFL offensive lineman that I’d always thanked my stars that I personally didn’t go head to head against Brett Broudou. I ran far and wide for the most part, and he liked to try to make my quarterback eat grass.