Page 71 of Time Out

Moore lined up.

The ball was snapped and he let loose with a forty-two yard kick that sailed high and tight straight through the middle of the bars.

“Yes!” Our team went wild.

He was tackled where he’d kicked the ball and hauled off the field as the stadium shook from the cheers and applause and absolute mayhem. I scanned the stadium, felt Maggie’s happiness radiating off her but kept looking until I spotted the man I hoped to see.

My dad was somewhere up there, probably losing his complete mind.

This was it, though. Those moments Cole had told me to remember. To lock into my memory so I never questioned, never doubted, because anything could happen—the good and the bad and as the seconds ticked down and our defense managed to shut Raleigh down from scoring—this was what I’d worked so hard for.

Not just a game in the NFL. Not just a win—but a trip to the post-season and the dream of a little boy to win the Super Bowl was within our grasp.

Within my grasp.

And with those I loved most, those I wanted to impress most in the stands as the clock reached zero time left, there was absolutely no better feeling. Nothing would compare to that moment.

Chapter 21

Maggie

I learned about more than football watching the game and sitting near Cole Buchanan’s family. First, I learned Kate and Dave treated every human under the age of thirty like they were their own children. As soon as I found the seat my ticket stated, Kate was on her feet, already searching for me. How she knew what I’d look like, I had no clue. As far as I knew, Davis hadn’t taken any pics of me, but once I got close to the row, she was already waving her arm, calling my name. She welcomed me with a hug and her name, insisting I call her Mama B like everyone else, and her husband Dave did the same thing. We spent the time alone with them, telling me all about Cole and their other son, Graham, who was still in college, playing football, but not the same position as Cole. And then Eden showed.

She hugged them like they were their own parents, held Jasper’s hand, and got him situated. She welcomed me with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes and a handshake that was a little too hard, a little too suspicious.

She had to know, right? Cole would have told her… which made everything make sense.

She wasn’t suspicious of me because she didn’t know me… she basically gave me the cold shoulder all game because she knew I was pregnant and she absolutely didn’t trust me.

It soured my mood. I was being judged in ways I hadn’t been since I stopped wearing floor-length skirts and homemade dresses and first stepped foot into the “real world.”

I didn’t blame her, but the assumptions she made about me weighed heavily on my shoulders. Throughout the game she made ignoring me an art form while she fussed with Jasper, turned and smiled and laughed with Kate and Dave all while Jasper was firmly planted between us. She jumped to her feet and cheered during every great play Cole made, gave high-fives to Jasper and Dave, spinning while she did so and skipped her gaze right over mine.

Needless to say, by the time the clock was running down, we weren’t all just on our feet, I was starting to get a pit in my stomach growing with dread because after this game, Davis promised Kate and Dave—and his own father who was also somewhere in this stadium—we’d all head to their home in Marysville, north of Nashville, for their Sunday family dinners.

All that surety I felt earlier in the week when I agreed to move in with Davis so he could help me out and all the confidence I had in what I thought we were growing was quickly replaced with an anxious, constant stream of doubts. If I stayed with Davis, this would be how everyone treated me. Friends. Family. Strangers online probably tearing me apart from my hair and eye-shape to the curves of my body. I would forever be known as a gold digger. Or worse.

I might have really liked Davis, but I wasn’t sure I had the stomach for the rest of it.

None of it was enough to ruin my excitement as Davis scored a touchdown with less than a minute left in the game, and I swear, for one brief second, our eyes met across the field, and he pointed at me.

“That’s Uncle Davis!” Jasper shouted. He pointed right back at number eleven and waved even while Davis was running to line up for another play.

I leaned back and made eye contact with Dave. “I thought he was done after the touchdown.”

An unfriendly smirk curled Eden’s lip in my peripheral. A fan of my questions she was not, but fortunately, Dave seemed thrilled to help me out. “Usually they come out and kick an after point kick for one point. But once they’re still down by two, if they score one more play, they can tie the game up.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I spun back around just in time to see Cole hike the ball. Next to me, Jasper’s little hand wrapped around mine and he squeezed. “Come on, Dad…”

My heart leaped into my throat and while I didn’t fully understand the game, it didn’t diminish the absolute electricity on the field. The complete silence as Cole hiked the ball or the mass hysteria that followed in a blink as one of the Steel players lifted his hands and the ball dropped right into it. He ran three steps and was caught in a dog pile as the rest of the team threw themselves on top. For one brief moment, as Jasper and I cheered and Eden turned around to hug Kate and Dave, she smiled at me, cheered and even managed to catch my hand in a high-five, which helped settle my fears.

At least, until it was time to walk through the stadium and head to where the players would leave the locker room and by the time we arrived, there was already a man outside the doors, apart from the rest, hands shoved into jeans and worn work boots on his feet.

I spotted him immediately, due to his pacing and his size, but it wasn’t the fact he didn’t seem to know anyone.

He was the spitting image of Davis, an exact replica only thirty-some years older. I had a flash of future Davis, maybe a little less muscled straight in front of me. The man who would be my child’s grandfather.

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