“Oh my God.” Josie panted, leaning on the frame and bringing a hand to her forehead. “Thank goodness I found you.” She was as out of breath as I’d been a few minutes ago. She was also wearing an apron with JOSIE’S JOINT in big green bold letters. “There’s a code yellow.”
We all blinked at her. Even the girls.
“Code yellow?” I ventured.
“The parents,” she explained, her eyes going wide and panicky. “They’re pissed.” She looked at Cameron. “Why are you still holding that? Please me tell you are not drinking it. I told you the second Josephino was for her!”
Cameron’s lips pressed into a flat line. “Believe me, I heard you.”
Had Josie made one for me? I shot Cameron a furtive glance, but he didn’t hand me the drink so—
Josie shifted at the door. “What in the world happened here? Never mind, we don’t have time for that.” She whirled her head, checking something over her shoulder before facing us back. “Hey, girls, how about we move this back onto the field? You can play whatever you want until practice wraps up. Yay!”
The girls cheered and immediately obeyed, streaming out.
“We’re right behind you!” Josie called, sending us an urgent glance and ushering us out of the shed.
She stopped us somewhere along the sidelines, and I made sure to face the field so I’d get a clear view of the team.
Voices—adult voices that had nothing to do with the ruckus the children were producing from the grass—reached my ears. I tried to look around Josie, but she snagged my face with both hands.
“Adalyn,” she said, bringing my head right in front of hers. “I need you to focus, we don’t have time. Or a game plan. And we seriously, seriously, need one. This is a code yellow, probably even black.” Josie’s eyes landed on Cameron, and she huffed. “Jesus, Cam, why are you still holding the Josephino?” She released me, snatching the cup from a still scowling Cameron and shoving it in my chest. “Here. You’ll need this.”
I accepted the cup, making myself ignore the weight of Cameron’s eyes on my profile. “Okay,” I told Josie with a nod. “What’s wrong with the parents?”
“The parents are what’s wrong,” Josie rushed out. “We were all at the café and it was all fine until they started talking about coming back here and interrupting practice. They have a plan. They’re sending two representatives. They were saying they didn’t want to”—she gestured for air quotes—“make a scene. But that’s impossible when Diane is involved.”
Cameron let out a grunt I didn’t understand.
I kept my focus on Josie. “Make a scene about what?”
The voices grew closer, and this time, I spotted two adults, a man and a woman, over Josie’s shoulder.
Josie swallowed. “They know, Adalyn. They’ve seen it.”
CHAPTER TEN
Cameron
I shouldn’t be here.
I should have left around the time the word coach had left Adalyn’s lips for the first time. Way before Josie and these two other people showed up and started babbling about rules and parent associations and the well-being of the kids and a dozen other things I didn’t care about.
They’d been going at it for at least twenty minutes and I still didn’t understand what they were really discussing. Something about Adalyn that I didn’t understand and didn’t concern me, clearly. That’s why I’d used the time to keep an eye on the girls while half of them played around and the other half… recorded shit on their phones. Dances. I didn’t even know what for. I hated smartphones, social media, and anything that was remotely related.
I looked down at my empty cup.
Bloody Josephino.
That’s what had started all of this. All I’d wanted was to pop into the café for a quick cup after my hike. I should have refused to deliver the extra beverage Josephine had prepared—without thinking of telling me, naturally—for Adalyn. But Josephine had a way of… sneaking up on people. She threw you a couple of questions and next thing you knew, you were coaching a kiddie team or delivering drinks.
She would have made a great sports agent.
“… And that is why my good friend Cam”—the mayor of the town patted my arm—“is right here.”
“Unfortunately,” I muttered. I’d tuned out a while ago but being stuck here was definitely unfortunate.
Josie cackled, startling me and making me notice that every eye in the small group was on me. The two parents—a woman with quite the bright hair and a tall man in red rimmed glasses—were giving me a once-over. Adalyn was, too, and not for the first time. I needed a shower. I was sweaty, my clothes and boots covered in dust, and I was done with whatever this was.
“Well,” the woman said, that head covered in a blinding shade of yellow still moving up and down my body. “He is tall.” I blinked at the observation. “And athletic. Also European.”
“He’s the whole package, really!” Josephine clapped. Clapped. Christ. “And he was—and is—doing such a great job with the girls. You know that.”
“Were you training the team dressed like that today?” Diane asked. “I can’t recall seeing you in anything like this when I’ve dropped off Chelsea in the past.”
I didn’t even look down at myself. “I—”
Josie cut me off with a pitchy laugh. “Oh no. He just got here! Cam had to take today off to take care of…”
“His chicken,” Adalyn offered quietly.
My what?
“Cam loves his animals,” Josephine agreed. “The animals love him in return. And you know who else adores Cam? The girls.”
I arched an eyebrow. “What in the world are you—”
Josephine cackled again, silencing me. “Ah! Kids. We love ’em. Anyway, you trust Cam, and that’s why he will be the perfect complement to Adalyn.” My brow climbed even higher. “He will take care of the technical side of things, like practice, games, all that stuff. While Adalyn focuses on the more practical things. Did I tell you Adalyn is a real-life boss-lady? She’s an exec for a team in in the big leagues!” She set one hand on my shoulder and one on Adalyn’s. “They already are the perfect team. Look at them!”
I wasn’t exactly comfortable with them studying me up close after that statement, but if no one had recognized me in weeks, I wanted to believe I was safe. So I shook my head and shot Josie a bland look, catching Adalyn’s face as she stood beside her. Her gaze was downcast. I frowned.
The woman in front of us huffed. “I don’t know. I trust him but I still have reservations about her. I’m very concerned for Chelsea, and the rest of the girls, for that matter. They are third and fourth graders, and very impressionable at this age. Trust me, I’m the president of the PTA for a reason. I would know these things.”
So she’d said. About a hundred times.
I didn’t even know what they were so worked up about. Something about not really knowing Adalyn, something they had seen online and not trusting someone like her with the kids, whatever that meant. They were constantly talking around whatever the real issue was. Not that I wanted to know. My only concern now was Josephine’s statement about Adalyn and I being a team. The woman had fired me. Several times in the span of a few minutes. Me, as if I wasn’t a pro footballer who was doing the team a favor. Which she apparently knew. She’d dismissed me as if she had a problem with exactly that.
I had no interest in finding out what the specifics of that problem were.
“And as the vice president of the PTA,” the man added, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of his nose. “I share that concern. My husband and I had a long talk with our Juniper after we found out about the whole… ordeal and while we support the free expression of, you know, emotions, we still think it’s not setting a good example for the girls.”
“My husband—” The woman stopped herself, her cheeks turning red. “Ex-husband, heard Chelsea saying something about wanting to switch from ballet to… kung fu or something outrageous like that. Do you know how unsettling that is? My daughter is a peaceful, delicate soul and now she wants to fight. Fight!”