“She worked yesterday, drove today, and will sit through a sold-out arena with Vivi wearing headphones and Skylar acting like she doesn’t want to be here when she absolutely does.”
I looked at my gloves and laces, at anything except their faces. “That’s why I don’t want this conversation right now. She’ll look at me for half a second and know if I’m falling apart. She always knows.”
Rider nodded. “Moms do that.”
“Gayle does it like a crime-scene investigator,” Briggs said. “She once asked me if I was dehydrated from across a parking lot.”
“You were,” Cade said.
“I had one headache.”
“You ate gas-station nachos and called it lunch.”
Briggs frowned. “They had protein.”
“They had regret,” Rider said.
Despite myself, I nearly smiled, but my phone buzzed inside my bag before it could happen.
Cade noticed my eyes shift. “Answer it.”
“I don’t need to.”
“If it’s your mom, answer it.”
“I said I don’t need to.”
Cade’s jaw tightened. “Captain isn’t code for martyr.”
Briggs made a sound beneath his breath. “That’s actually kind of good.”
Rider nodded. “Annoyingly good.”
I ignored all of them and grabbed the phone. Mom’s name lit the screen.
I pressed the call button before I could talk myself out of it. “Hey.”
Her voice came through soft and tired, with arena noise faintly behind her because she was already inside the building. “We’re in. Vivi’s doing okay. Security let us use the side entrance like you said.”
My shoulders dropped a fraction. “Good. Where’s Sky?”
“Trying to pretend she isn’t taking pictures of everything.”
“She wearing the jacket?”
“She is, and she hates that I made her. Say thank you, Mom.”
Skylar’s voice rose in the background. “I look like a youth pastor.”
Briggs snorted from three stalls away.
I turned my back to them. “Tell her youth pastors don’t wear cropped leather.”
Mom laughed softly, and the sound made my chest hurt. “She heard you. Vivi wants to know if number thirteen is still bad luck.”
I closed my eyes. “Tell her it’s bad luck for the other team.”
There was a pause before Vivi’s voice came through, smaller and farther from the phone. “That’s acceptable.”
