“Are you doing okay?” he asks Brooke, not replying to her question.
She nods.
“You promise?”
“Yes, I’m staying with Dutton for a while until things calm down. I’m safe.”
Mr. Vans’s focus returns to me, but this time there isn’t as much anger in his eyes.
He sighs heavily.
“Tonight's games for the two of you on me. You deserve to have some carefree fun,” he says to Brooke. “And you, Dutton, get one chance to redeem yourself for what you did to this place all those years ago.”
“Yes, sir,” I say and smile at Brooke. It’s hard not to—her smile could turn even the worst of situations into nothing but joy.
“And that look she’s giving you is the only reason you’re getting this chance to begin with. Now tell me what shoe sizes you need.”
Brooke and I rattle off our sizes and then join the group. We are the last ones here.
“All I’m saying is that this was poorly planned.” Linc crosses his arms as he stands in front of Luca.
“I thought I counted an even number.”
“Seventeen is not even.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, taking a seat at one of the four lanes we have claimed. Brooke sits next to me, and we begin to change our shoes.
“Everyone has a partner except for me.” Linc huffs.
“I said I’d be your partner,” Grace chimes in. “Like a hundred times.”
Linc and Luca both look past her to Preston, and then they both shake their heads.
“Nope. You have a partner,” Linc says as a matter of fact.
“I’ll gladly give him up,” Grace pleads.
“No can do. What needs to happen is that we need one more to join us.”
“I’ll be on your team,” Layla says, and I grin at my niece.
“You’re on my team,” Gavin says quickly.
Layla rolls her eyes at her dad, but then fist bumps me and quickly takes a seat by Brooke.
Brooke nudges her with her arm the way she’s done to me a dozen or more times.
“Hi, Layla, how are you?”
“Good. I …” My niece's words trail off and then she shakes her head. “My dad told me what happened and?—”
“And I also told you not to bring it up." Gavin groans and runs a hand over his face. “Sorry, Brooke.”
“It’s fine. Did you want to ask me something about it?” she asks my niece.
That’s how Brooke is. She can clearly see that something about it is weighing on my niece, and even though this man came to harassherand broke intoherhouse, she wants to make sure my niece talks through whatever is on her mind.
“I just … you seem fine today, and I would think that what happened was scary. How are you so calm?”
