“Help what? Score lots of goals? Kick with lots of power?”

I sense Mia smiling in my peripheral vision. I want to look at her, but I don’t dare break eye contact with Parker. He’s listening to me. He’s finally hearing me.

“Power,” he says. “I want to kick hard and far. Like you do.”

I cross my arms and gaze across the lanes like I’m thinking about it. “How about adding accuracy to that list?” I ask. “Power and range don’t mean much if you can’t kick where you’re meaning to.”

“Yes,” he says before I’ve even finished speaking.

“All right, sure,” I say. “I can teach you that. No special shoes required. But you’ll have to keep coming to practices. You’ll have to participate. Not just watch. And you’ll have to work hard.”

It’s not the most rousing speech I’ve ever given, but fancy words aren’t what he needs. If I’m right, Parker just needs to believe that I won’t make him promises and then disappear—and that he has a place in the Dynamos that’s his, no matter what.

“Fart Knocker?” Rhett yells, breaking the little cocoon that’s surrounded us. Rhett squints at the scoreboard, then looks around. “Guys, listen up. Hey, guys! Does anyone know who Fart Knocker is?”

Parker jumps up. “Gotta go.” He stops at the ball return and turns around, locking eyes with me. “But yes, Coach. Okay.”

Mia straightens and slips into the seat Parker just vacated. She’s wearing a smile on her face—I feel it even without looking at her.

“You look mighty proud of yourself, Coach Ethan.”

“Yeah . . . I like that kid.”

“Is he your favorite?”

“If by favorite you mean that he’s the one I think about the most, then yes. He is.” That definition would also make you my favorite girl, I think. Then I mentally beat the crap out of myself. “Parker’s just had a tough time, you know?”

Mia shakes her head, her curly hair shifting over her shoulder. “No. What happened to him?”

I lower my voice, though there’s no chance anyone’s going to hear us with the noise. “His dad walked out on him. On them,” I say, nodding to Raylene. Only then do I see that Raylene is sitting with Alison. Two glasses of white wine sit on the table in front of them. It’s like I’ve stepped into an alternate dimension.

“That’s sad—poor guy,” Mia says, her brow creasing with concern.

My eyes drop to her lips, to the soft pink shine of her lip gloss. It’d be so easy to just bend down and taste her. My willpower disintegrates when I’m this close to her, so I lean back a little and focus on my bowling shoes. “I can relate to him, in a way.”

“I thought your parents were together,” Mia says. “You told me they’re still crazy about each other.”

“They are,” I say, noticing that she remembers the things I say almost verbatim. I wish I hadn’t noticed. Knowing that isn’t going to make my life any easier. “I just meant that I know what it’s like to have someone you trust disappoint you in a big way.”

Mia blinks at me. “What?”

“Nothing . . . Never mind.” I don’t want to bad-mouth Alison—especially since she’s here. I grab Mia’s hand and pull her to her feet. “You’re up, Ms. Hubba Hubba.”

Her eyes lift to the scoreboard above. “Hubba—what? That’s not me. One of the boys entered that.”

I grin. “Wonder which one.” I tow her out to the lane, stopping to grab her bowling ball on the way.

“Ethan, I’m allergic to sports,” Mia says, as she tries to squirm out of my grip. “I told you this! I even carry an EpiPen.”

“Just try it. It’s not going to kill you.” I hand her the bowling ball, which tips her forward as she absorbs the weight.

The boys have all stopped what they’re doing. They stand in a line, as still as they’ve been all night. Then Milo catcalls, “Coach Vance is touching his girlfriennnnd,” and suddenly they’re all snickers and nudging elbows.

“I’m serious, Ethan. I could gravely injure you.” Beneath her smile, I can tell she is actually concerned. “I break windows when I try sports. I break bones.”

“It’s okay. You’re in the hands of a professional.” I fix her grip on the ball. “You’re going to bowl a strike, right here, right now.” I take her hips and turn them a bit. Then I walk around her and adjust her arm, then pull her shoulders back. The boys start chanting, “Mi-a! Mi-a!”

“Are you done?” she asks, looking miserable. “Can I go now?”

“No, you’re all crooked.”

“You just put me in this position!”

“Yeah, it didn’t work. Relax, Curls. We got this.” I step behind her, thinking I’ll help her the way I learned, with my dad guiding my motion. But the instant my body lines up with hers, I know I’ve made a mistake. A big one.

Her incredible violet smell invades my nose and throws my body into immediate chaos. Heat shoots through me, and I’m suddenly doing everything I can to not think about how good she feels against me.

“You hold it this way.” I wrap my hands around hers to show her how to hold the ball, but less than one percent of my mind is still thinking about bowling. I’m getting hard for her right here, with people everywhere, but I can’t talk my goddamn dick down when I’m pressed against her ass. There’s just no way it’s happening. I keep talking, because what the hell else can I do? “Swing straight back and straight forward. You’re going to want to let go right when . . .”

“Ethan,” she says.

Just that. Just my name, but it’s like a plea and a demand rolled into one.

“Yeah?” I say, my voice sounding hoarse and deep. There’s something so familiar about this. About her pressed against me this way.

“What are we doing?”

She’s turned into a statue in front of me. A statue with soft curves that are driving me insane.

“Not what we want to be doing,” I answer.

The words spill out of me at the speed of truth.

Mia darts away like I’ve stung her and chucks the bowling ball. It lands in the gutter with a crack and bounces into the next lane, where it begins the slowest roll imaginable. Eventually, it makes it to the end of the lane and disappears.

The boys fly into hysterics, but Mia looks up at me. I hate the hurt and anger in her green eyes. It sends me crashing from the high I was on moments ago, with her body against mine. I get the feeling I should apologize, but I’m not fucking sorry. What just happened felt too good for me to regret it.

Without a word, she hops off the lane and heads over to Rhett—who’s standing with Raylene.

I can’t go after her right now, so I force myself to get back into coaching mode. I spend the next hour trying to keep the boys from breaking fingers and toes, with the occasional success of actually sending a ball down the lane.

My mind never completely bounces back though. I keep thinking about the hurt look in Mia’s eyes. Since that night at her parents’ place, I’ve fought off desire for weeks. Tonight, desire fought back and it kicked my ass. By touching her the way I did, I violated the understanding we had—the one I championed—to be friends and coworkers, and nothing more.

Yeah. Regret just showed up after all. Bastard.

As seven o’clock approaches, I gather the boys to say a few words like I always do at the end of practice. Past the elbowing, fidgeting boys, their parents stand in a semicircle. Mia is there. She doesn’t seem angry anymore, which loosens the tension that’s been coiled in my shoulders for the past hour. It’s only then that I remember she wanted to ask me something earlier, just before Alison showed up.

Alison is back there too, holding the baker’s box, and Rhett stands next to Raylene. My eyes snag on them for a second, seeing the unmistakable signs in their body language, and my mind makes a calculation. Rhett plus Raylene equals whoa . . . How did I not see that coming?

I lean on the ball-return machine, bringing my attention back to my team. “So, guys. What did you learn today?”

“I want to have my tenth birthday party here.”

“The pizza here is so good!”

“Mr. Butts bowled two strikes!”

“Okay, okay,” I say. “Anything else?” I look at Tyler, praying the kid will give me a break.

“Yeah,” he says. “Being on this team rocks. But I already knew that.”

“It’s a good thing to learn again, isn’t it?” I ask. “A good thing to be reminded of?” A few of their heads bob, telling me I’ve got them where I want them. “What do I always say about being on this team?”

“That it’s less about me and more about we,” Cameron offers.

“That’s right. You guys play as much for each other as you do for yourselves. I think we did a good job of working on we today. What do you boys think?”

A chorus of shouts rises up around me. “All right. Good job tonight, Dynamos. Go see Alison before you leave for a cupcake and remember to say thank you.”

Usually it’s a jailbreak at this point, with kids stumbling over anything in their path to get going, but no one moves.

“It’s all paid for, boys,” I say. “If you turned in your shoes, you’re free to go.”

Milo, who’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, reaches into his soccer bag and pulls out a ball.

A soccer ball.

He rolls it my way across the shiny floor. I know what they’re going to ask me before I trap it. As usual, Tyler speaks for the group.

“I asked my dad to talk to the bowling alley owner, and he said it was okay. That you could do it. But just once and just you.”

I look at eleven faces, trust radiating from their eyes. As much as I don’t want to do this here, in this place that’s so much like home but isn’t, there’s no way I’m disappointing them.