Anything for Her - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,96

his family, although knowing he’d never hear Anna’s voice again, knowing that she would always wonder what had happened to him, that would be hard.

But he could not abandon Sean, who had already lost everyone else he’d ever loved and trusted.

He couldn’t present himself to Allie and offer to pack up and go with her without first talking to Sean.

Which meant breaking the promise he’d made her. He had to tell Sean what was going on, and ask how he felt about starting all over. Again.

* * *

THE HIGH SCHOOL basketball season launched that evening with a junior varsity home game. Nolan couldn’t be anywhere else but in the stands.

He stood and clapped with the rest of the crowd on the home side of the court when the boys ran out onto the court. Students whistled and stamped on the bleachers, creating thunder and making them shake. Nolan hardly noticed. He was thinking how young those boys looked. Skinny legs, big feet, zits. Tank tops bared thin bodies. Sean was actually one of the better-put-together of the group. A couple of the boys blushed and cast shy glances at the crowd. Being the center of attention must be new to them.

Sean’s head turned and he scanned the crowd. For a moment there was something achingly young and worried on his face. But when he spotted Nolan, he gave a huge grin. The relief and sheer pleasure in that grin did strange things to Nolan’s heart.

He hadn’t understood the impulse that made him take in the boy he had barely exchanged a few words with, but he supposed he’d thought he was doing something decent. What he hadn’t known was how quickly he would come to love this boy, no different than if he was his own.

His mind did an unsettling, sideways shift. It occurred to him he’d never believed Dad really did love him the same way he loved Jed, who was his own. Maybe he’d been wrong, he thought now. Maybe being a blood relation wasn’t actually that important.

I guess I should give him a call. Just to talk. Maybe it’s even time—past time—I forgive him.

The one thing he’d never let himself think about entered his head. What if Dad had left Mom when he found out she’d had an affair, or later when he realized their oldest son wasn’t his?

I wouldn’t have had a father, that’s what.

Would that really have been better? Because the truth was, his dad had been a damn good father. The best.

Once this is settled with Allie...I’ll call him while I still can.

Feeling some sense of peace, Nolan tuned in when the referee blew the whistle and the game started, Sean playing forward.

Nolan might have been prejudiced—okay, was prejudiced—but he thought Sean was, hands down, the best player out there. He rebounded aggressively, shut down every opposing player he defended and, by the final buzzer, had scored an impressive eighteen points. Fouled once, he stepped up to the free-throw line and dropped in two shots, cool as could be.

I’ll be asking him to give up this team, these new friends. Yeah, he’d be able to play basketball wherever they went—but maybe not this season. For a kid this age, starting all over mid-school year sucked. Sean would know, because he’d done it so recently.

Nolan didn’t know what he’d do if Sean threw a fit and said, “No way am I going.”

Crap.

What if the decision came down to an either-or? Nolan asked himself. Allie or Sean? The yawning pit in his belly gave him a good idea what she’d gone through when she was seventeen and faced the same dilemma. Maybe what she faced this time, too, if she really did love him.

Allie or Sean?

Suppressing a groan, Nolan had no trouble making that decision.

He was sticking to both of them. However much Sean bitched, this choice wasn’t his to make.

That realization gave Nolan new sympathy for Allie’s mother. Parents sometimes did have to drag their reluctant kids along, the way she’d done. Hell, it happened all the time, when one parent or the other got transferred on the job, say. Of course, her decision had been different in a big way, he reminded himself; her husband had had to give up his business, Allie the chance at a brilliant future as a ballerina. And, yeah, they’d all given up their names.

He’d be asking that of Sean, too.

It’ll be tough, he told himself, but Sean will adjust. Kids did. The most important thing to a boy