what I’d done, she’d kick me out and be on her own again, and I’d promised to show up for her and the kids. Keeping that promise meant not giving her a reason to throw me out. Telling her was selfish, anyway. It would only hurt her.
Chaos had no chance of helping Ella—of being there for her. Not after what had happened. I’d have to wait until Maisie was in the clear before coming clean to Ella. Then the choice would be hers.
“What is that kid doing? Isn’t that illegal? He can’t trip him like that!” Ella shouted.
“I think it was more of mutual clumsiness, there,” I countered.
“Oh my God, he did it again! Get him, Colt! Don’t you let him do that to you!”
“You know, he’s only six,” I said, sweet as cherry pie.
She slowly turned to me with a glare and an openmouthed scoff. “Whatever.”
I laughed and for the first time realized that I was utterly, completely content with my life. Even if I never got Ella, never tasted her mouth, never touched her skin, never kept her in bed on a rainy Sunday morning or heard her say the three little words I was starved for, this moment was enough.
Glancing back at Maisie in the shade, I saw her eyes closed, and the deep, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. She was asleep with Havoc curled up under her outstretched legs. If she was already this exhausted, how the hell was she going to withstand another round of chemo next week?
“Oh no…no, no,” Ella muttered, and I turned my attention back to the field.
The other team slipped past Colt, then the defense, and scored to win the game.
Well. Shit.
My heart ached when I saw Colt’s face, the way his shoulders fell. But he shook hands with the opposing team like the sport he was, and then sat on the bench long after the coach finished the post-game pep talk. Seeing some of the other dads cross the field, I looked over at Ella, who looked almost as disappointed as Colt.
“Well, that sucks.” She folded her arms across her chest, her long side braid brushing over her arm as she turned to look at me. “What do I say to him?”
“How about you give me a second with him?”
“Be my guest.” She motioned toward the bench. “I’ll pack everything up.”
I crossed the field with his cleat bag in my hands, then dropped down in front of him to start untying the double knots he swore he couldn’t play without.
“Man, I loved watching you play,” I told him, slipping the first cleat free.
“I let him by. We lost because I messed up.”
I untied the second cleat and then took it off, too. “Nah. You win as a team, and you lose as a team. There’s no shame in that.”
“I didn’t want to lose,” he whispered, like it was a dirty secret.
“No one does, Colt. But I can tell you sometimes the losses are just as important as the wins. The wins feel really good and let us celebrate what we did right. But the losses, they teach us more. They teach us to see where we can improve, and yeah, they feel pretty darn bad, and that’s okay. As you get bigger, you’ll see that it’s not how you handle the wins that make you a good man, it’s how you handle the losses.”
I handed him the shoes he’d brought, and he put them on his feet as he thought, his little forehead puckered in the same lines Ella wore when she was working something out. Then he fastened the Velcro and hopped off the bench. “So it’s okay to lose.”
I nodded. “You have to lose sometimes. It keeps you humble, keeps you working harder. So yeah, it’s okay to lose. Sometimes it’s even good for you.”
He heaved a giant, melodramatic sigh and then nodded. “Will you come with me for a second?”
“Sure,” I answered without thought, following him past our bench to the away team’s, where he found the kid who had scored the final goal.
The kid saw Colt and stood up.
Colt walked straight to him. “I just wanted to say that you’re really fast. Good job today.”
The kid smiled. “You, too. That was an awesome goal!”
They shook hands like tiny men, and Colt grinned as we walked away.
“I’m really proud of you,” I said as we started to cross the field.
“Well, he’s really fast. But you know what? We play them again at the end of