RYDER FELT NEARLY as upset about his kids losing as he had the Steamers’ loss against the Vikings. There’d been a well of disappointment when his last throw was intercepted, and Minnesota scored on him, but that didn’t sting nearly as bad as Jack fumbling during the last Lil Steamers game of the tournament.
The kid was disappointed. He’d fought and struggled to throw the ball straight to his running backs, making their catches close to the end zones, but the Ryders were simply outmanned. Well—out wo-manned.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Glenn,” Jack told Ryder, yanking off his helmet right after Keola Pukui blocked a beautiful throw he had sent almost on top of the end zone. “She’s good.”
“And so are you,” he told the kid, sitting on the bleachers, offering Jack a bottle of water and the seat next to him. He took the water, not looking at Ryder as he drank deep. Around them, the Minis celebrated while Ryder’s team hung back, letting Reese’s girls have their moment.
“The true measure of a man is how he admits his mistakes,” he told the boy, gaze moving over the screaming, smiling girls, stopping at Reese as she high-fived them. “Sometimes we can do our best, or at least think we are, and still be wrong.”
“Wrong?” Jack asked, holding the water between his small fingers. “You think I did something wrong?”
“No,” he told the kid, pulling his attention away from Reese. “I just mean that we all make mistakes. Even when we practice and plan, sometimes God or the universe or just plain dumb luck has other ideas about how things should go.”
Jack considered Ryder’s explanation, his forehead wrinkled as he watched the ground, pulling up clumps of grass and dirt with the tip of his shoe. “I delayed. That last throw, I tried to make sure Billy was close as he could be to the end zone, but I waited too long. That’s how she got him.” Ryder nodded, agreeing with Jack. He liked that the boy was able to own up to his mistakes.
He was already a better man than Ryder in that regard.
“So mistakes happen?” Jack asked, looking at Ryder with his eyes rounded and wide. “So I shouldn’t beat myself up?”
“Nah, bud. You shouldn’t.” Across the field, Reese laughed at Wilson and Baker, letting the bigger man kiss her cheek. “Don’t beat yourself up but learn from your mistakes. Make sure you don’t make it again.”
Jack nodded, smiling at Ryder before he handed back the bottle. “I got it, Mr. Glenn. No more stupid mistakes.” And as the boy ran off, joining his teammates to offer their congratulations to the Minis, Ryder watched Reese. She had been his biggest regret. She always would be.
Pukui approached, and Ryder’s throat tightened, feeling that deep ache in his chest over the loss the man had suffered, and the incredible weight that must be heavy in his heart now that he was solely responsible for raising his daughter. That was a loss both Pukui and his kid would never get over. Ryder was familiar with that kind of pain.
Reese leaned down, kissing Pukui’s daughter, brushing back the hair from her face and something wild and old and sweet shoved at the dozing giant Ryder kept at bay. The creature had been awake for a while now. He’d wanted Ryder to act and take and do whatever he had to win back Reese. Seeing her with that little girl, seeing her happy and elated and kind made that giant ache with the anguish of not being near her.
Reese was good and tender and a part of Ryder’s past that he held close to his heart. She lived inside it, always waiting for forgiveness she should have never needed. She was wild and beautiful and someone who had filled Ryder up in the short time they’d been together. She was the past, a sweet, safe memory that was true and precious to him. And he was desperate for her to be his future.
And he wanted that future to start right then.
23.
RYDER
TOO MUCH OF their lives had been up for public consumption. Ryder knew marching across that field to soundly kiss Reese in front of their kids, teammates, families, and media would have done nothing to get him alone with her with the quickness he was desperate for.
They deserved now. Right now. They deserved a new shot at the thing that they’d been best at together.