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He could tell Ford the truth. He had two years left on his contract, guaranteed, which was supposed to mean something. Grand Rapids had taught him it didn’t. He’d given that town nine years, and a mid-season trade had ended it with a handshake, no warning. So a lease made him wary. Signing his name to twelve months of anything he couldn’t fit in the bed of his truck by nightfall felt like asking to be blindsided again.
The other truth was that the apartment had one bedroom, thin walls, and nobody in it who’d rate his breakfast. Leaving Grand Rapids had cost him a locker, a diner where the servers knew his order, and a few friends he barely kept in touch with now. Leaving here would cost him a kid who called him Big Cole and a man he caught himself watching at the stove, and Cole already knew what losing that would do to him. So he hadn’t let himself believe any of it was his to keep. He’d never said any of that aloud, and he didn’t plan to start now.
“I’ll look at it,” he said, which was as close to a no as he could get without having to explain himself.
For once Ford didn’t have any advice ready. He nodded slowly and kept his thoughts to himself. Then he pushed off the island and forgot to be careful. He groaned and his face twisted with obvious pain.
“How’s the hip?” Cole asked, keeping his voice low.
He’d been asking since February, getting the same nothing back, and kept asking anyway. Ford needed someone looking out for him for a change.
“Thirty-four and thriving.” His hand was halfway to the freezer before he caught himself. Cole was tempted to cuff him upside the head for being such a stubborn ass. He refused to ice his hip when anyone might see him being vulnerable. “Don’t start. Charlotte’s got the worrying covered.”
“Or she doesn’t like seeing you hurt. You hide it worse than you think.”
“There’s nothing to hide.” Ford’s grin didn’t quite hold.
Cole let it drop. He wasn’t sure anyone would get through to Ford until he was flat on his back, unable to walk.
Charlotte thundered in with one shoe on and the other in her hand, backpack dragging by a single strap. “I can’t find my other shoe.”
“It’s in your hand.”
She looked at it. “Oh.” Then she looked up at Cole, and her face went open and certain, the look that got him every time. “Big Cole, are you coming to my practice Saturday?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Even if you don’t live here anymore?”
Ford, halfway into his jacket, stilled and pretended he wasn’t eavesdropping.
“Even then,” Cole said. He bent to be at Charlotte’s level. “Any time we’re in town, I’ll be there. Doesn’t matter where I sleep.”
He meant it. This kid got things out of him he’d normally hold back, the truth slipping loose before he could stop it. Charlotte took it as fact because she was six and he’d never given her a reason not to, and went back to the more pressing business of getting ready for school.
Ford got her out the door with the practiced chaos of years of doing school mornings alone: backpack, water bottle, a kiss on the crooked ponytail, a “love you, be good, listen to Ms. Ekdahl.” He stopped at the door, keys in his hand, and looked back into the kitchen where Cole was already running water over the griddle.
“Hey. The apartment thing.” The sunshine had banked down to something Cole had to work harder to read. “You should do what’s right for you. I don’t want you passing it up because of us. Charlotte’ll survive. Kids are tougher than they look.”
Had he really been so transparent?
Cole wanted him to say the opposite so badly it embarrassed him. Stay. I’d rather you not take the apartment.
“I know,” he said.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
Ford looked at him a beat longer than he had any reason to, and for that beat, Cole let himself believe the look meant stay. The house went quiet as the door closed behind them. Cole hated it a little more every time they left.
He cleared the plates and wiped up the syrup Charlotte had gotten everywhere because somebody had to and it was easier if it was him. He shut off the water, picked up his phone, and looked at Russ’s message again. His thumb hovered over the reply box, where a reasonable man would already be typing back to ask when he could come see the place.
He put the phone in his pocket without answering, grabbed his keys, and headed out for practice. The third stair creaked under him on the way down, faint but there. He’d get to it. He always did.
TWO
Ford idled at the curb outside Lakeside Elementary and watched Charlotte march up the front steps in her mismatched socks without once looking back, which he took as proof he and his ex were doing this parenting thing right. Charlotte knew she could count on both of them, but she also had no problem being every bit as independent as she proclaimed to be. He stayed at the curb until the doors swallowed her anyway, the same as every morning, then pulled out of the drop-off lane with children’s music still tinning out of the speakers. He turned it down low enough to hear himself think. That turned out to be a mistake.
