From the Start (17 page)

Kate had one goal in bringing Colton to the Twister Tavern: cheer the man up.

And so far, it was working. “Yeah, baby, twenty-nine baskets. Whoo!” She spun from the arcade basketball game tucked into the corner of the restaurant where she’d spent half her Saturday nights when she was in college.

“I can admit that’s impressive.” Colton eyed the basket at the end of the net-lined game. “But I should probably tell you I’ve set records on this game, oh, like a hundred times. We actually had one of these back in our dorm at Iowa—”

“Shh.” She clamped one hand over his mouth. “You’re still in ISU territory, and after our loss today, you can’t just start flinging around your questionable loyalties.”

He grinned behind her hand. “Fine. But watch . . . and learn.” He turned, stuck a couple quarters in the machine, and proceeded to blow away her twenty-nine baskets with forty-five of his own. He whirled back to face her with a cocky smile. “Whatcha say now, Walker?”

That if it meant more of those grins, she’d happily lose again.

That very possibly the last screw holding her common sense together had just twisted free and now clinked through her all loud and disconcerting and impossible to ignore.
Get a grip, Walker.

“I say it’s unfair. I haven’t had dinner yet.”

“Fine. We go eat, then rematch.”

She followed him back to the table, where a waitress was just now delivering their food. A plate heaping with French fries and a burger for Kate. Basket of ribs for Colt. She plopped into her seat and immediately dropped a napkin in her lap. “Come to momma.”

Colton grinned at her over his pop glass. “You never struck me as the burger and fries type.”

“You’ve only known me eight days. There’s a lot you don’t know.” She dragged a fry through her ketchup and took a bite.

Amazing how little this place had changed since college—new menus, maybe, updated ISU pendants and team photos occupying wall space, but same old wood-backed booths and checkered tablecloths. Waiters and waitresses still wore the red-and-yellow aprons she remembered and the
e
in the
Cyclone City
neon sign over the bar flickered like always.

She reached her fingers around her burger. “Holy cow, this thing’s huge.”

“Ha, holy cow. Funny.”

“What? Oh . . . yeah.” Another glance at her burger. A moment’s hesitation.

“Not funny?”

“I love my meat, but I prefer not to think about where it came from.”

But at least Colton laughed as he lifted a glazed rib. He had a nice laugh. A rich, tenor sort of sound. And it wasn’t something she’d heard much during the football game. Oh, he’d tried—put on a good face. Took time to explain to her the ins and outs of what happened on the field. Argued halfheartedly with her about their opposing alma maters. Cheered when his team pulled off a game-winning touchdown in the last minutes of the fourth quarter.

He’d even let her interview him during halftime, more game memories and notes for the book she’d better start writing one of these days.

But she’d sensed the persistent internal grimace he couldn’t shake ever since that interview. He was beating himself up over it, she knew. He’d put so much stock in that one impromptu opportunity.

Not all that different than her and the James Foundation.

Maybe that’s why she’d found herself suggesting they grab an early dinner in Ames before heading back to Maple Valley. A good barbeque joint could work miracles, right? Except maybe she shouldn’t have picked a place with television monitors hanging in the corners, all tuned into cable sports.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. She waited until he’d half finished his ribs before treading into conversation. “Colton, what did you do when you weren’t playing football? Before the injuries, I mean.”

He looked up from his plate. “Um . . . sleep?”

“Surely you had some outside interests. Hobbies. Causes. Friends.”
Girlfriends.
It was the closest she could get to the question she wanted to ask. She’d read about Lilah Moore online—rising star in the world of California politics. And according to the articles she’d read, not only the director of Colton’s foundation but also his longtime girlfriend.

Until she’d dumped him the day of the game that ended his career. Apparently she was now engaged to someone else.

Colton reached for his glass but instead of taking a drink fiddled with his straw. “Football’s been my life since high school. It didn’t leave a lot of room for anything else.”

“It’s just . . . I can’t write an eighty-five-thousand-word book solely based on game highlights, Colton. You don’t want to talk about your childhood. You don’t want to talk about your personal life.”

She could feel him stiffening, even from across the table. Perhaps this was the wrong time to bring up the subject. But they weren’t exactly swimming in time to get this project done. His manager wanted a draft by early October. The foundation wanted her in New York for a couple weeks of orientation in November.

The deadlines were beginning to eat at her.

A waitress glided past, carrying a plate sizzling with something straight from a frying pan. “I’m really glad you’re the one writing this book, Kate. I want it to turn out well. I need it to turn out well. But there are some things . . .” Ice cubes clattered against the edge of his glass as he twisted his straw. “There are some things I’m not going to talk about. Not even to you. Couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

Couldn’t?
What did he mean by that? And why did she feel like a wall had just gone up, mere seconds wiping away the past week of a gradually forming friendship that’d surprised her with its ease—the past twenty-four hours spent almost entirely in each other’s company?

What’s the story you don’t want to tell, Colton?

The more time she spent with this man, the less she felt she knew him.

But the more she wanted to.

“For a while, I did a lot of speaking.”

She blinked. “Huh?”

“You asked what I did outside football. I took some speaking gigs. I volunteered at a homeless nonprofit. And I spoke at schools, some church youth groups—that kind of thing.”

She lowered her hamburger, recognizing his remark for the attempt it was. “But how . . . ?”

“You’re wondering how I could have spoken to groups, considering how badly the interview went.” At the far end of the restaurant, someone tapped the jukebox, and a whiny country ballad glided over the room. “I’m completely comfortable up on a stage in front of three hundred kids. But put a camera in my face and I freeze up. Don’t know why.”

And he was hoping for a future as a sportscaster? “What did you talk to students about?”

Colton dropped his wadded-up napkin in his now empty
basket. “Making good choices. Staying in school. In the words of my oh-so-tactful manager, we took advantage of my reformed-bad-boy image.” He rolled his eyes as he mimicked his manager’s voice but then shrugged. “It was good, though, the speaking. Feeling like I was doing something important. If I had to have such a lousy childhood and make dumb choices later on, nice to have something good come from it.”

“When in your lousy childhood did you discover you had serious football skills?” She thought he might balk at that question, like he did every other time she’d asked about his past.

Instead, he fixed his gaze somewhere over her shoulder, thoughtful remembrance gliding in his blue irises. “The first foster home I stayed in lasted four months. One day my case manager showed up. She said the family had decided it wasn’t working. I’d have to go back to a transitional home.” He leaned his chin on his fists. “It’s weird, I can still feel the vinyl of her Pontiac Grand Am. I took a lot of rides to and from temporary homes in that thing.”

Kate slid her plate away, pulled into his memory.

“So we drove away from that house, and Norah—she was my case manager—took me out on this country road. Told me life hadn’t been fair to me, and she wouldn’t blame me for being angry. And she parks next to this old barn, pulls a box out of her trunk. It had all these figurines inside it—glass, old, ugly. Said she had planned to give them to Goodwill but suddenly had a better idea for them.”

In the background, the country song drifted into the smooth lilt of an old Elvis ballad. “Next thing I know, she’s chucking a figurine at the barn wall. Hands me one and tells me to throw it. We emptied her entire box.”

Colton looked up now, gaze flickering as if traveling from the past back to the present. “Anyway, after that, she asked me
if I played any sports. Said with my throwing arm, I should try baseball.”

“Baseball?”

He grinned. “She’s a baseball fanatic. So I went out for it just for her. I went out for pretty much every sport over the next couple years. Football was where I excelled.”

And it had become his escape. A coping mechanism. Like throwing glass against a barn wall.

Their waitress stopped at their table then, cleared their plates, and left the bill. When she left, Kate cleared her throat. “Thanks for telling me that, Colton.”

He shrugged. “Should fill in a few of those eighty-five thousand words at least.”

“Have you kept in touch with Norah?”

“Not too much. She’s sent me some cards over the years. I sent her tickets to that last playoff game in January. We didn’t part on the best of terms—I was such an angry kid back then. Didn’t realize at the time how lucky I was to have her. Not every foster kid ends up with a case manager like that.”

“Is that why you bought Webster at the auction yesterday? Trying to be an influence in his life the way she was in yours?”

He lifted his shoulders once more. “Or I just miss the game so much that I’d play catch even with a kid who can’t stand me.”

Maybe. But she doubted it.

“Excuse me. You’re Colton Greene, aren’t you?”

Kate looked up to see a college kid standing at the edge of their table, hopeful eyes ogling Colton. Colton nodded.

“Guys, I told you it was him,” the student called over his shoulder.

And for the next ten minutes, she watched Colton sign autograph after autograph, pretending he wasn’t thrilled.

While she pretended she wasn’t getting attached.

When was the last time he’d been this out of breath?

Colton pumped his legs as he tore after Bear, over grass and stray leaves. His focus darted between the ball in Seth’s friend’s hands and the deck chairs across the Walkers’ front lawn, marking off the end zone.

“Get him, Rae!”

Raegan was several yards ahead of Colton, and just as Bear was about to reach the makeshift end zone, she stretched out to grab his arm.

Kate’s whooping a few feet back joined his own cheers.

“Oh yeah. Take that, Bear McKinley!” Laughter simmered in Raegan’s voice as she yanked the football away from the guy whose size fit his name.

“That’s my girl,” Case called from the porch, lifting his root beer with the arm not stuck in a sling.

A tepid breeze skated over Colton’s face as he turned, grain dust from the field across the lane floating in the air. Kate lifted both hands for double high-fives, her hair in straggles around rosy cheeks. “Now aren’t you happy you ended up with two girls on your team?”

He could barely feel the badgering ache in his knee, its futile reminder that this was pretty much the only form of football he’d be playing anytime soon strangely void of its usual punch. “Hey, I wasn’t unhappy to have the two of you on my side.” He elbowed her. “I knew we could take on Seth and Bear and Ava.”

This is what a Sunday afternoon should look like. Patchy sunlight filtering through clouds and tree branches over a rambling stretch of grass. Church clothes long since traded in for outdoor wear—sweatshirts and jackets now discarded on the porch steps.

And friends he hadn’t known more than two weeks split into
teams for very possibly the most unorganized game of touch football he’d ever played. Bear gave Raegan a playful punch in the arm as she sauntered past.

So maybe yesterday’s gig hadn’t gone well. Maybe he’d looked ridiculous sitting next to a TV veteran like Link Porter and stammering in front of the camera.

But for these few sunny hours, none of that mattered. All that mattered was getting the old football he’d found in Case’s garage down the lawn and past those hunter-green lawn chairs.

And once the game was over, well, he already had plans for the rest of the day.

He placed one palm on each sister’s shoulder as they huddled. “Okay, ladies, last possession and clearly our opponents don’t think we’ve got a shot.”

Kate pulled a band from her pocket and gathered her hair into a ponytail. “I say we try a double-reverse play. It was so sweet yesterday when the Hawkeyes did that. All those hand-offs—so tricky but so perfectly executed. Like a complicated but flawlessly composed sentence.”

Colton tasted his own delight. “I have never liked you more than I do right now, Kate Walker.”

An alluring flash flickered in her bronze eyes. “Let’s try it.”

As Kate reached for her water bottle, he took the ball from Raegan. “Much as I admire your pluck, it might be a bit much to pull off. Let’s do a simple fake. Raegan, you run up the left side, and I’ll make like I’m gonna throw. Kate, you come around behind me and be ready for the hand-off. You’re going to take it down the field.”