Chapter Eight
He must have been nuts, leaving that message for Diana. If she came to the game, he’d want her, just as much as he wanted her yesterday. If he wanted her, he was going to have to tell her the truth about himself, who he was, where he’d been and what he’d done. If she knew that ugly truth, she sure as hell wouldn’t want him.
But Ed Nolan had reminded him of who he really was: a fighter. Someone who didn’t run scared. Someone who confronted his challenges and dealt with them as best he could, even if his best might get him into a shitload of trouble.
What did he have to lose? If he didn’t try for Diana, he’d never have her. If he did try for her and she decided his background was too awful, he’d never have her. But there was a chance, however slim, that she’d decide that his screwed-up background was forgivable, that he had somehow redeemed himself, that an attempted murder conviction notwithstanding, he was worthy of her love.
Oh, and she’d have to dump her fiancé, too. Just one more minor detail.
He watched as the teams lined up, nine in red T-shirts along the bench to his left, ten in green T-shirts along the bench to his right, a mix of girls and boys. At their age—early teens—some of the girls were taller than some of the boys, and he didn’t have enough players to create an all-girl league and an all-boy league, so he’d created a single co-ed league. He coached both of these teams, which was why he had to referee the game. He couldn’t stand on the sidelines with one team or the other. He had to remain neutral.
These were his kids. He worked with them in an after-school program he’d designed with the middle school. The combination of high-stakes proficiency testing and budget shortfalls had cut into the amount of physical education and recess time the students received each day, and he’d convinced the school board that any after-school program he set up needed to include physical activity for everyone, regardless of their athletic ability. At first, some of the boys balked at having to form teams with girls, and vice versa. But a grudging respect had grown among the players. Some of his girl players were pretty damned talented. Some of his boy players had more ego than athletic prowess. He divvied the teams up carefully so they’d be evenly matched. And they loved playing evening games at the community center. They felt like varsity jocks when they played there.
Volunteer coaches stood with the two teams. Nick pulled a ball from the rack, bounced it twice to make sure it was fully inflated, and then crossed to the center of the court. The two tallest players joined him, and eight other players, four in red and four in green, shaped a circle around them. Nick blew his whistle and tossed the ball. The girl in red jumped higher than the boy in green, and the game got underway.
Nick had to watch the game closely. He had to monitor for traveling, elbows, all manner of fouls. Some of his players were meek and clumsy. Some were almost thuggishly aggressive. His primary objectives were to make sure no one got hurt, everyone had fun, and all the players left the game feeling better about themselves than they’d felt before the tip-off. Achieving those goals demanded his full attention.
But it received only ninety-nine percent of his attention. The last one percent skimmed the stands, searching. Friends, siblings, parents, a few school and community center workers sat scattered along the scuffed wooden bleachers. Not exactly a capacity crowd. If Diana came, he would see her.
He did. Right after the first basket was scored, he spotted her. Not knowing any of the other people in the stands, she sat by herself, dressed in a simple beige sweater and jeans, her hair falling in tawny waves around her face, her dazzling eyes fixed on the players.
A boy—Will Czerny, a brilliant kid with serious anger issues whom Nick had been working with for a year—dribbled toward him, and Diana followed the action until her gaze met Nick’s. She smiled hesitantly and fluttered her fingers in a tentative wave.
That one tiny gesture infused Nick with energy. He gave a quick nod, then turned and jogged down the court, watching Will dribble past a guard and make his lay-up. Nice play, and Will hadn’t plowed anyone down en route. Nick left his whistle dangling around his neck—no need to blow it—and glanced up at the scoreboard in time to see two more points added to the red team’s score.
The game went well. Only one minor flare-up occurred, between two boys Nick happened to know were good friends. He’d assigned them to separate teams because if they’d been teammates they would have combined to terrorize their opponents. On separate teams, they negated each other.
He wished there had been some sort of afterschool sports program when he’d been thirteen, a place where he could have burned off his own anger by running and sweating and shooting a ball into a hoop. A place where he could have talked to an adult who had some familiarity with what was going on in Nick’s home, in his life, without telling Nick he was imagining things or warning him that as long as the violence didn’t touch him personally, it was none of his business. That was what his parents had told him, and he’d known they were lying. The violence had touched him personally, and it had been his business.
He wished there had been a safe place where he could have hung out, away from his father’s temper and his mother’s passivity, a place where he would not have to be a hero—or a criminal.
It was just such a haven he provided to the kids in his afterschool programs. He saw himself in some of them, and if he could keep them from being sucked into the system the way he’d been, he would consider his life well spent.
The game ended with the green team winning by four points. If the game had been played on Friday, he would have packed both teams into a few cars driven by volunteers and taken everyone to the Pizza Pit for a post-game feast. But it was a school night, and the players’ parents and guardians swarmed down the rickety bleachers to collect their kids. Nick thanked the coaches and scorekeeper, gave the players a brief speech about how proud he was that they’d played clean and fair, ascertained that everyone had a ride home and reminded them to do their homework. That final remark was greeted by a chorus of good-natured groans. “Wanna tell us to brush our teeth, too?” Will hooted.
“You especially,” Nick shot back. “And brush your tongue, too. It looks green.” The kids erupted in laughter and stuck their tongues out at one another for inspection. “Yours is blue!” “Yours is black!” “That’s ’cause I eat fire!”
He felt Diana’s presence even without looking at her. He knew she was standing on the periphery, not wishing to intrude on his pep talk with the kids. Once they headed for the exits, he turned to her.
She wasn’t wearing the diamond.
Did that mean she was ready to pick up where they’d left off last night? Had she done the thinking she’d said she needed to do, decided she was done with her Boston fiancé, and come to the community center for the sole purpose of throwing herself at Nick?
Nothing was ever that simple—and nothing in life had ever been handed to him. Ed was right. If he wanted Diana, he would have to fight for her.
Still, the absence of her engagement ring was a good sign.
“That was fun,” she said.
Sure it was. Nothing more entertaining than sitting on a hard wooden bleacher and watching a group of unevenly talented tweeners playing a game of hoops that ended in a score of 43-39.
Yet Diana was smiling. The past hour couldn’t have been too painful for her.
“I’ve got to lock up the equipment and wash up,” he said. “Then we can grab a bite to eat, or something to drink.”
“Do what you have to do,” she said. “I’ll wait.”