The ball rolled across the concrete court, landing at his sneakers.
“Forty-three, twenty-eight, hot shot. I’m gaining on you.” Cassie slapped her hands together, breath clouding and swirling from her lips. She sniffed and rubbed her frostbitten nose with the back of her hand.
Jett bounced the ball once, the yellow light from an overhanging streetlamp lighting their small court. Headlights from a couple of oncoming cars lit up the road beside them. Otherwise, it was dark—so dark they’d lose the ball if it flew out of hands and into the grass. “Tell me again why you prefer playing in eighteen degrees when we could be playing in the luxury of a fifty-year-old high school gym?”
Cassie leapt forward, bouncing the ball out of his hands.
“Hey, hey, hey!” he called, watching her dribble the stolen ball and shoot it into the basket.
“Two-point penalty for small talk and two points for the shot. Forty-three, thirty-two.” Cassie grinned wickedly as she threw the ball to his chest. “And to answer you, this is about home-court advantage.”
“You mean hypothermia advantage.”
Her grin widened as she put her hands out in false apology. “It’s not my fault you forgot gloves.”
“Because I didn’t need them,” he shot back, “seeing as I expected to be inside before you called on the way here with your ‘great idea.’”
Despite the weather and the cold, sweat ran down the back of Jett’s neck as he dribbled toward the basket.
Cassie lunged, her right thigh taut as she reached forward before he slipped past. Fingers gripped, then wrapped around his T-shirt. It was an illegal move, she knew. But they liked to play illegally.
Still, there was little resistance on the shirt. He could’ve planted another foot forward and been out of her grip easily.
And yet, Jett stopped. His feet stumbled back unnecessarily.
And now here he was in her face, her nose inches from his neck.
“Whoa, now. Am I going to have to call a foul on you, Miss Everson?” He gave a crooked smile.
She liked that look. She liked that look so much she found her mind forgetting how to answer, her already speeding heart rate raising another ten miles per hour. Where was her quick wit now? Her lips opened, searching for words to match his rhythm. Some vague idea of a referee was forming, but her scattered mind couldn’t finish it. His blasted chest kept rising and falling in front of her, so close that at each peak, the ball at his side touched her waist.
She looked down at her feet, out of bravery or cowardice she couldn’t tell.
She took a step back, and the magical, tenuous bubble popped.
Before going a second further, she had to tell him. Now.
There was a question in his eyes as he clearly saw the struggle she held with herself. “What?” He smiled lightly, though there was a seriousness about the brow. “You have a thing about fouls?”
“No, I, uh . . . I wanted to see . . . wanted to revisit that conversation about . . . kids.”
She swallowed and felt as though she had ingested a golf ball. Three and a tenth dates in, and horror upon horrors, she was bringing up kids. In romantic comedies, this was the shot just before the guy’s fork clattered loudly to the ground and he ran outside for a taxi.
But what else was she going to do?
She’d thought through the options.
First, there was The Door Wide Open Plan, where he’d drop her off at her house. He’d use this rusty, beckoning voice as he observed some mistletoe above them. He’d lean in, she’d move on her tiptoes, and . . . a flash would go off. They’d step back. Star would be there, standing on the stairs declaring she was texting a photo to everyone at the Haven. Kennedy and Deidre would grab onto his legs, screaming, “Daddddyyyyyyyyyy!”
Then there was The Stealth Plan. Taking Edie’s advice, Cass would hide the kids in the basement until their wedding day. As the minister declared them Mr. and Mrs., the girls would rush out of the pew, grab them in a tight hug, and jump up and down. Cassie would join in the jumping. The photographer would take a hundred shots of the moment. Edie and Donna Gene would clap in teary celebration.
Then there was The Middle Ground Plan, the plan she’d landed on. Dip his toes in the water first, ask in a general way about kids. Dig a little deeper to see if he could get on board in the future. Then, if that went well, knock him off the high dive: Hey, so you know how you just said that maybe you could see yourself with kids one day? Well, guess what? I have three now. Yay!
So, here she was, doing the unspeakable. Asking on a third-and-a-tenth date about kids.
And, to her slight surprise, he wasn’t running desperately for his car. To her definite surprise, in fact, his expression lightened.
“Really? You know, I wanted to talk with you about that too.” Headlights illuminated the grass around them, the Haven beside them, as another set of cars passed. He scratched his head. “Uh, so you go first. What did you want to say?”
“Well.” Cassie took a breath. “You know, when I put down on my profile that I didn’t want kids, I didn’t mean that exactly. It’s not that I don’t want kids. It’s more that I can’t have kids.”
“Really?”
She frowned. His face had lighted up like a house wrapped in five thousand feet of Christmas lights. He might as well have said, “Really? You’re infertile? That’s fantastic!”
His face mellowed. “And by ‘really,’ I mean I’m so sorry to hear that. Continue.”
“But, despite that . . . hurdle . . . I’m not really opposed, per say, to kids. I even like them.”
He shook his head. “I was wondering why on earth you hung out with kids for a living if you didn’t.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway, I think it’s important that you be aware, that you know, that—” She straightened, dropping the bomb. “—I’m thinking about adoption. Like, seriously.”
“You’re kidding.” The ball dropped to the cement.
He looked as though he was trying hard not to throw his head back and laugh. Then, suddenly, he was laughing. A laugh of such relief, of such joy, that her eyes drifted to the apartments behind the Haven, half expecting faces to peek out behind the blinds. “Me too.”
“You too? Wait. You’re thinking of adoption too?”
Jett wanted kids.
Jett was even considering adoption.
All the hurdles that had been ten feet high, that she had somehow been expected to jump over in her five-foot-nine-inch frame, were somehow behind her. She had crossed the finish line and stopped, amazed and surprised to see that the journey that was so impossible five minutes before was over before it had barely begun. He was not concerned about wanting kids after all. But even better, even harder to achieve, he was not concerned about her desire to adopt. If she had said that to a hundred other men with the same original stance, she doubted there would’ve been five who would’ve changed their tune so readily.
And it took so little convincing. In fact, it took no convincing.
It was exactly what she’d dreamed of.
Maybe crazy Edie could’ve snuck the kids into the relationship, but that was the last thing she wanted—for Jett’s sake, of course, but even more so for the kids. Star, Deidre, and Kennedy were not tag-ons. They weren’t one of those “Buy this kitchen set and we’ll throw in a useless spatula” kind of deals.
They were equally part of the package, as essential as the stainless steel in a stainless-steel stockpot. She wanted nothing more than for a man, this man, to be as excited to get to know these girls as potential daughters as he was to get to know her as a potential wife. And yes, though this was only a possibility for the future, she needed that assurance now. She needed to know he would never “put up with the kids” for the sake of having her.
Suddenly, however, that needless worry was over. He wanted kids. He wanted to adopt. There was nothing left to fear.
“My story is going to be a little crazy, Cassie.” He rolled the ball lightly beneath his tennis shoe, a sudden ease in his demeanor she hadn’t noticed before. “Honestly, I didn’t want kids. Not until three weeks ago—no, not even that long. Days. But now, I’m starting to get it. Starting to see just how amazing little people are. Of course, I still don’t know how you do it with all those teens.”
Glistening sweat beads fell off the tips of his short hair as he raked a hand through it, smiling at what was supposed to be a compliment.
Cassie hesitated. “You . . . don’t like teens?”
“Let’s just say they’re better off under your wing.”
“Teens are pretty great, Jett. You just have to get to know them.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course.” His eyes widened, clearly realizing he was barking up the wrong tree. “But you gotta admit it takes a special person to be able to work with them. Me, I’d rather haul a hundred-and-thirty-five-pound hose into a burning building than spend ten minutes with one of them. But the little kids now. Toddlers. They’re incredible.”
Being “able” to work with them. Her focus narrowed in on that word, distinct as the crow soaring beneath a blanket of snow-white clouds. Her voice hitched. “Toddlers? Toddlers are the ones who throw temper tantrums in the middle of a grocery store. Whenever you see a parent who looks like they hate life, you can bet there’s some little kid around.”
“They can be exhausting, sure, but at least they’re not having moody blowups every ten minutes,” Jett said. He paused as though recalling a particular situation. “They can be so ungrateful.”
Cassie laughed without humor. “And toddlers aren’t moody?”
“Sure, but they’re just a few years old. Teens are old enough to know how they should be acting, without doing it. But babies. When they snuggle up to you—”
“And poop in a diaper. It’s disgusting. You won’t ever change a teen’s diaper.” She picked up the ball. Tossed it a little harder than she intended at his chest.
He caught it, his eyes narrowing. “Yeah, with teens all you have to worry about is them cussing you out and stealing your meds. Sure. Teens are a breeze.”
His return throw bounced loudly on the concrete before she caught it. She bounced it back. “Babies spit up.”
“Teens throw up after getting drunk at a party you didn’t want them to go to in the first place.” He bounced the ball back to her.
She caught it. A frustrated huff escaped her chest, and she didn’t try to hide it. “At least you’re not walking around like a zombie with three hours of sleep a night.”
“At least you’re not worrying about them getting pregnant.”
They stared each other off, she with the basketball on her hip, he with sweat dripping down his forehead. A bead drifted into his brow, then eyelid, but he didn’t move. He was too busy resisting her, ignoring the drop as though any movement whatsoever would have been a white flag.
Her gloved fingers wrapped around the ball. “So that’s it, then. You hate teenagers.”
He waved a hand in the air. “Sure. Yes. Forgive me, but I’m like every other person in the world who would rather dive into a shark tank than sit with them for ten minutes. And you are the one female in existence who doesn’t look at a picture of a baby and think they are adorable.”
“Oh, I’ll look at the picture, alright,” she said, her voice rising menacingly. “Then laugh at how miserable the parents are every single night of their lives.”
He nodded once, twice, lips once so attractive now tightening into a firm, straight line. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Likewise.”
She stared at her ball for several long seconds, aware of just how badly things had turned in a span of a minute. “I guess I’ll see ya.”
She heard him clear his throat, all the while incapable of looking up. “I guess so.”
A heavy moment passed in silence. Then she dropped the ball, and they both moved.
There was no sound but the slow, rhythmic bounce of the ball thudding against the concrete as they both walked swiftly across the grass to their cars.