“But you started it,” she argued.

“I didn’t start sh—anything. My kid needs a day off during the week. This has nothing to do with me. My kid is ten. He isn’t in the majors yet. You want him getting Little League elbow or stress fractures in a couple of years? I don’t want Josh to have to get surgery before he’s even out of high school because I wanted him to win a fu—damn tournament he isn’t going to remember when he’s sixteen,” I snapped at her, irritated.

“I do care about my son,” she tried to argue.

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

It was shameful how much I enjoyed her cheeks going red. “But you implied it!”

I shrugged right back at her the same way she had at me, and it sent her into a rage. Bitch. “Well, you have an awesome way of showing it when I just told you about how he could injure himself by overdoing it, and you’re still arguing with me over something that’s had plenty of studies done on.”

“I do care about my son, Teen Mom—”

God help me. I took a step toward her. I didn’t know what the hell I was thinking about doing to her, but it was something, damn it.

The expression on my face must have said just that because the woman shut her mouth and took a step backward, her hands immediately coming up to her face.

“Okay! Okay!” An arm was waved up and down. “That’s enough. Christy, go home. You’re out of here for the next two practices for that,” Dallas ordered. When the woman started opening her mouth, he blinked, that alone working better than any “zip it” gesture. “You started it and you know it.”

I almost stuck my tongue out at her when her gaze swung over to me.

“Diana, make sure somebody else brings Josh to the next practice.”

What? Was he fucking kidding me? I hadn’t even done anything but defend myself!

Just as I opened my mouth to argue that fact, Trip jumped in. “Everybody else, we’ll talk over the next couple of days and come to some agreement on changing the schedule. We’ll e-mail you,” he concluded with a whole hell of a lot of finality to his voice. Where was the guy who had hung out with me at the bar?

I was pissed. As the mob finally split up, I stood there, stunned and about five seconds away from pepper spraying half the parents.

I turned to try and find Trip, who had done little more than smile at me from twenty feet away lately, but he was surrounded by parents deep in conversation already. Dallas… I had no clue where the hell he had disappeared to. And Jackson was standing off to the side with his arms over his chest, looking so unimpressed with life, I wasn’t sure why he bothered still breathing.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Tia?”

The sound of Josh’s voice almost immediately ripped me away from the edge of diving back into Diana From Years Ago who would have told everyone to lick a dick. First, I had to mentally picture myself smacking everyone in the back of the head, and then I cut off the rage that had started taking over. It was maybe only ten seconds after my nephew called me that I managed to turn around with a nearly serene smile and find him looking up at me with a suspicious expression on his face.

“What happened?” he immediately asked.

My head hurt, but I knew that wasn’t what he was picking up on. If there was someone in the world who was my spirit animal, it was this kid. I wasn’t sure how I ever forgot it. And since Louie wasn’t here, I told the one who had already heard everything and more in his life the truth. “I’m about five seconds away from going to kick Jonathan’s mom’s ass, and then kicking her mom’s ass afterward to teach them both a lesson.”

The kid burst out laughing, reminding me of how young he was beneath it all. “Why?”

“She’s out of her mind. We were having a parent meeting and she started talking nonsense. I might go kick Jonathan’s ass too for being the reason she’s here.”

Josh laughed again, shaking his head. “You’re crazy.”

“A little,” I agreed, winking at him, suddenly feeling whatever was left over of my rage disappear. How could you stay mad when you had so many great things in your life? “You ready to go home?”

He nodded, his grin a mile wide. “Yeah.”

“All right, come on.” I waved him toward the walkway, pausing until he was by my side. “According to your coach, I can’t come to practice with you next time because of that psycho, so tell your grandpa tomorrow that he’ll have to bring you. I’ll call him, but you tell him too, okay?”

That had Josh stopping and frowning. “Why can’t you come?”

“Because, I told you, she was saying crazy stuff about how it’s my fault that we’re trying to get the schedule changed, and I might have said something about how she didn’t care about her kid and that’s why she thinks the schedule is fine,” I explained to him honestly, not wanting him to consider me a liar. I felt like, if I didn’t lie to him, I hoped he would learn not to lie to me either. No one was perfect, and I didn’t want him to believe he needed to be. He just had to be the best kind of person he could be and stand up for himself. Being “right” was so subjective.

“And because of that you can’t come?”

I nodded, giving him an “I know, right?” face.

The downturn of Josh’s mouth deepened and he shook his head. “That’s not fair.”