Worth the Risk (Carolina Rebels 5)

“Sure.” Then I realize she said our room. “Actually, I have another spare bedroom, the one next to yours. Jackson can have it.” There’s a twin bed in Bree’s room, so I’ll sleep in there and let Mom have my room until she leaves.

“Oh. Thank you.”

I feel like I should help her, or do it for her, but she may want to move her things herself. She goes outside and I return to the living room. Jackson’s eyes widen as he watches his mom walk out the door.

“It’s okay.” He whips around to look at me. “She’s getting your stuff out of the car. She’ll be right back.”

“You aren’t going to help her?” Mom asks.

“She seemed to want to do it herself. Go move your things into my room.”

She purses her lips, but gets up to do it, leaving me alone with the boy.

Jackso

n sits on the edge of the couch and seems to be anxious as he waits for his mom. Then he looks at me. “You’re a Rebel.”

My eyebrows rise. “Yeah, I am.”

“You were at my school.” His little legs swing, bumping into the couch each time.

“I was?”

He nods. Oh, maybe I was. We went to some of the local schools in September, right before training camp, for this reading program thing. We read to a few classes and then played ball hockey with the older kids.

“What’s hockey?” he asks as if he’s been dying to ask this question ever since I went to his school.

“It’s a game. Like baseball or basketball, but you play on ice with skates.”

Raelynn walks back inside, her arms loaded with stuff. She smiles at Jackson before continuing up the stairs. Bree cries, so I pick her up from where Mom placed her in the pack ?n play and sit on the couch. Jackson and Bree eye each other. Bree leans over and tries to grab Jackson, but he leans away from her.

“Who’s that?” he asks.

“This is Bree. I’m her dad.”

“She drools a lot.”

I laugh. “Sometimes. I bet you drooled a lot when you were a baby.”

Jackson doesn’t seem to like that idea. “Momma,” he says when she comes back down the stairs.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Did I drool when I was a baby?”

She laughs. “Yep. All babies drool.” She kisses the top of his head before going back out to her car.

“Mr. EJ, I’m thirsty.”

Part of me wants to correct him and tell him he can just call me EJ, but if his mom has told him to say mister, then I don’t want to overstep. “What would you like to drink?”

“Apple juice.”

“You’re in luck. I have some of that. Come on.” He follows me into the kitchen. “Do you drink out of a big boy’s cup?”

“Yep,” he answers, popping the p just like Raelynn did earlier.

I find my smallest plastic cup and pour him some juice. I hear the door open and close, and then footsteps up the stairs. I carefully watch him and I’m kind of impressed when he drinks out of his big boy cup without spilling his juice. I so have a ton to learn about kids. Raelynn appears in the kitchen a moment later, some papers in her hand.