Sophie laughed. “Yeah, but we have to be in charge of our senior yearbook. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with that responsibility. I’m the only one that knows my good side.” She pointed to the left side of her face. Which looked exactly like the right side of her face.

Uncle Matt just laughed. “Okay, one sec.” He pulled out his phone and started typing on it. “You need the JV team roster too, right?”

Good lord, did we?

“Yup,” Sophie said.

I hated that for me.

Sophie’s phone pinged. “Thanks, Uncle Matt. You’re a lifesaver.”

Uncle Matt looked over her head and smiled.

I turned to see Jacob approaching. I wasn’t sure how I’d never noticed how handsome he was before.

“Hiya, Coach,” Jacob said. The two of them did some weird handshake.

I’d never seen Jacob greet Uncle Matt in any other way. Even when Uncle Matt wasn’t his coach, Jacob had always called him that. I knew that Uncle Matt wasn’t his real father. But he’d helped raise Jacob ever since he was four. And I sometimes wondered if Jacob calling him coach stung. Jacob rarely ever talked about his real father. At least not to me. And I wondered a lot about that too. All I really knew was that he’d died in a terrible accident before Jacob and his mom moved to the city.

Jacob’s attention turned to us. “What are you guys doing here?”

“A top secret mission,” Sophie said.

Uncle Matt gave her a weird look, but didn’t mention the yearbook committee. Which was good. Because I didn’t really want to have to join it.

“Are you staying to watch practice?” Jacob smiled at me.

And my heart started beating funny in my chest.

“Can’t,” Sophie said. “We have a thing. Right, Scar?”

I nodded. I was much worse at lying than she was.

“I’ll catch you guys later then.” He winked at me and ran onto the field.

“Thanks, Uncle Matt,” Sophie said. “We owe you one.”

I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the rosters or the fact that he didn’t mention we’d joined the yearbook committee.

Sophie started to walk away.

“A word, kiddo,” Uncle Matt said to me before I could follow her.

Oh no. Was the lie on my face? Sometimes that happened. I forced myself not to wipe my cheeks. That definitely wouldn’t help hide the lie.

His eyes fell to the right sleeve of my jacket where Axel’s jersey number was stitched on. “Is that Axel’s varsity jacket?”

“Mhm.” I tried to say it casually, but failed.

“Are the two of you dating?”

All of my uncles acted like surrogate fathers. Didn’t they know that my one father was plenty? They were friends with him, after all. “No, not exactly.”

“Care to elaborate on that?”