My breath catches in my throat as I do a quick sweep of the room. The throw pillows are a mess, not propped up in specific places like I usually keep them. There are two plates on the coffee table and two glasses of pop that I didn’t take to the kitchen in my haste to get Ethan.

Shit.

“Now I see why you had to ‘work late,’” he says, using air quotes like some kind of grown-up when he is not.

“Listen here, child . . .”

His laughter is quick and loud. I’m not sure what to make of it, so I just stand there frozen in place.

“Not that I have to defend myself to you,” I say, keeping an eye on him while I gather the dishes, “but I did work late.” You little smartass.

“Okay.”

“Ethan!”

“What?” His grin would be wide and adorable . . . if I weren’t on the verge of both irritation and humiliation. “So, you had a date? You don’t have to—”

“It wasn’t a date.” I don’t think. Ish. “And it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not discussing this with you.”

He shrugs. “Fine. I’ll ask Cole if the pizza was good at practice on Monday.”

I drop a plate. This amuses my son to no end.

“So it was Cole,” he says, picking up both the pizza and the crust that fell to the floor.

“It’s none of your business.”

He plops down in the recliner and gets comfortable. “I don’t want details.”

I start to take the dishes upstairs—partly because that’s where they need to go and partly because I don’t want to have this conversation—but then I stop.

Maybe we need to have this conversation.

If Ethan is right, he’s astute enough to realize that there’s a connection between his coach and me. And if I’m being honest, I’m going to have a hard time trying to fight it.

Like I haven’t been struggling already.

So maybe the right answer is just acknowledging that in some way and blaming it on my team mom duties. That way Ethan doesn’t get the wrong idea.

I place the dishes on the coffee table again.

“Fine,” I say, blowing out a breath. “Cole was here.”

Ethan grins.

“I’m the team mom now. I don’t know if he told you that. We had some things to talk about, and I ordered a pizza because I worked late.”

Oh, well done, getting the “work” part in there.

“I thought you weren’t discussing this with me?” he asks.

“I’m not.”

“You know he has a thing for you, right?”

“Ethan!”

He laughs. “Well, he does. He watches you when you walk around the field. So do half the boys on my team, so it’s not like a new thing. It’s gross, but not a new thing.”

They do?