Aidan shrugged Keira off. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he huffed. “I forged my mom’s.”

“Your dad knows what day the game is on. He just won’t let you out of the house—and how do you plan on getting there anyway?” I said.

At that, Aidan looked at me and turned his bottom lip inside out in a puppy-dog pout.

“Oh, no,” I said.

“Please, Fred?”

Aidan got down on his knees and Jed shook his head, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Sam started giggling as Aidan brought his hands up to me like he was praying.

“I will never ask you for anything else,” he said. “Just let me take care of getting out of the house and then ask Luca to give me a lift with you guys? By the time we’re out there, the game will be going and Dad won’t be able to do anything.”

“Since when has this been so important to you anyway?” Jed sneered, and I was surprised at the venom in his voice.

Aidan jumped back up to his feet, dusted off his knees, and stuck his hands back in his jacket pockets. He shrugged, but he didn’t answer Jed—he spoke to me. “I dunno, just . . . When I decided that I don’t agree with everything my dad says.”

He started walking again, and the four of us followed.

“And I don’t want it to be like my not playing is the same thing as me agreeing with him, you know?”

Something had been bothering me for a while by then, and that day it finally bubbled over—like I was a kettle on the boil.

“Is that why you still hang out with me and Sam?” I said. “Even though your parents don’t like that Anika and Luca are living together and are about to have a baby?”

Sam frowned and looked from me to Aidan and back again.

“Wait, what is happening?” Keira asked, but we all ignored her.

Aidan stopped walking and so did I. I stood in front of him and could see a blush forming on his cheeks and then he finally met my eyes.

“I’ve never really thought about it like that,” he said. “But if I listened to what my dad said, then I wouldn’t have you guys as friends, and that would be so much worse. And yeah, it’s the same with what he thinks about the haven and those kids. . . . He doesn’t know them, but he talks about them all the time. He has no idea but he acts like what he thinks is right just because he says so!”

Aidan kicked another stone along the path, with a perfectly straight leg like he did when playing soccer. “It’s weird, knowing that your parents are wrong about some stuff, you know?”

I sighed. “Okay, I’ll get Luca to give you a lift.”