"How do you know it's gonna be okay?"

"Because it has to be." I shrugged. "Rourke's dad told me that John Lennon says everything will be okay in the end, and if it's not okay then it's not the end."

She scrunched her nose up. "John Lemon?"

"Lennon," I corrected. "The guy in The Beatles."

"I don't know who that is," she sniffled, curling into my waist. "And I don’t get what he means."

"Yeah, me neither," I agreed with a sigh. "But it will be okay…"

4 Present Day

Daryl

Tonight's game was a washout. The Ocean Bay Falcon's ran away with the lead. I should be feeling ecstatic.

Instead, I was numb.

It was hard to hold my head up high when I felt nothing but disgrace on the inside.

For my whole life, I wanted out of Ocean Bay.

The town I'd grown up in.

The only house I'd ever lived in.

My need to escape my hometown stemmed all the way back to babyhood when my dad, the unreliable bastard he was, climbed out of my mother's bed, vanished from both of our lives without a forwarding address, and left the door open for Wren Chambers to climb in.

Within a year, Mom was remarried to Wren, sporting a new surname, playing the role of doting wife, and had a baby daughter – my little sister, Sophie – to fawn over.

The only consolation prize for the upheaval of my life, at the time, was the fact that we didn’t have to leave our neighborhood. I got to stay in the house I'd grown up in, though after the arrival of Wren, home didn’t feel quite like home anymore.

The man that now headed our family had zero ambitions of raising another man's child. From a young age, I understood that. I recognized his intolerance of me. It was why I had my plans. It was the reason I never missed a day's practice in my life.

Through hail, rain, or snow, I showed up. It was how everyone and their mother knew where to find me on a Friday night; under the lights.

It wasn't like I came from an overly abusive home. I just didn’t come from a loving one. Sure, I loved my mother and sister and I knew Soph loved me back, but my stepfather? Let's just say there were no words to describe the intense level of pure hatred that I felt for him.

Football was my meal ticket out of this place.

A full-ride scholarship to college was my shot at a future unattached to Wren and his college tuition fund that came with strings attached.

Many, many strings.

A football scholarship was something that I could attain on my own two feet.

I could only assume that it was for all of the above reasons that I didn’t notice Molly's return to Ocean Bay.

I was so hyper-focused on the game, so goddamn self-absorbed and hell bent on carving an escape route for myself, that I just didn't take the time to see her.