Read Running Interference for Free Online Page A

“At work. She’s a little younger than me, but that don’t bother her.”
    Cam reached between his legs and lifted a bottle of beer. “How much younger?”
    Detrick rubbed a hand across his mouth as he garbled “ten years.”
    Cam stopped the bottle inches from his lips, and his jaw dropped. They were twenty-seven. “So she’s seventeen?”
    “One year over consent.”
    Jesus.
He patted Detrick on the back. “Be careful. You don’t need any little Ds running around. That gets expensive, man.”
    “You speaking from experience?”
    Cam nearly choked on his beer. “Hell no.” But he saw it every day with his teammates. A few thousand dollars here, a few thousand dollars there, several thousand more to prove and fight paternity. It was why he’d made the decision in college not to sleep with anybody he wasn’t prepared to marry, which considering he’d been in back-to-back serious relationships hadn’t been hard to live with … until now. Now, he might have to adjust that just a bit.
    “Saw Sabrina on the VMAs.” Detrick whistled. “Looking damn good. You ever see her anymore?”
    “No.” And he didn’t care to. That was progress. Funny how a year after a break up you could see it for what it was—the best thing that could’ve happened. If she hadn’t broken up with him, he would’ve spent the rest of his life jumping through hoops for a suspicious woman. He didn’t deserve that. He knew what it felt like to be abandoned and cheated, and he’d never step out on another person. It pissed him off she thought he would.
    “Cam, after you’re done eating could you drive me and some friends to Coffee Bean?” Corrine smiled so hard she had dimples.
    “You don’t need no Coffee Bean,” Aunt Yvonne said. “And you ain’t givin’ any of your father’s hard earned money to those people.”
    “I have my own money,” Corrine said. “Please.” She trained her gray eyes on Cam.
    He liked Coffee Bean. It reminded him of his go-to Huntington Avenue Starbucks back home in Boston, but he wasn’t getting in the middle of this. “Not tonight, Rin,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of time for joy riding while I’m home. Besides … ” He smiled extra-wide, “I’d already planned to take you to the mall and spoil you.”
    Her hug just about strangled him, and her screams rang in his ears long after she’d run upstairs. Probably to post it all over social media.
    “Nice diversion tactic,” Detrick said.
    “Well, it sounds like our mothers are not fans of Coffee Bean. How ‘bout you?”
    “Nope.”
    “Coffee not your thing?”
    “People coming in and messing with my neighborhood is not my thing.”
    Seemed to be the general consensus around here. His mother hadn’t sounded too thrilled about the development in South City the few times they’d talked about it either. But, man, when you got out and saw how the other half lived, you wanted more and more of that. A little progress wouldn’t hurt this neighborhood. More jobs. More things to do. It still wouldn’t be enough to make him comfortable with the thought of his mother living here, though. But maybe it would make him feel less guilty about leaving the rest of them here once he convinced her to move to Boston.
    “You see anybody since you been back?” Detrick asked.
    “Lots actually. I stopped by Pop’s gym.”
    Detrick stretched out his legs. “Did you see Tanya?”
    “Yep. I actually spent quite a bit of time with her today over at the school. Got my ass kicked in something called ‘the shuttle,’ but I think it made her day.” He smiled.
    “She’s looking good lately. Must be all that football she’s been playin’.”
    Football? “Don’t you mean basketball?” He’d never forget the day she turned down a scholarship to play college ball on the West Coast.
My family needs me here
, she’d said. And over the years he couldn’t stop thinking that maybe she’d botched her one shot to get out too.
    “No, shithead,”