Playing for Kinley (Cruz Brothers Book 1) (17 page)

My brother waved his hand, smirking. “Go ahead.”

The guy ran off with the enthusiasm of a six-year-old. Come to think of it, he actually reminded me of our nephew, Leo. “New guy,” Mason muttered when Cooke left the garage. “Kind of a spaz but knows his shit. He’s like the encyclopedia of anything on wheels. Plus, he can rebuild a car engine faster than I can.”

I raised my eyebrows at that. “I think he likes you,
boss
.”

He grinned. “Not now that he knows you’re my brother. His hero-worship is going to shift to you. Congratulations.”

Cooke came back in and gave me the baseball he wanted me to sign. I had to admit, the smile on the guy’s face made me love my job even more. “Thanks so much. My little brother is going to freak. He loves you even more than I do.” He cringed as soon as he said it, looking up at me apologetically. “That sounded weird. I’m not—”

I put my hand up, smiling at him. “It’s okay. I’m happy to do it.”

Cooke went to go put the ball back in his truck, walking slowly and handling the ball like it was spun glass. “I think you made his year,” Mason said, turning to me. “Probably his brother’s, too. I don’t know much about the situation, but I heard one of the guys say that his brother is autistic. And it’s none of my business, but from what I hear around the shop, Cooke mostly takes care of the kid himself.”

I felt my stomach sink with every word. “Damn.” I thought for a second. “You know, we play the Orioles here in Baltimore sometime in August, I think. I bet I could get them both tickets to the game.”

Mason slapped my arm, a sober look on his face. “That’d be great, man. I’d appreciate it and I know they’d love it.”

There was a heaviness in the air and we both knew what the other was thinking about. The struggles we experienced growing up were weighing on our minds, and thinking about these two brothers brought so much of it to the surface.

I squeezed Mason’s shoulder and started to lead him outside. “Come on, man. Let’s go eat.”

##

Dawson came over to Mason’s place that night, and we sprawled out in his living room, drinking beer and watching college basketball. Guys’ nights like these didn’t happen often anymore, unfortunately.

But it was understandable.

Dawson worked irregular hours as a detective, and he had a wife and kids. Mason had an entire business to run. And I, of course, didn’t even live in the same city, not to mention the fact that for most months out of the year, I was traveling all over the country.

“Mickie alright with watching the kids tonight?” I asked.

He shook his head, taking a sip of his beer. “They’re with a babysitter, actually. Said she needed a night out with the girls.”

Our last conversation at Christmas about the stress of their situation ran through my mind. “Things getting any better? With her new hours and everything?”

He shrugged and I could tell something was just off with him lately. He’d always been the hardest of the three of us. Kind of had to be what with being the oldest and feeling like he always had to look out for us when we were younger.

But this detachment I was sensing wasn’t normal for him. This felt almost like…unhappiness. Like he’d almost lost his passion for life or something. It was guys’ night so I didn’t want to get all emotional on him by asking for more.

I just hoped he and Mickie were doing okay. I wanted both of my brothers to be happy.

You should be happy, too.

Working on it.

“I’m telling you, man,” Mason said from his spot across the room. “If that Hauser kid would just work on his inside shots, he’d be first round draft pick.”

And thus began the debate on the next NBA first round draft team. It went on for a good thirty minutes. We could never be like this at home when we were young, and our father never just sat around and talked sports with us. So I never took these times with my brothers for granted.

Just as halftime rang out of the Virginia v. North Carolina game, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

Please let it be Kinley.
We hadn’t talked since we both left D.C., which was only two days ago but it felt like an eternity.
I sound like a freaking teenage girl.
Great.

It was her.

I was smiling before I even opened up her message. And then I flat out laughed when I saw the picture she attached. It looked like some feral, stray cat—malnutritioned and dirty.

Kinley hated cats.

Like, truly thought they were all possessed by demons and that they should all live on an island by themselves. 

Her text just made me laugh—and miss her—even more.

Kinley:
This is the only wildlife I encountered today. I still feared for my life, though. It ran away when I pulled out my knife.

I quickly typed out a response.

Parker:
Then I’m pretty sure the cat was more afraid of you then you were of it.

Kinley:
See? I can be scary.

Parker:
You with a knife? ANYBODY would be scared of that.

Kinley:
Remember that the next time you tell me my Tweety Bird sucks.

I laughed again and debated on whether to send my next response.
Oh, what the hell.
If she couldn’t tell I still wanted her then she was completely naïve…or blind. Might as well make my intentions known if she hadn’t figured them out already.

Parker:
Feel free to get rough with me anytime you want. ;-)

Kinley:
Know that I’m rolling my eyes at you right now.

Parker:
But you’re smiling, too.

I think I was actually holding my breath as I waited for her reply.

Kinley:
Maybe.

Yes
. That’s what I wanted.

She was starting to give a little, I could feel it. If I made her smile enough, maybe I could eventually get her to forget the fact that she’d spent the last several years pissed at me.

That’s when I realized how quiet the room had become. I’d been so absorbed in talking to Kinley that I’d actually forgotten where I was and the fact that my brothers were sitting only feet from me.

They also knew me really well.

“Who you talking to there, bro?” Dawson asked.

I winced, knowing what was coming. I didn’t even have to look to know that both of them were wearing shit-eating grins.
Bastards.

But I grew some balls and eventually looked up, doing my best to keep my face blank. “No one you know,” I replied.

They may have been my brothers, but I was not about to tell them about my relationship with Kinley. Not before talking to Clay about it. I wouldn’t disrespect him like that. And yeah, maybe that sounded really chauvinistic because Kinley was her own person and made her own decisions and all that. But Clay was my best friend, my third brother. I owed it to him to tell him about it myself, to his face.

I should have told him a long time ago. And since I was still in love with her and still wanted to be with her, I should probably tell him now. I just wanted to make sure there was something to tell him. As in, I needed to work things out with Kinley first.

Plus, I was a coward and wasn’t quite ready for that. There, I said it.

“You were smiling like Gabby does when we let her play dress up and put on her fake makeup.” Dawson wasn’t letting this go.

“I was not.”
Good comeback.

Then, Mason had to open his mouth. “Bro, I just told you that you weren’t going to hit over twenty homers this whole season if you don’t get in the gym more and you didn’t even hear me.”

“Well, fuck you very much, asshole,” I scoffed and chugged down some of my beer, wishing it was tequila or something a hell of a lot stronger to drown out their bullshit.

They watched me for a few seconds, exchanging silent words and glances between them. Then, Dawson said, “Holy shit. Parker is pussy-whipped.” He pointed an accusing finger at me as he said it.

I groaned and buried my face in my hands. “I am not. She’s just a friend.”
Well, she’s
supposed
to be.

“A friend who you sext with like a fifteen-year-old kid,” Mason chimed in.

“Jesus. We weren’t sexting!” They both laughed and that’s when I turned to Dawson with an evil glint in my eyes.

He asked for it.

“Don’t think I don’t know that you let Gabby put some of that fake makeup on you, by the way.”

Mason’s head whipped over to Dawson, eyes wide, as our older brother ducked his head and seemed to become very interested in the label on his bottle.

“What?” Mason asked. “You let your daughter put makeup on you?”

Before he could argue, I said, “I’ve got pictures.”

That got Dawson’s attention. “What? How the hell did you get pictures?”

I smirked, knowing I had him. “Mickie owed me a favor.”

“Oh, this I got to see.” Mason sprung up and practically dove over to where I sat on the couch. Dawson abruptly stood up and headed for the kitchen muttering “no fucking way” under his breath.

Well,
that
conversation had been effectively avoided.

For now.

Kinley

Shit, shit, shit!

How had I forgotten about Marcy’s wedding? Oh, that’s right. Maybe because it was on February fourteenth and I hadn’t celebrated Valentine’s Day ever since my middle school days when my then boyfriend had held my hand for ten minutes and gifted me a Snickers bar.

And as long as you didn’t count two years ago when Norah and I bought out an entire section of chocolate ice cream at Costco, watched every single Julia Roberts rom com in one night, and got drunk off homemade sangrias.

Besides, what heartless bitch scheduled her wedding on Valentine’s Day, anyway?

Marcy probably thought it was romantic and all that. Well, attention to all future brides out there everywhere, it’s not. All of your single friends will take it as an annoying way for you to shove your profound happiness in their miserable faces. And the non-single people who might actually have plans for V-Day will be pissed off that you ruined said plans, and are instead forcing them to celebrate your lifelong happiness on the most holy of romantic days.

Either way, you were going to be stuck with a bunch of sour-faced guests, with the exception of maybe your parents and grandparents.

An even more humiliating aspect to this whole fiasco was that I didn’t have a date.

And worst of all.

Worst. Of. All.

It was in Boston.

Boston
, of all places. I mean, we both went to Boston College—that’s how she and I met—but did she have to have her freaking wedding there? Did it matter that she still lived in that city? It shouldn’t. You could have your wedding anywhere.

Anywhere but the city where Parker lived.

And because I tended to ignore this holiday altogether every year, I’d completely forgotten all about it, despite the fact that I’d already told her months ago that I would be there. Luckily, I didn’t have a photo shoot scheduled and had just planned on using the weekend to catch up on work from home and sleep.

So much for that.

Instead, I found myself in another airport, waiting for my flight from New York to Boston. I was texting Norah the whole story, needing her extreme bias against this holiday to comfort me, when my phone suddenly rang.

Parker.

He was calling me.

He’d done this a couple of times over the past few weeks. Calling me, claiming that he had a question for me or making up some story that always turned out to be absurd and irrelevant.

We both knew exactly what he was doing, though.

And I hadn’t told him to stop.

That said something but I’d rather give myself a Brazilian with a pair of tweezers than contemplate the implications of it.

“Hey, Kin,” he said when I picked up. “How’s it going?”

I loved hearing his voice. Loved it too much.

“Oh, just peachy. I forgot about my friend’s Valentine’s Day wedding, so now I’m making a last-minute trip to Boston to share in their blessed day.”

Bitch much?

Yeah, I was being nasty about this. I should have been happy for my friend. I
was going
to be happy for her. Even if going to a wedding right now felt akin to someone slowly pulling off all my fingernails, one by one.

“You’re coming to Boston?”

Shit.
I’d said it without even thinking. I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t be in town.

But not really.

“Yeah…I’m waiting for my flight right now.”

He paused. “Oh, that’s awesome.” He went quiet again and I just listened to him breathe, matching my breaths with his. It seemed both of us were having trouble with words. “You got a place to stay?” he asked.

Ah, crap.
In my panic to pack and book a flight, I’d stupidly overlooked booking a hotel room.

“Um, well. No, actually. But I can get a hotel room when I get there. It’s no big deal.”

“You could stay with me.”

You know that screeching sound of slamming brakes on asphalt that you often hear in cartoons? That’s what blared through my head when he said that. If I had a rewind button on life like in the movie
Click
, I would have definitely used it here.

“What?”

“You could stay with me. I’ll be in town this weekend and I’ve got two extra bedrooms. I wouldn’t mind you crashing.”

Yeah, neither would I
. That was the problem. Or was it a problem?

“No, it’s fine. Really. I can get a hotel room.”

“Kin, seriously. My place doesn’t cost and I’ve got free beer. How could you turn that down?”

I smiled despite the knot in my throat. “Well, when you put it that way…”

“And I wouldn’t even have to clean.”

“That’s probably because you’re hardly ever there.”

He chuckled, the sound so sweet in my ear. “Regardless. I’ll let you help me replace my knobs.”

My breath caught and some weird choking sound came out of my mouth. “That better not be a metaphor for something.”

He laughed loudly. “My
door
knobs, you perv. I’ve been meaning to put new ones on.”

Warmth was starting to spread throughout my body as I found myself liking this idea more. “This offer just keeps getting better and better.”

“Come on,” he pushed. “You’ll love this place. It was built in the 1890s. I promise you’ll want to see it.”

“Is it haunted?”

“Eh, Harvey is the only ghost I’ve seen. But aside from standing at the foot of your bed at night while you sleep, you’ll hardly notice him.”

Silence.

“Joke?”

“Yep,” was all he said.

I thought about it. I didn’t want to spend the extra money on a hotel room. And it probably would be more comfortable; I was getting pretty sick of hotels.
Oh, who are you kidding?
You know exactly why you want to stay there.

Next thing I knew, I was making a decision and rolling with it. “Okay. Text me your address so I can program it into my GPS.”

“I can pick you up at the airport.”

“No, it’s okay. I might be running around a little while I’m there, so I’d prefer to have a car.”

“Alright. I’ll text it to you.”

What I said next was probably stupid and definitely wasn’t well-thought out. But I was having an ill-timed case of word vomit. “I’ll stay with you on one condition.”

“What’s that?” he asked, sounding a little wary but also intrigued.

I bit my lip, almost changing my mind at the last second. But I didn’t. “You have to come as my date.”

He didn’t even hesitate.

“Done.”

##

To say that my guts were battling out World War III in my stomach as I drove over to Parker’s place would have actually been a pretty accurate statement. Hell, my hands were trembling—actually trembling—on the steering wheel. Parker was the only man in the world who had the ability to imbue me with such uncertainty and panic.

And in a very weak, particularly panicked moment, I’d texted Norah and told her what was happening.

Norah:
OMG…you are so going to bang him!

Kinley:
Hey, it would be nice to actually get some helpful advice here. You know, advice that won’t lead to my heart being shredded to pieces all over again?

At that point, I was freaking out so much that I was practically begging for it. She seemed to sense this.

Norah:
Ok. Even though it’s against your starved vagina’s best interests…if you think you still have feelings for him, then you probably shouldn’t bang him. Until you both talk it out and figure out what you want, you need to keep things platonic.
Moving too fast will make it even more complicated.

Which was exactly what the non-horny side of my brain had been telling me all along.

Kinley:
I knew you had some sage words somewhere down in there.

Norah:
Yeah well, don’t tell anyone. Guys get intimidated by smart chicks.

Kinley:
Those are the ones you stay away from.

Norah:
I’m only using them for their dicks so it doesn’t matter. ;-)

I rolled my eyes. One day that woman was going to slip up and find a guy who actually liked her for her brain. Wonder what she was going to do then.

Norah:
Seriously, though. Be careful, ok? I know I joke, but I actually do love the shit out of you and I don’t want the baseball babe to hurt you.

This was why I loved the shit out of her, too, and kept her around. No matter what the case, she always had my back.

Kinley:
There you go again, showing your soft side.

Norah:
That can’t happen. It can’t, I tell you! Forget everything I just said and bang him. Bang him all night…long and hard. Do it for your vagina.

I laughed and was pretty sure the guy sitting next to me on the plane got a peek at the text. Especially when he shifted in his seat and quickly looked away. I glimpsed down at the wedding ring on his finger. At least he had ignored me instead of making some lewd remark about what he saw. He must be one of the good ones.

Kinley:
And you were doing so well with your advice. Flight just landed so I’ll talk to you later.

Norah:
But it probably wouldn’t kill you to let him get to second base. That could be fun. Or third base. You need some third bases in your life, K.

Kinley:
‘Bye, Norah.

So, there I was. Picturing all kinds of dirty baseball metaphor scenarios as I stood at Parker’s front door. The old brick brownstone was gorgeously picturesque in downtown Boston. For some reason, I was surprised that Parker picked this neighborhood. I guess I expected something a bit more upscale or swankier. Something bigger and maybe outside of the city. Lord knew he could have certainly afforded bigger.

But the fact that he hadn’t gone for that warmed my heart. It was very Parker.

I briefly considered making a run for it—I still had the chance. But I forced myself to find my lady balls and reached out to ring the doorbell. A few seconds later, I heard heavy footsteps on the other side of the door steadily make their way closer to me. Then, the heavy oak door swung open.

Mother of—

“Hey, Kin.”

No shirt.

He had no shirt on.

The only things Parker was wearing were a faded pair of worn jeans and the biggest smile I’d seen on his face in years.

But no flipping shirt.

Had he done that on purpose? Damn him and his ability to play on my body’s desires.

I swallowed around my suddenly dry mouth. “Hey. Um, this a bad time?”

Shit, did he have a woman in there?
Was that why he was standing before me half naked? I’d never be able to live it down if that was the situation.

Then, I noticed the white t-shirt in his hand. He shook his head at me while he pulled it on over his head. “No. Sorry, I just got out of the shower. Come on in.”

Well, this was starting out just great. Naked abs and panty-melting grins.

At this rate, third base wasn’t looking too far off.