Playing for Kinley (Cruz Brothers Book 1) (41 page)

I made the mistake of holding onto the bowl I was currently washing as I reached across the other side of the sink for the dish soap. When I leaned forward slightly, my foot slipped on the stool, and when I tried to catch myself on the edge of the counter, the bowl in my hands went crashing to the floor, shattering in a hundred pieces, the sounds of which could be heard throughout the entire house.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight and hoped I was dreaming. But when I opened them again and turned around to see the broken bowl on the floor and Dawson rushing around to clean it up, I knew the whole thing was real.

“What the hell was that?” Dad yelled from the bedroom. I heard his door slam open and then his heavy feet making their way into the kitchen.

I swallowed, bracing myself for whatever he would punish me with. Dawson scooped some of the bowl up and threw it away in the trash, but he was still trying to gather up the smaller pieces scattered across the floor when our dad came into the room.

Dawson immediately forgot about the bowl and straightened his body, stepping in front of me as he stared Dad down. He was a lot braver than me.

“What the hell did you do?” Dad sneered at us.

I fought back tears and knew that I needed to be tough like Dawson. “I br—”

“I broke a bowl,” Dawson said, interrupting me.

But that wasn’t right!

I
broke the bowl. I should be the one in trouble.

Dad looked at Dawson, then at me, and then at the sink still full of soapy water. “Looks to me like the kid probably broke it.”

Dawson didn’t sound scared when he replied, “He was handing me the bowl and I dropped it.”

Dad narrowed his eyes at Dawson and stepped toward him. “I think you’re a lying shit,” he said. Then, Dad made a move closer to me and Dawson stepped in front of him again. “Get out of my way, boy. He needs to be taught a lesson.”

Dawson shook his head. “He’s just a kid. It was an accident. He didn’t mean to.”

Dad laughed but it didn’t sound like a happy one to me. “Well, after I’m finished with him he’ll learn not to have another accident again.”

Dawson still didn’t move and the next thing I knew, Dad had hit him with the back of his hand so hard that he fell back against the cabinets, his hands whipping out to steady himself against the counter. “Parker, go to our room and lock the door,” Dawson demanded.

I shook my head, not wanting to leave my brother for Dad to hurt him some more. Dawson may have been tough, but Dad was still a lot bigger than him. “Parker, go!” Dawson shouted so I listened to my big brother.

I always trusted him.

Even as I locked myself in our bedroom and hid in the closet, listening to the sounds of them yelling, followed by a series of thumping noises and crashes, I still trusted my big brother.

My head started to clear as I came back to the present, the memory still fresh in my mind.

Dawson had taken the brunt of our punishments like that whenever he could, always wanting to protect us from our father’s rage. What flooded me with guilt, however, was the fact that Sal had still ended up coming for me later that night and had given me a black eye, rendering Dawson’s own beating pretty much moot. He could have avoided a fight if he’d just let Sal go at me in the first place.

But that just wasn’t Dawson’s way.

It had been hard to explain away that black eye to the school teachers and Clay’s parents. But as soon as Sam Masterson had gotten a good look at me, he marched into our house with a furious expression on his face and came back out the same way. I knew he’d spoken with my father, but I’d never found out what he said, nor did Clay.

Not that it had really stopped Sal from hitting us. He’d just paid extra attention after that to not leave any marks on our faces. He’d seemed afraid of Sam after that, though. It was the moment that I started to see Clay’s father in a whole new light and, in a way, began to replace my own father with him.

Luckily, there were so many dishes that needed washed, I was able to keep myself busy for the rest of our visit. By the time we left, the kitchen looked somewhat presentable, smelled a little better, and Mom looked just a bit more relaxed. Not much, but enough to notice that seeing her sons had a positive effect on her.

As we left the house and climbed into Dawson’s truck, I knew one thing hadn’t escaped any of our attentions.

We hadn’t once gone back to see our father.

Parker

We all needed a drink after the visit to our parents’ house—except Mason, of course—so we stopped at a pub in the old historic district and ordered beers and a Coke.

It felt like we’d been able to have moments like this with just the three of us more and more lately and I certainly wasn’t going to complain about it. Especially since I was going to have to go back up to Boston the day after tomorrow. We had a short break before postseason started up next week, and Bill had graciously allowed me to go visit my family after I explained the situation with my father to him.

Missing a couple days of practice was worth it if this trip allowed me to get my head together. Because between the stuff with Kinley and today’s trip down memory lane, it was turning into one huge clusterfuck.

“So, what’s up with you, man?” Mason asked, punching me lightly on the arm.

I looked up from picking at the label on my beer bottle. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged, his eyes studying my face. “I don’t know. You’ve been acting off lately.”

I shot him a baffled look, then turned it on Dawson who looked as if he agreed with Mason and wanted to hear my answer. “I’m sorry, was I the only one in that house?” I asked, pointing to the exit of the bar. “That kind of shit messes with a guy’s head.”

Both of their faces turned more serious but Mason still gave a quick shake of his head. “Not just today. You’ve sounded off on the phone lately, and anytime we’ve seen you it’s just not the normal dumbass Parker that we’ve come to love.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“He’s right,” Dawson chimed in. “You’ve sounded different. What’s up with you?”

I wanted to deny it, but Kinley’s words kept coming back to me. About how bottling everything up would one day drive me crazy. I think she was right because I suddenly felt like I was going to explode with everything I’d been feeling over the past month.

I wanted to get rid of all of this so that maybe my head wouldn’t feel so crammed with complicated shit.

“I was seeing someone,” I admitted as I took a pull of my beer.

They had matching shocked expressions on their faces as that sunk in with them. Dawson raised an eyebrow at me. “Was?”

I gave a curt nod. “Yeah. Things kind of went south about a month ago. Just having trouble dealing with it, I guess.”

“What did you do?” Mason asked knowingly.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Thanks for the loyalty, bro. What makes you think I had anything to do with what went wrong?”

He smirked. “Because we know you and we know that women like to talk about their feelings, which you don’t. I got a hundred bucks that says it had something to do with that. Things got a little serious, she wanted to talk about it, and you freaked.”

I wanted to be pissed but he was right.
Dammit.

I hated when either one of these assholes was right. About anything.

“Plus, we got the news about Sal around a month ago, too,” Dawson added. “Understandable if that screwed you up a little. It messed with all of us.”

I didn’t respond to that, trying to get my thoughts in order. They were going in so many different directions, it was difficult to prioritize what I wanted to say or ask them first.

“Who is she?” Mason asked, sounding curious. “You’ve been with tons of women. What made this one stick?”

“Not
a ton
, asshole,” I shot back, making him chuckle. He threw his hands up in surrender. “Excuse me for offending your virtue.”

I sighed, running my hands through my hair in a nervous gesture. Here it was, the big reveal. “It’s Kinley Masterson.”

Silence.

At first, I was afraid to look at them. But when I did, I saw a delighted smirk on Mason’s face and the ever-present stoic stare whenever something serious was being discussed on Dawson’s.

“Holy shit, Parker,” Mason exclaimed, slapping me on the shoulder. “Nice going, man. Got to say, I wasn’t expecting that.” I smiled briefly at that, but then lost it as I remembered how my last encounter with Kinley had gone down.

“Clay know?” Dawson asked, staring at me intently.

I shook my head. “You guys are the first I’ve told.” Other than Moberly but I didn’t mention that. “We didn’t want to tell him or her parents before we knew where it was going. And the things that happened with us a month ago left everything up in the air.” I scrubbed my hands down my face, feeling tired and weary. “I don’t know where we stand right now.”

“Have you talked to her since then?” Mason asked as he grabbed a handful of beer nuts and started tossing them in his mouth.

“No. I don’t know what to say. I don’t feel like I’ve worked anything out inside my head yet, and I don’t want to talk to her until I do. Both of us shouldn’t have to deal with my shit.”

“But you know that’s sort of the point of a relationship, right?” Dawson pushed. “You help each other out with your problems, you rely on each other. What’d you say to turn her away?”

Here comes all the guilt again.

I stared down at the table when I answered him. “I found out about Sal and, I don’t know, all this shit just bombarded me. Everything ugly in my life suddenly came to the surface and I didn’t want any of it to touch her. So, I just shut her out of it. Kept it away from her.”

They were both quiet as they listened attentively. “It pretty much hit a boiling point one day when she demanded to know what was wrong. That’s when I told her about Sal and she started asking a bunch of questions. Then, she got frustrated that I wouldn’t open up to her about anything, that I never do. I tried explaining why I didn’t want her to know about my past, and it just made her angrier.” I had trouble finishing the rest and just stopped.

“And then I take it she left?” Dawson clarified.

I swallowed, my nerves going haywire. “She…” I started but paused. I blew out a breath and tried again. “She said that if I didn’t start letting people in that I was going to start looking for other ways to handle everything. That I would start looking in other places.”

I waited for their reactions of outrage but their faces remained blank as they looked at me. “She was implying that I would end up like
him
, using alcohol to deal with my problems,” I said pointedly. “She basically said I was going to wind up like our father.”

Mason’s face turned skeptical. “I don’t think that’s what she was saying. But what she did say, I agree with her on.”

He couldn’t have shocked me more if he’d suddenly stripped off his clothes and started dancing on top of the table buck-ass naked. “
What?
”

“I do, too,” Dawson said.

My head swung back and forth between them, a sense of betrayal turning my blood to ice. “How the hell can you two say that? I don’t have a problem with alcohol like him. And I’m damn sure never going to turn into an abusive bastard either.”

Mason responded first. “Nobody’s saying that. But coming from a person who knows first-hand, I can tell you that if you don’t start dealing with all the shit in your head, it will drag you down. You’ll never turn into him—none of us will—but you’re going to look for other ways to purge your frustrations with life. I think baseball has always done that for you, but it might not always be the case. One day, it may not be enough anymore. And you can’t play baseball forever.”

“It’s not like both of you are always so eager to open up. Yet you’re not getting the third degree here.”

“Dude, I’ve been in rehab,” Mason replied. “Therapy was mandated as part of the program and I have to say it actually helped. Now I’m not saying you need therapy, but talking to anyone helps a lot more than you think. And I bet Kinley would like to be that person for you.”

Dawson spoke up. “And it’s not like being married for nine years hasn’t forced me to change my ways. Mickie knows more than I would ever be willing to tell anyone else, and she’s never once pitied or judged me for any of it. Back before we got married, she did what it sounds like Kinley’s done. She flat out told me that she would dump my ass if I didn’t talk to her, tell her things and open up.”

“And you did?” I asked.

He nodded, an amused smile playing over his lips. “Oh, yeah. I wasn’t about to lose her over something stupid like that. I sat my ass down and told her everything I was able to tell her, which seemed to be enough because we got married a few months later.”

Then, he went serious again and pinned me with his stern cop look. “I’m just saying that you can’t be with someone if half of you is always closed off to them. I looked at it from Mickie’s perspective. I would have hated it if I’d known she was keeping stuff from me, especially serious issues that affected her that much. If I’d known that I didn’t have all of her, didn’t know all of her, it would have driven me insane.”

That was a good point. I thought about it and I knew that he was right. Anytime I did have a suspicion that Kinley was keeping something from me—even something stupid like that she’d eaten the last ice cream bar in the fridge and tried to hide it from me—I relentlessly pursued the topic until I found out what it was.

It was the same thing with Clay when he’d finally told me about him and Gwen after months of keeping it a secret from everyone, even me. I had to admit that a part of me had been wounded when my best friend felt he couldn’t tell me something serious like that. I felt like I’d failed him in some way.

Now, I was keeping something from him.

A big something, like the fact that I was in love with his sister.

Holy shit.

What the hell am I doing?

I was shutting out the most important people in my life. No wonder Kinley was pissed at me. I was now pissed at myself, wanted to kick my own ass. I crossed my arms over the table and buried my face in them.

“Oh my God,” I murmured to the table. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

I felt two slaps on my back, one from the right and one from the left. “You’re a Cruz, man,” Mason answered. “There’s always something wrong with us.”

Well, now it was time to fix it.

As soon as I walked out of this bar, I was going to go find Kinley.