Playing for Kinley (Cruz Brothers Book 1) (43 page)

Parker

Of course, this would happen.

Because a month without Kinley hadn’t made me suffer enough, her brother—my best friend—had to find out about us like this.

I gave Kinley’s hand a reassuring squeeze and pulled her up beside me. “Why don’t you let us talk for a minute, Kin?” I said.

I kept my eyes locked onto Clay’s as he did the same. I felt her head shoot back and forth between us, catching a glimpse of her nervous expression in my peripheral vision. She started to move hesitantly toward the stairs. “Okay, but please don’t be mad at him,” she said to Clay, though he didn’t look over at her. “It was my decision as much as it was his not to tell anyone.”

He didn’t respond and she disappeared from the hallway. We stood there in silence, staring at eac
h
other until he finally spoke, his voice rough. “Let’s go sit on the back porch.”

Probably best. That way if he started yelling at me, it wouldn’t echo throughout the whole house.

I followed him down the stairs and into the kitchen where he grabbed two beers out of the fridge and stepped out on the back porch. The late September air was warm but with a light breeze, the sun shining but scattered clouds offered comfortable shade. The serene atmosphere was at total odds with my churning insides.

I decided I would let him speak first, give himself time to adjust to what he saw upstairs. I’d sit back and follow him wherever he wanted to lead the conversation, unless I didn’t like what he had to say about me and Kinley.

Just because he was my best friend didn’t mean I would let him step over the line, big brother or not. Kinley and I were both grown adults and we had the right to make our own decisions.

I just didn’t want to lose his friendship over this.

“How long has this been going on?” he asked in a low voice.

He may have sounded calm and collected to some people, but I knew Clay too well and I recognized the edge to his question. He was a politician after all so he was an expert at schooling his emotions and masking his frustrations.

Might as well be honest.

And if I had to take a punch to the face for it, so be it.

“The first time started right before I went to the minors. She was seventeen at the time.”

He looked over at me, bewilderment written all over his face. “The
first
time? Jesus, Parker. What the hell? How many times have there been?”

“Just that time and now,” I was quick to say. “This time it started around…hell, I don’t really know. New Year’s? Then we made it official around March, I guess.”

I was almost afraid to look at him when he grunted and chugged down a good portion of his beer. “All this time and you’ve kept it from me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I fell back into my chair and sighed. “I don’t know. I didn’t want you to think I was taking advantage of her. Especially back when I was twenty-one and she was still a senior in high school. This time, I was ready to tell you, but I don’t think she was. We had to pretty much start all over. And I didn’t want to push her too far by getting your whole family involved, even you. I needed to get her on the same page with me first.”

“Why’d you have to start over? What happened the first time?” He was starting to sound more curious than angry now, which I took as a good sign.

“I was a stupid kid back then, man,” I admitted. “I didn’t take advantage of her but I ended up hurting her all the same.” He raised a questioning eyebrow at me, the trademark look of a protective big brother ready to defend his sister. “It’s nothing like you think. I just broke up with her. After I got called up to Pittsburgh, I told her we needed to stop seeing each other and she didn’t take it well.”

He didn’t remove his eyes from me, his scrutiny making sweat form on my brow. “Why did you end it?”

I threw my hands out, not thinking I would actually have to explain this part to him. I figured he would understand it. “What else could I do? My life was about to do a huge one-eighty and she was going off to college soon. I didn’t want her putting any part of her life on hold for me. She deserved to see the world, be a regular college student. I felt like she wouldn’t have had all of that if she was dating me. So, I let her go.”

He was silent for a second and then asked, “So that was you trying to be noble?”

I let out a short laugh, the sound thick with self-deprecation. “Yeah, and a lot of good it did me. She ended up hating me and avoiding me for all these years, while I wallowed in my sorrows, realizing that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, realization of some sort sparking in them. “All these years of her withdrawn behavior and distancing herself from us and her home…that was all because of you? Because she didn’t want to have to see you?”

I raised my hand at him, seeing where that train of thought was leading him. “Look, if you want to be pissed, go ahead. If you’re going to hit me, you might as well get it over with. But you should know that I’m in it this time for the long haul. I know now what I’ve done wrong and I’m going to make it up to her. I’m not letting her go again.”

He studied me, his eyes assessing. “So, whatever was just going on upstairs between you two is fixed?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been an asshole, shutting her out of my problems, my past, my family situation. She wanted me to open up to her about it and I refused. I had some time to think about it and I apologized. I know I can’t continue to live like that.” I evened out my tone until he recognized the seriousness in it. “I won’t screw things up with her again.”

Clay pursed his lips and abruptly stood up, walking over to the porch railing. His back was to me so I couldn’t see his expression, but from the way his back muscles were tensing, I was guessing it probably wasn’t a happy one.

I took a deep breath and let it out. “I understand that you’re pissed, but I need you to know that I’m going to treat her well. I love her and I would do anything for her. I’ll take care of her, I promise.”

He huffed, shaking his head as he took another pull of his beer. “You think I’m mad at you for dating my sister?” he asked, turning around to face me.

I was confused as to what the right answer was here. “Well, I assumed so…”

Clay blinked slowly a few times and breathed deeply through his nose. “No. I actually have no problem with the two of you. You’ve been my best friend for most of my life and I know you, know the kind of person you are. I couldn’t imagine anyone better for my sister.”

Well, hell.

Why’d he have to go and say that? The sincerity in that statement really struck me.

He swallowed before continuing. “What I do have a problem with is the fact that you never told me about your relationship, thinking I’d object to it for some reason. That I wouldn’t trust you with her. That you would think less of me like that. Now, I know I don’t have much room to talk because I didn’t tell you about Gwen for a while, but this is different. Both of you are my family and you snuck around behind my back for how many years. I don’t like the people I love the most keeping secrets from me.”

I nodded, guilt and shame warring inside my head. “I know. I’ve been a dumbass.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he muttered, making me grin, although I tried to hide it from him. I wanted him to know I was taking his concerns seriously.

“From now on, full disclosure,” I told him.

I saw an involuntary shudder move through his body. “God, please no. She’s still my sister, man. I don’t need to know everything.” The disgusted look on his face was comical as I watched him drink more of his beer, as if he were trying to wash away the taste in his mouth with it. “Just keep me apprised of the big stuff, okay?”

I smiled at him and began to relax. “You got it.”

Clay looked away, a thoughtful expression curving the edges of his mouth as he turned back to me. “That was the truth, though? When you said you loved her?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah. Has been for a long time.”

He looked satisfied with that answer and I saw his body start to relax as well. Relief flowed through me as I realized what had just happened. I had just told Clay that I was in love with his sister, was never going to leave her, and he approved.

He gave us his blessing.

It was like a five hundred-pound weight had suddenly been lifted off my shoulders.

He extended his beer bottle to me, an easy grin on his face. “Well, then. I guess the only thing left to say is that best friend or not, I’ll still kick your ass if you screw up again. So…just make her happy.”

I clinked my bottle against his, tipping my chin at him in understanding. “That’s the plan.”

##

I couldn’t believe how drastically things had changed for me in just one day. I’d had a very eye-opening conversation with my brothers, got Kinley back, and confessed everything to Clay.

After he and I talked about me and Kinley, I told him about my father dying. I told him as much as I could about the situation, but not everything. I wanted Kinley to be the first I spoke to about the rest of it. I wanted her ears to hear my first-ever confession.

And I was taking her somewhere special to do it. So she would know how much she meant to me. I wanted the place where I would finally bear my soul to her to be a place that meant something to both of us.

Our meadow.

But there was one place we had to stop at along the way.

I pulled up along the side of the road, across from the place that held so many memories I wanted to forget. I put the vehicle in park and placed my arm along the seat, behind Kinley’s shoulders. She looked out the window, a perplexed expression on her face.

“Where are we?” she asked.

I tipped my head in the direction of the house, surprised that this wasn’t as hard to do as I had once feared it would be. “That’s where I grew up.”

Her head whipped around to look at me, then snapped back to the condemned-looking house. She seemed to understand what I was doing and why I was doing it when she reached over and took her hand in mine, squeezing tightly.

I wondered what was going through her head, how the place looked through her eyes. To her, she probably saw a ramshackle house with chipped paint and a dirt yard. The shingles falling off the roof, the weeds growing around the property, the random pieces of garbage littering the ground that kept popping up no matter how many times my brothers and I picked it all up.

To me, the scene looked like a nightmare, a place that kids feared in their dreams. A place that never left your soul, even after you were old and gray. It was a place that could suck you in and hold you prisoner if you didn’t fight your way free and escape its clutches.

I wanted to show her this place not in order to receive her sympathy or to make her feel sorry for the circumstances I was born into.

I was showing it to her so that she might understand. Understand that there were parts of me that I was ashamed of, maybe even embarrassed by. That I needed people like her and her family in my life because if I’d never met them, I honestly had no idea how I would have ended up, where I would have been now.

And I didn’t want to think about it either.

“Oh, Parker,” she whispered, her voice wavering, lower lip quivering.

“I don’t want to take you inside yet.”
Because he’s in there
and I never want you to meet him
. Though it was the truth, I didn’t say that. “But someday I will. And maybe when things get better for my mom, you can meet her too. It just may take a little more time for that.”

She nodded and offered me a comforting hug, offering her support. “I understand. Thank you for bringing me here. It means more than you know.”

I got back on the road and drove for a few more miles, turning onto a dead-end road until I came to the right spot and pulled over along the side of the road again. Kinley recognized the area and turned to me in astonishment.

She never knew how close our meadow was to my childhood home. The place I was so often afraid to go back to growing up.

“Really? All this time?” she asked.

I shrugged and then got out of the vehicle, walking around it to help her out of her side. I reached into the backseat to grab the blanket I had the foresight to bring, and then started walking through the trees, her hand clutched in mine. “I found it when I was in high school. Sal had been on a rampage that night and I just took off, had enough of his bullshit. I ended up around here and started walking through the woods just to clear my head. Then, I stumbled upon the meadow.”

In my head, I was back there, remembering that day as if it had just happened, every detail crystal clear in my mind. “I couldn’t believe such a beautiful place was so close to our house, the ugliest place I could have imagined at the time. I don’t even know how long I stayed here that first day. Hours maybe? After that, I came here all the time. And then started bringing you here. It just felt right somehow, to have you here. I can’t really explain it, but finding it somehow felt like fate.” It probably sounded stupid, but I was trying out this whole being open and honest thing, so she was most likely going to hear a lot of ridiculous things.