Playing for Kinley (Cruz Brothers Book 1) (7 page)

I put my hands up in surrender. “You can’t touch the merchandise, man.” I pointed at my face. “This is the moneymaker.”

Again, he rolled his eyes but smiled.

“Di, we need another plunger!”

I looked around, waiting for an explanation, and everybody’s faces were expressionless. Diane caught my gaze. “He’s re-modeling the bathroom,” she deadpanned.

Well, that explained it.

Knowing that it probably looked like a warzone in there, I decided to wait to say hi to Sam until he didn’t have a wrench or hammer in his hands.

And I couldn’t help but notice that one particular person wasn’t in the room. I was hesitant, but not asking about her would have been weird of me.

“Where’s Kinley?”

“Oh, she ran to the store for some marshmallows,” Diane replied. “I could have sworn I had another bag. And Sam will have a fit if he doesn’t have his sweet potatoes.”

At least she wasn’t upstairs in her room, avoiding me. Yet.

That was when headlights from the driveway shone through the front windows. “That should be her now,” Gwen said, looking out the window.

Okay, here we go.

Slow and easy. Like old friends.

Old friends who used to make out.

Not helpful.

The door opened behind me, so I turned around and there she was.

That perfectly slim yet curvy body, that long chocolate-brown hair with caramel highlights, those sparkling green eyes that I could stare into all day, every day, that bow-shaped mouth and full lips—my favorite of her physical characteristics—that felt like paradise when they touched mine.

That frozen expression on her face as she looked at me that sent me crashing back to reality and reminding me exactly what we were to each other. And what we weren’t.

“Hey, Kinley.”

“Hi, Parker.” Her voice was soft and quiet.

And unsure.

I hated that.

Not wanting to arouse suspicion and hoping she went along with it, I leaned down to hug her. I didn’t wrap my arms all the way around her, though I desperately wanted to, and her arms barely grazed my waist. Her body was stiff as a board.

I hated that, too.

I had a long road ahead of me.

Kinley

Why did he have to look better every time I saw him?

I knew when he was supposed to get to the house. That trip to the grocery store had been my opportunity to delay the inevitable just a little longer. And, of course, my body reacted the same way it always did when I saw him.

My heart beat faster.

My pulse quickened.

Heat washed over me as if I had just stepped into a sauna.

Apparently, my mind was the only part of me that was still annoyed with the gorgeous baseball player who still starred in all of my dreams. My body obviously didn’t care about that; it still wanted him. But that wasn’t going to happen. That was just asking for trouble, and our relationship was much too complicated and sensitive to even consider the possibility that there could ever be casual sex between us.

To me, it had never been casual. It had never been just a fling.

To me, every touch meant more. Every kiss was seared into my memory.

To me, it had been the beginning of the future I wanted, with the man I had always longed for.

To him, it had been temporary.

To him, it had been fun, a way of filling up his time. Maybe an exciting game to him, since we had been keeping it a secret from everyone.

To him, it had been nothing worth developing feelings over.

We had one summer together and it had been everything I’d hoped it would be. Until he left. It was hard not to let those perfect afternoons spent with him that summer be tainted by his abandonment at the end of it. It was hard to not look back and say
Oh, see? That kiss wasn’t what you thought. It didn’t mean anything to him so why should it have meant anything to you?

Despite all of my efforts not to, that’s what my mind contemplated during dinner. I masked it by talking about my recent photo shoots, especially the one I had just finished in Canada. Clay talked about how things were in the mayoral office, and Gwen shared stories from her experiences with the One Heart One Hand Foundation that she and Clay started together. And Parker talked about his plans in the off-season, the changes happening with the Red Sox, and how next season was looking for them. That had been hard, hearing about the details of his life and knowing I was no longer a part of it. Not in the sense that I had a right to the intimate details.

I missed hearing about some of that, too, because I had always loved watching him play ball.

I went to every one of his and Clay’s high school games and never could take my eyes off of him, though I was sure everyone just assumed I was being a supportive younger sister.

I went to a couple of their games at UVA after we ended things and quickly realized how difficult it was seeing him after everything. So, I never went back and used my school or work as an excuse.

I hadn’t been to a single one of his major league games.

A huge part of me wanted to feel guilty for that. Because regardless of our secret—albeit brief—relationship years ago, we had essentially grown up together. We had went through a lot and shared a lot before we ever became intimate with each other. Even if we had never touched or kissed or snuck around, he would still mean the world to me, and I had always supported him.

In fact, that was one of the things he had liked about me the most, he used to say. How much I supported his baseball career, how much I admired him for chasing his dreams, and how much I encouraged him to never give up.

He’d encouraged my dreams, too.

He had told me to pursue photography if it was what made me happy.

He had probably been the most influential person in my life when it came to choosing my career path.

I would like to think that I still would have discovered my passion without him. But I could also admit that he had certainly been instrumental in my ambitions to become a photographer.

After dinner, I needed a break from him and everything he reminded me of, so I ran up to my old bedroom and locked myself in it for a few minutes.

But it only took those few minutes to recall the first time I realized that I liked Parker as more than my big brother’s best friend. I had been eight years old and Parker twelve.

Judy Bloom was so funny. She reminded me of Lucy from “I Love Lucy.” Mom liked that show and Judy Bloom got herself into as much trouble as Lucy did.

I was in my room, reading my new Judy Bloom book, when I heard the front door open downstairs and the sound of boys’ voices carried up to my open door.

I smiled.

That was probably Clay and Parker. Parker came over all the time now. Had dinner with us a lot and often stayed the night. I liked Parker. He teased me like Clay sometimes, but he was never really mean about it. Plus, I liked his smile. I decided to go down there and see what they were doing. They would probably tell me to go away, that I was being an annoying little sister, always trying to tag along with them.

I walked downstairs and found them running around the first floor, Parker with a Nerf football in his hands and Clay chasing him.

“I touched you!” Clay shouted.

“Two hands!” Parker yelled back. “You only got me with one!”

I watched them as they laughed and then started throwing the ball around the room. Next to all of Mom’s picture frames and vases and all of the other breakable stuff.

“Hey! Mom said you can’t play ball in the house,” I told them.

Both of their heads whipped around in my direction, and it was the first time they even noticed I was in the room. “What are you going to do about it?” Clay asked with a sneer. “Tell on us? Are you a tattle tale?”

“Mom will be mad if you break something. You’ll get in big trouble.”

“And where is Mom?”

“She’s down the street, talking to Mrs. Hannah. Mom wanted to check in on her after she fell last week.”

Clay smiled and went back to throwing the ball. “See? She’s not here so she won’t know.”

“Yeah, stop being such a party pooper, Kinley,” Parker said as he caught the ball, stepped back a little, and threw it back at Clay.

He was getting really close to my jewelry kit that I had laying out on the dining room table. Mom and Dad got it for me as a birthday present, and I had a lot of necklaces and bracelets on the table that I was still working on. It was the kit I wanted. Everything in it was so pretty. All the colors and the stones that looked like Mom’s diamonds, thought I knew they weren’t.

I wanted to make pretty jewelry like the kind Mom wore.

And maybe I could make her something for her birthday.

“Watch out!” I told Parker. “Don’t knock over my jewelry kit. Those necklaces took a while to make and I’m still not done.”

Parker looked behind him and turned back to Clay. “It’s fine. We’re being careful, Kinley, so stop being a pest.”

That hurt my feelings.

He was starting to sound more and more like Clay.

“Yeah, Kinley,” Clay teased. “Why don’t do you go back upstairs and play with your Barbies? I know you make them kiss each other.” He puckered his lips and started making kissing noises, which made Parker howl in laughter.

Mad, but also a little embarrassed, I scrunched up my face and started running back up the stairs so I could hide in my room. Then, I heard a crash, followed by hundreds of
ticks
and
clicks
as my jewelry kit clattered to the floor and all the little pieces scattered across the hardwood. I ran over to it in a panic, already knowing that everything I made the other day was now gone.

“Parker! What did you do?”

I was scrambling around on my knees, trying to gather everything up and keep all the pieces from rolling under the furniture and being lost completely. It was already too late, though. Everything was mixed together. The different stones and colors were no longer separated and it would take forever to sort everything out and organize it again.

“You ruined it!” I screamed at him.

When I looked up, his face was red and he actually looked guilty. Clay did too and fidgeted, shifting nervously on his feet across the room.

“I’m sorry, Kinley,” Parker said. “I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t paying attention and Clay threw the ball. I jumped and accidentally ran into the table.”

I could tell that I was about to cry and I didn’t want them to see that. “You guys are a bunch of jerks!” I ran back upstairs to my room, burying my face in my pillow, and cried. If they weren’t always making fun of me, they were destroying my things and I was tired of it.

I didn’t like Parker anymore.

I heard the front door open again a while later and heard Mom’s voice talking to the boys. I couldn’t tell what she was saying but I didn’t go down there to find out. I wasn’t going to tell on them either. She would probably figure it out and I didn’t want to see them anyway. I was still mad.

A little while after that, there was a knock on my door.

“Go away!” I told whoever it was.

Clay and Parker came in without knocking again. “Get out of my room!”

“We’re sorry, Kinley,” Clay said. “We shouldn’t have been playing ball in the house and we’re sorry we knocked over your jewelry kit. We didn’t mean to.”

I knew Mom had told them to come up here and say that. “I don’t care. Leave me alone.”

I went back to pouting into my pillow and heard their soft footsteps leave a few seconds later. Eventually, I went down to eat dinner when Mom called my name. She tried making me feel better, saying that we could fix it. I was still mad at them, though. Dad said that they weren’t going to be able to play baseball for a while now as punishment.

That made me feel a little better.

I went straight back up to my room after I helped Mom do the dishes and read more of my Judy Bloom book. It had gotten pretty dark and was almost bedtime when there was another knock on my door. I told them to come in, figuring it was Mom, coming to remind me to brush my teeth, though she didn’t usually knock.

The door opened and I turned to see who it was.

Parker stood there, looking down at his feet, seeming nervous.

“What do you want?”

He moved a little closer to the bed where I sat. “I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry for ruining your jewelry thing. And…” he paused as he reached into his pocket and pulled out something, “I made you this.”

Curious, I took it from him and immediately recognized the various pieces from my jewelry kit.

He’d made me a necklace.

He still wouldn’t look at me. “I’m sorry I made you sad. I didn’t mean to. I don’t like seeing you upset like that.”

I looked back down at the necklace and smiled. He tried to make me something to say he was sorry. Since Clay wasn’t with him, I figured Mom hadn’t made him do this. He did it all on his own. That meant that he really was sorry.

I had a weird feeling in my belly when I looked down at the piece of jewelry and realized that he had strung those plastic stones through the string for me. He picked out each piece and did all of that for me. Because he felt bad for what he did. Felt bad for making me cry.

“It’s really pretty,” I whispered and his head shot up, finally looking at me.

“You like it?” he asked, a smile starting to form on his face.

I nodded and put it around my neck, wearing it proudly. “I love it. Thank you.”

His smile grew and turned into the normal one that I liked so much on him. “So, you forgive me?”

I smiled back at him this time. “I forgive you.”

He nodded and walked back to the door, turning one last time to look at the necklace that he made hanging around my neck, smiled at me again, and then walked out.

I liked Parker again.

And that was when the crush that had quickly morphed into an infatuation started.

I wore the necklace almost every day after that. And he always smiled when he saw it. After that day, it didn’t matter if he teased me like Clay did. I knew that he didn’t really mean it. He was trying to act like all the other big kids. Because of that, I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to tell anyone that he had made me a necklace. So, I didn’t. I let everyone assume that I made it myself.

It was the first of many secrets that we shared together.

I walked over to my camera bag that lay on my bed and opened the inside zipper of the main compartment. My fingers touched the plastic pieces and I pulled out the necklace.

The same necklace that he had made me all those years ago.

I’d kept it with me all this time. Had stowed it away in that camera bag, had taken it with me on every photo shoot I had ever been on.

So that Parker was with me wherever I went.

Just like he had once promised that he would be.

I had thought about throwing it away in college one time and finally being done with him, pushing him out of my life completely. But I never could. It may not have been healthy to hold onto something so precious to me but also something that represented someone who had brought me so much pain and misery.