Wait for It

I looked at my shorts, and then I looked at the weather app on my phone.

According to the screen, it was ninety-four degrees out today. In October. Fucking global warming.

I looked at my shorts again, held them in my hands, taking in the ragged hem for a minute and said, “Fuck it.” I’d worn things a lot shorter when I was eighteen. This pair had been with me for the last five years, and I still wore them on a regular basis. The thing was, I usually tried to avoid anything higher than my knees at Josh’s games or practices because, while the boys didn’t blink twice at me running around the house with only a big T-shirt on or sleep shorts, some boys weren’t used to that.

God knew my mom had never worn shorts while I was growing up. She made faces any time I put on anything that wasn’t a respectable skirt or loose pants. I could still remember what her face had resembled when skinny jeans and leggings had gotten popular. You would have figured I’d been naked.

It was going to be hot as hell today, and I wasn’t going to be showing anybody anything they hadn’t seen a hundred times before simply going to the mall. And Josh and Lou had never told me anything about the clothes I wore—except for this one red dress I’d put on to go out with some friends from my going-out days that pretty much made me look like a prostitute. “No” was the one and only thing Josh had told me that night a year and a half ago before pointing in the direction of my room. “No, no, no,” he’d repeated again, shaking his head. “No, Aunt Di.”

Adjusting the straps of my bra so that they were hidden under my brand new Tornado T-shirt with CASILLAS screen-printed on the back, I slipped on my flip-flops just as Josh yelled, “Are you ready?” from down the hall.

Luckily, I’d already packed the cooler for our day at the park, collected a couple of magazines to look through for new hairstyling ideas, and charged up my tablet so I could catch a couple of episodes of The Office when there was nothing else to do but sit around. I had this competitive baseball thing all figured out.

I rushed out of my room, finding Josh in the living room already standing by the door. He was pumped and ready for his first game in months. “You got everything?” I asked as I grabbed the handle of the blue cooler with one hand and the strap of my oversized tote with the other; it was also filled with sunblock, an extra battery pack for my cell, nuts, a hand towel, bug spray, and two ponchos in their small plastic containers.

“Yeah,” he answered in that same easy, confident tone he always used… even when he was lying out of his teeth.

I blinked down at him. “Did you grab an extra pair of socks?”

Josh tipped his head back and groaned. “No.” Dropping his bag, he ran toward his room. In no time, he was back out, stuffing the extra socks he was always forgetting into his bag. The kid had sweaty feet and needed an extra pair, especially on a day like today.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said, motioning him forward.

I locked the front door as he threw his things into the back. Glancing in the direction of Dallas’s house, I noticed his truck was gone. The fields where the tournament was happening that weekend were almost an hour away, and Josh and I listened to music on my playlist the entire ride, singing along softly half the time. Josh and I were both still half asleep. Our resident ray of sunshine was spending the weekend with my parents at a family member’s house in Houston instead of frying under the sun with us.

At the park, we climbed out of the car, yawning. Josh grabbed his bag and then helped me lower the cooler out of the back, tiredly smiling at me when our eyes met. I held my hand out, palm up, right in front of him, and he smacked it.

“I love you, J,” I said.

He blinked sleepily. “Love you too.”

And in that way that Josh and I had—my oldest nephew, my first real love—we hugged each other, side to side, by the car. While Louie might be the sun, Josh was the moon and the stars. He was my gravity, my tide, my ride or die. He was more like my little brother than my nephew, and in some ways, we had grown up together. I had loved him from the moment I laid eyes on him. Loved him from the moment I knew he was a spark of life, and I was going to love him every day of my life.

He pulled back after a tight squeeze of my middle. “Okay, let’s go.”

We went.

By the time we found the group of Tornado members clustered around one of the picnic tables at the center of the three baseball fields, I was already sweating. “Morning,” I greeted all the parents and kids who turned to look at us as we walked over to them. I didn’t miss the long look two moms shot at me as their gaze went from my mostly bare legs to my face and back. Haters. I also didn’t miss the inappropriately long look one of the dads, who I knew was separated from his wife, shot me either. I just chose to ignore them. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Taking a seat on one of the nearest picnic tables, I waited for the coaching staff to arrive. Dallas was the first one to get there. He had two duffel bags hanging over each shoulder, an orange water cooler balanced in his hands, and his sunglasses and baseball cap on. He was wearing a red Polo shirt that had the team’s emblem and what I figured was his name embroidered on it. And just like usual, he had his holey cargo shorts and tennis shoes on. I noticed him glance in my direction and tip his chin up, but he didn’t greet me as he headed straight to the main congregation of parents and kids, and eventually broke off to walk the boys over to an empty patch of grass to start warming up. There was still well over an hour left until the tournament started, and I knew there was no rush to move toward whatever field would be used first until later.

I sat there for the next hour flipping through a magazine and browsing random stuff on my phone. When I noticed a few of the other moms getting up and start making their way over to one of the fields, I grabbed my things and followed after them. Parking the cooler on the floor beside the second row, I hopped up and took a seat to wait. Josh was on home, catching the balls the pitcher was throwing at him to warm up, but it wasn’t going so well. The pitcher was throwing the ball too high every single time. After about the tenth time, Josh had to get up and run after it. Trip, who had showed up minutes ago, waved the pitcher over to talk with him, giving Josh a break.

Standing up, I snagged a bottle of water from my cooler and walked over to the fence separating and protecting the audience from the game and players. “Josh!” I hissed over at him, the fingers of my free hand clinging to one of the links. Out of the corner of my eyes, I caught the big, male figure that belonged to Dallas standing by third base talking to one of the moms that had been giving me a bitch face earlier. It was the Christy woman I was pretty sure, if I had my hair color correct.

Josh turned around immediately, ripping his facemask off, and walked toward me, his palms facing upward as I tossed the bottle up high to go over the fence. “Thanks,” he answered, right after catching it.

“Did you put sunblock on?” I asked.

He nodded, the bottle glued to his mouth as he guzzled a third of it down.

I couldn’t help myself. “On your face too?”

“Yes,” he replied, one eye narrowed.

“Just checking, attitude,” I muttered, noticing the mom who had been talking to Dallas turn around and head over in our direction. It only took a moment for my brain to process who the parent was.

It was definitely Christy, the person who had gotten me suspended weeks ago.

From the way her face was tilted down, even with a pair of aviator glasses on, her attention was focused on the lower half of my body. Something in my brain recognized that this wasn’t going to go well, but something else in my brain said that I needed to behave. I could be an adult. I was not about to get suspended again, damn it.

So I smiled at her and said, “Hi,” even though I was grinding down on my back teeth, expecting the worst. Where I’d last seen him, Dallas was standing by third base, his head facing our direction. I could tell his forehead was wrinkled, but he didn’t make a gesture to move. What was this about?

I’d only seen him at practice once in the week since he, Jackson, and Miss Pearl had come over for spaghetti. We had waved at each other since then and that was it. I could have stayed after practice to talk to him, but by that time rolled around, I still had two boys to feed and put in bed. I didn’t have time to wait around for the other parents to give me a chance to talk. I didn’t take it personally that he wasn’t shouting from the rooftops that we were friends and spent time outside of practice together. There was also that big thing that always seemed to hang around my thoughts while we were at practice: the last thing I wanted was any kind of drama from the other parents thinking something dumb about us.

“Josh, go finish warming up,” I told him when Christy didn’t return my greeting as she came to a stop at an angle to me on the other side of the fencing. Josh frowned as his gaze bounced back and forth between the other mom and myself. “Everything is fine.”

Josh hesitated for one more second before nodding and putting his facemask back on, taking the bottle of water with him.

Before I could even open my mouth to ask what was going on, her words came at me, sharp and straight like an arrow. “You need to go change.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Your shorts, Diana. They’re inappropriate,” the mom, who hadn’t spoken to me once since our incident, said.

I went from one to ten instantly, courtesy of her words and choice of tone that was 100 percent bitchy and nothing else. I didn’t like her to begin with, so my patience was already in the negatives by the time she’d opened her mouth. But I tried my best to be mature. “I’m a grown woman, and they’re not that short or inappropriate,” I told her coolly, my hands instantly going to my sides. My fingertips were on the hem of my shorts with my hands straight down; it wasn’t like I was palming a bunch of bare thigh.

“I wasn’t asking what you thought about them,” she said, her reflective sunglasses flicking down to my thighs once more. “I don’t want Jonathan being exposed to that.”

Be mature. Be an adult. Be an example to Josh, Diana, I tried telling myself. I’d say I only halfway failed. “What is that? Thighs? Half of a woman’s thighs that he’s seen every time you’ve taken him somewhere?” That sounded a lot more smart-ass than I’d intended it to.

She could obviously tell because I could sense the tension coming off her body. “I don’t know what kind of places you take Josh, but I don’t take my Jonny any places like that. There’s children here. This isn’t a brothel.”

A brothel. Had this bitch really just said brothel? As in I worked at one or hung around one? Really?

I glanced over my shoulder because she was talking so fucking loud. Couldn’t she use her inside voice and just talk to me? I wasn’t surprised to see about eight sets of parents staring at us. Listening. So I asked her one more time to make sure I wasn’t imagining anything, “Excuse me?”

“Go buy some pants,” she said so fucking loud, I’m sure the opposing team heard her. In a whisper, with her eyes straight on me, she said, “Look, honey, I know you’re Josh’s aunt, but if you’re looking for a husband, this isn’t the place. Some of us are real moms. Look around. We’re not dressed like hookers, are we? Maybe you could learn something about real parenting from us.”

Someone cackled loudly enough for me to hear.

My entire body went hot, red hot.

I didn’t give very many people the power to hurt my feelings, but Christy’s comment went directly to my heart. Real mom. It was the real mom that pierced straight through me, robbing the breath from my lungs and the anger from my head.

Realistically, I knew my ass wasn’t anywhere close to hanging out. I knew that. It didn’t matter that there had been a handful of moms on Josh’s old team that made the girl on Dukes of Hazard look like a pilgrim. In that moment right then, I was the only one with some bare leg exposed and it wasn’t even that fucking much.

I cleared my throat, fighting back the pressure squeezing at my lungs and the heat covering every inch of my skin. What example did I want to set for Josh? That he always needed to come out on top? Some things were worth winning and other things were not. With every inch of self-control in my body, I tried holding on to the very edges of my maturity, because if someone was an asshole to you, you didn’t always have to be an asshole back.

“Christy,” I said her name calmly, “if you want to talk to me about my clothes”—fuck off and go to hell, I said to her in my brain but in reality I went with—“don’t raise your voice at me. I’m not a child. While we’re at it, you don’t know anything about me or Josh, so don’t make it seem like you do.”

Of all the replies she could have gone with, she chose, “I know enough about you.”

While I’d been friendly with the parents on Josh’s old team, none of them had ever been close enough to me to know what happened to turn us three into a family. All they knew was that I was raising Josh and Louie, and that had come up because there were Spanish-speaking parents on the team who overheard him calling me tia all the time. When they’d ask, I told them the truth. I was their aunt. I didn’t care what they thought; they could all assume whatever they wanted.

“You don’t know anything,” I practically whispered to her, balanced somewhere between being upset and really pissed. “I don’t want to embarrass you or make you feel like an idiot, so please stop while you’re ahead with the comments. Talk to me like an adult, because I bet your son is looking over here right now, and we want to teach the boys how to be good people, not big mouths with opinions and a lack of information.”

It was her turn for her face to go red and she pretty much squawked at me, “You’re going to embarrass me? You embarrassed yourself and Josh coming to a tournament dressed like that. Have a little respect for yourself, or respect for whoever was reckless enough to let you watch their kids.”

To a certain extent, I knew what she was saying wasn’t the truth, but her words were a brutal reality that managed to pick at those frayed little ends inside of me. Sticks and stones might break your bones but words could also hurt you. A lot. A lot more than they should have because I knew she didn’t know anything.

But even being aware of all of that, this knot formed in my throat, and before I could stop it, my eyes got misty.

I looked at the fencing to the side away from her as two tears jumped out of the corners of my eyes and streamed down one cheek before I wiped them away with the back of my hand almost angrily. I think I lasted there in front of her all of five seconds before two more tears crashed down my cheeks, falling from my jaw to my chest. It wasn’t until I felt my lip start to quiver that I swallowed and turned away from her, embarrassed—humiliated—and feeling so small I could have crawled into a hole and stayed there forever. Worst, I couldn’t even argue with her points.

Instead of doing all the things I should have done in retaliation, I turned around and started walking away.

“Diana!” I heard Dallas yell.

One second later, I heard, “Aunt Di!” But I couldn’t stop.

I speed walked away from the bleachers, my face angled toward the ground. One tear after another slid down my cheeks, falling into my mouth and then down my chin to my chest. My vision went blurry as I stared at the sidewalk before catching a glimpse of the small building where the restrooms were located, and I pretty much darted into it just as three times as many more tears came out of me.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even find it in me to make a noise as my back hit the cement wall in the bathroom. My hands went to my knees as I hunched over, my heart cringing and flexing. Aching.

Who was I kidding? I was a fuckup. I was going to ruin the boys. What the hell was I doing raising them? Why hadn’t I just let the Larsens take them? I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t even manage not to embarrass them. I thought that I’d stopped making so many stupid decisions, but I was wrong.

God.

I cried more and more and more, silent tears that didn’t clog my throat because it was already full of shame and guilt and anger at myself.

Even as a little kid, I either got mad or I cried if I was embarrassed before I got angry.

“Aunt Di?” Josh’s voice was hesitant and whispered, but so familiar it cut right through my thoughts.

I wiped at my face with the back of my hand, keeping my gaze on the cement floor. “I’m okay, Josh,” I called out in a weak, hoarse voice that said I wasn’t.

He didn’t reply, but the sound of cleats clacking on the floor warned me he was coming before I saw him peek around the edge of the wall. His small face was soft and worried, his mouth and eyes downturned. “Tia.” The word came out of him in a hiss, a claim.

“I’m okay. You should go back to the field. I’ll—” I stopped talking when this sob crept up on me out of nowhere. The hand I slapped over my mouth didn’t help any.

“You’re crying.” Josh took another step further into the building. Then another.

Dragging my palm up toward my eyes, I wiped at them. Get it together. I had to get it together. “I’m okay, J. I promise. I’ll be okay.”

“But you’re crying,” he repeated the words, his eyes flicking across the stalls like he was worried he’d get caught doing something bad but obviously not worried enough because he kept creeping toward me. His hands met at his chest. “Don’t cry.”

Oh my God. Him telling me not to cry only made me cry even more. Before I could stop myself, as he got closer and closer, I blurted out, “Do I embarrass you?”

“What?” He stopped in place two feet away. He genuinely looked like I’d hit him.

“You can tell me the truth,” I said in broken syllables, sounding like a complete liar. “I don’t want you to wish I wasn’t around if it’s because of something I wear or something I do—”

“No! That’s stupid.” Those eyes just like mine went over my face and he shook his head, looking so much like a young Rodrigo it only made me feel that much worse.

“I don’t—” I was hiccupping. “I know I’m not your real mom or even Mandy,” the words kept getting broken up the more I cried. “But I’m trying. I’m trying so hard, J. I’m sorry if I mess up sometimes, but—”

His body smacked into mine so hard, my spine hit the wall again. Josh hugged me like his life depended on it. He hugged me like he hadn’t since his dad died. The side of his cheek went right along my chest as he held me tight. “You’re better than my real mom, better than Mandy—”

“Jesus, Josh. Don’t say stuff like that.”

“Why? You always tell me not to lie,” he said into my chest as he hugged me. “I don’t like you crying. Don’t do it anymore.”

Oh my God. I did the complete opposite and bawled a little more, right into my eleven-year-old.

“Ms. Christy is a witch,” he said into my shirt.

A mature adult would have told Josh not to call a person a witch and deny that Christy was being one. Except I’d call her behavior that of a bitch, not a witch.

But I didn’t feel very much like a mature adult then. I’d used up all my adulting points of the day. So all I did was hug Josh closer. “She is,” I agreed with a sniffle.

“I’ll quit,” he stated. “I can join another team,” my nephew offered, cracking my heart in half.

“Joshy—” I started to say before I got cut off.

“Can I talk to your aunt, Josh?” a rough, voice filled the bathroom, making me look up to see Dallas standing three feet away. When the hell had he walked in without us noticing?

The boy in my arms tensed before he turned around, his stance wide and protective. “No.”

God help me, the tears started up all over again. I loved this kid. I loved him with every single cell in my body. There was a lot of things about love that you could only learn after you’d faced the real kind. The best kind wasn’t this soft, sweet thing of hearts and picnics. It wasn’t flowery and divine.

Real love was gritty. The real kind of love never quit. Someone who loved you would do what’s best for you; they’d stand up for you and sacrifice. Someone who loved you would face any inconvenience willingly.

You didn’t know what love was until someone was willing to give up what they loved the most for you.

But it was also never letting them make that choice, either.

Dallas sighed, his hands going into his pockets. His thick-framed sunglasses had been shoved up onto the brim of his hat, but I didn’t look at his face. I didn’t want to. “Please, Josh.”

“Why? So you can make her cry too?” my defender asked.

“No. I’m not going to make her cry. I swear. You know me better than that,” he explained. “Please. I don’t want you to quit. I’d like for you to play the first game at least, for your friends out there, and if you still want to quit afterward, you can. I wouldn’t blame you. We’re a team, and you don’t treat people on your team like that.”

Josh didn’t say a word.

I just stared at the sink behind Dallas. I had maxed out the amount of times I wanted to cry in front of this man.

“Diana, can I talk to you?” came the nearly gentle question that only made me angry.

Had he told her to talk to me about my shorts so he wouldn’t have to?

It only took me a second to decide he wasn’t that kind of person. I don’t know why I’d been thinking the worst of him so much lately. He didn’t deserve it.

Still insisting on looking at the sink, I let out a breath that made me sound like I had lung cancer. “I don’t want to talk to anyone right now,” I pretty much whispered.

“Josh? Please?” was Dallas’s reply.

“Don’t make her cry again,” my eleven-going-on-twenty-year-old nephew demanded. “She never cries.”

That was a lie, but I appreciated why he’d gone with it.

Maybe my feelings were hurt and a part of me felt like it had been split open, but I didn’t want Josh to think I couldn’t handle my own battles, even as I bled my feelings all over the place. Slipping my hands over his shoulders, I tightened my grip on him. “Thank you, J, but I’ll be okay. Go finish warming up. We aren’t quitters.”

And my poor, beloved nephew who knew me too well, turned to look at me over his shoulder. Those brown eyes were guarded and worried. “I’ll go if you want me to.”

Fuck. I touched his shoulder. “It’s okay. Play your game. I can handle this. You don’t have to quit. I’ve got this.”

He didn’t budge.

“Go, Josh. It’ll be fine. I’ll be—” Where? I didn’t want to go back by the bleachers just yet. I wished I could be the bigger person and not let a bunch of words hurt me. “Here. I’ll be on the bleachers watching.”

He nodded.

Stooping down, I gave him another hug because I couldn’t help it, and he hugged me back. I kissed the top of his head quickly and released him, watching as he shot Dallas a look that I knew would eventually become trouble when he got older, and then disappeared through the winding hallway of the door-less bathroom… leaving me alone with his coach. It was a place I didn’t want to be.

I’d learned years ago that I didn’t have to do things I didn’t want. It was a gift of being an adult, getting to choose what you wanted and didn’t want in life. You just had to see how many choices you had, and if you didn’t have any, then you made some.

And without thinking twice about it, the second Josh was around the corner, I made my decision. I was going to sit and watch the fucking game even if it killed me. In the words of my abuela, que todos se vayan a la chingada. Everyone could go to hell.

Except as I walked past the second to last man I wanted to talk to in the near future, fingers reached out and snatched at my wrist. “Diana,” my name came out comforting and smooth like warm milk.

I stopped, my gaze going down to the fingers wrapped around my bones. “I just want to watch the game. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.”

“I know.” At least he wasn’t arguing with me. “But I wanna tell you I’m sorry. I know she’s been gunning for you, and I didn’t put a stop to it.”

I swallowed, my throat muscles bobbing hard, making me feel like I was trying to pass an egg, but really it was just my pride.

“She doesn’t have any idea what she’s talking about,” he said softly, with so much kindness and compassion, it unzipped me from the throat down.

Tears filled my eyes and I tried to blink them away, but they just stayed there, making my vision hazy and distorted. “I’ve never even done anything to her. So we argued. I argue with everyone. I know I’m a pain in the ass sometimes, but I would never go out of my way to be mean to someone who had never really done anything to me.”

“I know you wouldn’t, and you’re not a pain in the ass. We get along just fine, don’t we?” he assured me, making me sniffle.

“Yeah.” Was I still tearing up? “She doesn’t know me. She tried to tell me I wasn’t a good parent figure to Josh, that I—I’m not a real one. I am—”

“I know you are,” came his low reply, all mellow and tender. “They know you are.” I could see him getting closer to me out of the corner of my eye. “They couldn’t have anyone better raising them. It doesn’t matter what she says. You’re great. You know you are.”

I sniffled, angry and hurt. “Yeah, well, no one else seems to think I am except you… and them… and the Larsens.” My voice cracked. My own mom didn’t seem to believe that half the time. But I couldn’t say that out loud.

Instead, I started weeping again, silently.

I swore I could feel pressure at the back of my head like maybe he was cupping it. I didn’t move. I would swear on my life he made this “shh, shh, shh” sound, like he was trying to soothe me. “This is my fault.” When I didn’t say anything, he leaned in even closer to me. “Don’t cry. I’m sorry.”

There was an earnestness in his tone—hell, in his entire body—that seemed to reach into me more than his actual words. I’d been apologized to hundreds of times in my life, but there was something about Dallas doing it that didn’t seem false or contrived. Maybe I was being dumb, but I didn’t think I was imagining hearing or sensing something that didn’t actually exist.

I looked up at him, hating him seeing me with what I was sure were puffy, red eyes with disaster written in the pupils. Dallas’s expression was a mournful one. There was a softness to his features that didn’t normally exist. And when he blew out a breath that hit the cheek closest to him, I could confirm his guilt.

“I try not to play favorites, and it came back to kick me in the ass. I’m sorry. I should have told her to go sit down when she started going off instead of telling her I didn’t have time to deal with her,” he said, so close to my face. “You’re my friend. I’m sorry for letting you down. I seem to do that a lot.”

“You didn’t let me down,” I muttered to him, feeling embarrassed all over again. “Look, I’m going to go sit in the car until the game starts. I want to be alone for a minute to get my shit together.”

He sighed, the fingers around my wrist retreating for a brief moment before they slid up my bare forearm, the calluses grazing my upper arm and shoulder over the sleeves of my T-shirt as they made the trek upward, and then he was palming my shoulders with both of those rough-worked hands. He breathed, rough and choppy. The tips of his tennis shoes inched closer to me, his hands squeezing my shoulders as he said in a whisper, “I’m gonna hug you as long as you promise not to grab my ass, okay?”

I almost laughed, but it sounded more like a broken croak.

I came from a hugging family. I was descended from a long line of huggers before me. We hugged for good things and we hugged for bad things. We hugged when there was a reason and we definitely hugged for no other reason than because we could. We hugged when we were mad at each other and when we weren’t. And I’d always loved it; it became a part of me. A hug was an easy way of showing someone you cared about them, of offering comfort, of saying, “I’m so happy to see you” without words.

So when Dallas wrapped his arms around the middle of my back, he swallowed me in something that had always been freely given in my life. And he said words that hadn’t always been so easily shared, “I’m sorry, Di.”

I smiled into his chest sadly, letting the nickname go in and out of my ears. “It’s not your fault, Professor.”

His body tightened along mine. “Professor?” he asked, slowly, quietly.

He knew. “Professor X. You know, Professor Xavier.”

My neighbor—my friend—made the same choking sound he’d made back at my house when I’d called him Mr. Clean.

“Dallas?” a voice called from outside the bathroom.

Said man didn’t loosen his hold on me even as his upper body started shaking a little. “Yeah?”

“Game’s about to start,” someone who wasn’t Trip told him.

“All right. I’ll be out in a sec,” the man hugging me answered, his palm making a flat trek up my back to land between my shoulder blades before he slowly pulled back just enough to look down at me. “I need to go.” There was a pause. “And I’m not bald. I’m just used to having short hair.”

I didn’t say anything; I just sniffled.

Dallas reached up and touched my forehead with one of his thumbs briefly before snatching the cap off his head and settling it over my hair. The tips of his fingers brushed high over my cheekbones for tears that had disappeared by that point. “Go watch your boy.”

When I didn’t say anything, he tipped his head to the side and lowered his face until it was inches from mine, his expression so tight I swore he looked furious. “Where’s that person who gave me a stare down and asked me if I wanted to be friends with her or if she should fuck off, hmm?”

The corners of my mouth tilted up just a little, and it made his lips do the same.

He blinked and told me in that bossy, military voice, “Don’t leave.”

I swallowed and couldn’t help but duck my head for a moment.

“Don’t leave,” he repeated. One of those hands I’d admired a time or two came up and gently brushed my neck before dropping away. “I’ll talk to Josh after the game, but if you guys wanna quit, I can’t stop you. I’ll talk to Christy. We don’t treat each other like that here.” His thumb moved up to touch right beneath my chin. “I don’t want you to go anywhere if that means anything, Peach.”

This smooth motherfucker was killing me. How? How was he single? How could his wife be such a dumbass? What could he have done to ruin a marriage? I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t.

The thought came to me as forcefully as the one the last time we’d seen each other had, scary and unwelcome: I liked him. I liked him a lot, and I had no business feeling that way. None.

That was why I trusted him. Because some part of me really liked this man. Shit.

So I told him something I would probably live to regret. Something that I wasn’t supposed to say now or ever. But if I’d learned anything over the last few years, it was that you didn’t always have the right time for anything even if, in a perfect world, you were supposed to. “Look, I don’t know what happened with your wife—where she is, why you guys aren’t together… it’s not my business—but all I know is that she’s an idiot,” I told him.

He blinked those brown-gold-green marble eyes.

But I wasn’t done. “You deserve the best, Dallas. I hope you find someone who appreciates you someday, if that’s what you want. I’m so lucky to have you as my friend. Anyone who has you as more than that is a lucky bitch.” I smiled at him, feeling a rush of heat on my face. “I’m not trying to stick my hand down your pants either, all right?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed, but he didn’t say a word. Instead, he took a step back, eyeing me with that jutted jaw of his. “Don’t leave, okay?”

I’d barely nodded by the time he had disappeared.

The sound of cheering from outside a moment later brought me back to reality. Josh was out there. My pride wasn’t worth missing out on Josh playing, that was for sure. Reaching up to touch the brim of the cap that had just been placed on my head, I shoved it down a little further on my head and told myself it didn’t matter what these people I barely knew thought about me.

But I still walked with my head down to the bleachers, and I’m sure my face was pink as I did it. Luckily, the spot by where I’d left the cooler was still open and I took it, my hands going to my knees. The boys’ team was starting on the field and Josh was right behind home base, in position.

I felt overly self-conscious throughout the game, and I cheered a little more quietly than I normally did when someone on the team did well, and I was definitely a lot more restrained than usual when Josh nailed a ball that hit the back fence. He was more subdued too because he didn’t run as fast as he usually did. All in all, the game went well and the Tornado won their pool game—a game that didn’t matter in terms of progressing in the tournament. At the end of it, the team huddled together away from the parents while Dallas talked to the boys about whatever it was they talked about, and soon afterward, most of the players went back to the dugout to collect their things and move out of the way so that the next two teams could come on to the field.

At no point did I look around for Christy.

But Dallas and Josh stayed off to the side, talking. From the looks on both of their faces—so, so serious—it was some deep shit. Some deep shit that involved me.

I could tell from Josh’s initial body language that he was angry, but I could also tell from Dallas’s that the man had the patience of a saint. As the minutes went by with me standing there staring, Josh relaxed a little; his hands dropped from his sides and he seemed more easy, less cagey. At one point, the older man put his hand over his heart and nodded at whatever he was telling his player. And what could have been ten minutes or twenty minutes later, the man held his fist out and Josh bumped it.

I guess that meant we weren’t going anywhere, and that was okay. Who was I to make someone change their dream just because I wasn’t exactly happy? I couldn’t and wouldn’t be that person. This was about Josh, not me.

And at that point, I wasn’t ruling out tripping Christy if the opportunity ever presented itself.

So as they walked toward me from where they’d been far out in the field, I let out a deep breath and purposely ignored the looks I could feel burning through my skin. My nephew came to me first grabbing the water bottle I’d taken out of the cooler while he’d made his way over. And he smiled this tight, one-sided grin.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

He nodded. “You okay?”

The fact this eleven-year-old was asking me that made my heart feel funny. “Yeah.”

Josh twisted his mouth. “Can I keep playing here if I promise never to be friends with Jonathan?”

I steeled myself and smiled. “Whatever you want, J. You can be friends with him if you want. His mom just can’t drop him off at our house, is all. Water might end up in her gas tank and she’ll never leave.”

“You can do that?”

Shit. I waved him off, realizing maybe I shouldn’t teach him things like that. Yet. Maybe if a girl ever broke his heart, I’d help him do that before I ripped all of her hair out. “I don’t know. I’m just making stuff up. But really, you can be friends with Jonathan if you want. I don’t care.”

“I don’t really like him anyway,” he whispered.

I was not going to smirk, and I managed not to. “It’s up to you, but I’d be okay with it.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“I’m positive. I want you to be happy.” I could come, mind my own business, not talk to anyone, and go home. For him, I could.

He gave me that narrow side-eye I knew damn well he’d inherited from me. “I want you to be happy too.”

That had me sighing. “Your happiness makes me happy. I’ll figure it out. Plus, I’m leaving in two weeks, remember? I don’t have to see any of their ugly faces for a while.” I reached up to pull at a strand of hair sticking out from under his cap. “I want you to kick some ass so you can go into the major leagues and then take care of me for the rest of my life. You’re not putting me in an old folks’ home, you know.”

Josh groaned and rolled his eyes. “You always say that.”

“Because it’s the truth. Now go play or whatever it is you do with your friends.”

He puffed his cheeks out and nodded, taking a step back before stopping and shooting me another of those looks that was too old for such a young kid. “You’ll tell me if you’re not happy?”

“You of all people can tell when I’m not happy, J.”

“Yeah,” he answered easily as if there was no other answer he could have possibly given.

I puckered my mouth just a little and earned one of his dimpled smiles. “I’ll be fine. Go get a snack or something and hang out with your friends.”

Pulling out a five from my pocket, I held it out and he grabbed it with a “thank you” before he went off to meet up with the other kids on the team who were in line at the concession stand buying God knows what. With the cooler handle in one hand and my big bag over my shoulder, I rolled over to the middle section of the three neighboring fields, taking an empty picnic table that was about ten feet away from the nearest parents on the team. I’d already looked at the schedule the night before. The next game wasn’t for another hour.

My phone ringing had me reaching into my pocket, and when the number flashing across the screen was an unknown California number, I hesitated for a second. California? I didn’t know anyone except Vanessa—

Oh shit.

I didn’t think I’d ever answered another call faster.

“Hello?”

“Diana,” the incredibly deep male voice on the other line replied.

I hadn’t heard it that many times in person, but I could put two and two together and guess who was calling me. “Aiden?” I wanted to make sure it was my best friend’s husband.

He skipped over my question but still confirmed it was him almost immediately. “Vanessa is going into labor. I’ll buy you the first ticket out.”

He didn’t ask if I could come, and he didn’t say she wanted me there. It was both those things that touched me the most.

Without thinking twice, I rattled off my e-mail address to him and said, “Get it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” There were plenty of people in the world that I wouldn’t take a handout from; Vanessa’s husband was not one of those people. He could afford to buy the plane if he wanted.

My best friend was having her baby.

I needed to find Josh and call the Larsens.