by Sierra Dean
When they were both spent, he disappeared into her bathroom and came back moments later, strutting through the room, unapologetic in his nudity. She marveled at him, watching him move through her sleep-heavy eyes.
“Nice ass,” she teased.
“Yours ain’t so bad either.” He gave it a playful smack.
When he settled in behind her and tugged her against him, she didn’t hear the logical part of her brain suggest sending him home. Which was good. Because she would probably have told her brain to go fuck itself if it had tried.
She fell asleep with his arms wrapped around her.
What did her brain know, anyway?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nine-year-olds were terrifying creatures.
Olivia leveled Alex with an unflinching stare, and the bruising on her face only managed to make her all the more intimidating. For such a slight girl, she had Alex squirming in his seat.
Did she know why he was there? He didn’t know what kids understood about sex, and hoped Liv was blissfully unaware of most aspects of it, but still…she had to think there was something unusual about his presence at the breakfast table.
He felt guilty.
Liv ate her oatmeal, the sludge giving off an appealing cinnamon-maple scent, but the sight of the cereal had made Alex’s stomach churn ever since his sister told him as a child it was made of dehydrated brain. It looked like she was only chewing with one side of her mouth though, so maybe she was being limited to soft stuff.
Instead of focusing on her meal, she continued to keep both eyes on Alex, and with each passing second he wondered what the children’s version of a scarlet letter was, and how large the one on his forehead must be.
“So…” He started to speak, hoping he might come up with something clever as the words came out, but he drew a complete blank. “How are you feeling?”
Olivia shrugged. “Better.” She mumbled the word around a mouthful of oatmeal. “Mom said I can probably go back to school soon.”
Alice sat down at the table, handing Alex a toasted bagel and a cup of steaming-hot coffee, an identical breakfast in front of her. “We’re going to wait until the bruises go down a bit first though. Don’t want anyone thinking you’re a little street fighter, do we?”
“You’re just afraid they’ll think you hit me.” Though the words were said with a pout, there was a teasing tone to Liv’s voice suggesting she was pulling her mother’s leg.
Alice, for her part, laughed and ruffled her daughter’s wild hair. “Glad to see your sense of humor wasn’t damaged in the accident.”
Olivia sniffed. “Neither were my taste buds.”
Alice smiled. “All right there, sassy. Eat your oatmeal. No complaining.”
Liv made a face but continued to fill her mouth. Alex took a big sip from the coffee, hoping it would keep him from saying anything else stupid.
“What are you doing here?” Liv asked bluntly.
“Olivia.”
“I mean in Florida,” she clarified. “Don’t you play in California?” She looked at her mother, both eyebrows raised as if saying, See, I wasn’t being rude.
“Oh.” Alex prodded his bagel, wishing he’d taken a big bite to give him longer to come up with a response. “I wasn’t doing very well, so they sent me here until I could get better.”
Olivia nodded. “Is it working?”
Alex glanced from her to Alice and smiled in spite of his attempt to remain smooth. “Yeah. I think things are improving.”
“My dad came to see me, but then he had to go back. I thought maybe they gave you time off too, like they did for him. But I guess that means you can stay longer.”
Alice went stiff.
It hadn’t escaped Alex’s attention that the first night he’d eaten dinner with them, Alice had constantly cut off Liv’s stories about her father. At the time he’d assumed there was bad blood between the two. Maybe a bitter divorce, perhaps a sordid custody battle. The kind of things he had no place asking about.
But something about the way Liv was talking about her father tugged at his brain. Something…familiar.
He turned his attention back to Alice, whose face was now bright red, and she’d begun ripping chunks off her bagel. He wasn’t sure he was in any position to push the subject further, but if he didn’t ask, his curiosity would nag at him.
“Hey, Liv?” He spoke to the child, but his gaze remained locked on her mother. Alice lifted her eyes and watched him but didn’t make any move to stop what he was doing. “What’s your dad’s name?”
“Matt.” She ate another mouthful of oatmeal.
“Matt what?”
As Liv continued to chew, she stared at her mother for aid. “Hernandez,” Alice whispered.
Now Alex’s attention returned to the girl. Her iced-coffee skin, those dark curls, the light brown eyes. God, it was like a tiny girl-shaped clone sitting in front of him. The similarities were so close he was surprised he hadn’t seen it before.
“Your dad plays baseball too, hey?” he said, glancing back to Alice. She wasn’t looking at him now. Instead she stared into her coffee like the secrets of the universe were being unlocked in the swirling cream.
“Yeah. He’s real good. You know him?” Suddenly Olivia was excited. She’d put her spoon aside and was watching Alex, waiting for his reply.
“We play in different leagues, but yeah, I know him.” The way most players with the same amount of active time knew each other. They weren’t buddies, but they’d met enough times to recognize each other and make friendly chitchat if they crossed paths.
“He’s pretty great, right?” Her cheeks were bright, eyes wide with enthusiasm. He had a feeling she didn’t get to talk about her dad a lot. It certainly seemed like a topic Alice preferred to avoid.
Which shed a lot of light on her misgivings about Alex himself.
“Sure,” Alex lied. The Matt Hernandez he knew was a selfish, self-centered prick with a sense of entitlement almost equal to the size of his ego. But no little girl needed to hear those things about her father. “He’s a great player.” That, at least, was true.
“I knew it.” Olivia nodded proudly and resumed eating.
As silence descended on the table, Alex began to consider all the things Alice had told him, all her reasons for thinking they could never have a functional relationship.
It wasn’t about him at all. And it was only half because of what he did. All her excuses stemmed from her history with Matt Fucking Hernandez. Alex sat back, the coffee still in his hands, and thought about Matt Hernandez, trying to wrap his head around Matt and Alice being together. He couldn’t picture it, and when he could, he wished he hadn’t.
Who had Matt been nine or ten years ago? Alex was pretty sure he’d been drafted right out of high school, so he would have already been in the mix with the Mets at that point, but still in their farm league. An up-and-comer, not the superstar he was now. Ten years ago Alex had been moving into college, all his hopes focused on being a big league prospect. Alex hadn’t been drafted until his junior year, almost four years after Matt.
That was four extra years for Matt’s head to grow, and four extra years for Alice to foster her misgivings about baseball players.
Alex wanted to talk about it. He wanted to tell her they weren’t all like that, he wasn’t like that, but he couldn’t very well make any convincing arguments with Olivia sitting across the table. And even if he could, how much of what he said would she believe?
The truth was, if all went well, he’d be going back to San Francisco in a couple of weeks. And as much as he liked Alice and wanted to be with her, he also needed to be back in the game. Baseball was his life, it was his guiding passion, and though being with her felt good and right, something was missing.
Until he was back in a Felons jersey, he wasn’t going to be completely himself.
But he didn’t think baseball and Alice needed to be mutually exclusive. There had to be a way he could convince her they migh
t work out, even if he still played in California.
Mostly, though, he wanted to convince her he wasn’t Matt Hernandez.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The ball was long gone.
Alice—still wearing her grease-stained work apron—leaned against the chain-link fence and watched Alex’s home run peel out of the park and into the stadium seats. The small crowd went wild, and the pack of kids in the outfield lawn clamored to find the souvenir.
She couldn’t make Alex out all too well from where she was standing—he was a small figure wearing the team’s white home game jersey—but she’d heard the announcer call his name when he’d come up to the plate.
It had been two very long days since Alex had woken up beside her and they’d shared the dreaded Bad Breakfast. When she’d opened her eyes that morning, she’d felt bright and sunny and happy. Even the awkwardness of having Alex share breakfast with Olivia hadn’t sent her into a panic.
Until those two awful little words.
My dad.
Translation, two less little, equally awful words: Matt Hernandez.
Leave it to Matt to find a way to ruin things without being around.
And leave it to you to blame everything on Matt, her brain scolded. She hated being right about that too. She was using Matt as an excuse to push all her problems onto someone else. If not Matt, then Alex, but her problems were never Alice problems.
She fiddled with the pockets on her apron and debated sticking around for the next inning, but it would be at least two more before he took the plate again, and the sun was already going down. Her mother had arrived the previous day to “help out” with Olivia, but Misty Darling’s idea of help was to stick her nose into everyone else’s business at all times.
Misty would never have won any mother-of-the-year awards, but she seemed to think she was in a suitable position to judge Alice’s mothering. Normally it was kept to a distance, since she lived a hundred miles away, but whenever she came around, the opinions started flying like bullets.
Alice couldn’t get too frustrated with Misty, though, because her mother was doing her a big favor by helping out with Liv. All the same—and in spite of what he’d done—she couldn’t wait for Kevin to get home.
Her phone buzzed.
Think of the devil.
“Hi, Misty.”
“Hey, kitten. Can you bring home burgers or something? I tried to cook that casserole you left, but I forgot it in the oven and…well, it’s a bit mesquite. I mean, if that’s your thing, we can still eat it, but I think the kid might want something more substantial.”
Alice had tuned out most of the conversation, hearing only every other word her mother said. “Okay. Why…?” The idea of arguing with Misty exhausted her, so she let it go with an unfinished question. “Okay. I’ll get something.”
With Misty at the house, there was no way to invite Alex over to talk. Over the last two days they’d exchanged texts and a quick phone call, but nothing as serious as what they needed. It was clear they had to have a serious discussion about Matt. She had to explain…or try. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say or what he might ask, but she knew the unfortunate conversation had to happen.
It wasn’t like she’d lied, but she hadn’t been totally open either, and sometimes that was worse.
She texted him, knowing he wouldn’t get it until after the game. Your room, tonight. Name the time, I’ll bring the wine.
She might need to be a little drunk to make the whole thing easier.
Maybe a lot drunk.
The lot was full, so she’d had to park on the street. On her way back to the car she wished she could undo the text. Perhaps it wasn’t the right time. It could certainly wait a few more days, couldn’t it?
But in a few days he might be packing his bags to go back to San Francisco. She’d been watching the minor league stats, and she knew he was getting the heat back into his swing. Enough heat and the Felons would want him in their rotation again.
Then she’d have to scratch him from her personal lineup card and let him go back where he belonged.
And it sucked.
She wanted to be where he belonged. She wanted to be his…his touchstone. The place he thought of as home when he was gone a long time, the place he couldn’t get enough of.
But to be his, she needed to be honest. And giving herself over to someone that way was something she didn’t know how to do. Was it possible to want to be in love, yet convince herself she didn’t deserve it? Was she destined to screw everything up for herself because of some preconceived notion she wasn’t worthy of getting happiness?
“Ugh,” she groaned, climbing into the car.
It had been easier to ignore the desire for love when she didn’t have a hope in hell of finding it. A therapist might tell her it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that’s why she didn’t see a therapist. And because they were too expensive.
Now she was confronted with this man. This wonderful, warm, sexy-as-hell man. And for some reason he didn’t care about her baggage, he didn’t mind that she had a kid, and he’d even stuck around after dealing with her bitchy moods. She wanted this man. And beyond all logic, he wanted her.
Was she really going to squander things because she had a shitty ex? Was she going to screw everything up intentionally on the off chance they might end up hurt, and it would be hard?
What was she waiting for?
She checked her cell phone at every stop sign and red light, waiting for a message. Sitting in the drive-through at McDonald’s, she glanced roughly forty-seven times, but the notification light never came on. It wasn’t until she rolled into her driveway that the phone started to ring.
She juggled the cell in one hand and the two big McDonald’s bags in the other, bumping the car door closed with her hip. “Hello?”
“You’re bringing the wine, are you?” Alex sounded tired but was still his warm, joking self. “Don’t you know what wine does to me?”
“What’s that?” She placed the McDonald’s bags on the hood of the car, hoping to avoid going into the house at least a few minutes longer. If she was pressed, she could pretend reception inside was bad.
“For one thing, it makes me horny.”
“Oh? Is that all?” Alice smirked. “I think I can handle horny Alex.” It was nice to hear him teasing her. If he was able to make sex jokes, he couldn’t be too mad.
“And sleepy.”
“Well, that is a problem, isn’t it? The two don’t tend to play well together.”
“Tell me about it. It’s like the old NyQuil experiment.”
“The what?”
“You know, take a dose of NyQuil and try to jerk off. See what wins—the drugs or the big O.” He yawned on the other end of the line. “Right now I think the sleep would win.”
“Maybe no wine then.”
“Maybe not. But I’d still like to see you.” There was something lingering at the end of the sentence, like a nearly audible ellipsis, the unspoken words coming through louder than the spoken ones.
“Yeah. I think it might be a good idea for me to come over. I have to make sure Liv is fed and in bed. I don’t much trust my mother’s maternal skills when it comes to caring for a child. You think you can last a couple hours?”
“I can try.”
“That’s all I ask.”
“For you, babe, I’ll skip the NyQuil.” He chuckled then yawned again. “Give me a call before you come this way.”
“Why, so you can kick the other women out?”
His reply was a short, derisive snort. “No, so I can make sure you don’t get here and find me passed out in my boxers in a puddle of my own drool.”
“That was almost a sexy mental image until you added the drool part.”
“As luck would have it, I’m almost sexy, except for the reality part.”
Olivia had come to stand in the front door, peering out at Alice through the screen. Her bruises had begun to fade, but the yellow-green re
sidue they left behind made her look sick, giving her cinnamon-colored skin a gray, unhealthy hue. But overall the kid was healing up beautifully. Alice figured she’d be able to go back to school the following week.
Blessedly, Kevin was scheduled to be released over the weekend, though his recovery would come much slower. Broken bones didn’t heal the same as bruises.
Not to mention the things beneath the surface that might never heal.
She shook her head as if she could dislodge the unhappy thoughts of her brother and the issues no casts would be able to fix. Liv had both brows raised expectantly. Alice shook one of the bags in her daughter’s direction, and Liv’s giant eyes lit up.
Alice wouldn’t win any mother-of-the-year awards by stuffing her child full of McDonald’s and calling it dinner, but it wasn’t like she made a regular habit of it. She had tried to leave a healthy dinner, but Misty had managed to mess it up.
Huge shocker there.
“I gotta go. I’ll call you in a bit so you have time to kick your hoes to the curb and take your hand out of your boxers before I show up.”
“I can only promise one of two.”
“Better than nothing.” She hung up, tucking the phone in her back pocket and gathering up the bags.
“Did you get me a Happy Meal?” Liv asked, her voice tentative. She was at the weird in-between age where she wanted to seem older than she was, but in many ways still clung to her childhood.
“I did.” Alice wasn’t sure if this was the correct answer, but when Liv made grabby hands in her direction, she assumed she’d done all right. She handed off the smaller of the two bags once she was through the door, and Liv ran off towards the kitchen, barely raising her eyes as she searched for the toy.
“That you, Al-Al?” Misty’s voice came from the kitchen, raspy in a way that might be considered sexy, only Alice knew how many cigarettes the woman had smoked to get it. She was a half-dozen packs away from needing one of those throat boxes to talk for her, but nothing would dissuade Misty from her habit, and Alice had long since stopped trying.
“No, it’s a neighborhood burglar who likes to leave McDonald’s in their wake.”