29. Harlowe
CHAPTER 29
HARLOWE
I entered the park where the Knights played with a sudden weakness in my legs and the urge to sit down right where I was. Why had I agreed to this? I had no idea, other than it was important to Brooks. Yet the idea of facing his parents—alone—made me want to turn around and run.
We were into October, yet the days were still on the warm side, but the night cooled right off. I’d come prepared. I was wearing jeans—maybe for the last time because I was starting my second trimester and everything was getting a little tight.
Still, I was there to support him. This was what co-parenting was going to look like, in my opinion. We’d not only be there for our kid, but also support each other.
As I was about to open my phone back up to see where my seat was—he’d sent it, but I hadn’t looked at it—I heard, “Harlowe.”
I’d recognize my best friend’s voice anywhere. Still, it took me a few moments to figure out which direction it was coming from. Then I saw her as she hurried toward me.
“It’s insane here,” I said when she grabbed my arm.
“I know. It always is, especially for the playoffs.”
Brooks had told me I’d be sitting in his mom’s seats. Those were ones she’d set aside as soon as she’d known the Knights would be in the playoffs. Most owners, I was told, used a suite—a box for them and their guests to watch the game. But Mrs. Briggs liked to be down near the field, especially this year. All of her sons were playing.
Camden took me down and those seats were near the dugout. Very close to where they usually sat. The season tickets that her dad had for every game along with some added ones. I wasn’t sure who all was coming, but I was happy to see Monroe, Everly, and Amity down there waiting for us.
After I’d greeted each of them, Amity grabbed my wrist to stop me from pulling away. Relief washed over me that the Briggs parents weren’t anywhere near us. Maybe I’d heard it wrong. Maybe they were up in a suite.
“Are you all right?” Amity asked. “We all heard about what happened with Mr. Briggs.”
“Yeah. I’m all right,” I told her as Camden rearranged who was sitting where so that I’d be next to Amity since she was talking to me right now. “I don’t do well with confrontation.”
She nodded. “I can totally understand that. Especially when it’s Mr. Briggs.” That was right. Amity would’ve seen Mr. Briggs in action at least once, given that she’d grown up with all of us. Several years ahead of Camden and me, but she had still been around. “Good thing the guys don’t mind confrontation with their dad. Nor does Camden.”
“Hey, they raised me this way,” Camden interjected. “If he’s being a dick, I’ll call him ‘a dick.”
I snorted. “She did leap like a rabid snake.”
“Of course I did.” She nudged me with her hip from the other side of me. “He was being an asshole.”
I was about to agree with her when I saw her parents out of the corner of my eye and kept my focus on the field. Before they got down here, Brooks stepped out of the dugout in all of his gear and immediately looked in our direction. Once his eyes had found me, the corners of his mouth turned up and he gave me a slight nod.
He’d seen me. That meant if things were too weird with her parents there, I could leave. He’d know I’d come like I’d said I would.
“Harlowe,” Mrs. Briggs called out. She was wearing jeans, which I almost never saw her in, and a long-sleeved T-shirt and was carrying a jacket over her arm. When her gaze met mine, she waved me over.
I only had to pass Camden to get into the aisle while everything inside of me was telling me not to go, not to talk to them, but I figured we were in public and their dad couldn’t be too bad with all of these witnesses.
“Harlowe, honey.” Mrs. Briggs pulled me into her arms for a tight hug. One unlike I’d ever get from my own mother, whether she knew I was pregnant or not. “Congratulations,” she said right before letting me go. “I’m so excited that you’re making me a grandma.”
This wave of relief crashed over me. We weren’t ignoring that I was pregnant and at least she was happy about it. Or had come to terms with it.
“My understanding is that this wasn’t planned, but it’s going to be great. You’re going to be a fantastic mother and I know my son. He’s going to be an amazing dad.”
Tears pricked at my eyes. I wouldn’t cry here, damn it.
“Thank you,” I whispered as she hugged me again.
“I know exactly how hard it is with even one child when Dad is gone all the time,” she told me because when this baby was born, the season would have started. Brooks would sometimes be on the road. “So, this is a direct order to call me. I don’t go on the road with them. Only occasional away games. So, I’ll always be here for anything you need.” She squeezed my hand. “I mean it, Harlowe. Anything.”
Swallowing down the lump in my throat was hard. This was the motherly love that I’d never had in my life. While I wouldn’t want to bother her for pretty much anything, it was nice to know that I could if I needed to. In fact, I only planned to bother Camden. She was my best friend and this baby’s aunt. She’d be happy to be bothered.
Mrs. Briggs released my hand and stepped to the row behind us, where there were a few empty seats waiting to be filled. Which left me alone, face-to-face, with Brooks’s dad.
Mr. Briggs looked down at me. He was as tall as all the guys. Barely an inch difference between any of them. “I want to apologize, Harlowe.”
My eyebrows shot sky-high and out of the corner of my eye, I caught Camden’s head snapping toward us before she quickly looked back out to the field. She was as surprised as I was and wanted to try to look like she wasn’t listening when she was right there. Even talking quietly, she could hear him.
“I appreciate that,” I told him because I had no idea what else to say.
“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings,” he kept going. “Honestly, those words should’ve never left my mouth. It was a surprise. Not an excuse, but I’ve had this vision for my sons and it’s been made very clear to me that they need to live their own lives.” He took a breath, glanced at Brooks, who was watching from near the dugout, probably ready to tear a hole through the netting to get to me if his dad stepped out of line. “If Brooks is happy, I’ll be happy for him.”
“Really?” I asked because that was hard to believe. A change like that in Mr. Briggs wasn’t something any of us would’ve guessed.
“I’m trying,” he answered honestly. “It’s going to take time to change my thinking, but none of that was about you.” He grunted. “Well, I guess a lot of what I said was about you, but I wasn’t saying it with you in mind. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Mr. Briggs.”
He gave me a curt nod then followed his wife to their seats as I turned to Camden, dazed at what had just happened. Her eyes were wide in surprise. All I could do was move back to my seat beside her.
“What the hell?” I mouthed so he wouldn’t hear it.
While still wide-eyed, she shrugged. “I told you Brooks laid into him. Twice. I didn’t even get to tell you about the second one.” Now I wanted to know, but she waved me off and said, “Later.”
Talking about it with him right there was probably a bad idea. Plus, we didn’t have time to dissect it. We had game one of the first playoff series to cheer for.
Brooks had stood there watching the entire exchange, but with a satisfied smile, he pulled his face mask down and headed for the plate.
“Do you think this means he’s suddenly turned over a new leaf?” Apparently, I didn’t have the patience to wait.
“Doubt it,” she said back. “But he knows he doesn’t get an opinion on the women in my brothers’ lives.”
“Wonder if that extends to you.”
She snorted then turned to me. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not dating anyone.”
The other girlfriends couldn’t have heard what had happened, but I was thinking we’d have a slumber party to go over it like they did on true crime podcasts. Every detail would be gone over with a metaphorical black light.
The game was intense. At this level, even the tiniest mistake could change the game. But the Knights didn’t make a mistake that night. Cobb didn’t give up any hits. Minnesota didn’t get their first hit until a reliever came in.
I waved to Brooks as he was leaving the field and sent him a text of congratulations. Camden wanted me to hang around, but I wasn’t going to be the reason Brooks wasn’t ready for the game tomorrow.
That game… they lost. It was so hard to be in the seat and see it happen. All that meant was there wouldn’t be a sweep. There were still three games left, though unfortunately, the next two were in Minnesota.
“You should come,” Camden said into the phone the day after the second playoff game. “It’s just Minnesota. It’s barely a trip.”
“I have to work, Camden. I can’t just drop everything.” Though I kind of wanted to. After all, why was I working so hard on a business that wasn’t mine and wouldn’t ever be mine? “This baby is going to be expensive.”
She scoffed. “You know damn well you don’t have to worry about that. Brooks is going to take care of the both of you, whether you like it or not.”
That was right. I did know it, but I wanted to need being taking care of as little as possible. Though if I got too much further in this pregnancy without finding another job, taking care of me would start a lot sooner than the birth of the baby. Whether it was legal or not, most people don’t want to hire a woman who was about to take two months off for maternity leave.
“You have fun,” I told her.
I might not have gone to the game, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t watching on TV, yelling at the screen in a way that I never had before over the next few days. Once again, they won one and lost one. Which put the series tied and it was coming back to Kalamazoo for the last game.
Brooks didn’t even need to ask me to come to that one. I was in the seat cheering them on. As I was with the ALCS, which they did sweep. Won it in four games, though this time, the winning game wasn’t in Kalamazoo.
The only thing left was the World Series.
Each day, Brooks was diligent about sending me texts or calling me. Almost like he had a plan to make sure that I’d miss him if he didn’t. Of course I missed him. I loved him and that had never been clearer than when he’d given me the space that I’d asked for.
It just wasn’t something I was going to address before the World Series was over.
The Knights won their first two games of the World Series at home and Kalamazoo was buzzing with excitement. This was the second time that Brooks had been to the World Series with Kalamazoo, but they’d lost last time. None of the other Briggses had ever been.
It was like you could feel everyone’s expectations everywhere you went.
The morning of the third game, which was in Washington, D.C. and again, I declined the offer to travel with Camden, I got a phone call from my father. Well, it was both him and Mom on speaker. I hadn’t spoken to them since the day they’d shown me what it would take to buy Cleats & Kegs. Honestly, I’d been expecting the call to say I was out of time and they’d found a buyer.
“Hey, honey,” Dad said when I’d answered.
“Hey. What’s up?” I was trying to sound aloof, but there was a current of fear and worry underneath it. My parents didn’t call me almost ever, so I knew what this was. “You sell Cleats & Kegs?”
Dad sighed. “We did. I’m sorry, honey. We just couldn’t come down on the price.”
This time, tears didn’t burn my eyes—they just began to fall. This was the moment I hadn’t been looking forward to. I was going to be out of a job.
“We don’t know if the new owner will be keeping all the staff or what’s going to happen. We didn’t meet him,” Mom added.
Yeah. No shit. Thanks, Mom.
“Right.” I wiped the tears away with my hand. “Oh, I should probably mention that I’m pregnant. Not that either of you care.” I was met with silence. Yeah. They weren’t happy about it. “So anyway, thanks for letting me know.” Then I ended the call and threw myself down onto the bed to let all that stress and emotion out of my body in the form of tears.
A few minutes later, my dad sent me a text telling me that they were leaving for Italy in two days so this would have to wait until they got back but the news of my pregnancy was a shock.
Yeah. No shit.
Later that night before the game, I went to the bathroom and my heart stopped. There were little spots of blood in my underwear. Once my heart started back up, it was pounding like a fucking drum.
The first thing I did was call my doctor. Someone was always on call. She said she didn’t think it was anything to worry about, as spotting was normal in pregnancy sometimes, but she wanted me to go to the ER to get checked out.
Which I did. Alone. And I sure as hell didn’t tell Brooks. Even if he had his phone near him, he would just worry and there wasn’t anything he could do. I didn’t want to pull Camden away when the doctor was so sure it was nothing.
Luckily, at the hospital, the ER doctor said everything looked really good. The spotting had been so minimal and there was none that he could see when he checked. Everything was fine. I heard the baby’s heartbeat and the ultrasound showed the little thing as active as was normal.
Though it was weird to see something inside of you moving, but you couldn’t feel it. He just recommended I take it easy over the next couple of days and come back if it happened again.
At home, I set myself up on the couch—the doctor had said take it easy , not bedrest —to watch the rest of the game. They lost, which put the series at two to one.
Once I knew it was done, I called Camden right away.
“Were you watching?” she asked.
“Most of it.”
“It was so close, but I’m sure they’ll win tomorrow. You know that that means? The final game will be in Kalamazoo.”
“That’s great,” I told her without the usual excitement.
“What’s wrong?”
I went on to tell her everything that had happened that day. She waited patiently as I spoke, letting me get it all out.
“I’m so sorry about the restaurant, Harlowe and that your parents are such assholes about the baby,” she said first.
I shrugged. “You know I expected it. Doesn’t even bother me.”
“Right.” Though I didn’t think she totally believed me. “Have you told Brooks about the hospital? Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, everything looked great. My doctor said it was normal to have that happen sometimes.”
“That’s good.” She sighed. “Brooks?”
“No. I haven’t told him and I’m not going to.”
“ Harlowe ,” she warned.
“No. Listen. This is enough of a stressful time for him and nothing’s wrong. If something were wrong, I’d tell him. No question.” She was quiet on the other end. “Please don’t tell him, Camden. I know I ask you that a lot and it’s not fair, but I’ll tell him once the World Series is over, I promise.”
“You swear?” she asked.
“I swear. I’m not trying to keep anything from him. I just want him to be able to focus on the games. It’s important.”
“Yeah.” She blew out a breath, which fanned against the phone. “All right. Fine. But if there’s even a hint of something wrong—”
“I’ll call him first myself.”
“OK,” she said, giving in. “I won’t say anything, but if he gets mad at me, I expect you to come to my defense.”
Nodding, though she couldn’t see it, I said, “I’ll put my body between you and him. Thank you.”
“All right. I’ve got to find my parents’ car to get back to the hotel,” she told me. “Be safe.”
“Always.”
At least, no matter what happened, I’d always have Camden on my side.
But something occurred to me… with other parts of my life falling apart, didn’t I want someone to lean on? Camden was great and would be there for me, but didn’t I want something… more?
I did and Brooks had been the one I’d always wanted. It seemed to me that we could be together now. Camden would be fine with it. His father had apologized and, while not happy about it, didn’t sound like he’d make life miserable. The rest of my problems had figured themselves out even though not with the resolution that I would’ve wanted.
The biggest reason was that I wanted him.
I just wasn’t going to do anything about it until after the World Series. He needed to focus and even good news could be a distraction.