Chapter 4
Kai
Max makes a jumbled sound that I’ve come to know as meaning “snack” as he points towards the kitchen in my hotel room.
I adjust him on my hip. “You want a pouch?”
He points to the kitchen again.
“Can you say pouch ?” I prompt, but he just keeps pointing in that direction.
I grab his favorite flavor of pureed fruit, undoing the top and letting him feed himself as I carry him around my room, tidying up before Miller comes over to watch him for the first time.
“Is that good, Bug?”
He smacks his tiny lips together.
He still only has a handful of words in his vocabulary, but it’s wild when I get to hear them.
It’s even wild to watch him feed himself though he’s been doing it for months.
It might sound pathetic, but the small changes I see in him as he learns and grows are the most exciting moments of my everyday life.
And right on cue, I have to push away the lingering disappointment and questions, wondering what moments I missed for those first six months of his life when I didn’t even know he existed.
I should probably put him down. Let him chill in his highchair or something but I’m always a needy little fucker on game days. I hate knowing I’m leaving him behind for the rest of the day. I miss dinner with him, and bedtime. So yeah, I’m a bit helicopter-y on afternoons I have to go to the field.
A knock sounds at the door and I find myself checking out my room, making sure it looks okay before answering it for my coach’s daughter. Except when I open the door, it’s not Miller waiting for me on the other side. It’s my brother.
“What are you doing here?” I ask as he barrels inside.
“Heard the new nanny is hot.” He looks around my hotel room, for her I guess. “And a woman, thank fuck.”
“Don’t curse in front of my kid.”
Who am I kidding? Max is being raised by a baseball team. He’s heard worse already.
“Sorry, Maxie,” Isaiah says. “Thank frick. Better, Dad?”
I roll my eyes.
“So where is she?”
“How do you even know about her or that she’s hot?”
“So, she is hot? I didn’t actually know that. I was manifesting .”
Isaiah takes a seat at the small kitchen nook, his feet up on the stool next to the one he’s sitting on.
I tend to get the biggest rooms on the road because I have another person living with me, and all of Max’s stuff eats at any available space I have.
Additionally, there’s always an adjoining room connected to mine for Max’s nanny to stay.
Now that Troy’s gone, it’s empty, but Miller will stay in there while I’m at the game tonight.
“She’s not not hot.”
“Oh my God,” my brother says, accusatorially. “You’re gonna bang the new nanny, aren’t you? So cliché, my guy.”
“No, I’m not. And neither are you because not only is she Max’s new nanny, but she’s also Monty’s daughter.”
Every muscle in Isaiah’s body freezes. “You’re kidding me. Monty has a hot daughter? How old is she?”
“Twenty-five.”
“And she’s good with kids?”
“Doubtful. She’s like a goddamn hurricane, but Monty’s adamant about me hiring her, so I don’t really have a choice.” Isaiah nods in understanding. “How the hell do you know about her? I’ve only just met her.”
“The team’s group chat is going off.” He holds up his phone and I adjust my glasses to look at it. “You should take it off mute every once in a while.”
Travis: Heard Max’s new nanny is a woman. Fucking finally, Ace.
Cody: Troy was cute, but his replacement is cuter. I think I saw her in the hallway earlier. I wouldn’t mind her being my nanny. Feed me. Tuck me into bed. Take my temperature too.
Isaiah: She’s not a nurse, you idiot.
Cody: I call dibs on her being my seatmate on the plane.
Travis: What the hell? That’s my seat.
Cody: Wait until you see her. You’ll understand.
Isaiah: You can have the plane seat. I call dibs on everything else.
An odd sense of annoyance rattles through me because this is Monty’s kid and Max’s new caretaker. She’s not here for them. They’re acting like a pack of starved dogs going after a single bone when, in reality, they have a buffet in every city we visit.
I would know. I used to have a buffet too.
“Okay.” I usher him off the stool. “You need to leave before she gets here.”
“No way. At least one of the Rhodeses needs to make a good impression and you’re too stressed and grumpy lately to do it.”
“If there’s one Rhodes I can count on making a good impression, it sure as hell isn’t going to be you. Max will do it.” My brows cinch. “And I’m not grumpy, you dick.”
I’m just tired . Tired of doing it all alone. Tired of feeling like I’m not doing enough.
“Really?” Isaiah asks with a huff of a laugh. “Because you used to be the happiest dude I knew, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw you genuinely having fun. Back in the day, you were a bigger flirt than me, with shockingly more game. When’s the last time you let that side come out?”
“There are ways to have fun other than screwing around in every city.”
Like watching the same YouTube video of farm animals singing and dancing on repeat. Or playing peekaboo behind a napkin for an hour straight in an attempt to get Max to stop crying while he’s teething. My new definitions of fun.
“Yeah, but that way is the most fun.” A smirk quirks on his lips.
In my twenties I was a massive flirt, and I did my fair share of fucking around, but responsibilities crept into my life again, shifting my priorities.
The flirty side pops out occasionally, when I’m out at work events alone, but then the reminder of who’s waiting for me at home brings me back to reality and I squash my former self.
But I’m not getting into that conversation with my little brother right now because as much as I love him, he’ll never understand. Our teen years were terrible, but he has no idea just how hard they were because I sheltered him from it all. It’s what I do. I take care of my responsibilities.
“Are you feeling okay?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“You look sick. Maybe you should call out tonight. Stay home. Watch my son.”
He rolls his eyes. “Says the guy who plays once every five days.”
“Exactly. And look how much I get paid for it. I’m essential .”
Isaiah barks a laugh. “I’m the shortstop. I play every single game. There are four more starting pitchers waiting for their night.”
“Which is why I should retire early. The Warriors will be fine without me.”
His brown eyes narrow. “You’re just running in circles hoping one of your points sticks, huh?”
“Worth a shot.”
“If Monty’s daughter is anything like him, she’ll be great with Max. What are you so worried about?”
A knock at the door sounds, cutting off that conversation.
“You’ll see.”
Isaiah turns back to me with a mischievous smile. “Who is it?” he calls out in a sing-song voice.
Shut the fuck up , I mouth.
“Don’t curse in front of my nephew.”
“Your favorite person in Miami,” Miller deadpans from the hallway.
“Sexy voice,” Isaiah whispers, and I find myself annoyed that he noticed.
He opens the door, casually leaning on the frame and blocking my view of the girl in the hall, but I watch as his spine stiffens before his head whips around to me, slack jaw and wide brown eyes.
I know that guy better than he knows himself, so it’s not hard to understand that he’s silently asking why I didn’t tell him that Miller is the girl he fell in love with from the elevator this morning.
“Isaiah, Miller. Miller, Isaiah. My brother.”
“Buy one, get one. Fun,” I hear her say, but I still can’t see her because my brother is frozen in the entryway.
“I’m the uncle,” he finally blurts out.
She laughs, a deep throaty sound that goes straight to my dick. “I put that together from the whole brother thing.”
“Isaiah, move.”
“Yeah. Welcome. Come on in.” He ushers her inside as if it were his room to welcome her into. “Can I get you anything? Water? A snack? My number?”
She completely ignores him.
As soon as he’s out of the way, she comes into view, still wearing those cutoff overalls and I’m not quite sure what’s so fascinating to me about her thighs, but they’re thick and muscular, the kind you get from years of playing softball.
And I can’t stop imagining how blissfully constricting they’d feel around my waist. Or even better—my face.
But then I remember this is Monty’s kid I’m thinking about, and I have to close my eyes to keep myself from looking at her.
“You good, Baseball Daddy?”
Isaiah cackles.
My eyes shoot open to find her looking at me like there’s something very, very wrong with me and clearly there is if I’m looking at this woman like that .
She’s borderline certifiable.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “This is Max.” I nod my head towards him, shifting my hip so he can see her better.
“Hi, Max,” Miller says, her eyes softening.
That wild-girl edge I saw this morning is calmer now, maybe for Max’s sake or maybe for mine, I’m not sure, but a small amount of my hesitation about this situation eases away.
Max blushes, burying his head into the crook of my neck, knocking off his little ball cap in the process.
He’s being shy, vastly different from his desperation to get to Miller this morning, but he’s not afraid of her the way he is with most strangers.
I think he’s simply aware of her attention, and even though he’s acting like he doesn’t, he likes it.
But there’s a part of me that’s loving that my son wants me regardless of the pretty girl calling out his name.
“He’s being shy.”
“That’s okay, Max. I tend to have that effect on boys.”
My eyes dart to Isaiah. Case in point—my brother, who is frozen like a statue in the kitchen, silent but mesmerized.
“Should we show Miller all your stuff?” I ask my son.
Max reaches up to use his hat to cover his pink cheeks, but it’s on the floor so his giddy smile is pretty obvious behind his arm.
“Come on, Bug.” I take his empty pouch, setting it on the kitchen counter before placing him on his feet.
“Bug?”