Chapter 21 #2
Dallas smiled at me a little as he leaned toward me—and for one stupid second, I don’t know why, I thought he was going to kiss me—but all I felt was a tug at the back of my hair and I knew he’d pulled my loose hair out of the collar.
He narrowed his eyes and I narrowed mine right back, and the next thing I knew, he reached behind me again and tucked the rope of hair he was holding back inside his jacket.
And he still smiled at me, just a little, little, little thing, as he said, “Better.” His hand went to the red baseball cap on my head, and he pulled the brim down a half-inch on my forehead. “Nice hat.”
It was that, that had me smirking at him as I soaked in the heat his body had left in the soft material of the inside of the jacket. “It came broken in to the shape of my head.” I huddled into the jacket. “I don’t ever give things back. You’ve just learned that the hard way.”
He smiled, slowly coming to his feet from the crouch he’d been in.
“I like your cap,” I told him honestly. The emerald green made his hazel eyes pop like crazy. Plus, it was just fucking cute. “Did Miss Pearl make it for you?”
“I made it,” he said with a twist to his mouth. “She taught me how.”
The stupid smile that came over my face had me staring at him in awe. I even slapped my hand right over the left side of my chest. “Are you real?”
Dallas tapped my chin. “I’ll knit you one, Peach.”
“I could have given you my jacket,” the poor, poor dad beside me piped in, breaking my trance of love.
Dallas’s attention instantly moved toward the man, and as the words “She’s fine” came out of his mouth, he turned that tall, muscular body and parked himself in the tight space between both of us.
He didn’t fit. Not at all. His elbow pretty much landed on my lap and most of his thigh and calf were pressed and aligned to my matching body parts.
I shifted to my left an inch and the length of his leg followed me, his elbow staying exactly where it was.
What the hell was happening?
“How’s it going, Kev?” Dallas asked the dad, still smothering me but somehow his attention elsewhere.
Hmm. Shoving my hands into the pockets of his jacket, the back of my left hand hit something crumpled. Paper. Making sure he wasn’t looking at me, I pulled what I figured were balled-up receipts out, being nosey and wondering what the hell he’d bought.
But it wasn’t recycled white paper I pulled out.
They looked like Post-it notes. Plain, yellow Post-it notes like I’d seen in his truck. That just made me more curious.
Both men were talking as I started opening the notes as quietly as possible, really not caring if he caught me in the act by that point. But he didn’t turn to look at me. He was too busy talking about who he thought the Texas Rebels were going to try and recruit next season.
The ball of paper was really two square-shaped notes stacked together.
I read one and then I read the other.
Then I went back and read the top one and followed it up by reading the bottom one.
I did it a third time. And then I balled them back up and stuffed them where I’d found them.
I didn’t need to look at them again to remember what was on each.
The first one, in small, neat handwriting that was crossed out with hard dashes across the letters, like he’d changed his mind, had said: YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE.
The second one… I sucked in a breath through my nose and made sure not to glance at Dallas even out of the corner of my eye.
It was the second one that had me feeling like a twitchy crackhead. The words hadn’t been crossed out like the first one, and there was a smudge on the corner of the Post-it that went straight to my heart. It was a smudge like the ones I always spotted on his neck and arms.
I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU.
I can’t live without you.
The first time I read it, I wondered who the hell he couldn’t live without. But I wasn’t that stupid and na?ve, even though my insides felt like they were on the verge of exploding.
He wasn’t… there was no way….
What exactly was it that I had told him and Trip in my kitchen during Josh’s sleepover what felt like forever ago?
“ Tia!”
I sat up and looked around, recognizing Louie’s voice instantly.
Dallas must have too, because he shot to his feet and scanned the area.
But I found the blond head instantly; beside him was Josh.
It was the woman in front of them that had me zeroing in like an eagle on the hunt for an innocent mouse for breakfast. Of all the women it could have been, it was Christy.
Fucking Christy.
The notes forgotten for now, I swiped my bag off the bleacher and left the rest of my shit where it was, that second of hesitation giving Dallas a head start on the route toward the boys.
He made it before I did, and that was when I noticed that Josh had his arm around his brother’s shoulder.
The last time he’d made that kind of protective gesture had been at Rodrigo’s funeral.
Which meant someone was about to die because Josh and Louie should never feel threatened by anything.
“What happened?” Dallas asked immediately, his hand reaching out toward Louie. I didn’t miss how Lou took his hand instantly.
“She called me a brat,” Louie blurted out, his other little hand coming up to meet with the one already clutching our neighbor’s.
I blinked and told myself I was not going to look at Christy until I had the full story.
“Why?” Dallas was the one who asked.
“He spilled some of his hot chocolate on her purse,” it was Josh who explained. “He said sorry, but she called him a brat. I told her not to talk to my brother like that, and she told me I should have learned to respect my elders.”
For the second time around this woman, I went to ten. Straight through ten, past Go, and collected two hundred dollars.
“I tried to wipe it up,” Louie offered, those big blue eyes going back and forth between Dallas and me for support.
“You should teach these boys to watch where they’re going,” Christy piped up, taking a step back.
Be an adult. Be a role model, I tried telling myself. “It was an accident,” I choked out. “He said he was sorry… and your purse is leather and black, and it’ll be fine,” I managed to grind out like this whole thirty-second conversation was jabbing me in the kidneys with sharp knives.
“I’d like an apology,” the woman, who had gotten me suspended and made me cry, added quickly.
I stared at her long face. “For what?”
“From Josh, for being so rude.”
My hand started moving around the outside of my purse, trying to find the inner compartment when Louie suddenly yelled, “Mr. Dallas, don’t let her get her pepper spray!”
The fuck?
Oh my God. I glared at Louie. “I was looking for a baby wipe to offer her one, Lou. I wasn’t getting my pepper spray.”
“Nuh-uh,” he argued, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Christy take a step back. “I heard you on the phone with Vanny. You said, you said if she made you mad again you were gonna pepper spray her and her mom and her mom’s mom in the—”
“Holy sh—oot, Louie!” My face went red, and I opened my mouth to argue that he hadn’t heard me correctly.
But… I had said those words. They had been a joke, but I’d said them.
I glanced at Dallas, the serious, easygoing man who happened to look in that instant like he was holding back a fart but was hopefully just a laugh, and finally peeked at the woman who I’d like to think brought this upon herself. “Christy, I would never do that—”
The pain in my ass had some balls to her because, even though she had one foot set to the side like she was prepared to take off, she still managed to clear her throat and bring her attention to Dallas, her mouth pursed.
“Dallas, I feel like that’s grounds for kicking them off the team. It isn’t sportsmanlike.”
“Neither is making someone cry, and we already addressed that, didn’t we, Christy?” he replied to her in that cool voice that now had me imagining him in his dress whites. “Drop it. It was an accident, he apologized, and we can move on from this.”
She blinked so fast, it was like she was fluttering her eyelashes.
Seeing her up close again, Christy wasn’t ugly.
She had to be in her mid-thirties, she was in good shape, and when she wasn’t making ugly faces, she wouldn’t be horrible to look at.
A memory from the tryout nudged at my brain…
had those moms said something about Christy liking Dallas?
“Drop it?” she asked in a squeaky voice.
“Drop it,” he confirmed.
“If this was anyone else, you’d at least suspend them—”
I knew she had a point, and suddenly I sucked in a breath, expecting the worse.
But all Dallas said was, “You’re right. But I’m not going to. You’ve been starting this mess with them, Christy, and we all know it. You and I already talked about this, didn’t we? I don’t want to suspend anyone, but if I do, it isn’t going to be them.”
Yeah, I could tell from the look on her face, she liked Dallas. And she liked Dallas a lot. “But you’re playing favorites!”
“I’m always going to be fair with the boys, but I will play favorites with everyone else who isn’t an active member of the team. Don’t put me into that position, because I know she”—he tipped his head toward me—“only bites when she has to, and I will always take her side. Are we clear on that?”
He would?
Christy’s cheeks puffed up with so much indignation, she literally squawked.
Everything from her forehead down was red.
“This is unbelievable. Fine! But don’t think Jonathan is going to be on this team much longer.
” Her gaze stayed on Dallas for a moment, a dozen emotions flashing across her face before, just like that, she turned on her heel and disappeared into the crowd.
Why did I suddenly feel bad for her?
It wasn’t until then that I noticed half the parents of the team were sitting on the tables around the concession stand. What was probably half the parents of every other team playing in the tournament that weekend were, too. Great.
I cleared my throat and popped my lips. “Well, that was awkward.”
“I’m not a brat.” Louie was still hung up and outraged.
I pointed my finger at him. “You’re a tattletale, that’s what you are. Nosey Rosie. What did I tell you about snitches?”
“You love them?”
It was Dallas who laughed first, one of his hands already sliding into his back pocket where he pulled out his wallet and a bill. “Lou, go buy another hot chocolate.”
Louie nodded and took the five, heading back into the line as Josh, who was at my side, said, “I’m gonna go find my friends.”
“All right,” I said. “Careful.”
Josh nodded and disappeared.
Dallas looked down at me with a serious expression on his face, and I raised my eyebrows back at him. A sense of being overwhelmed filled my chest as I snuggled in deeper into the warm jacket, the backs of my fingers brushed against the Post-it notes in the pocket.
What exactly was going on?
“You’re always going to take my side, Professor?” I pretty much whispered the question.
He took a step toward me, his gaze still centered directly on my face. And he nodded.
“What did you guys talk about?” I asked him, still so low only he could hear.
Dallas took another step forward, the tips of his tennis shoes touching the tips of my boots. His chin was down to his collar as he took me in. And in a voice that was a lot louder than mine had been, he said, “I suspended her for two weeks after what happened, you know.”
I didn’t know. I was actually pretty damn shocked no one had told me.
The surprise must have been apparent on my face—or maybe he knew me too well, because he dipped his chin down even further in a partial nod.
“I did. And I apologized to her if I’d given her the wrong impression that I was interested in her, informing her that I wasn’t and we needed to keep things professional. ”
“I thought she liked you.”
He shrugged, the corners of his mouth indenting just slightly. “It isn’t the first time it’s happened.”
“What? Getting hit on by moms on the team?”
“Yeah.”
I snickered. “Are you sure you weren’t imagining it?”
Dallas made a face before this giant, beaming grin took over his mouth, so potent I could have taken his jacket off and been warm the rest of the day. “I’m sure, baby.”
Baby again? All I could say was “Uh-huh,” so that I wouldn’t sound like an idiot.
“I wanna ask if you really said you’d pepper spray her, but I already know the answer.”
Pressing my lips together, I shrugged.
He reached up toward me and brushed the backs of his fingers over my cheek, still smiling wide, and pinched my chin. “You’re fucking nuts.”
All I did was shrug again. “You know that, but you’re still here, aren’t you?”
His smile melted into a smaller one, and the deep breath he let out made it seem like it had weighed a thousand pounds. Then his fingers brushed over my cheek again, and Dallas moved to tuck a strand of her behind my ear. His voice was soft. “I’m still here, Peach.”