Chapter 14 #2
I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s been acting…
weird since the party. Asking me to go to a game to show the world we’re happily married seems more normal, except for the way he’s standing there, weight on one foot as if he’s nervous I’m going to say no.
Per the terms and conditions of our arrangement, I don’t get to say no.
I mentally redo my schedule. If I shift the meeting with an advisor earlier and swing by the store on my way back, I should be able to make the game. The walls will have to wait.
“Sure,” I say finally.
Brayden’s face does something—I’d almost think he was smiling if not for the way the expression drops a second later. “Okay, cool.” He also doesn’t budge from the doorway.
“Was there something else?” I ask. Because if I’m going to fit everything in, I needed to get started a half an hour ago.
“No.” Brayden himself pushes off the doorpost, then adds, “Not right now.”
What does that mean? But I don’t have time to ponder that, so I throw myself into getting ready instead.
During the game, I sit in the family room with a few of the other wives. Most have kids with them who run around making adorable noise. Please don’t let me get a migraine. Please don’t let me get a migraine.
Lexi is here, smiling, holding court as various wives and girlfriends circulate. She beckons me over. “Sav, come meet the girls!”
So I spend the next hour or so dividing my attention between a monitor playing the game and a swirl of model-pretty blondes and brunettes, all in cute custom-made Peaches gear.
I’m in a T-shirt that I bought today from the team store, a generic Atlanta shirt with a sparkly A on it.
The only thing they had in my size that wasn’t either an old Blake Forsyth T-shirt on sale or something for Asher.
Adler, I correct. I should call him Adler.
“What a cute shirt!” Lexi exclaims, then pokes me in my side where I missed cutting off a tag.
“Thanks,” I grind out, then add get something with Brayden’s number on it to the ever-growing list.
I turn my attention to the game playing on the monitor, just in time to see Asher—Adler, whatever—hit a single and jog to first base.
During the next pitch, he strays a little off the bag, then jumps back when the pitcher throws over, shooting the pitcher a fuck you expression.
Maybe the pitcher takes offense to that—or maybe he’s just good at these kinds of throwovers—because he does it again.
Only this time, Asher is off the base and the umpire loudly declares him out.
“Fuck,” I swear quietly—there are kids around—but not quietly enough.
Lexi hears. She’s sitting next to the third-baseman’s wife, dividing her time between her phone and her son drowsing on her lap. She’s dressed in a cute romper, her hair perfectly flat-ironed, her husband’s number on a pendant on a thin gold necklace. “You must be a real fan, huh?”
With the implication that I wouldn’t—shouldn’t—care about how Asher does otherwise.
I swear again, this time internally. I don’t really care about baseball. “I want the team to do well.”
“Of course.” Her mouth purses knowingly.
Well, two can play at that. I lower my voice as if conveying a secret.
One of my dad’s negotiation tricks: make people feel like they’re in on something, even when they’re not.
“I didn’t know who Brayden was when I first met him.
I didn’t even watch my first real game until after we got married.
I’ve been trying to study up so I know what Brayden’s talking about.
” Which is true—the game watching part. Not the part where Brayden talks to me about anything happening on the field.
On TV, the camera cuts to Asher as he storms back into the Peaches’ dugout, then yanks off his batting helmet. For a moment, he starts to slam it on one of the long dugout benches in frustration before he sets it down.
Brayden is sitting nearby. The camera catches him saying something that makes Asher’s expression turn dark before it returns to the game.
I need to know what’s going on between them. Brayden won’t say anything. But Asher…
My phone opens to my text messages of its own accord. I type in Asher’s contact then pause.
Brayden might find out. Not that he has any right to care.
Not when he’s still getting photographed with women other than me.
I go to his Instagram to scan—not stalk—the photos he’s tagged in.
Only he must have finally turned off that functionality because the only photo that’s there is of the two of us on that porch in San Diego.
Not that that means anything. He probably just doesn’t want me to find out what he’s been up to.
I don’t text Asher, mostly because Lexi is craning her neck over to look at my phone.
Instead, I distract myself with the—incredibly good, it turns out—buffet and pile my plate with a chicken quarter, a salad, and a scoop of farrotto sticky with cheese.
I sit back down and ready myself to eat, then pause with my fork hovering mid-air.
Is someone going to say something? I glance around the room, expecting Barb-ish looks.
Maybe they’re too polite to do that out loud.
Maybe they’re going to gossip about me later.
Did you see what Savannah was eating? No wonder she can’t find a shirt in her size.
I’m not going to let that stop me. Fuck ’em and let ’em go hungry. But I wish I had a friend in Atlanta who wasn’t currently beefing with my husband. And who seems like he wants to be more than a friend.
Lexi is leaning over again, and I brace myself for whatever she’s about to say. “How’s that stuff?” She nods to the farrotto on my plate.
“Good!” I hold up an illustrative forkful, waiting for some reaction—a declaration that she’d eat that if it wasn’t for the calories. Something about cheat days.
“That’s what I’m hitting up next,” she says simply.
Something inside me I didn’t know was tense unwinds. “I can get you some,” I offer. “That way you don’t have to disturb your little one.” Because her son has gone from drowsing to fully napping, his head tucked under her chin.
“Oh. you’re so sweet, thank you.”
I take her plate, fill it, then bring it back and scoot my chair closer to hers. “Must be hard with the team gone half the time,” I say. “I can barely manage without kids.”
“You get used to it,” she says. “Plus, aren’t you…” She looks at my belly, and it takes a second to realize that she’s asking if I’m pregnant.
This is my normal size, I bite back. “Nope.”
Lexi flushes faintly. “I just figured with the wedding being so quick.”
I shake my head. “No kids. Not even a cat.” I want one, if only so the house doesn’t feel so empty. I’m not going to say that to Lexi. Newlyweds aren’t supposed to get lonely. “I’m sure I’ll be busy when I go back to school.”
“Damn, girl.” She jostles me gently in the shoulder, careful not to wake her son. “I tried doing classes a couple years ago, then Izzy came along, and well, my degree’ll wait, I guess.”
“He is very cute.” Her son has her curly hair and her husband’s slightly oversized ears, and he’s resting against her with an open-mouthed expression.
“He should be. I lost a tooth having him.” Lexi drops a kiss on her son’s head. “Anyway, go get that degree for both of us.”
That’s what I’m here to do. Once I have that, I can put Brayden, this fake marriage, and everything else behind me.
On TV, Brayden’s at the plate, staring down the pitcher like he’s going to hit the ball to Mars, even if he’s already struck out once this game.
He doesn’t wear batting gloves when he’s hitting.
The camera zooms in tight to his fingers as they grip the bat.
There’s something on the fourth finger of his left hand.
At first, I think it’s a rubber thumb guard that other players wear while hitting.
Then I realize it’s a black silicone wedding band.
One I’ve never seen him wear before. Huh.
He's probably just reminding the team that he’s married. That’s what this whole charade is for, really: proving to the Peaches that Brayden deserves a spot on their roster. That must be it. That must be all that it is.