CHAPTER 15 DANNY
After we win on Saturday night against the Padres, I head back to my mom’s place again. After Anna gets the boys down and my mom heads to bed, it’s just my sister and me in the family room—her with a glass of wine and me with a beer.
She clinks her glass against my can. “How’s it going, DJ?” she asks.
I blow out a breath. “Can’t complain. Good win tonight, and I’m loving Vegas. How are you doing?”
“The divorce has been hard,” she admits.
“It’s like the man I married doesn’t exist anymore.
He’s nickel and diming everything even though he’s to blame.
He doesn’t want the divorce, and I don’t want to be with someone who thinks it’s okay to cheat.
So he told the boys mommy and daddy are breaking up because of me. ”
“Jesus,” I mutter. “I’ll fucking kick that asshole’s ass.”
She reaches over and squeezes my arm. “You’re a good brother, but I’ll handle him. I can’t have you messing up your game hands.”
I chuckle. “Come to Vegas.”
“Like move there?” she asks, her brows crinkling.
“At least come to visit. Check it out. See if you like it.”
“You just want me there so mom will move there, too,” she accuses.
“I don’t think she would. Do you?”
She shrugs. “I bet if we were in the same place she’d go. I know she’s tired of driving an hour to come see me and the boys up in Dana Point, and I’m just about ready to let Chris have the damn house because I’m tired of fighting.”
“Oh, Anna,” I say. I feel like a shit brother despite her words that I’m not one. “Listen, let me take care of a house for you and the boys. Wherever you want. Dana Point, San Diego, Vegas, hell…Chicago if that’s where you want to be.”
When my eyes meet hers, hers are full of tears.
“You’d do that for us? Really?”
This time I reach over and squeeze her arm. “Of course I would. I would do anything for you three and Mom. Just say the word, okay? Pick the place, pick the house, and send me the details. And if you need me to kick Chris’s ass, I’m a phone call away.”
“God, you’re a good guy. How hasn’t some woman snapped you up yet?” she teases.
But even though she’s teasing, I don’t laugh along with her. Instead, I go for the truth.
“Because I haven’t let them.”
Her brows dip. “You haven’t let them?”
I shake my head and press my lips together.
“Why not?"
I lift a shoulder. “Kinda hard to believe in happy endings when you walk in on your dad fucking your mom’s friend at the age of seven and he chooses the other family. Except, you know, when he needs money.”
“Not all men are like Dad and Chris,” she says, and the fact that she still has hope at her own happily ever after even with what she’s going through right now speaks volumes.
I’m not sure what it speaks volumes to, though—maybe the fact that we’re clearly different, or maybe the fact that she’s a romantic at heart.
She poses an interesting question next—one I hadn’t thought of. “Are you more scared of being cheated on or being the cheater? Because it’s not like it runs in your genes, Dan.”
“I never really thought of it that way. I won’t get involved with someone who’s married, and if I don’t get too close to a chick, then I can’t cheat on her, right?”
It’s a deeper conversation than I was expecting to have with my sister this weekend.
“So you do the whole bad boy thing, women fall at your feet, and you can say goodbye without getting emotionally invested?” she asks.
“I guess.” I shrug. It’s sort of an uncomfortable conversation to have with my sister, even though her two kids are proof that she has had sex, too. We’ve just never openly talked about our conquests.
And the other thing is that I am emotionally invested right now. With someone I haven’t even seen naked.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she murmurs.
“Do what?”
“Not get attached to the women you have sex with.” She lifts a shoulder. “I guess I always thought sex was something special between two people.”
Right. And again, it’s probably because she didn’t walk in on her father having it with her mother’s best friend when she was seven.
I don’t bring that up again. There’s no need to at this point.
“I guess men are just wired differently than women.” I can’t speak for all men. Surely Cooper sees something special in Gabby since he wants to bang only her for the rest of eternity.
And I haven’t had sex since I met Alexis Bodega. I haven’t even so much as looked at another woman.
Does that mean something? Does it mean I’m growing? Evolving?
Or am I turning into a pussy?
“I guess,” she murmurs.
I pull out my phone to check our schedule as a way to change the subject before I confess everything that’s going on with the woman I am not yet prepared to talk about, and I spot a text from her.
Carrie: You around to talk?
I clear it off the screen before Anna sees it, and I pull open my calendar.
“I’m home against the Cardinals next weekend.
Come out with the boys and Mom. I’ll get a real estate friend to show you around a few places, we’ll do dinner at some fancy place on the Strip, go out on the town, and you and the boys can come check out the clubhouse. Deal?”
She sighs and pulls out her phone. “Lucas has a baseball game on Friday after school. We could fly out after that. It looks like except for practice, the weekend is clear.”
“I’ll make sure he gets his practice in,” I say with a wink.
She laughs, and on the spot I book four tickets on flights Friday night and Sunday evening without even asking my mom.
I text in my request for four family tickets to the games on Saturday and Sunday, and then I bid my sister goodnight so I can head upstairs and hopefully get a chat in with Alexis before bed.