Is it because we’re being loud? Or is it because they’ve noticed Asher and Brayden are suddenly no longer at each other’s throats?Or is it because…
We were discreet at the hotel. Mostly discreet. When I’d come out of Asher’s room in the morning, the only person I saw was the hotel housekeeper. We’re being careful. Or at least I think we’re being careful, which is an entirely different thing.
Still, I tuck myself closer to Brayden, kiss his cheek for good measure, trying to convince whoever’s looking at us not just that we’re interested in one another but that we’reonlyinterested in one another and no one else. Either way, Brayden is smiling at me, at Asher, maybe at the general state he’s in. It’s possible this is the first time I’ve seen him truly, uncomplicatedly happy.
Whoever was looking our way sinks back into their seat. It’s possible I was imagining the whole thing in the first place. A trick of my imagination, paranoia about what happened to Victoria a few months ago. That must be it. I’m sure of it.
Back at the ballpark,we’re loading our luggage into Brayden’s truck when Asher wheels his suitcase by, clearly about to do the same in his own vehicle. “Should we…” Brayden cups my cheek, leans close, our bodies slotting together, then he breathes in my ear, “invite him over?”
I flush involuntarily at the nearness of Brayden’s body to mine. At the heat that’s been pooling in my belly for the past few days. I nod.
Brayden kisses my hair, a little nothing of a kiss. No, a married kind of kiss, the kind we’ve spent the past few months playacting that now comes naturally. “Hey, Asher,” he callsacross the parking lot, “are you supposed to be driving with your head all scrambled?”
“My head’s fine, B.”
“You sure? We could give you a ride home.”
“You don’t need to—” Asher begins, then must hear what Brayden is actually asking him. “Huh, yeah, maybe that would be good.”
We have to reposition our suitcases in the back of Brayden’s truck to make everything fit. But eventually, it all does.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Brayden
I havea specific routine for coming back from road trips: laundry, run, shower, food, sleep. We’re barely into our front hall when I pull Savannah into a long kiss in full view of the open door. When I’d kissed her for the first time at our wedding, I wondered if I’d ever get to do it again. I did, in that strange bridal dressing area at the country club, at various team functions, and the more I do it, the more I want to do it.
Asher’s watching us, and I can’t tell if he’s envious of Savannah or of me or simply feeling left out. I kick shut the front door, reach for Asher’s T-shirt, pull him to me, chest solid against mine. “I need to shower,” he mumbles against my mouth. “We all smell like plane.”
Routine is helpful, necessary. It makes me feel like I have everything together even when I don’t. I should be shoving my clothes into the washer, replacing uncertainty with the thump of my shoes against asphalt. What it takes some days to make me feel like I have any control over myself.
Now I leave our suitcases in the front hall and take Savannah’s hand. We pull Asher up the stairs, all of us laughing loud enough to fill the entire house with the sound.
Baby comes downstairswhen we’re all on the living room couch. Asher’s in a borrowed pair of my sweatpants that are an inch too short in the legs, Savannah in one of those thin tank tops guaranteed to make me lose my mind. Baby approaches Savannah, sniffing her disdainfully for all of two seconds before relenting and letting Sav pull her into her lap.
Asher leans over to idly stroke Baby’s fur.
“Careful, she’s kind of a menace,” I warn.
He shifts to rubbing her on the head. “I don’t know, seems like she likes me just fine.”
Baby cranes her tiny fluffy neck up—of course she likes him, of course she automatically likes everyone other than me—then lifts one tiny, scraggly paw and swats him hard enough to raise a tiny pinprick of blood. Sav and I laugh.
After a second, Asher does too, then sucks his finger into his mouth. “So you do take after your mama after all.”
“Baby, don’t let these men talk to you that way.” Savannah scoops Baby up, cuddling her on her lap, kissing her between her tufty little ears. Baby hasn’t gotten any cuter, really, but she’s purring with her entire body, clearly happy at us—at least one of us—being home.
Home. It hits me all at once. I always thought of my parents’ house as just that: their house, a place I lived in and couldn’t wait to move out of. In the minor leagues, I had apartments, some provided by the team, some I leased myself. When Iwanted to buy a house, the real estate agent showed me exactly one listing. This one.
Are you sure?she asked.
At the time, I was hungover, impatient with the entire process. Who cared what a house was like? It was just some place with a bed and a home gym and protein powder and whiskey. The stuff my life was composed of before. I think I snapped something like,When you know, you knowas an answer.
Sitting next to Savannah and Asher something settles inside me that I didn’t even know was unsettled before. Asher’s shoulder brushes mine on the couch. Savannah is busy offering her fingertips for Baby to bat at. Our laundry is commingled in the washer; our food delivery order charged to one account.
Could it be like this all the time?That feels dangerous to even think. And yet…all I want to do tomorrow is the same thing that we’ve been doing for the past day.
My phone buzzes. Barb telling me that now that we’re back from Chicago, Sav and I are expected at church this Sunday.
