“Gah, put it back on!” a voice screeches.
My hands fly to cover my nipples. Not because I’m ashamed of having nipples or because I’m modest. It’s more that the screech belongs to Tillie Jean. She’s clearly been sleeping on the couch in my suite, and I know math.
Tillie Jean plus sleeping on my couch plus not enough sleep equals a very dangerous Tillie Jean, which puts my nipples at risk of a twister.
Big brother instincts kick in a split second after self-preservation. “Where’s Max, and how hard do I have to kick his ass?”
“Ugh, is he naked?” another voice says.
“Mackenzie?”
“Oh, don’t even think you’re getting off easy, you lazy-ass team saboteur,” a third voice says.
One,saboteur?It’s way too early in the morning for words like that, and I’m the guy with a word-a-day calendar who likes to toss out big words. And two, as I head deeper into my suite, it becomes obvious that there’s at least five of my teammates’ wives and girlfriends here. Yes, I’m counting my sister more as a teammate’s girlfriend than as my sister at the moment.
“Marisol? Tanesha?Henri?Jesus. What did Max do that all of you had to come get me?”
“Max isn’t the problem,” Tillie Jean says. “Youare.”
“Don’t act so surprised.” Henri pulls a face at me. “Being the least confrontational of all of us doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you too. I get mad sometimes, and I’m mad now.”
“Missing curfew while your game’s in the crapper?” Tanesha snorts. “You have alotof explaining to do.”
I retrieve my shirt and pull it back on. Getting caught in any state of undress with five of my teammates’ wives and girlfriends is the exact opposite of cleaning up my reputation.
“Can’t talk about it.”
“Why?” Mac demands, and honestly, right now, I miss the days when she used to go totally mute in my presence.
Okay, I don’t. That was awkward for everyone. Tell myself I’m a god in my head to pump myself up? Yes. Get stared at by a totally silent woman decked out head-to-toe in Fireballs gear every time we ended up in the same room after her BFF started dating one of my buddies in the city? Nope.
But right now, I wouldn’t mind if she wanted to pretend I didn’t exist.
“Don’t be rude,” Tillie Jean says.
Yeah. She knows what I was thinking.
I pretend I don’t know she knows, though. “It’s not rude to not talk about the things you can’t talk about. I’m aware my game’s in the shitter. You think I want to be the guy who tanks our chances after everything it’s taken to get here? Fuck, no. I’m working on fixing it, and that’s why I’m out past curfew, and that’s all I can say without cursing it.”
That should take care of Mackenzie. She never met a superstition she didn’t believe. Ask me sometime about the lengths she went to back when Brooks joined the team and she found out he was planning to give his own superstition the middle finger since he didn’t want to play for the Fireballs.
Before she decided to marry him, I mean.
Things changed then.
But that’s the only superstition she’s ever given up, and I think she took on fourteen more to replace it.
“Liar,” Mackenzie says.
Henri sucks in a breath.
Tanesha and Tillie Jean both snicker. I might’ve grown up with TJ, but I’ve known Tanesha longer than any other Fireballs wife, which unfortunately means she’s known me that long too. She’s my baseball sister.
Marisol crosses her arms and taps her fingers against her bicep. “Give me one good reason we shouldn’t tell management you’re not getting your sleep while your game’s total shit.”
“Because then I’d have to have meetings with them instead of going to sleep so I can play like the god that I am today? And my game’s notshit. It’s more…having a little breather.”
Whew. Five glares is a lot of glare for this hour of the morning.
