“The girls that you’re fucked up over?”
“There is no girl.”
I raise a brow. “Interesting. There’s always a girl.”
My brother is a lot like our mother in some ways. When hefalls, he falls hard. History has that way of repeating itself and my motherand father watched Logan with concern. He started dating Callista Hawthornewhen we were in high school. Sure enough, they fell in love, which baffled mebecause Callie was a bitch if you asked anyone.
I digress.
They loved each other, had all these plans, she went tocollege in Ohio with him and when Logan got drafted, she lost her fucking mind.
Full blown, next level crazy shit. For the first time in mylife, I saw my brother truly devastated. He loved her so much he almost walkedaway from baseball.
Since then, he refuses to love, just screws around to avoidthat kind of pain.
“We’re talking about you and your girl.” He grins with hishead tilted.
I narrow my eyes, and then I know I have him. “You sawCallista.”
Maybe someone else would’ve missed his cue, but I know himway too well. He laughs and looks down at his menu. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
He sighs. “Fine. I saw her when we were in Tampa. She knewthe Yankees were coming, sent me an email, and asked to have dinner.”
Logan is so damn predictable. Of course he’d meet her, evenafter the theatrics, the threats, and her last ditch effort of claiming she waspregnant—which she wasn’t.
“Let me guess, she’s sorry, she was just upset and scared,she didn’t mean to try to trap you into marriage…am I warm?”
“She’s engaged.”
I didn’t see that one. “Oh.”
“She’s happy and… I don’t know.”
He looks like someone just punched him in the stomach. “Whyaren’t you happy about this? She moved on and, let’s be honest, she had thatwholeTerms of Endearmentthing going on.”
“I loved her. No matter what you and Mom and Dad and prettymuch everyone else thought of her… I loved her. If it all hadn’t gone down theway it did, I would’ve married her, Cay. I,” he pauses and I know my babybrother enough to hear the pain underneath it.
“You still love her.”
“I don’t even know who she is now. She’s living in a smallhome, that her and her fiancé are renovating. They flipped their first housesix months ago and are working on this one. She learned how to hang drywalland…you know, that wasn’t her.”
I snort. “No, that girl tried to pretend she was living inManhattan, not Bell Buckle.”
The waitress comes over and we place our orders. Once she’sgone, I get back to the conversation because it keeps it off me and Hadley.
“So, seeing her brought back unresolved shit?”
“More like, I won’t have that. I’m not unhappy with my life.Who the fuck would be? I’m literally making millions of dollars to playbaseball every day. I could bang any girl I wanted, I’m pretty fucking goodlooking, and have nothing to complain about.”
And then I hear our mom. “But you have no one to share itwith.”
He sighs heavily. “I swear, you sounded just like her andDad.”
“Because we heard that crap all the time.”
My parents are ridiculously happy together. Zach and Momwere high school sweethearts. She followed him to college, and when Zach gotdrafted, their relationship fell apart. Mom moved on, married my dad, was happyand all that, until my father’s death. Then, we lost everything and had to moveto Tennessee. When we got there, they saw each other, planets shifted and starsaligned. Same old story about finding each other after all that time, and nowthey get to share their lives together, which is what matters.
