Page 2

CHAPTER 2

JENNER

T he line drive was headed right for me, only a couple of feet too high. That wasn’t going to stop me.

I launched, hoping to stretch myself enough to snag the ball and as planned, the line drive ended up in my glove.

The crowd roared because it was a beautiful—though lucky—catch. I could’ve done that exact thing twenty times and only catch it a few, but this time, it worked. The second baseman, Silas Briggs, ran over and gave me a hard pat on my shoulder.

His dark hair was tucked under his hat but his brown eyes danced with joy.

“Lucky bastard,” he said while laughing.

I shook my head. “Skill, Briggs. Skill.”

That only made both of us laugh harder. I fucking loved spring training mostly because while we had to play well, we also had a lot of fun. The focus wasn’t as hardcore as it was when the season started.

That didn’t mean we weren’t still going to play like it counted. This was our warm-up. The way to shake out the winter cobwebs—not that I let any form. I’d spent my winter working out, staying in shape, hitting the ball. Anything I could to keep an edge.

It’d been a hard road to get here and now that I was, I wasn’t about to slow down. I would’ve been happy playing on any team, but being on the Knights was better. My best friend was on this team. His brothers were now all here. Sometimes I thought that Ann Marie had gotten me here because she’d wanted Silas to play on the Knights and thought it’d help.

Me being here hadn’t made him want to be here at all. That wasn’t how it worked. Now that he was on the team and with Amity, he’d stay, but he’d never wanted to play on the Knights originally. Now, she’d built a team where every player was at the top of his game. We’d lose some this season because that was how it went, but we were being slated as the best team in the league starting out.

Winning the World Series had helped with that.

I’d like to think that I’d been traded to Kalamazoo around the same time as Silas because the entire staff had known that I was the best for the job. After all, Silas and I had played together all our lives. We knew what the other was thinking when it came to baseball before a word was uttered. It was why some analysts called us ‘the fiercest duo in baseball.’ That was a bond you couldn’t engineer but instead was manufactured over years and years of playing together. Hell, we’d started tee-ball together.

We won the spring training game and signed some balls because that was one of the reasons these games pulled in so many fans. It was easier access than during the season. Not easy, but easier. Then we were headed to clean up.

“I can’t believe you made that catch,” Silas told me as he slapped my back on our way to the clubhouse .

We would leave Florida soon, which would put us back where we felt most at home. We only had one more training game, which would make most of the guys happy. A lot of them were itching to get home, though I wasn’t. I didn’t have a lot to rush back to.

“Pft. Of course I did.” Though I hadn’t even known if I would.

“Listen…” Urban was suddenly at my other side. He was third in line among the brothers and had the same dark hair and brown eyes. Anyone could tell those four were brothers though wouldn’t think they were twins. “We’re going to be unstoppable this year if we all keep playing this way.”

“Yeah, we will,” I agreed as Urban and I fist-bumped.

“It’s going to be a fantastic year,” Silas added. “Coming off that World Series… If we all stay serious, it’ll be good.”

Though the World Series had seemed more like a Briggs family show, the rest of us had done our parts. But all the sports channels wanted to talk about was how so many brothers were playing on the same team together. First time it’d ever happened in baseball history.

Which of course meant that they covered how the guys had gotten here, which meant mentioning Amity’s dad, who’d coached all of us. It was something that he was the only high school coach in America to have this many players land in Major League Baseball .

We’d all played hard and the first thing you learned was that baseball was absolutely a team effort. Any weak spot could cost the game.

Then the analysts brought me into the conversation and I fucking loved it, though I loved it more when they talked about me without it being relative to the Briggses. I loved them like my own family, but fuck, it was hard in their shadows.

I played baseball because I loved it. There was no former player dad pushing me to my limits. Or when there was, it wasn’t my dad. It was Silas’s. Being the best… pushing myself to the limits… that was all my doing.

“You’ve been building every year,” Brooks said once we were in the clubhouse. He looked like his brothers with the exception of him having the broadest shoulders and being ever so slightly taller. “I think this will be your biggest yet. You’re always solid and are always part of why we win, but you’ve never been stronger, faster, or better.” Though I wasn’t sure why he was giving me any accolades at all.

It was like he sensed that I wanted to stand out from them. Either that or it was the big brother in him. He’d always acted like I was one of his siblings since I was always around.

“True.” Silas pulled his shirt over his head. “What’d you do this winter? Steroids?”

I lifted my middle finger at him. “Fuck that. They shrink your balls.”

The guys all laughed. Besides, I hadn’t really bulked up over the winter. I was basically the same size. I was just stronger from working out— with Silas, by the way—so I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.

“Kidding, kidding.”

The fact was the guys treated me like another brother. Hell, the whole family did, other than Camden.

Nope. Couldn’t think about her with her brothers all around me. Somehow, one of them would know and I’d gotten really good at not thinking about her, at least in their presence.

Besides, she hated baseball players—especially me specifically. Though I was the one who’d created the image of how she saw players, so I had no one to blame but myself.

“Hey.” Silas hit my shoulder with his as I went back to my locker. His was right next to mine with his brothers on the other side of him. “Why don’t I see you with anyone anymore? It’s been months.”

A picture of Camden flashed through my mind. Only she was seventeen, her hazel eyes were filled with tears, and I’d hurt her on purpose, which had led to her being stabbed twice by branches in the fucking woods.

I carried that shit deep in my chest, a guilt that had at one point threatened to end my career. It was also something that her brothers knew nothing about.

“Maybe it hasn’t been months and I just haven’t invited you to witness me in the bedroom,” I tell him, though there was no point in saying it quietly. His brothers were going to hear it either way .

Wasn’t that the fucking rub? Suddenly, every one of them were in a relationship, which had somehow led them to focus on my love life. Or sex life, since love didn’t enter the picture.

“Yeah, nobody here wants that invitation, but we spend a lot of time together.” Silas scoffed. “I feel like I’d see it.”

I’m not sure why he thought that, given that I’d never been one to be in a relationship—not since high school—and I also didn’t bring any random women around. There was no point to that. Until recently, it had been no different with the Briggs brothers.

I rolled my eyes. It had been a while, but why the fuck was he watching me so closely? No, this was just a way to give me some shit.

“I can’t believe one of you procreated,” I said loudly to change the subject. “I really didn’t have my money on Brooks being the first. And never would I have guessed it’d be with sweet Harlowe Chandler.”

A rumble of laughter spread through his brothers. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who’d been surprised by all of it. Fuck. We go away to the All-Star Game—without Brooks—come back, and she was pregnant. Sure. We hadn’t known about it for a while, but Brooks had been injured, so he hadn’t gone to the game. Guess he’d found something else to do.

The rest of the team was used to our chatter and went on with their lives. Hell, they were all probably trying to get out of here to spend time with their own people .

As for the Briggses, Amity was here for some of spring training, Everly was a teacher and class was still in session, so she’d been here on a couple of weekends, but that was it and Monroe was still in college with classes to attend. Poor Harlowe couldn’t go anywhere because she was too close to giving birth.

“‘Sweet’? Harlowe?” Silas countered. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that woman be sweet a second in her life.”

I waved him off. “She’s sweet. You just see her as too much of a sister to notice it. Most of you do.” I shrugged. “I assume Brooks doesn’t.”

“I do not,” Brooks added. Since he was fucking her, he couldn’t see her as a sister. That would have been weird.

Silas nodded. “Yeah. I guess that’s true. So who’d you have your money on becoming parents first?”

“Honestly?” I asked. “You and Amity, since you’ve been dancing around each other for years.”

“That’s true,” Urban added.

“Figured the minute you got with her, she’d be popping out babies,” I told him.

Silas grabbed a towel as he yanked off his baseball pants. “I wasn’t dancing around her . I didn’t even see her for years and you know very well that my older brother made really fucking sure I knew how to prevent adding to the population.”

Cobb—the youngest of our group—snorted. “Yet he didn’t take his own advice.”

“Fuck you all,” Brooks said, which made us chuckle. “I did take my own advice, but as I told every fucking one of you, nothing is guaranteed and I don’t regret it for a second.”

“Nor should you,” Cobb told him, then he put his hands on Brooks’s bare shoulders. “I’m just fucking with you.”

“You still thought about her, though, I bet,” I said to Silas, going back to my original comment. “Even though you didn’t see her for years.”

“I can’t deny that, I guess,” he said, but it was quieter.

I’d known the guilt that Silas had carried around with him after Jayce, Amity’s brother, had died. He’d blamed himself, even though it had all been just an accident. Plus, I’d been there, too, so if there was guilt to go around, I’d have to take that on with him.

But it was an accident.

“I will say,” he continued, “the closer Harlowe gets to having that baby, the more I think about it. I’m not sure Amity is ready for that yet, but fuck, the idea of her carrying my baby…” He shook his head.

Clearly, it was an idea that he liked.

As I was an only child, someone in the Briggs family having kids was my best chance at being an uncle.

And I could understand the idea of liking the idea of the woman you loved carrying your kid. The problem being for me that the only woman I’d come close to loving came with four huge, protective older brothers who wouldn’t mind burying my body in a shallow grave if I got her pregnant .

Not to mention she fucking hated me for hurting her and she didn’t even know that I’d done it on purpose. There’d been a reason. A good one. But I didn’t think she’d give a single fuck about that.

Once the brothers were all off to shower, I dropped into the chair in front of my locker. I’d taken my shirt off, but my lower half was still clothed. I needed to get in the shower but was overtaken by an almost obsessive need to check Camden’s social media.

Her shit was locked down, yet for some reason forever ago when I’d sent her a friend or follow request on whatever platform, she’d accepted it. My guess was that she thought her brothers would think it was weird if she hadn’t.

She didn’t want them to know what had happened.

Her most recent post on Instagram was of her and Harlowe watching the game today. God damn. that woman was beautiful. Her hazel eyes—brown with blue sunbursts erupting off her pupils—almost always had a kindness behind them. Not when she looked at me, but usually when she looked at anything else.

The way her smile curved her lips, like she was hiding something behind it.

Fuck. I was so fucking fucked.

Silas wanted to know why he hadn’t seen me with anyone recently. This woman right here was why. The more I tried to put her behind me, the harder it had become.

Then something else flashed in my mind .

Camden on the ground. Two fucking sticks the size of small tree branches poking through her as blood spurted from her mouth.

My chest tightened and my stomach churned with acid that threatened to empty anything I had in there.

That had been the most terrifying moment in my entire life.

But even then, as she’d lain injured on the ground, she’d looked at me with steely eyes. She’d hated me even as I’d tried to save her.

“You all right?” Silas asked, standing next to me in just a towel with his wet hair dripping down him.

I must’ve sat there longer than I’d thought.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” I quickly shut my phone off so he wouldn’t see what I’d just been looking at.

Silas’s eyes narrowed at me. “Something must be wrong but the look on your face. A message from your dad?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Everything is fine there.” My mom had cancer again a few years ago and there was worry it or another type would show up, but so far, she was in the clear. After her second go-around, they’d done some genetic testing and it turned out she had a rare generic condition called “Li-Fraumeni.” Which meant she had a higher likelihood of cancer for the rest of her life. They’d had me tested because I could’ve gotten it from her, but I was in the clear. Her first bout with cancer was why they didn’t have any more kids. She was about to have her annual scans and test and that was always a tense time. Silas loved my mom as a second mom since we’d each spent equal time at each other’s houses as kids. “Mom gets clear bills of health every checkup.”

“Glad to hear it.” He started getting ready as he spoke. “So what’s up?”

“Nothing.” I pushed to my feet and tossed my phone into my locker. “I need to shower.”

“Jenner,” he snapped before coming closer to me. “Something is going on. What is it—and don’t give me any bullshit. You’re the only one I told about all my Amity shit. Come on.”

“It’s checkup time for my mom and that’s always a tense time.” I sighed heavily. “I worry. Last time, she almost didn’t make it.”

“I know.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “She’s had it twice, right?” I nodded. It was two different kinds of cancer but that wasn’t a point I needed to make right now. “Well, there’s not going to be a third time.”

Yeah. I hoped he was right.

“So.” He patted my shoulder twice then stepped back. “What’s the bet this year?”

I burst out with a laugh. Silas and I made a bet every year. It was just a stupid competitive thing for us because either way, both charities were getting donations. Mine was typically the cancer charity that had helped my mom out when I’d been a kid.

“Home runs,” I said with full confidence. “I’m feeling pretty good about this year.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. OK. But I’m kicking your ass.”

“You think you’re kicking my ass. ”

In reality, we mostly split the wins with our bets. It wasn’t that I won every other year and he won every other. It was more like if you tallied them up, we broke even. It was just something to give us that extra push.

Once Silas had walked away, I headed for the shower like I’d intended to.

It made me wonder how he’d react if he knew the thoughts I’d had about his sister over the years. Hell, last year, he’d had to restrain himself from fighting right on the field when a third baseman from another team had said some shit about Camden. Shit he wouldn’t repeat, which meant it’d been shit that would’ve pissed me off.

He’d almost clobbered the man which would’ve landed him in big trouble with both the league and the team.

Camden might’ve been tough enough to brush off things like that. Being the little sister of four baseball players and the daughter of one, she’d formed a pretty tough shell.

But I wasn’t tough enough to ignore any of that.

Had that third baseman said his shit loud enough for me to hear, there would’ve been no almost in the fight.