Page 26 of True Honey (The Hornets Nest #4)

SHORE

I had made up my mind. I was going to follow Arlo’s terrible advice and be selfish for once.

Incredibly selfish. All I could think about was her and she’d been avoiding me like the plague since the last dinner disaster.

Sending her home in a car to put distance between her and all of the horrible things coming out of those idiot’s mouths had seemed smart at the time.

Until I realized that I had sent her home alone.

She thought she did something wrong and now I was paying for my stupidity.

I shrugged into my favorite hoodie and a pair of shorts before wandering out into the kitchen hoping to catch her before I needed to be at the stadium for the Harbor VS.

The Hornets game. Cael had organized it to raise money for local animal shelters; it had turned into more of a Willy Wonka situation when he proposed a lottery for kids to get to make up the opposing team.

Families could buy chocolate bars at games and if your kid unwrapped a bar with foil, they got a place on the team. It was ambitious, but it was working, from chocolate sales alone Cael had raised over a hundred grand and the games ticket sales would raise even more.

August was at the counter alone in the kitchen and I looked around for Drew, trying to dampen my disappointment that she wasn’t awake yet.

“Morning,” I said to him and he grumbled something under his breath. It took me another five minutes to ask him where she was.

“She had to work,” August said without looking up from his papers.

“Work?” I said. My confusion was palpable because August finally acknowledged my presence.

“Yeah she went in to help I guess and picked up a shift at Hilly’s for later,” he explained.

Why would she do that? I chewed on the inside of my mouth and considered the fact that she was preparing to leave. She was trying to make more money so she didn’t have to rely on the income from me and the stadium.

“And she just left you here?” I asked him.

“I’m thirteen not three,” August glared at me.

“And you’re here.” The kid reminded me of a young Cael, all bones and skin, no muscle or desire to have any.

He was lanky. But the attitude that ran from his toes to his nose, that was all Josh.

I set down my protein shake on the counter and leaned against it.

I could tell he wanted to say more.

“She only gets nervous leaving me alone at night, during the day she can call to check on me…” he explained in a less combative voice. “I’ll walk over there for dinner later.”

I stared at him for a moment, his fingers finding the half-eaten bagel beside him as he focused on his homework.

I couldn’t be frustrated with his push back, if it was me I’d be the same way about some guy moving in on my mom.

Even the idea of it made my skin crawl but I knew that if I wanted to make it work with Drew, August was the way I got my foot in the door.

He was the guiding missile in her heart, what he wanted he got and only because Drew worked her ass off to make sure he had it. It was the reason she had taken the deal in the first place.

August.

“Get dressed,” I said to him and he scowled looking up from his homework.

“What?” He said.

“Get dressed,” I repeated, “sneakers, shorts… whatever. But we need to be at the stadium in twenty so…” I tapped the counter and collected my drink, popping the cap on it and pounding it back as August slowly got off his stool.

“And here,” I said walking over to the closest, I tugged out a box of old hornet hats and tossed one at him.

“Put this on, I don’t need you getting a sunburn. ”

I sounded like my mother.

“Or whatever,” I added as he eyed me with caution.

It was another ten minutes before he appeared again in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt that looked somewhat clean.

His hat was pushed down over his hair and without the dark shaggy mop in his eyes he looked so much like Drew it was scary.

It was like all his features softened and everything she gave to him was able to shine through the surface.

I cursed under my breath realizing that we couldn’t take the bike and we were going to be late anyways. We were going to have to walk down because Arlo would have left the house already and I wasn’t putting August in a car with anyone I didn’t trust with my life.

“Come on,” I said to him and we started to make our way down.

It was clear when August took control on the path that he had been taken down this way before and that they had taken it upon themselves to bring him in like he was just another family member.

I wasn’t sure why I was ever nervous about it.

“What’s going on today?” he asked when we popped out from the path into the parking lot of the stadium and it was full of cars. “I don’t really like baseball…” August said, looking over at me.

“It’s a charity game, you can hang out in the dug out and throw garbage at Cael all game if you want,” I said, swiping my card on the door and letting him slip inside in front of me.

The stadium was alive with energy, Susanna was fielding phone calls and people crowded around the desk as we passed through the tunnel and into the main part of the offices.

The locker room was bustling with players and members of Harbor who had won special privileges for the day.

Each member of the team had been assigned a child that they would cart around the stadium for hours until the big game.

Cael had a small ginger child dangling by the ankles and it reminded me to double-check all the waiver forms before the game started.

“Cael, put him down!” Dean snapped, wandering across the locker room in a jersey that looked a size too small on his giant frame with a little girl following close behind her hand tucked into his as he tried to get control over the room.

“What the hell is going on in here?” August asked from behind me and I turned to look at him with a scowl.

“Don’t swear,” I said.

“Do I have to remind you I’m thirteen, hell , isn’t a swear.” His eyes narrowed on me and Van wandered over with an exhausted look on his face.

“No one said we’d be babysitting,” he said.

“Cael gave us no information about what we were doing before the game and not a single one of us is qualified to juggle twenty kids… Can you like… do something?” he asked, whipping around to holler at one of the boys who was chucking cleats across the locker room.

“What makes you think I’m qualified?” I scoffed.

“I don’t know, you’ve been wrangling all of us for years…” Van said as he tried to stop the kid from causing any damage. “You kept Cael alive, that instantly makes you more experienced than all of us.”

“Barely,” I ground out through my teeth.

I looked around at the carnage happening and stuck my fingers between my lips before whistling loudly. It was like someone had hit pause on a remote the way everybody turned to look at me and froze in place.

“We’ve got ten minutes until the game starts, I want Hornet’s players in a line here,” I pointed to my left, “and Harbor Guests, here…” I said pointing to my right. “Make sure that you're with your designated Hornet.”

Cael stared at me like I was intruding on his perfect day and scowled, dropping his child to the ground with a soft thump before moving him into line with the rest of the kids. “Take them out for warm-ups as the stadium fills up and run off their energy…” I said to him,

“What’s up Auggie?” He fist bumped him gently and completely ignored what I said.

“Hey, I have someone I want you to meet,” he said, throwing his arm around August’s shoulders and walking him over to the opposite end of the locker room to where Riona’s daughter stood with her arms crossed and her earphones in.

Usually I would protest, but the combination was oddly well met and Cael knew it too because Daisy smiled the second he introduced them and I hadn’t ever seen her do that in all the years of knowing her.

Cael wiggled his eyebrows at me as Daisy showed August her phone and handed him an earbud, forcing him to slide off the headphones he was always wearing .

With him busy I was able to get the rest of the team on the field without any hiccups.

Once the game started the guys and the children were all too busy to cause trouble.

Cosy Mitchell was the captain of the Harbor team, representing all the shelters in need around the city.

It was weird to see her on the field, in comparison to Van she was a little shorter, a little curvier and alot less sunshine than her brother.

But she was in a good mood and it showed with each inning that they played.

I was proud of Cael, beyond comprehension for putting the entire game together. Riona was standing in the dugout with Ryan as the game started, her hair pulled back into a ponytail and dark sunglasses over her eyes.

“He’s doing a really good job,” she said to her brother as they watched Cael run across the field.

In the time since the exhibition game Cael had switched around some of his classes, leaning more into public relations work and event planning.

At the time Ryan had found about fifteen issues with it until he saw how great Cael was at planning parties.

“Silas holds his hand through all of it,” Ryan grumbled, but I could hear the pride in his voice.

“Not this time,” I said. “He did this one all on his own.”

Riona smiled out at her nephew who was correcting August’s swing in the batter’s box against Josh.

“You aren’t supposed to be helping the enemy, Cody!” Josh hollered, gloving the ball.

“Grow a heart, Josh,” he said back, returning his concentration to August.