Chapter Eight

CAYDEN

I should’ve known better than to come out with Logan. Anyone with a sibling knows they’re a pain in the ass sometimes, anyone with a twin knows they’re doubly so. As soon as we sit down his eyes narrow and he laughs.

“What?”

“You’re all hung up on some girl.”

“I’m not hung up on anything. And what the fuck does that even mean?”

“You look like shit, first off. Second, you didn’t deny it which means I’m right,” he leans back, arms crossed with a stupid grin I’d like to run my fist into.

“And here I thought we might have a nice dinner. We haven’t even ordered and you’ve managed to piss me off.”

He shrugs. “It’s a gift.”

“Sure it is.”

I take a second, because as much as Logan is a shithead, he’s also someone who likes to keep the attention off himself only when there’s something he doesn’t want to discuss. So, the fact that he came at me first means he’s worried I’m going to see that something.

“What’s her name?” I ask as he stares over the menu.

“Who?”

“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 he falls, he falls hard. History has that way of repeating itself and my mother and father watched Logan with concern. He started dating Callista Hawthorne when we were in high school. Sure enough, they fell in love, which baffled me because Callie was a bitch if you asked anyone.

I digress.

They loved each other, had all these plans, she went to college 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 my life, I saw my brother truly devastated. He loved her so much he almost walked away from baseball.

Since then, he refuses to love, just screws around to avoid that kind of pain.

“We’re talking about you and your girl.” He grins with his head tilted.

I narrow my eyes, and then I know I have him. “You saw Callista.”

Maybe someone else would’ve missed his cue, but I know him way 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 knew the Yankees were coming, sent me an email, and asked to have dinner.”

Logan is so damn predictable. Of course he’d meet her, even after the theatrics, the threats, and her last ditch effort of claiming she was pregnant—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. “Why aren’t you happy about this? She moved on and, let’s be honest, she had that whole Terms of Endearment thing going on.”

“I loved her. No matter what you and Mom and Dad and pretty much everyone else thought of her… I loved her. If it all hadn’t gone down the way it did, I would’ve married her, Cay. I,” he pauses and I know my baby brother 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 small home, that her and her fiancé are renovating. They flipped their first house six months ago and are working on this one. She learned how to hang drywall and…you know, that wasn’t her. ”

I snort. “No, that girl tried to pretend she was living in Manhattan, not Bell Buckle.”

The waitress comes over and we place our orders. Once she’s gone, 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 play baseball every day. I could bang any girl I wanted, I’m pretty fucking good looking, and have nothing to complain about.”

And then I hear our mom. “But you have no one to share it with.”

He sighs heavily. “I swear, you sounded just like her and Dad.”

“Because we heard that crap all the time.”

My parents are ridiculously happy together. Zach and Mom were high school sweethearts. She followed him to college, and when Zach got drafted, their relationship fell apart. Mom moved on, married my dad, was happy and all that, until my father’s death. Then, we lost everything and had to move to Tennessee. When we got there, they saw each other, planets shifted and stars aligned. Same old story about finding each other after all that time, and now they get to share their lives together, which is what matters.

“We did. And I keep wondering, how the hell am I ever going to meet someone who isn’t after Logan the baseball player, millionaire, and celebrity, and actually gives a shit about Logan the man? Anyway, I told you my deep shit for the night, what’s going on with you?”

I am so not telling him. “Not a thing.”

“Lying son-of-a-bitch. You may be able to lie for a living, but I’m not buying it. Something is up.”

“Nothing. I’m working on a case that has me a little irritated. Other than that, nothing to report.”

Thankfully, the waitress appears with our beer and food at that moment, which might just save me from this damn conversation I don’t want to have.

We both fall silent, eating and drinking. The dim sum is fantastic, and I forget about Hadley, her smile, the way she rode off, and leaving me feeling even more confused on how I feel about her.

Instead, I focus on the good food, semi-decent company, and the fact that I went a whole hour without remembering her around my cock.

That’s a win .

But now I’m remembering again.

“Have you gone riding lately?” Logan asks, breaking up the silence.

“Today, actually.”

“Ha!” Logan claps his hands. “I knew something was off. You only ride when you’re feeling lost. You only feel lost when you have feelings about something—or someone—you shouldn’t.”

“Why did I have to share a womb with such an idiot?”

“Ahh, yes, your way of avoiding difficult conversations is in full force. Come one, I spilled my drama, let’s hear yours.”

As much as I’m relentless, my brother is worse. When he wants something, he doesn’t give up. I can lie, and try to weasel out of it, but then he’ll come to my apartment tomorrow, hounding me, maybe even show up at my work, where he’ll take centerstage because my office is chock full of Yankee fans who think my brother is a god.

Spoiler alert, he’s not. He wet the bed until he was seven. What kind of god does that?

My point is that it’ll be a nightmare and I’m already living one. Her name is Hadley Arrowood.

“I slept with Hadley,” I blurt it out. Might as well just get it over with.

“Yeah, you did that in college.”

“Last night, or maybe it was this morning, I don’t know.”

He leans back. “I thought she hated you.”

“She does.”

“So how the hell did you end up naked?”

I fill him in on the case, the attempt to get her to see my reasoning, and the stakes of closing the merger so I can work on the one I really want to be doing. The one I brought to the damn firm and now may have to sit on the sidelines.

Logan, for all his shortcomings, is my best friend. He is always there for me, and we may give each other crap, but at the end of the day, there is no one in the world I trust and admire more than him.

“Wow. So, your feelings for her have obviously not gone away.”

“No.”

I have wanted her since the day I saw her. I’ve made her be the enemy because it’s so much easier than admitting how much I like her.

“Well, brother, it seems you have a problem. But the question is, what are you going to do about it?”

If I knew that, I wouldn’t be a damn mess.