10. MATTHEWS

MATTHEWS

S ilas and I stood in the kitchen over two mugs of coffee when a massive blond kid I recognized as Dean Tucker, the first baseman, stomped through the kitchen. His enormous frame swayed out of the way, just barely avoiding slamming straight into me as he made his way to the fridge. He reappeared from behind the door with a bottle of water and, when he finally made eye contact with me, he popped the cap, watching me for a moment as his head tilted to the side.

A tiny venomous-filled laugh ripped from his chest and he nodded.

“Mary, this is Dean Tucker.” Silas introduced us.

“The first baseman.” I held my hand out to him.

He stepped forward, leaning over the island so we were closer than before, and inhaled sharply. His eyes dropped to my wrist before finally taking it.

“Mary's going to stay in the guest room for the duration of her visit, and she's going to conduct her interviews from inside the Nest,” Silas explained as Dean leaned against the counter, his eyes flickering back and forth as he listened.

“Oh.” Dean nodded, and I watched as he masked the discomfort on his face. “You're the fancy reporter.”

“I am,” I said, knowing he recognized me fully. You're close to Cael.

“What's for dinner?” He brushed it off and looked back to Silas.

Dean Tucker was a specimen in his own right. If I had to guess, he was nearly six-three and what had to be close to two hundred fifty pounds. He was pure muscle from head to toe. His jaw ticked tightly as my eyes ran down over his strong neck, traps, and broad chest to his taut, excised stomach, where his sweats hung on his hips just low enough to create a sliver of tanned skin between the band and his shirt.

His blue eyes studied me as I drank him in, but his expression never changed.

“A list.” Silas swiped a piece of paper from the counter. “You and Cael are on duty tonight.”

“I switched my day with Van,” Dean said without skipping a beat. “I have therapy with Ella in an hour, I'll text him this.”

“Seems Ella is a hot commodity this morning.” Silas narrowed his eyes before pressing his lips together in question but didn't seem to sense the tension in the air. “Go and tell her about dinner, please.”

“Mmm,” he hummed and turned to look at me again. “Mary.” He nodded and left the kitchen with not a single ‘it was nice to meet you’ in sight.

“If you'll excuse me, I just need to make a phone call,” I said to Silas before following Dean's route toward the front door. He was walking out onto the porch as I caught up to him. His long legs carried him much faster than I could walk.

“How do you know me?” I asked, causing him to turn with a sigh.

“You smell like lavender,” he said, jaw tense as he looked me over with disapproval. “It's his favorite.”

“Cael?” I asked, and hurt flickered across his face. He didn't say anything more before climbing down the steps toward a truck parked along the curve of the driveway.

I lifted my fingers to my mouth and my teeth found my nails, worrying them as I spun out with thoughts. I couldn’t figure out if I had screwed this up. Heat licked at my chest and my heart still raced from my run in with Cael.

It was hard to ignore the way he made me feel.

Even worse was the idea that it wasn’t anger that bubbled up.

It was longing.

“Shit,” I swore under my breath and wandered back into the house to find Silas.

“You ready for the rest of the tour?” He asked as I entered the kitchen and I gave him a polite smile and quick nod, unable to think past the image of Cael’s damp naked body.

The rest of the day was spent on the phone with the hotel as I set up in the corner of the Nest that Silas had organized for me. The house was like nothing I had ever seen, and it outdid any other frat house on campus. Not a frat house , Silas had grumbled when I made a comment, brushing my fingers along the dark wood of the banister that led to the upstairs rooms.

He explained that a female medical intern had previously occupied the room I was staying in, so it was cleaner than any other room in the house. He left me to organize but it wasn’t long until he circled back, standing in the archway with his arms crossed.

“Excuse my intrusion,” he said, as I set my laptop on the couch beside me.

The light from the grand window behind me made the chunks of ashy, nearly gray pieces of his beard and hair stand out more. He rolled his slim shoulders back in his shirt and danced around his question like it pained him to hold onto it.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Shore?” I asked, setting down my phone and giving him my full attention.

“You know the Codys, don't you?” His brows kissed in the center and created worry lines across his forehead.

“I do,” I answered honestly.

Silas clicked his tongue at me and sighed.

“Do you know the term ‘ baby gloves’ , Ms. Matthews?” He asked me, his tone dropping from polite to serious in a matter of seconds.

“It's a common term,” I said, and he raised a brow at my sass. “Yes.”

“Use them,” he said curtly, the muscle in his jaw ticking as he ground his teeth together.

“How did you know?” I asked him as he turned to leave me again.

“First of all, don’t insult my intelligence.” He laughed but it was tight as he stepped forward. “You'll come to figure out that this…” He waved a hand around to signify the house. “...is much more than a baseball team. It's a family.”

“Vague,” I said.

“Protective,” he corrected. “Be gentle, please. They’ve struggled enough this year, they don’t need anymore character growth. ”

I bit my tongue to keep from saying something I shouldn't but desperately wanted to. The Codys were my family first. This team, this house, took them from me. I was alone.

I finished setting out my things and grabbed my cell phone from the table.

“Hey, Lovebug.” Momma's voice nearly made me cry every time.

“Hey, Momma.” I leaned back on the couch and looked around at the dark green wallpaper and fancy, mahogany crown molding.

“How are things going?” She asked. I could tell she was mucking around in the garden because I could hear the birds in the background chirping circles around her head.

“This might have been a mistake,” I said, picking at the hem of my shirt. “I thought he would at least want to see me, or even talk like adults.”

“And he doesn't.” She sat in one of the rickety steel lawn chairs; the squeaky sound of the old metal echoed through the phone. "So much like his Daddy," she groaned. I know that tone in her voice. She had predicted this but had kept her thoughts to herself so I would learn something.

“He's so different,” I whispered, trying not to let my emotions get the best of me.

I had come here with a plan. I'd held on to the idea that Cael was the monster under my bed for so long. My loneliness had turned to resentment over time. He had ruined so much of my life because, no matter what I did, he was there, tainting it and reminding me it would never feel as good as I felt when he smiled at me.

He was the sun and I sat in darkness when he’d left. I became a person no one would recognize, because if I wasn't his Clementine, he wasn't my Cael.

But I was wrong.

And he had proven it in one conversation.

“ You're mine, and I'm yours.”

He hadn't changed as much as I had hoped, and now I was left disappointed.

“Do you remember that summer when you found that injured bird?” She asked me, and I said yes. I remember every summer with Cael. “You were so young, maybe ten. Do you remember what Ryan said to Honeybug when he declared he would make the bird a bed with hay and blankets?”

I hummed at the nickname. It had been a long time since I had heard it. It was a pair of names given to us when we were young: We were both bugs; I was love and Cael was honey.

“He told him it was foolish because the bird would never fly again.” I bit down. I could picture the defiance that had flickered in Cael's pretty blue eyes, even then, butting heads with his Dad.

“And do you remember what Cael said back to him?” Momma asked.

“He—” I stopped to laugh. “He put both hands on his hips and said…” I inhaled tightly, the fuzzy feeling of the memory flooding my chest.

Momma repeated it back to me. “You misunderstand how powerful love can be.”

“I don't even know where he learned the word misunderstand, but the look on Ryan's face had been priceless. That man walked out to the barn, dragging Honeybug with him, and not an hour later, you had a brand new bed made from wood and filled with blankets for that bird,” she said.

I stayed quiet for a long time, unsure how to respond to her story.

“Here's what I know about Cael Cody,” Momma said over the phone. “And no matter how different he may be, granted, he's been through a lot, Lovebug,” she added, as if I could forget the hole that his mother had left.

“His love has the ability to move mountains.”

I chewed on the inside of my lip for a moment before responding. She wasn't wrong. Cael had and always would be a force of nature, but I used to be the breeze, the birds, and the sun. Now I am the mountain, hard and cold.

“What if I forgot?” I asked her. “How to love.”

“It's like riding a bike, Baby,” she cooed.

Once she hung up, I set the phone down on the couch beside me and tried to sort through the thoughts she had left me with. She had forgotten one crucial detail of the story.

The bird never flew again.

It became dependent on Cael and, like a typical child, he grew bored of it.

Ryan had to kill it two weeks later because it couldn't feed itself.

Love hadn't been enough.