39. MATTHEWS

MATTHEWS

“ Y ou got this.” Ella instructed me through the break and, surprisingly, I did a really good job. I lined up for my second shot, aiming for any ball I could sink, when Ella stopped me.

“Wait,” she said with mischief flickering across her face. “The dare is covered, but each ball sank is a truth you have to answer.”

“Oh come on, El!” Dean groaned and leaned over on the table like he was in physical pain. “You didn’t say this was truth or dare, you just made a bet!”

I watched Cael staring at Ella, something passing between them. Whatever game Ella was playing beyond the pool table was cerebral ; she was playing a mind game. She was more subtle than Arlo, who played with his ears pinned back. There was no secret that Cael’s faux-older brother was a protective doberman-type alpha male but seeing the look in his eyes today. Something had shifted.

He stiffened his shoulders in the loose gray t-shirt and shook his head, admitting a silent defeat.

“Fine, each ball sank is a truth answered.”

“Why do you play these stupid games with her? She always wins!” Dean groaned and paced in a loose circle as Zoey laughed.

“Less complaining, more… pool shark-doing .” Cael waved his hands around at Dean, who responded with a strained and terrified, “you think I’m a pool shark? We’re screwed!”

I laughed and Ella leaned close to me. “Take that pocket, really slow, inhale, and shoot. ”

Her voice was so calm and I followed her every word, watching the orange ball bounce off the left pocket. Ella didn’t flinch. She was calm as Cael leaned over the table and sunk the first ball he laid eyes on. As he straightened out his eyes met mine, sparkling like they were made of ocean waves.

“Favorite color?” He asked me.

“Juvenile,” Dean scoffed.

“Spell that.” Cael laughed at him, attention breaking just for a moment, but Dean just shrugged. “Don’t use words you can’t spell, Tucker.”

“Green.”

It was purple, but I wasn’t going to give Cael an inch of satisfaction. No matter how simple things had become between us, the urge to remind him how horrible it could be lingered.

Cael looked back at me and smiled because he understood the game. Without breaking eye contact, he sank another ball.

“Is there a surface in the Nest you prefer, Ella?” He turned his head slowly to her.

Arlo lost it laughing, wild and loud, breaking the hardened persona for a brief second to enjoy that teasing. It was a hard feeling to swallow, standing on the outside of their circle, watching them laugh and treat each other like family. I had Bobbi, and in moments like that, witnessing the magical entanglement of an unbreakable thread that strung the Hornets together, I missed her.

“It’s at least twelve inches long.” She laughed and winked at Arlo, whose laughter stopped, and a blush spread across his cheeks.

“Is that medically safe?” Zoey asked, her eyes bouncing between Ella and Arlo’s crotch with a horrified look on her face. Van scoffed like she had personally insulted his penis. “Aw. Baby, you’re perfect,” she cooed at him. “I don’t need twelve inches.”

Arlo lost it laughing again, this time Silas joined him in a chorus of taunts that faded out as Cael lined up to take his next shot but missed. He watched me from across the table as he handed the pool cue to Dean.

Ella wasted no time taking her shot and landed a double ball in the far right pocket.

“That’s my girl,” Arlo praised .

“Have you been using the batting cages?” She asked Cael without remorse.

He chuckled, and I watched as the lie flickered across his features.

“Of course, I have been, Peachy.”

But he doesn’t lie like I expect him to, and it rattles me a little because it proves just how unafraid he is to get in trouble. Maybe it was how honest he was even when playing a kids' game that scared me, but our lives weren’t a game and he had never lied to me.

My heart raced at the thought.

Ella didn’t say much else, but she turned to me. “I sunk two balls, ask a question,” she whispered to me.

“That’s not the rules,” Cael groaned.

“You wouldn’t follow them even if they were, shithead,” Ella hissed, clearly upset with him but finding other ways to punish him for his secret activities.

Cael looked to Arlo for help but his friend just shrugged him off.

“She has a point,” Arlo said. He might have been on Cael Cody protection detail, but Ella was meddling and she was the boss.

“First time,” I ask him and the grin falls from his face.

He had been mine, despite everything that happened, he had been mine.

I could see the gears turning behind his eyes, the storm passing as he faked a smile and leaned over the table at me. “Her name was Clementine,” he whispered, his eyes flickering to the bracelet around my wrist. “Waste of a question.”

Dean looked on quietly, and Ella watched the two of us with a smile on her face that could only mean trouble. Cael was pissed off. Outraged that I would even ask him, I could see it in his shoulders and jaw. The huffy little smile that formed on his lips was a tell-tale sign that the question upset him. It brought his morals into question and rattled the walls around the memory we both held onto so desperately from that night.

Ella took another shot and sunk another ball.

“What about you?” Ella poked Dean in the chest with her finger and smiled at him. “First time?”

A blush crept on his cheeks, he scanned the room and leaned closer to her, lowering his voice. “Patrick Harvey.” He shrugged, “In the back of Van’s truck after we won the season opener two years ago. ”

“That was your first time?” Cael looked at him surprised. “In College?”

Dean looked at him. “It’s not like I could bring guys home.”

“You fucked a Pittsburgh player in the back of my truck?” Van hollered. “You could have at least picked a piece of ass from a good team! Or screwed around with someone on our team. Now there’s bad juju in my truck.”

“That was two years ago, Van, I don’t fuck where I play,” Dean said.

“Yes, you do,” Cael and Arlo said in unison.

“I didn’t back then.” He rolled his eyes. “And can you all stop yelling, please? There are other people in the diner.”

“Take your shot,” Cael said to Ella. “Get this beating over with.”

“Dean,” Arlo called over to him and the first baseman wandered to the table.

He leaned over the table and Arlo whispered something to him that made Dean groan as he returned to the pool table and watched Ella miss her shot, which was strange because she was perfectly aligned. He surveyed the table before taking his own, sinking a ball without much thought.

“Who’s Julien?” Dean asked.

My heart seemed to sink into my stomach. I should have expected Cael to get curious. He had heard more of that conversation that I had wanted, and now… I looked at Cael, hoping that he’d give me an out, but he wasn’t on my side .

He was just as invested in the question as Arlo was.

“If you wanted to know, you should have offered to play,” I called out to him, my body leaning around Cael to make eye contact with Arlo. “He’s my ex.”

Arlo’s dark, judgemental eyes narrowed and he pushed to the edge of the booth. “Why’s the picture still up then?”

“That’s a question, King.” I rolled my eyes.

Dean missed his next shot.

I tried to shake off the adrenaline that rushed through me when I didn’t miss mine.

“Why were you stalking my social media?” I asked Cael, ignoring the heat that radiated off Arlo.

“Cause I’m a jealous idiot.” Cael shrugged and leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I had to know.”

Cael watched me, his eyes burning blue and his jaw tight with unsaid upset.

“And you were keeping secrets again.”

He said again like we were back in my bedroom and he was pleading with me to tell him why I was crying. “I made you sad.” His voice broke in my head like it had done that day.

“It wasn’t your business, Cael.” I swallowed and turned away from him back to the table.

“Take a beat,” Ella whispered, forcing me to breathe before taking my next shot. I sank that too.

“All yours, I’m sick of the truth,” I said.

“What’s with the bracelet?” Ella pointed to his wrist.

Cael looked down at the fraying threads and smiled. “Clementine made it for me in the sixth grade out of string she stole from the corner store in town.” His eyes caught mine and sparkled under the pool table bulbs.

“Sixth grade?” Ella’s brows pinched together. “How is that thing still on?”

Cael shrugged. “Willpower…” He searched for the word. “Stubborn determination.”

I smiled at him as my chest filled up with warmth and I leaned over the table to shoot again. I missed my second shot, my hands were shaking with adrenaline as his silent affection poured over me.

Cael moved around the table, brushing up against me as he lined up his shot and missed.

“You’re distracted!” Dean groaned as his eyes counted the balls still left in play. “We’re going to lose.”

“We were never going to win, big guy.” Cael slipped back into his typical cotton candy demeanor. Fluffy and sweet.

I backed away from the table so Ella could sink the last four balls. One at a time they plunked into their respective corners and Arlo’s grin took on a new brightness. Beaming with pride, Ella straightened out and surveyed her work.

“Have you shown Mary the calendar?” Ella asked and Dean went beet red while Cael just started laughing. “She hasn’t seen it has she? You should use it in your piece, it’s a work of art.”

Zoey giggled from her side.

“Don’t worry boys, I burned every copy of that calendar she’s gotten her hands on,” Arlo said with confidence as he crossed his arms and stared at his fiancée.

“Hey Kelly,” Ella walked to the banister and yelled from over the loft, her head turning to Arlo with a sly smile. “You still have that copy?”

“What?” Arlo straightened out, his body growing tense. “Oh, Blondie…” He sighed. “You’re in so much trouble.”

“Yeah, yeah…” She waved him off as the hostess came up the stairs with a Harbor Hornets Fundraiser Calendar in her hands. “Remind me how much trouble I’m in later when we’re alone,” Ella hummed, kissing him but keeping the calendar out of the reach of his grabby hands.

She tossed it on the pool table, flipping it open to November.

Dean was squatted on first base in a pair of tight ball pants and no shirt, his skin glistening from sunscreen and sweat. Navy blue face paint smeared beneath his eyes complimented the green-blue color of his burning gaze. His hair wet and curled around his ears with a serious look on his face as he stared out past the camera.

“Mr. November,” Zoey swooned. “Always a favorite.”

Van choked on his beer.

“But Mr. June…” Ella flipped the calendar back to Cael’s month.

“Oh my God.” I covered my mouth and looked down at it. “How did you even get up there?”

Cael was standing with his feet wide, balanced on the massive block letter sign that lit up the front of the Harbor stadium with a bat carefully positioned between his legs and his hands wrapped around the top in such a way that he perfectly covered himself.

“A ladder.” He shrugged, clearly very proud of himself.

The hazy blue light of the sign kissed his naked skin and complimented his stupid grin.

“You climbed that ladder naked?” Zoey giggled.

“I’ll tell you something, there’s nothing as freeing as the wind kissing your balls twenty feet in the air with the looming threat of death on the horizon.” Cael smiled.

I dug my phone out of my pocket and snapped a photo of Mr. June and saved it.

“I have more, I’ll mail you a copy,” Ella said and Arlo practically hissed from his spot at the table.

“Oh relax, Cap,” Ella waved him off. “I pulled Mr. January out of all of them. Your ass in those baseball pants are for my eyes only.”

He cocked his head and the lightness returned to his features as he rose from his chair.

“One last question.” She stared at Cael as Arlo rounded the table and hung himself around her, kissing her face just below her scar. “I asked about your past, but what do you see for your future?”