Chapter 5

5

Tripp

Two weeks later…

My house is a disaster. My new nanny quit after less than forty-eight hours on the job. I spent yesterday cleaning a family of chipmunks out of a closet.

Yes, those are related. No, I don't know where James learned to bring woodland animals into the house. He's four .

I burned the bacon this morning. My mom's out of town with all of my kids' other stand-in grandmas from the neighborhood where I grew up. My last back-up babysitter, my buddy Beck Ryder, is with his girlfriend in Europe for a vacation where the goober probably isn't proposing, because he's an idiot who can't decide how to do it. Levi's running late to join me this morning because he flew in from god only knows where overnight.

And we have a meeting in three minutes with Sam Pakorski and the Fireballs' new owner.

Beversdorf passed a few days ago after being in a coma since the stroke. His private funeral was yesterday, here in Copper Valley, and his sole heir—a distant niece, apparently—requested that Pakorski fly into Copper Valley to meet with her about the team.

He tells me she's working hard to get his estate in order so she can get back to her regular job.

He also tells me the bidder who wants to move the team to Vegas will be at the meeting.

I doubt he 's bringing his two young kids with him.

This is either going to be a disaster, or it'll be an accidentally brilliant strategy. I have no idea how Beversdorf's niece feels about kids—or about baseball—but I do know I'm not letting anyone move the Fireballs away from Copper Valley without me putting up the biggest damn fight of my entire life.

I don't fight. I wait. I watch. I negotiate.

Until today.

Today's a fighting day.

I will do whatever it takes to get control of the Fireballs.

"C'mon, Emma. Pretend your feet are birds and run."

"Feet aren't birds , Daddy!" James shrieks with laughter and drops one of the seventeen trucks he's insisting on bringing with us.

I scoop it up and put it into the diaper bag, make a mental note to wash all his trucks in bleach when we get home, then heft both my kids into my arms. "Right now, feet are birds."

"Fwy! Fwy!" Emma pumps her legs, and I shift her so she doesn't kick me in the jewels. But shifting her makes four more of James's trucks fall to the pavement of the parking garage.

He bursts into tears.

And I have to remind myself that I missed this for the week they were with my in-laws.

I did. I missed this. So much, even while I was grateful for the breathing room.

It's complicated.

We're seven minutes late for the meeting in a rented private room at Noble V, and I get side eyes from a few lunchtime patrons for bringing my noisy kids into an upscale wine bar.

But the minute we push into the meeting, everything changes.

There's an older man in a cowboy hat who's on his feet not far from the refreshments, thumbs tucked into his waistband, showing off his big belt buckle under his belly paunch while he smiles like he's patiently waiting for a temper tantrum to die down.

Pakorski's sitting at the head of a long table, grimacing like he'd rather swallow a goat than sit in this room for one more minute.

And Beversdorf's niece?—

My eyes bug out.

I almost drop Emma.

My heart plummets so fast it kicks me in the balls on the way down.

The atmosphere is already heavy, but when the lone woman in the room turns flashing eyes on me, I suddenly feel like my bones are made of graphite and the weight of ten thousand ballparks has been dumped on my shoulders.

And in the midst of the horror of realizing Beversdorf's niece is the Lila who thinks I'm Levi , one thought gongs through my chest, a syllable at a time.

I. Am. So. Screwed.

Probably should've read that report that my team put together on her, but I was busy making sure my smoke alarms didn't go off and packing a diaper bag.

She's standing across the table from Cowboy Hat in a hunter green pencil skirt that highlights every last inch of curve, stiletto heels, and a white blouse that's giving me bad, bad fantasies. I swear I hear club music thumping and Levi's voice whispering do it, bro. Have some fun .

When recognition hits, she blinks once.

Then twice.

And a tentative smile pulls at the corners of her lips before her gaze shifts to my two wiggly beast-children.

Fuck , she's pretty.

Even with the hint of that smile fading and her brows slowly drawing together like she's well aware that Levi Wilson doesn't have kids .

"Dada, where my penis?" Emma asks. It comes out in two-year-old speak, except for the word penis . Naturally.

"You don't have a penis, Emma," James tells her. "You gots a javina."

"Toys?" I ask them both while I set them on the floor.

Pakorski winces harder. And Lila—there are so many expressions dancing over her face that I almost turn around and walk out.

Happiness fading to confusion to amusement to suspicion to irritation, and a million little micro-expressions between.

Cowboy Hat snickers. "Got a confused one, son? Ain't surprised, since you can't find the nursery. Private meeting. Check the next building."

"I'm here to buy the Fireballs," I reply.

Cowboy Hat momentarily freezes before forcing a laugh. "That right there's funny."

Lila's brows quit dancing and she pulls up a poker face. And as Pakorski is tipping back his antacids, the door swings open behind me, and my brother strolls in.

Wearing his fedora, white pants, a paisley button-down, and indoor sunglasses.

So, so screwed.

"Sorry I'm late," he says easily, because he still thinks that's our biggest problem.

"Lila Valentine, meet Tripp and Levi Wilson." Pakorski gestures to us. "You heard of the boy band Bro Code? They're from here, and they've all put together a proposal for you."

Lila's gaze darts between me and my brother, and did I say poker face?

I don't know what that is, but it's seven levels past poker face. She could be negotiating with the devil for all she's giving away.

Oh, fuck.

She wants to keep the team.

"Levi and I are acquainted," she says, her brows furrowing tighter while she looks at him.

I swallow hard.

Even baffled, she's sexy as hell.

"What? Oh, no, I'd remember you," my brother says, completely missing the subliminal shut the fuck up and don't make this worse message I forgot to send him with my mind while I was distracted with trying to not get aroused.

"You're…Levi?" Lila repeats to my brother.

Then she looks at me.

I duck my head—yes, a complete chicken move—and open the diaper bag for my kids to rustle through.

Yep.

This is helping the whole she's pretty and I want to kiss her again thing.

"You're Levi Wilson?" Lila repeats to my brother.

She turns back to me without waiting for an answer. Her eyes have gone so flat and cold that they could single-handedly put a few million metric tons of glacier back in the Arctic.

Or right here. In downtown Copper Valley.

My face, on the other hand, is so hot I could grill a burger on it.

I cried when both my kids were born and wasn't the slightest bit embarrassed. Hell, I cried at my wedding and Jessie's funeral too. I'll own it.

I once tripped over a microphone cord and split my pants in the middle of a sold-out stadium show while the camera was trained on me. I said the word epitome wrong seven times in an interview once.

Not once did I get embarrassed the way I'm currently embarrassed.

And we're going to ignore the part of me howling a big ol' nooooo at realizing I won't ever be back in a club where I accidentally run into this woman again, buy her a drink, and tell her a funny-not-funny story about how I felt like I couldn't have a good time as myself, and I'm sorry, but could we start over?

She looks at Levi.

At his fedora.

Then his white pants.

Then back to me, confirming that Levi and I don't look as much alike as I thought.

Levi looks at me.

And all the puzzle pieces seem to fall into place, even though I never actually told him what happened in New York, but he's smarter than he lets on, and now he's giving me that look.

Hell, Lila is too.

It's the one our mother used to give both of us when Beck and his bestie Wyatt would sneak into our house and steal all the cookies from the cookie jar, which she never believed, because she always said Mrs. Ryder kept enough food in her house for a small army.

Beck eats more than a small army, though, and so Levi and I got blamed a lot for missing cookies.

This time, I've fully earned the glare of shame.

My brother's glare disappears as he turns to aim his pop star, ladies love me smile at her. "Yep. I'm Levi. Most days. Unless I need a break and hire a stand-in."

I could fucking kiss him.

Pretty sure he'd rather kick me.

Understandable. I want to kick myself right now.

"This is my big brother, Tripp," Levi adds. "Doesn't get out much, but he makes being a dad look easy."

"Wook, Daddy." James reaches into the diaper bag and pulls out a baby chipmunk.

A live baby chipmunk.

I dive for it. Levi coughs, and I know he's hiding a laugh, even though this isn't funny. Pakorski makes another strangled noise.

And Cowboy Hat might as well pry off that belt buckle and whip his belt over his head in a dance move worthy of some of the shit I used to do on stage.

He's won.

He's already won. "Son, you two need to take this circus out of this here business meeting. Ain't no place for kids here."

Translation: Nobody's selling a baseball team to you, idiot. You can't control your personal life. How could you run a baseball team?

The chipmunk bites my thumb, and I stifle a yelp while I try to grab the itty thing by the scruff of the neck.

"Daddy! That my chipmunk!" James cries.

"And he needs to go outside with his family." Fuck. Fuck . His family was released yesterday in the woods behind our house. This one's going to need to be taken to an animal sanctuary, because it's not like I can just go call Mama Chipmunk and tell her she forgot one.

James's lower lip wobbles.

Emma bursts into tears.

And I've officially used up my entire quotient of fucks for the entire month. Going to need a year's worth this morning.

Levi lifts my screaming daughter, gives me a this is a worse shitshow than Cash's wedding look, and strolls out of the room while I struggle to keep hold of the chipmunk.

"He wantsa to wide in my fiya-twuck," James wails.

"I'll get you a stuffed chipmunk to ride in your firetruck, bud, but real chipmunks belong with their mommies. Daddy's gotta have a meeting with the grown-ups, and then we'll go see a lot of animals, okay?"

Cowboy Hat clears his throat. "I don't know what your wife does, son, but if she don't know her place with those rugrats, then you're doing something wrong."

My head whips up.

"His wife's dead," Pakorski supplies for me.

That, at least, takes him aback.

But only as long as it takes Lila to speak. "Mr. Pakorski, this meeting is over. The Fireballs aren't for sale."

"Lila—" Pakorski starts.

"Darlin', I see you sitting there saying you know a thing or seven about running a baseball team," Cowboy Hat says. "But little girls don't belong in pro baseball."

I step in front of James to shield him from the carnage that's undoubtedly about to happen. My eyebrows are so high, they're rearranging my hairline. That feeling in the pit of my stomach?

That's my own rage exploding. I don't have any right to come to this woman's rescue—not after what I pulled—but I start to ball my hands into fists, which makes the damn baby chipmunk give a squeak and pee down my shirt.

I won't hit him while my kids can see. I will not hit him while my kids can see.

"You need to stop talking," I growl.

"You're standin' there holdin' a rat with a screaming brat behind you and thinkin' you got room to say a word?"

Pakorski's on his feet. "Lila, wait."

"For what?" She gestures to Cowboy Hat while she yanks her bag open. "If this is any representation of what you look for in team owners, you clearly have bigger problems than a team that's come in last for a couple seasons."

Levi walks back in. Emma's gnawing on a piece of bread, and he has a large metal bowl in hand. "Compliments of the kitchen."

I wish I could say this was the first time the two of us had ever done this routine, but life on the road in a boy band is weird sometimes, and so is single parenthood.

The chipmunk goes in the bowl. I get Happy Emma. Levi gets Sobbing James. He angles his chin toward Lila, who's shoving a notepad into a messenger bag, and asks the silent question. So are we screwed or what?

Yeah.

We're screwed.

"Darlin', you ain't goin' nowhere until you sign those papers selling that team to me," Cowboy Hat says.

And I've about had it with today. "She'll sell to you over my dead body."

She turns cool green eyes to me. "I'm perfectly capable of declining business offers on my own." Her curly hair whips over her shoulders as she turns to stare down Cowboy Hat. "And you. You give cowboys everywhere a horrible reputation. You should be ashamed of yourself."

She tosses her messenger bag over her shoulder.

"Lila. Two minutes?" Yes, that's desperation. No, I'm not ashamed.

"I believe you've already had more than that, Mr. Wilson."

" Please ."

Emma wiggles, and I let her down to run to the diaper bag. James squeals and lunges, and he, too, gets deposited on the ground, chipmunk forgotten, because Emma might touch his trucks, which still need to be cleaned from landing in the parking garage.

"Tripp's been working on a plan to turn the team around for months, Lila," Pakorski says. "The smart thing for a man in my position is to move them across country, rename them, and let them start fresh. But?—"

"He can't even control his kids," Cowboy Hat interjects.

Levi opens the door, jerks his head, and then steps back while two of his security team stroll in. "He insulted the lady," he tells them.

She rolls her eyes.

James grabs a truck that Emma was reaching for, and when she yells mine! , he takes off running around the room.

"Please," I say again as Lila brushes past me. "I'm sorry. I—it was a bad day."

She stops and faces me head-on, and boom .

God , she's pretty. But it's not a surface thing. It's her poise. The way she's clearly restraining herself. The intelligence lurking in her bright green eyes. The front that says she's not hurt, when I know she just buried her uncle—alone—and now she's dealing with a mess of his baseball team and a guy who lied to her about who he was so he could make out with her in a club bathroom and another guy who's just a dick.

"I ain't leaving this room until I own my baseball team, so you can just back the fuck off," Cowboy Hat snarls at Levi's security team.

"Fuck!" James yells.

"Fuck!" Emma yells back.

"Don't say fuck , Emma. That's for big people." James turns to chide her, trips over his own feet, and flies nose-first into the edge of a wooden chair.

He erupts in a wail.

Naturally. Running nose-first into a table will hurt like hell.

When James starts crying, Emma starts crying. She's very empathetic. And if she cries too much, she'll puke, and we're already pushing it this morning. Which means I'm shifting into dad-mode, leaping around the table and catching my toe on the corner of the table.

I stifle the urge to let out a good fuck of my own, because James is bleeding, and the only thing Emma hates more than someone else crying is blood.

"Hey, hey, c'mere, bud. It's okay." I sweep up first one kid, then the other, and head around the table to the diaper bag, where I grab an old burp rag to hold to his face.

"I bent my nose!" he hollers.

"Bud gone die!" Emma shrieks. "Bud! Bud bad!"

"Blood doesn't mean he's going to die," I tell her, but she's two.

She's freaking out.

She's not listening.

Unless— "Emma, you want a mushroom?"

My daughter stops mid-scream with her mouth still open, and she eyeballs me like I'm lying.

But she loves mushrooms. It's disturbing how much she loves mushrooms. Yet she does, so I use it to my advantage when I have to.

Now is when I have to .

I nod to the table at the back of the room, which features trays of appetizers. I can see a veggie tray and dip.

And mushrooms.

"There are—" I start.

"Daddy, it huuuuuurts ," James wails.

And all thoughts of mushrooms fly out the window as Emma starts wailing all over again too.

Because this?

This is my life. Screaming children. A dream perpetually just out of reach. And a lonely bed to fall into all by myself, every night.

I'm exhausted. I'm defeated. My suit is covered in chipmunk pee and nose-blood and cry-snot. And I can't even remember why I cared enough about the Fireballs to be here this morning when we could've spent the morning at the park. Singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" until my eyes crossed. Retrieving Emma's mittens from all over the playground. Putting her in and out of a swing seven million times. Getting hit on by the nannies taking their charges to the park too.

Fuck.

Yeah, I remember why I'm here.

Balance.

Gotta have something to live for other than taking care of everyone around you, old man .

Levi said it most recently, but it's an echo of what all of my closest friends have been saying since Jessie died.

I dropped James and Emma at my mom's, and I left.

I just left.

Headed up to Shipwreck, a hilarious little town in the Blue Ridge Mountains where Beck has a weekend house and where all of us from the old neighborhood like to disappear to from time to time, and I drank myself into oblivion.

Wasn't alone—Beck was there, and I think Davis and Wyatt too—and we definitely video chatted with Levi.

I can't do this , I'd said. I've never loved two people more than I love them, but I can't be the dad they need .

Not by yourself, idiot , had been the recurring answer over the twelve hours of my complete meltdown, which they've all reinforced for me at every opportunity.

Subtly. Hey, Tripp, can I take James and Emma to the video arcade so I don't look like the dumbass adult going in to play games all by myself?

Like Beck doesn't have an arcade of his own in every home he owns. So maybe not that subtly.

But the point stuck.

We called our band Bro Code even before we went viral on YouTube because we were all brothers—all of us from the neighborhood where we grew up, and not just the five of us who were playing around with being a band. Cash's brothers and sisters were my brothers. Davis's and Beck's sisters were my brothers. Wyatt, the last kid on the block, was my brother.

We grew up in a village, just as likely to be grounded by someone else's parent as our own, and equally as likely to be fed by someone else's parent as our own. When Cash's parents wanted to go out for date night, Beck's parents would host a sleepover. When my mom had to work late, Levi and I would head to Davis's house. Christmas cookies were made at Beck's house. Neighborhood cookouts were held in Cash's backyard. Davis's dad taught us all to shoot hoops and got Levi and me to the piano lessons Mom insisted we take, and Wyatt's grandma took both Wyatt and me to baseball practices when my mom couldn't do it.

Doing this parenting thing all on my own?

It's fucking hard.

And my friends are right. My kids can't be all that I live for.

But the universe seems to be telling me that I need to let go of my dreams of running the Fireballs when I'm not dad-ing.

Levi lifts Emma for me, and I realize we're alone.

Just my brother, my kids, and me.

Shit .

"It's over, isn't it?" I say grimly.

"At least we know the team's not going to Vegas," he replies, but he's equally grim.

Because it is.

It's over.

My dream? It's not going to happen.

Ever.