11. Kyle

“If we adjust the tube three-quarters of an inch to the right, then the ball will exit at the same angle as the next line,” Collette explained to Piper as she bent down and used a ruler to adjust the tube, causing her blond braids to slip over her shoulder.

“Good.” Phoebe, Collette’s twin sister, nodded.

“We are so going to the crush them.” I rubbed my hands together. I could taste our victory already. My girls were rocking this.

Across the room, Dylan’s teenage son, Liam, and his team of six were setting up a piddly domino run. They didn’t stand a chance against us. Grey had already knocked their line over twice in his excitement, and they hadn’t even figured out how to get the last domino from the table to hit the first on the floor. Not to mention, ours went over a bookshelf, down the desk and across half the room. We had three twists and one Matchbox car run. Between the twins, who were smarter than most rocket scientists, and Piper, we were going to crush them.

Dylan coughed, garnering my attention, and when I eyed her, she gave me a frown.

“Right, right. Not a contest,” I corrected, although I didn’t mean it. “This is just for fun.”

“Right.” Collette’s tone was just as placating as mine.

Piper surveyed the other group’s setup. “I don’t see a single category in which theirs would be better than ours.”

“Exactly.” A devilish cackle left Phoebe’s lips as she held up a fist.

Piper looked at Phoebe’s hand and blinked. Then she hesitantly tapped her knuckles against the older girl’s. The twins were a few years older than she was, but they had taken her under their wing within an hour of our arrival.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, so without disturbing the girls or their dominoes, I shifted back and dug it out.

Kayla: Got approval from the mom. She didn’t ask too many questions, but I could hear them in her voice. Be ready for a bunch after she gets the email.

Of course Harper would make this hard. Because of their connection to me, it would be against guidelines and rules to award Piper a grant.

But I could get around that easily. Rather than give her the grant from Hope Speaks, I would pay for Piper’s therapy outright. As long as I took care of the bills, I’d keep all communication running through Hope Speaks. Unless Harper became difficult. And already, the potential was looming.

Me: Just keep the language in the email vague.

Kayla: You’re the boss. (But I’m telling you again that this is a bad idea. When it blows up, please don’t fire me.)

Me: You and Cam have made your opinions clear.

They had both given me the just tell her the truth speech. But that wouldn’t get us anywhere. If she knew, then there was no way she’d accept any type of help from me. She was barely tolerating me as it was. Eventually I’d have to talk to her about my relationship with JJ, but I’d wait until she and I were on better terms.

“We are locking in this win,” Phoebe called to a girl with dark hair on the other side of the room.

The girl, who was about her age, responded by sticking out her tongue.

“Winnie, Phoebe, don’t fight,” Dylan said, keeping her tone melodic, even as she reprimanded the kids. “Maybe it’s time for a snack break.”

“Is it cookie time, Auntie Dylan?” a boy with dark hair and wide eyes asked quietly.

A boy in jeans and a denim jacket buttoned up to his neck stepped up beside Kai. His curly hair was like a brown puffball on his head. “Can we all have cookies?”

Dylan smiled. “Sure, we can do a cookie break, Finn.”

Piper whipped around, her pigtails smacking her cheeks. “It is not snack time. We had a snack at ten thirty. It’s now 1:04.” Her hands were balled into fists on either side of her and pressed into the carpet, and her body was rigid.

Bummer. A cookie sounded good. The gluten-free pretzels and juice boxes had been the bomb at snack time, even if Dylan’s lanky teenager had given me a look when I sat down at the table with kids, patiently waiting for my serving. Apparently he thought he was too old for a juice box. I would never be too old, though.

But Piper thrived on a set schedule, and I didn’t want her fight-or-flight instinct to kick in. For a kid like her, whose body wouldn’t produce the dopamine reaction the ways others did, a small change like this could cause a panicked reaction, and it could be incredibly difficult for her to rein herself in.

I held a hand out to Dylan. “We don’t have to have a snack.” With a look that begged her to hold off for another few minutes before bringing out the cookies, I turned to Piper. “What time did I say I’d take you up to the batting cages?”

The question was simple, but it was a reassurance that we had a schedule and that we’d stick to it.

Piper blinked rapidly, her stress increasing. “ You said we would leave here at 1:15 because you said we could bat at one thirty, since no one else would be there.”

“Yes.” I gave her a succinct nod. “That’s exactly what we’ll do.”

With that, she let out a long breath, and her hands relaxed.

“So we can do this for another ten minutes. Okay?”

She surveyed the dominos, her focus moving over them quickly. “And Mom can see this when she comes because it will stay and she can see it?”

I nodded, glancing at Dylan for backup. Approval, really. I was taking a lot of liberties in her facility.

“We’ll put up the play fence to protect it,” she promised. Dylan was one of the most easy-going people I’d ever met, and her general calm seemed to help Piper. That was a relief, since I was only here until she found more help.

“We should take a video of the whole thing once it’s set up,” Phoebe suggested. “Then we should record it again when it’s falling down.”

Piper blinked, and then she smiled at the blond girl. She didn’t make eye contact, but her focus was fixed somewhere around Phoebe’s neck. Piper’s smiles, I was learning, were few and far between.

“Yes,” she said. “Then we will have it forever.”

“Exactly,” Collette agreed with a proud nod.

When the girls were finished, I used my phone to take a video of the entire run as it stood. Then Dylan got the toddler fence out of the closet and put it up around their creation to protect it. Once Piper was certain it was secure, she and I headed up to the cages.

The vibration of the metal bat against a ball was great sensory input. My hope was that the input, along with the pressure on her joints, would alleviate some of the stress that had built up inside Piper today. If it didn’t help, then I’d take her to the training room and let her jump on the mini trampoline for a while.

“I know you love the Revs, but have you ever played baseball?”

“With Mom sometimes,” she said, her eyes darting around, taking in the details of the space—the netting, the clean white walls with a blue Revs logo in the center of each one, the turf beneath our feet, and the sound-deadening pads hanging around us. “I tried once with Dad, but I don’t like his mitt. It had bumps. He said I had to use it. Then he got frustrated and called Mom so we could go home.”

I winced, and my heart ached for the kid and her dad. Parenting a child on the spectrum wasn’t without its challenges. “How about hitting balls off a tee?”

She shrugged.

Taking that as a sign that she’d be up for trying, I pulled everything we’d need over and set it up. Ten minutes later, as she nailed another ball off the tee, it was clear this had been a great idea.

“Keep your swing level. You’re pulling up after you make contact,” I corrected.

She studied the tee, then the bat, and without looking at me, she nodded. I could see how people who didn’t understand Piper would consider her difficult. She danced along the line of composure and being stressed out all day long. Though the closest thing I’d seen to a meltdown from her today was the aftermath of her argument with Harper this morning, I could imagine how easily these could happen.

But as we worked on hitting off the tee, she was eager to please. Just like with the domino run, she wanted to do it right. She liked the positive reinforcement. Craved it, really, but she was worried about making a mistake. Doing things wrong. Especially new things.

Her bat cracked against the ball and sent it flying hard and high.

“Awesome. That was it.” I smiled, but I didn’t offer her a fist bump or a high five. Although she might oblige, like she had with Phoebe, it was clear she preferred her space.

“How do you like Little Fingers so far?”

With a shrug, she picked up another ball and set it on the tee. “I like the girls with the dominos. They make sense.”

I tried not to chuckle. Phoebe and Collette were definitely organizers. They didn’t play. They created a group of children who could dominate whatever activity they were performing. I appreciated that they were intelligent enough to see potential in Piper.

“I’m going to hit some balls too, if that’s okay.”

She shrugged, her focus still fixed on the ball on the tee.

Since she was still relaxed, I forced out the big news and crossed my fingers that she’d take it well. “Some people are going to come in and talk to us. Hope that’s all right with you.”

Piper turned in my direction, her attention skating up so high her eyes almost met mine before she glanced away.

“Why?”

Because I knew better than to bullshit her, I stuck to the truth. “They want to meet you. And I want you to tell me which one you like the best.”

She sent a ball sailing across the cage, then picked up another. “Do I have to stop playing?”

“No.”

She nodded, then got into the position I’d shown her.

I fired off a message to Cam and then set up the pitching machine. I’d cracked off three good hits before the door opened and a tall brunette walked in. I ignored her. She wasn’t here to talk to me. Thankfully, she headed straight to the fence. She chatted with Piper for about five minutes, and then she was gone. Two more women and a man popped in, one at a time, before I shut off my pitches.

“A bat weighs twenty-seven ounces.”

Brows raised, I eyed Piper, who was surveying her bat seriously.

“But it feels like more after you swing a lot.”

I chuckled. “Isn’t that the truth. Do you have Jell-O arms?”

She assessed one arm, then the other, and with a frown, she zeroed in on a spot on my shirt. “My arms are made of bones and skin.”

“I’m sorry.” I bit back a laugh this time. A lot of kids with ASD were very literal. “Do they feel like wiggly bands?”

She gently dropped her bat, then stretched her arms out. As she dropped them, her lips turned up just a fraction. “Maybe.”

“Means you worked them hard. Maybe you’ll want to play baseball someday.” I picked up her bat and headed for the rack. “Now we gotta get all the balls.” I pointed to the end of the cage.

She strode toward them, on a mission, as I grabbed the bucket. Together, we picked the balls up off the turf and dropped them into the bucket.

“I can’t play baseball,” she finally said.

“Why not?”

“I tried T-ball last year, but my coach told Mom I wasn’t normal enough to play.”

The hot fury that rushed through me when her words registered was like nothing I’d experienced before. “Normal?” I tried not to grit my teeth as I spit out the word.

“It was raining, and I didn’t want to get wet, so I ran back to the car.” She snagged another ball from the ground. “But I heard the coach tell her that in order to be on his team, I had to be normal.”

That was bullshit if I’d ever heard it. I wanted to wipe that idea from her head.

“Do you know Cortney Miller?”

Of course she did. Rather than just saying yes , she spouted his stats. She was fucking impressive.

“He can do some of the same things you do. List stats for anyone in the league. He’s really good at it.”

Straightening with another ball in her hand, she frowned down at the floor.

“But he worries a lot. Sometimes he would worry so much that he would have trouble playing the game. He couldn’t focus if he was wearing the wrong socks or if a clip on his leg guard was the wrong color.”

She blinked.

“And Christian Damiano? He’s afraid of germs and dirty things. The entire league changed the resin rules for him.”

Another blink.

“Emerson Knight? He has trouble focusing sometimes. He’ll walk right into walls if he isn’t careful.” I squatted beside her, not the least bit surprised when she didn’t look at me. I picked up a ball and held it out to her. “There is no set of rules that makes a person normal. Anyone can do anything they put their mind to.”

She took the ball and swallowed audibly. “Are there players like them on other teams too?”

“You know Corey Matthews? The New York Metros’ pitcher? He has dyslexia. He’s struggled with reading his entire life. And Bennett King, the catcher on the Rose City Roasters, is deaf. And Asher Adler from Atlanta is diagnosed with ASD just like you.”

She blinked twice and dropped the ball into the bucket. Then she was off, picking up another one. Rather than pressing her, I let the idea sink into her brain. Hopefully it resonated with her. Hopefully she’d recall it when she needed the reminder.

“Did you like any of the people who came in to talk to you today?” I asked as we finished up the ball collecting.

“Maybe the first one,” she said. Her tone was emotionless, but she’d answered quickly.

Huh. She was Cam’s favorite too. “Her name is Ashley. What did you like about her?”

“She didn’t smell, and she didn’t ask dumb questions. She does therapy like Ms. Temton does at school.” She picked up the full bucket and waddled back toward the front of the cages. “It’s three thirty. We are going back to the other room now, right?”

Once she’d set the bucket back exactly where we’d found it, I opened the gate and motioned for her to exit the cage. “Would you want to hang out with Ashley again?”

“When?” Without looking at me, she moved toward the door.

“After school most days. For an hour or so.”

“Why?” She turned, her lips tugged down. “Are you not coming here anymore?”

“I can’t come every day,” I said honestly. “I’m still playing baseball. I have two years left on my contract. After that, I’ll probably offer therapy like Ms. Temton and Ashley.”

“When you do that,” she said as we took the steps down to the underground tunnel that ran between the stadium and Langfield Corp, “will you do it with me?”

“I’d love that,” I said. I really would. “But we’d have to see what Mom says before we made plans.”

She was quiet as we moved through the hallways and when we stepped back into the Little Fingers rooms. Without a word, without needing reassurance, she shuffled over to the beanbag chair she’d been in earlier, put her headphones on, and just sat.

For a very out-of-the-ordinary day, Piper had been handling things exceptionally well. She hadn’t had a fit or tantrum since we arrived this morning. There were a few moments when she was on the edge, but she remained in control. That was a testament to both her hard work and Harper’s. After spending the day with Piper, I had to admit that Harper was raising an amazing little girl.

Dylan stepped up beside me. “You didn’t agree to the twins’ idea about posting the domino runs on your social media and having fans vote for the winner, right?”

A chuckle burst out of me. “Of course I did.” I spun to the redhead. “I gotta show off my team’s talent.”

She sighed and fiddled with the pink stone pendant on the necklace she always wore. “But Kyle, the twins and Piper are clearly gifted. They created a…” She waved her hand at their masterpiece. It was truly amazing. It was rainbow-colored, starting with red and ending ten feet later with purple. Every part fit the color scheme, and the twists and turns were perfectly spaced. “A very clickable social media post.” She frowned over at the other domino run. “And the other group tried really hard.”

I wouldn’t say it out loud, but it was borderline pathetic. It looked as if it had gotten knocked over again while I was gone, because it was only about three feet long at this point.

“You should have Cort post. Make sure the internet knows his son’s team built it.”

A deep growl sounded behind me. “Don’t pick on Liam.”

I turned, finding the giant man three steps behind me, holding his baby girl in the crook of one arm.

“You don’t think you can out-post me? Come on, old man.”

“Watch it, Streaks. We’re almost the same age,” he huffed.

“Nah, all those life points you’ve been collecting lately have added to your age.” I pointed at him. “Retired. Plus ten life points. Practically married.” I turned that finger to his fiancée. “Ten life points.” I nodded at his daughter. “Kids. Twenty life points. So by my math, you’re seventy-five.”

He dropped his head and gave it a shake. “You’re a moron.”

“How about this? We’ll deduct life points if you do this post-off against me and win.”

“I have a feeling you’ll be gaining ‘life points’”—he lifted his free hand and made air quotes—“here soon.”

Willow got a fistful of her dad’s hair and yanked, but the move barely fazed him.

“I’ve got another two years before I even think about retiring.” Chuckling, I crossed my arms over my chest.

He gently pried his daughter’s fingers from his hair and straightened. “Not what I meant. More the practically married part.”

Dylan’s eyes widened, and she bounced on her toes. “Oh my God. Is this like what happened with Liv and Becks? Where he’s all ‘I’m not into her,’ and they bicker all the time, but it’s only because he doesn’t have her yet?” Her voice was high-pitched as she finished the question.

My gut lurched. “No,” I assured her quickly and curtly.

But Cortney just raised a brow and smirked.

“I love that.” Dylan laced her fingers under her chin and tipped her head.

With a sharp breath in, I gathered my thoughts, ready to explain again that Harper wasn’t my type. But I was stopped by the sound of a grating voice behind me.

“You co-own Hope Speaks?”

Wincing, I slowly turned around, finding myself trapped in Harper’s glare.

“Ooh.” Dylan shook her head. “Let’s get that orangy-red passion out in the hall.”

I didn’t know what the orangy-red shit she was talking about was, but I nodded anyway and led a glaring Harper out the door.

“You’re Hope Speaks, and you picked Piper for a grant.” With her mouth pressed in a firm line like that, the small bow of her upper lip became more pronounced.

I tried not to think about how that lip had felt against my finger this morning. It was no use. The memory of the warm satin flesh was a taunt. And the slow puff of air that rushed across my skin when she’d released her breath?

Damn. Those simple thoughts had a wave of need rolling through me.

Her eyes sparked with fire like they had this morning. “Are you going to even bother responding?”

Fuck. With a thick swallow, I forced myself to focus. “I do run Hope Speaks, but I didn’t pick the grant recipients this year.”

That was the truth. Kayla had narrowed them down, and Mason had picked the two recipients, neither of whom was Piper. But that nugget of information wasn’t going to help me win this argument.

She huffed. “I don’t like being bulldozed.”

“Bulldozed.” I repeated the word to give myself a moment to come up with an answer because, shit, I knew exactly what she meant.

“Yes, Kyle. I googled Hope Speaks. It’s definitely you. You can’t come into our lives and start trying to take control. I don’t understand your motives here. And?—”

That was fair. What I was doing only made sense to me, and I was doing it because I’d made a promise to my best friend. A promise that definitely didn’t include tasting whipped cream off this woman’s lip. But fucking hell, I’d seen that flash of pleasure in her eyes as she sipped my coffee, and instinct had taken over.

But that wouldn’t happen again. I knew better. Harper needed help, and unfortunately, that kind of help didn’t include orgasms. I shook my head. Harper and orgasms should be two very separate topics in my mind. Harper went with things like stay away . And you know better than to even think about her that way .

“Why are you shaking your head? I’m dead serious.”

I believed it, but I had been too in my head for the last few minutes to hear what she’d said.

“I know.”

“Good. So we agree that Boston seems pretty much over the whole foul ball thing. And you’ve more than made up for your tirade. And you agree that it’s time to move on?” Harper cocked her head to the side, and a stray piece of hair swept across her cheek.

My hand twitched with the urge to brush it back, but I restrained myself by locking my arm against my side. “Piper needs the therapy that Hope Speaks can offer. Don’t stop her from getting it because you’re annoyed with me.”

Her shoulders tightened and her jaw locked. “I’m not saying she can’t accept the grant.”

The grimace she was sporting made it clear it hurt to say those words. Fuck. If she knew I was personally paying for the services? She’d probably combust. It was a good thing I didn’t plan to tell her that.

“Good. You can run it all through Hope Speaks. She met a therapist she liked today. Ashley is qualified to do ABA and RDI.”

She opened her mouth, but before she could respond, I kept going.

“Kayla will set up a meeting so you can meet Ashley before she starts. I won’t be there, so no worries.”

Some of the wind left her sails. “Good.”

“Yup. So we’re good. No more bulldozing. Just the kids getting what they need.”

She sighed, her shoulders lowering. “Yes. Great. Thank you.” It still pained her to say it, but her grimace wasn’t quite so pronounced this time.

“You’re welcome.”

With her chin lifted, she stepped around me and into the classroom. That could have gone worse.