14. Urban

CHAPTER 14

URBAN

T he sun woke me up earlier than I wanted to be up. Though I supposed that was probably a good thing, given that parents were going to be showing up to get their kids in the not-too-distant future.

Everly had told me last night that they were giving the kids a quick breakfast of bagels and donuts and then the woman she worked with would make sure that the kids were picked up.

I'd slept in my jeans last night because there wasn't a chance in hell that I was changing in the tent with my brother. I didn't give a shit about him seeing me naked. That was something that happened all the time, but what I did care about was how fucking small the thing was. We were already almost lying on top of each other.

Everly had changed into cotton shorts and a T-shirt, which, I assumed, weren't her normal pajamas. Here at camp, with the kids, she probably wanted to be prepared.

The noise outside of the tents grew as more kids woke up and the harder the women tried to get them organized.

Through the thin nylon, I heard Everly giving directions. Lucia, the woman she worked with, was going to set up breakfast. While Everly, Camden, Amity, and Harlowe were each going to take a group of five to the restroom for them to get ready for the day.

"Why the fuck are they yelling?" Silas asked with his face buried in the sleeping bag.

I chuckled. "They're not. What's wrong with you?"

"Sleeping on the ground fucking sucks." He pushed the bag back so that he could sit up. "This better not fuck up my game tonight."

I held up my hands. "This was your idea."

"Yeah. I know. I thought Amity would think it's sweet. I'm not sweet very often—"

"Don't I know it. "

He scowled at me. "And I thought she'd appreciate it."

"I think she did. They all probably did. The kids went nuts when we got here."

"Yeah." He smiled. "They did."

After a quick search of the area around me, I found my shirt and pulled it on. I'd packed other clothes, but I'd barely worn these yesterday, so I wasn't sure I'd change. I would hit the clubhouse to brush my teeth, though. We all kept shit like that down there.

I pushed out of the tent to see Everly walking away with her group. She had a small bag in her hand, as did all of the kids. This must've been what they'd put their toothbrushes and shit in. Camden, Harlowe, and Amity were all headed in separate directions.

"I'm going to the clubhouse," I told Silas when he stood up next to me.

"Me too."

It wasn't twenty minutes later, we were back, but the women with the kids weren't.

"They're in the concourse," Silas said. He was looking at his phone with a small grin on his face. "Breakfast."

I nodded then headed that way .

The kids were all full of energy as Harlow and Camden went around the tables, asking the kids if they wanted a bagel. Everly and Amity were doing the same thing with boxes of donuts. On a table right behind them, there were a few other boxes. Then the women came to stop in front of Silas and me.

"Donut?" Amity asked.

"Or bagel?" Camden added. "Or both? Whatever. I really don't care what you eat."

Everly chuckled quietly. The sound made me want to smile.

"I'm good," I told both of them. What I didn't say was that I had another idea for breakfast.

The women hurried the kids because their parents were going to start picking them up. They started taking the kids in groups back to the field to get their regular bags then dropped them off with Lucia at the gate designated for pickup. Finally, we were on the field with no kids.

Everly huffed out a breath and put her hands on her hips. "Time to break all these tents down." I wasn't sure she was directly talking to me, but I didn't care. I was here and wouldn't stand there watching her work .

Amity and Silas got busy on a tent, as did Camden and Harlow. So I pointed to the one closest to where I was standing and Everly nodded.

"You don't have to help with this," she said as we flattened the tent. "Don't you have game stuff to do?"

"Not for a while. I don't mind helping." Then I took a breath. Asking Everly to breakfast shouldn't have made me feel like a middle schooler asking my first crush to dance. Yet here I was, a little worried. Not about asking. About Everly saying no .

It wasn't rejection I was worried about. It was her preferring we keep hiding behind closed doors.

Once we'd gotten the tent back into the sleeve it had come in, I asked, "How about we get breakfast after this?"

Her gaze locked with mine and it looked like she was trying to decide what the right thing to do was. I could've answered that for her. Go with me. That was the right thing.

"I don't know."

I furrowed my brows. "Are you not hungry?"

Her stomach made a noise as if on cue, and I raised an eyebrow while fighting a grin. The smell of the baseball field surrounded us. It was one of my favorite things. The only thing that could ruin this moment was for her to say no .

"You can hear that I am," she said. "But it's… public. Too peopley."

I took a step closer and lowered my voice. "Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?"

She shoved me without much effort behind it. "It's not that and you know it. I just… people will get the wrong idea and it seems like you'd be pretty recognizable."

I sighed. "It's just breakfast. You'd get breakfast with Camden, right?"

"You want to get breakfast with me?" Camden was suddenly by my side.

"No." My response was immediate.

"I just heard—"

"It was an example, Camden. I'm trying to get Everly to go to breakfast with me, and if it's something she'd do with you, then it's a friend thing, so there's no reason she shouldn't say yes ." I looked back at her. "Unless she doesn't want to go."

Everly's chest deflated, like she'd taken a deep breath and was using the time to blow it out to stall giving me an answer.

"Fine," she finally said. "I'll go, but it's a bad idea. "

Camden squinted up at me. "So we're all getting breakfast?"

I sighed. "No." Then I gave her a shove that was only hard enough to make her move a single step. She laughed loudly the entire time.

Finally, the tents were all packed into their carrying cases and loaded back into the trailer for Lucia to take back to camp.

"Where do you want to meet?" Everly asked.

"I'll drive us."

She shook her head. "I have my car here, so you'd have to bring me back and I know you probably have things to do before the game tonight."

I narrowed my eyes. It was only nine by this time. "There's a long time before the game tonight."

Her jaw tightened. "I'll meet you, Urban. Where?"

I gave her the name of a diner-style restaurant not far from the field, and I wound up following close behind her to the place.

Something was off with her. I wasn't sure if it was the whole strangers seeing us in public together thing or what, but it was definitely there.

We took our seats and ordered drinks. I wanted a cup of coffee and a water. Everly ordered water and an orange juice. We didn't really start to talk until the drinks had arrived and we'd put in our food orders. I was doing an egg white omelet while Everly was getting scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast.

"So what's going on?" I asked after too long of a silence.

"What do you mean?" She was avoiding looking at me, so I waited until she did. Then she sighed. "This is going against everything I said I wanted out of… whatever this is between us."

"Breakfast?"

"Yes." She glanced around. Everly had her blonde hair in a ponytail, but the flecks of gold in her green eyes were on fire. It was like they got brighter with her emotions.

"You could've said no ."

"I did. You pushed."

I had pushed a little, but I hadn't intended to make her feel pressured. "I was only making the point that you'd go to breakfast with a friend. You're the one that keeps mentioning us being friends. So are we? Or not?"

She clenched her teeth together. "I want to be."

"Then what's the fucking problem?"

She sat back and I was going to look over my shoulder, but then our food appeared on the table. Once the waitress was done, Everly leaned back in.

"So it's breaking your rules to get breakfast with a friend?" I asked, nudging her a little more. This was something I was tired of dealing with, so we might as well have it out now.

"No. I don't have rules, Urban. I make decisions."

"And you decided to not date anyone before I came along. You're not going to go back on that, right?" I pressed. Her jaw clenched harder. "That's fine. That doesn't mean that I can't make sure you know that I want to date you ." I leaned over the table a little so I could keep my voice down. "I wasn't looking for anyone when I came here. Fuck, my whole goal is to get the fuck out of here at the end of the season. But I like you, Everly. You don't want to date. Fine. You don't have to. I just wanted to make sure you knew that I wanted something more in case you ever change your mind."

"So, you're for sure about leaving Michigan at the end of the season?" She wasn't looking at me but at her eggs as if they were the most interesting thing in this room.

"Yeah. I don't want to be here now let alone long term. It's a family thing. "

The smallest hint of a smile crossed Everly's face. "Now that, I can understand." She opened her mouth to say something then snapped up straight, closed her eyes then slowly opened them. I glanced around, trying to figure out what had caused such an abrupt change in her demeanor, but I didn't see anything obvious.

Until someone said, "Evie?"

A woman with hair a few shades darker than Everly's came rushing over to our table. The two of them had enough of a resemblance that they had to be related.

"Evie." She came to a stop beside us and set her hand on Everly's shoulder. "I can't believe I'm seeing you here." Then the woman slid her gaze over me. "I'm Ramona. Everly's sister." She reached a hand out for me to shake and I did. "And you are?"

"Urban." That was the only answer she was going to get, given how uncomfortable she was making Everly. I might not have known exactly why, but I knew Everly wanted to crawl out of her skin right now.

"This is the sister I don't talk to," Everly told me, still not saying a word to Ramona.

Sister she didn't talk to? That meant it was the sister who'd slept with her boyfriend. No wonder my girl was uncomfortable.

"We talk." Ramona giggled uncomfortably. "We talk, Evie."

Finally, Everly looked up at her. "I haven't seen you in, like, eight months. We don't talk. Don't worry. That wasn't me being sad about not talking. In fact, it's been the best eight months of my life. I'll assume tomorrow starts the best hopefully years of my life."

"You don't have to be mean," her sister snapped.

Everly moved out of the booth. "I'm not being mean. I'm telling you what you already know. I don't want you to contact me."

Then she walked out of the restaurant.

I pulled my wallet quickly from my pocket and dropped some bills on the table. I didn't know how many I'd left and I didn't care. As long as it covered the food we hadn't even eaten, I was happy. Then, despite Ramona's protest, I hurried after Everly.

It took a second for me to figure out which way to go, but once I saw Everly slowly walking down the sidewalk, I ran after her, hoping to stop her before she got to her car. Then I slowed to a walk once I'd caught up .

"So that was your sister," I said.

Everly pinched the bridge of her nose. "Yup. Now you can see why my boyfriend wanted to fuck her."

I furrowed my brows. "What are you talking about?"

She stopped on the sidewalk and turned to me. "She's gorgeous."

"She sounded fake."

"What?"

"She sounded fake," I told her. "When she came up to you, her voice. She sounded like someone sounds when they're pretending everything is fine when it clearly isn't. Then she said you talk when I know you don't. It was all fake."

"You're right." She threw her hands in the air. "She's fake, but I don't think that particular boyfriend really cared."

I put my hands on her shoulders then lowered myself so that we were at eye level. "Look. He was an idiot. I'm not sure how anyone who was with you could even think about anyone else. We're not together, as you like to point out, and I don't think about anyone else."

Her green eyes widened slightly before she put her mask back on. "You can't say that to me," she said. "This is supposed to be casual."

Yeah, well, now seemed like a good time to tell her. "I know. I thought I could be casual with you because I'm easy that way. Makes it easier to leave when I get traded. But it's been impossible not to fall for you."

Her shoulders slumped. This wasn't the news she'd wanted to hear, clearly.

"I can't be anything but casual with you." Her words felt like a fucking knife right into my gut. "I can't chance my heart getting broken again."

"I won't break your heart," I promised.

"How can you say that?" Her voice wavered. If I didn't know better, I'd have said that she was fighting back tears, given the glistening in her eyes. "How can you say that you won't break my heart when just minutes ago, you said that your only goal is to leave at the end of the season?"

Well… fuck. I had said that. "Goals can change."

She shook her head. "I don't want to change your plans. I'm too broken to give you what you want and you can't be casual. You're leaving at the end of the season but I don't want to leave Kalamazoo. I love my job. Love the kids. So that only leaves one option. "

I swallowed hard. This was not how I'd seen today going at all. "To not see each other anymore."

She nodded then quickly swiped a finger under her eye. "Exactly."

Then she turned and walked away.

Well, fuck.