Playing for Kinley (Cruz Brothers Book 1) (6 page)

The anonymous man’s body was covered in hair and he had a huge pot belly. The only clothing he wore were his tightie whities, a pair of suspenders, and combat boots. Dangling off his finger was a pair of handcuffs. And because I had a friend who was a pretty good graphics artist, Dawson’s head actually looked like it fit on the man’s body. On top of Dawson’s head was a police uniform hat.

And across the top, in big bold letters, it said, “DETECTIVE CRUZ, AT YOUR SERVICE.”

Dawson just stared at it in disbelief. Everyone else couldn’t stop laughing, including me.

“Is that Daddy?” Gabby asked, pointing to the cutout.

“No,” Dawson answered immediately. “No, it most definitely is
not
Daddy.”

“I don’t know, man,” I said, shaking my head. “You might have gotten soft over the years.”

He scoffed but it was Mickie who responded. “Oh, I can tell you that
that
,” she said, waving at the cutout, “is absolutely not under
that
,” and pointed at Dawson.

Dawson actually looked surprised by his wife’s comment.

“My vote is Parker’s,” Mason announced.

“Mine too.” This from Mickie.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Dawson protested. “At least mine won’t give you nightmares like
this
will.” The disgusted look on his face made me break out into laughter again.

“Give it up, man,” I said, slapping his back. “I win.”

“Ready to claim your prize?” Mickie asked.

I shook my head. “Nah. This will take some thought. Let me consider it and I’ll get back to you.” I looked at the cutout and then back to Dawson. “You know, you might want to put that out in the front yard. It’d probably work better than an actual scarecrow.”

I took off when Dawson leapt from his chair and ran after me.

It wouldn’t have been a complete night if one of my older brothers hadn’t tried to get me into a headlock.

Parker

I pulled my truck into Sam and Diane Masterson’s driveway—right behind Clay’s Scion FR-S—and couldn’t help the feeling of coming home that suddenly overwhelmed me. Dawson, Mason, Mickie, and the kids were my blood, the only blood family I would claim anymore. But the Mastersons meant as much to me as any of my actual kin could.

Hell, I spent more time inside this modest Dutch colonial growing up than I had my own house.

For obvious reasons.

Clay and I became best friends when we were seven. I remembered it like it was yesterday, no doubt a day that would forever stick in my mind as one of the most life-changing events to ever happen to me.

I hated it when he hit Momma.

All he did anymore was yell at her and hurt her and all she did was cry. I didn’t like seeing her so sad all the time. She didn’t smile much now, didn’t read us stories anymore. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d cooked my favorite meal, spaghetti and meatballs. Dawson did most of the cooking now, with what little food we had and what little he knew how to fix.

We’d had a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches and macaroni and cheese.

Dawson and Mason didn’t like it when they fought either. Most of the time when we all got scared, Dawson would make us go outside and we would walk around the block until we couldn’t hear them anymore. Or we would huddle together on the floor of our bedroom, build forts, and play war.

I didn’t have any friends at school, but I didn’t need any as long as I had my brothers. Some of the kids at school started making fun of my clothes, asking me why my parents couldn’t afford clothes that fit me and why they were always kind of dirty.

It hurt my feelings when they said stuff like that, so I didn’t talk a lot in my classes or to most of the other kids.

I thought that maybe if I kept quiet, they wouldn’t call me names.

But today was the first time that Dawson wasn’t there when I got scared.

Because today, after Dad drank a lot out of one his bottles that smelled really bad and hurt Momma, he started to hurt Dawson. He had never hit Dawson before, and I didn’t want him to hurt my big brother. Dad had been so angry and I had never been so afraid before.

Afterwards, Dawson got angry too and stormed out of the house without saying anything to me or Mason. I didn’t know where he went but I was too afraid that Dad would come after me or Mason next.

So I ran away, too.

I ran to a park a couple of blocks from our house where I sat now on a bench. Dawson always told us to be strong, be tough. Don’t be sad and don’t cry because we have to be brave. So, I was mad at myself when I started crying as I sat on that bench, staring down at my dirty sneakers. Dad had hurt him and I wasn’t being brave like he wanted me to be.

I wiped away my tears with my arm and told myself to be tougher. I wasn’t so little anymore. I would show them that I could act like a big kid. I could be strong like Dawson.

I still didn’t want to go home, though.

“Hey. You want to play with us?” I heard another kid’s voice say. I figured he wasn’t talking to me so I didn’t look up, just kept staring down at my shoes.

Then, I heard someone move closer to me and tap my shoulder. “Hey, kid.”

I finally looked up and saw a kid who looked about my age with black hair and a baseball bat in his hands. I looked over his shoulder to see a big guy standing behind him, watching us with a small smile on his face. Maybe he was his dad?

“I said, do you want to play with us?”

Then, I noticed he had a baseball in his other hand. I knew what baseball was. Dad watched it on the TV a lot, and I knew that he used to play it when he was younger. I had seen pictures of him in his uniform and Momma used to tell us that he was a really good player, back before things got bad.

But I didn’t know how to play.

Dad never taught me.

And because I didn’t want this kid to make fun of me like all the other kids at school did, I shook my head. “No. It’s okay. I’m just going to sit here.”

He frowned but didn’t immediately walk away. “Okay. Well, my dad and I are going to play over there,” he said and pointed to a grassy area behind him. “If you change your mind, you can use one of our gloves.”

He smiled at me and then ran back to his dad. I wasn’t used to kids being nice to me and definitely not used to asking me to play with them. Most kids avoided me so I avoided them. I had to admit that I’d always wanted to learn how to play baseball—maybe if I did, Dad could be proud of me and not be so mad all the time—so I watched the two of them. I watched the dad throw the ball at the kid, the kid swinging the ball and hitting it, and the dad chasing after it.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat there and watched them, but I eventually reminded myself to be brave. So, I got up and slowly walked in their direction. The kid saw me and waved me over to them, smiling during my whole way over.

“Do you know how to play?” he asked.

I hung my head in shame, shaking my head and remaining silent.

“That’s okay. We’ll teach you. It’s not hard.” My head snapped back up when he didn’t tease me. He was walking back to a bag on the ground and took out a glove, handing it over to me. “Here. You can use my old glove. What’s your name?”

Taking the glove from him and slowly putting it in my hand felt good somehow. I looked back at him tentatively. “Parker.”

He nodded and smiled again. I didn’t know anyone who smiled so much. The only time we smiled at home was when we were making up games in the bedroom the three of us shared.

“I’m Clay.” He turned to his dad as he put on his own glove. “Hey, Dad! Parker’s going to play with us!”

So, they showed me how to throw the ball, how to catch it in my glove. They taught me how to hold the baseball bat and how I should swing it to hit the ball. The more they showed me, the more excited I got. I knew this wasn’t all there was to it. I knew there were teams and they played on a big field and you had to run around the bases and everything.

But it was fun.

For the first time in I didn’t know how long, I was having fun just to have fun and not to avoid my fighting parents.

The rest was history for us after that day. Clay and Sam picked me up regularly to work on baseball with me, and I eventually started playing on his Little League teams with him. As we got older, we started playing in traveling leagues and then started varsity together all four years of high school. The miracle was when we were both offered athletic scholarships to play at the University of Virginia. I had moved from shortstop to third basemen, and Clay was our star pitcher.

It was a miracle because I honestly don’t know if I would have went to college without that scholarship.

I owed a lot to the Mastersons. Sam and Diane were like the parents I always wanted. Stable, supportive, loving parents. Clay was basically a third brother to me, but he was also my best friend. I could talk to him about things that I couldn’t always discuss with Dawson and Mason.

And then there was Kinley.

Our relationship had been complicated for a while, that was for sure, but it hadn’t always used to be. When Clay started inviting me over to his house on a regular basis when we were kids, I had looked at Kinley as the little sister I never had. Back then, she had been this bubbly little dark-haired girl with bright green eyes who had honestly freaked me out at first with her outgoing personality. I hadn’t been around kids like her with so much energy, and I was wary of her for a while, simply because I didn’t know how to deal with her.

When I started coming out of my shell, though, and opened up more to their family, I became more comfortable with everyone, including Kinley. I started treating her like a sister, as much as Clay treated her like one, because she really had felt like one to me. I’d felt the need to tease her as much as I had the sense to protect her.

Then, things changed as we got older. Adolescence tends to bring about a lot of confusing emotions in anyone and it sure did for me and I think her, too. We fought a lot, Kinley and I, as any brother and sister would.

But then one day when she was in eighth grade and I was a senior in high school, it suddenly struck me how beautiful Kinley was. That reaction had totally scared the shit out of me and shamed me all at the same time. I had been four years older than her and was disgusted at myself for thinking such thoughts about my best friend’s little sister.

Over the next few years, our relationship transformed into something I would have never expected. She had come to mean more to me than anything else in the world.

And then I threw it all away.

Because I’d thought I was being noble.

The Fourth of July was the first time I had been near her in years. I wasn’t sure how, but she had always been able to avoid me at holidays when I was able to come around, leaving town before I ever made it in. So, when I saw her that night, when I stayed under the same roof as her for the first time since I left her, everything had come pouring out of me.

It hadn’t gone well.

Stupidly, I pushed her. Forced her into talking about something she wasn’t ready to face yet, or something she wanted to leave completely behind her.

It had knocked me back about five steps from where I wanted to be in operation “Winning Kinley Back.”

Clay’s election results party in November hadn’t helped either.

Why I’d thought that making her jealous by flirting with every available woman within a twenty-foot radius was a good idea, I had no fucking clue. Jealousy wasn’t useful unless you already had something a little more solid with that person. You didn’t have to fully claim someone, but there had to be at least an inkling of it for the jealousy to work in your favor.

To give the other person a reason to confront you about it.

Otherwise, as I quickly found out, it just hurts them, making the whole situation worse.

And that was the last thing I wanted to do to Kinley.

So, my new plan was to just take it slow and easy with her. Start over, in a sense, and just be friends for a while. We would never go back to that brother-sister relationship—ever—but we could hang out and talk like friends, catch up on each other’s lives. There didn’t have to be pressure.

If I wanted her to be mine, I needed a clean slate with her.

I had to lay a new foundation for our relationship and show her that she could trust me. That I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. I clearly didn’t know what I was doing in the relationship department and didn’t totally understand women, outside of their bedroom preferences. Kinley was the first woman I had ever wanted anything serious with, so I was a novice at this whole dating-relationship thing.

But I needed her to give me that second chance.

I would do a better job this time, I could be the man she needed me to be. I had to show her that.

She’d wanted me once. I could make her want me again.

When I was finally able to find my balls again, I got out of my truck and headed for the front door, bracing myself for the hard eyes and death glares I knew she would be throwing my way, much to the ignorance of everyone else.

Knowing I never needed to knock at this house, I let myself in and was blasted with the scent of Diane’s cinnamon candles.
That’s the smell of home
. The living room was empty and though I could hear low voices in different parts of the house, I couldn’t see anyone.

“Hey, where is everyone?”

Two seconds later, Diane came fluttering out of the kitchen in her apron with that smile she always had for me on her face. “Parker! It’s so good to see you, dear!”

I wrapped my arms tightly around my adopted mother, squeezing as I carefully balanced the dish I held in the other hand. “Good to see you, too.” I extended the food out to her. “Hashbrown-potato casserole from Mickie. She said just warm it up in the oven and you’re good to go.”

“Oh, that sweetheart. She didn’t need to do that.” But she took the dish from me as Gwen came out of the kitchen.

Clay’s girlfriend was gorgeous and he should be damn proud. I really wasn’t sure how he had handled that mess with her ex. Personally, I didn’t know how I would feel or what I would do if some asshole had put his hands on Kinley like that. When she was in high school, I’d beaten the shit out of some prick just for spreading rumors about her.

Clay had gotten through the ordeal without killing the guy, though. Barely.

I think he had more control than I would have.

“Hey, Parker,” she said, leaning up on her toes to kiss me on the cheek.

“Hey, beautiful.”

“Back off my girl, Cruz,” came Clay’s voice from the hallway, “and go get your own.”

Working on it.

But surprise! It’s your sister.

“Just seeing if she’d gotten bored of you yet,” I said, smiling and giving him a quick hug. “I think there’s still hope for me.”

Clay rolled his eyes and punched me lightly on the shoulder, and I could see Gwen blush out of the corner of my eye.

“Just because you’re a famous ball player, don’t think I won’t mess up that pretty face.”