I’ve never asked why.

Don’t want to know.

“I was bird-watching, not looking at you naked,” Tillie Jean says directly to me. Her hair’s piled in a messy bun on top of her head, and she’s wearing paint-splattered jeans, an oversize Fireballs hoodie, and has bare feet.

Fucking gorgeous, which is not what I need to be thinking about her.

Trevor giggles. He has his arm wrapped in a sling, which means he probably shouldn’t be sitting in a massage chair. Rubbing injuries wrong can fuck them up. “Your nana wasn’t.”

Tillie Jean almost drops the coffee mug she’s trying to grab out of the vibrating cup holder attached to the chair. “Don’t talk shit about my Nana!”

“Not shit if it’s true.”

“Cooper, he’s talking shit about Nana.”

Cooper scrubs a hand over his face and shoots me a sideways glance, still cringing. “I can’t believe I actually regret using you to make money for charity.”

“I broke Nana’s binolu—bidonkular—bi-whatevers,” Tillie Jean says.

She giggles.

Trevor giggles. “An’ you got arrested.”

“Asshole cousin.”

“To asshole cousins!”

They clink glasses. Trevor flinches, hunching in on his slinged-up arm.

No small part of me wants to hug the guy, and I’m not a hugger.

Cooper sighs again, his face telling me he’s trying not to think about Trevor too as he looks at Tillie Jean. “She didn’t get arrested. She just got a citation, and she showed up here and shoved five hundred bucks at me to pay for her peep show ticket with late fees. I’ll get you your cut later.”

I snort. “I don’t want her money.”

He eyeballs his sister once more. “This was funnier a few years back when it was Chester citing her for indecent exposure. He didn’t like that her shirt said My cake kicks your cake’s ass. Especially the part where she fought it and demanded a court date to tell her side.”

“Did it hold up?” I ask.

His brows twist and flex the same way his whole body does when he’s diving for a line drive at second base. “Are you serious?”

I shrug.

Seeing her after spending the last three weeks trying to forget the sound of her screaming my name, the taste of her lingering in my mouth, the feel of her skin, and then jacking off to thoughts of her several times a day when I couldn’t forget—this should be awkward.

It’s never awkward with other women I screw around with. I mostly don’t see them again, and when I do, I’m voluntarily a dick so they stay away.

I’m used to being a dick, therefore, not awkward.

But right now?

I want to pull her onto my lap and ask what she thought of me pitching naked.

If it turned her on.

If she’ll get it if I tell her that I’m breaking my one-time-only rule just this once since I still want to feel my cock inside her. That last time was a half, and I want to cash in on the other half of our deal.

Yep.

I’m working on getting my ass traded. Because I very much want to fuck around with Cooper Rock’s little sister.

And?

Not awkward.

Uncomfortable, yeah, but only physically.

Emotionally?

I don’t want to talk about how fucking good it is to see her mere feet away from me, and how thirty seconds here with the woman who only annoys me because I don’t want to want her is settling something deep in my soul.

She brought me Thanksgiving leftovers.

Old news.

But it’s what keeps sticking with me.

“Did it?” I repeat. “Did it hold up in court?”

He finally cracks a grin. “Yeah. She got Judge Namasaki on her court date.”

“He hard?”

“His wife submits a peach cobbler to the county fair every year, and every year Tillie Jean’s apple strudels beat it, and Mrs. N swears TJ cheats by having Grady make them for her, except Grady was off at his fancy cooking school a lot of those years when TJ won, which also pissed them off. So the judge was inclined to take a stand against profanity on T-shirts too, especially when those T-shirts were smack-talking his wife. Just in case she was having Grady mail her apple strudels.”

“That’s sixty-five levels of fucked-up.”

“She had to do two hours of community service trying to teach Long Beak Silver not to cuss.”

“And that mother-beaker taught me a few new cuss words,” Tillie Jean proclaims proudly.

“To wuss curds!” Trevor cries.

They clink again.

He flinches again, I flinch for him again, Cooper winces again.

This is the hard part of the game.

Watching teammates face what we’ll all face eventually.

And what will you do then? that voice whispers in my head.

Three or four years might be all I have left. This contract I just signed? I know it’s my last.

Some pitchers make it to their late thirties, but that’s assuming no injuries. No accidents. No freak twists of the world throwing a curve ball at my plans.

No getting tired.

I don’t want to stay in until my late thirties. I don’t want to leave baseball broken and cranky and sore and needing constant painkillers on top of my anti-anxiety meds. I want to leave while I’m still in good shape so I can enjoy the rest of my life in relative comfort.

And what then?

I shrug out of the light jacket I’m wearing and toss it onto the back of a chair, because what then? always makes me break out in a sweat.

Plus, it’s three or four years away.

Practically a lifetime.

And I’m not looking at Tillie Jean while all this shit is rolling through my head.

Swear to god, I’m not.

Fine.

Fine.

I don’t want to be looking at Tillie Jean, but she’s so fucking comfortable and confident that it’s hard not to trust that everything will be okay when she’s around.

I don’t know how that happened, but it did.

Cooper shoots a glance at my jacket. “You’re seriously hot in here too?”

“I’m always hot.”

Tillie Jean finishes off her drink and leaps up, swaying for a second before getting her footing. “I was only looking at your new tattoo,” she tells me. “Also, you have pretty good form for a guy who hasn’t balled a thrown in hic! months.”

“Thank you.”

She twirls in the center of the room, dancing to some music only she can hear.

Cooper’s making a career out of grimacing today.

Trevor’s working on the giggles more.

And Tillie Jean keeps talking. “Did you know Thorny Rock kept a pet sea turtle? He named him Bob and tried to bring him with when he moved to Shipwreck before it was Shipwreck. Bob’s buried with Thorny Rock’s treasure.”

“No, he didn’t,” Cooper mutters.

“Yep. He did. I know because my paintbrush told me.”

“I need a beer. Max, want one?”

I’m not driving. My shoulders aren’t hitching at the sight of Tillie Jean. I’m feeling weird and warm and unusual, but not anxious, and I’ll stop at one. “Sure.”

Cooper heads to the kitchen that lines one corner of the massive open room.

Tillie Jean stops twirling as she gets close to the empty fireplace, and looks me dead in the eye. “How do you just get naked in front of the whole world?”