“So, are you in?”
As the music begins, I cast one more look in Kai’s direction. I wasn’t lying earlier when I told him he looked hot, and the jealous thing he’s rocking right now only adds to it. Sure, my dad warned me not to give him someone to miss, but Kai knows I’m leaving in less than two months and still, he’s looking at me like that. Maybe what he wants is a little unattached fun with the nanny for the rest of the summer.
“First of all, your brother is hotter than you.”
Isaiah chuckles.
“But, yeah, I’m in.”
With a sneaky smile on his lips, Isaiah spins me out before pulling me back in as the music takes over the crowd on the dance floor.
Six songs later and I’ve concluded that my dad’s players are all surprisingly good on their feet. I’ve had a turn with six of them, Cody being the most fluid, as if the pair of brand-new cowboy boots on his feet suddenly gave him the ability to dance to fast-paced country music.
Every player has made their way out here, either to dance with me or someone else, and then there’s Kai, still at the bar with the perfect sightline to me and his teammates.
“Goddamn,” Travis says next to me, hands on his hips to catch his breath. “I thought he’d be out here by now. I’m a catcher; my knees are shit. I can’t be dancing with you all night.”
“I think maybe you guys read him wrong. He doesn’t seem to give a shit, which defeats the purpose of this prank.”
“Nah.” Travis shoots a glance back to the bar. “He changed when Max came. Now he likes to play the role of a martyr. He’d never let any of us get away with a single dance with you if this were last season.”
The music switches to something slow as couples begin to pair off once again.
“Ah fuck.” Travis slides a hand on my lower back to pull me into him. “I swear to God if Ace hates me after this, I’m punching Isaiah straight in the face for coming up with this idea.”
Over his shoulder, I find Isaiah at a table, wide and excited eyes bouncing from us to the bar. I refuse to look over there. This was fun at first but now it’s sort of awkward to try to goad a guy into making a move when he clearly doesn’t plan to.
As Trav turns us, I immediately catch Kai shift from the bar, standing before heading straight for the dance floor.
With every step he takes, his eyes are locked on mine from across the room, but when he reaches the dance floor, he doesn’t come to interrupt. Instead he heads for his brother, who is sitting at a table on the outskirts, leaning down to speak into his ear.
Isaiah’s eyes widen as he looks at the front door.
“What’s going on?” I ask Travis, nodding behind him to the Rhodes brothers.
He follows my line of sight, then tracks Isaiah’s.
“Oh, shit,” he breathes, ushering me to the table Isaiah has occupied all night. “What are they doing here?”
Kai’s eyes bore into Travis’s hand on the small of my back while he takes a sip of his beer, elbows casually perched on the high-top table in front of him.
I want to smack him. I also really want to kiss his stupid handsome face, but he’s going to have to be the one to do something about it. I’ve spent the past two weeks telling him how attracted I am to him.
“They start their series against Texas tomorrow.” Isaiah turns back to the dance floor. “Cody!”
The first baseman is mid-dance with a cute guy wearing a black cowboy hat, and he shoots daggers towards Isaiah for the interruption.
But then Isaiah motions towards the door again and instantly Cody is at the table with his teammates. “Dean Cartwright is here? They couldn’t have picked a different bar?”
“What’s going on?” I look around all four of them for an answer.
“Daddy over here beat the shit out of that one”—Isaiah points to a group of men with eerily similar builds to the ones I’m with—“last year when we played Atlanta.”
“I didn’t beat the shit out of him.” Kai takes another pull from his bottle, eyes locked on the inches that separate me from his catcher.
“You cleared the benches after delivering a right hook to Dean’s jaw that knocked him on his ass.”
“It was your throwing arm, Ace. Do you know how much money that’s worth?”
Kai pops his shoulders. “He deserved it.”
“What did he do?” Kai’s eyes finally flicker up to meet mine at my question.
He doesn’t answer right away, so Travis cuts in from beside me.
“Cartwright had an illegal slide into home while I was covering the base. Took me out by the knees. It was dirty and it pulled me out for the rest of the game.”
My head whips back to Kai. “You punched him for that?”
“Of course not.” He takes a leisurely sip of his bottle. “I hit him with a pitch the next time he was up at bat. I waited for him to charge me at the pitcher’s mound, then I punched him.”
A laugh bursts out of me because, well, Kai doing anything like that seems entirely out of character.
A ghost of a smile tilts from behind his bottle. “This was before Max.”
Ah. Of course it was. He told me he was a different man then, but I like seeing this bit of fire in him. And the way his jaw flexes when his attention falls to the minimal distance that remains between Travis and me tells me it’s still in there.
The table is small, the bar is crowded. I’m not standing any closer to his catcher than he is to his brother, so even though I like this side to him, he’s being really fucking dramatic.
Travis pops off the table. “I’m grabbing us another round.”
Cody and Isaiah turn their backs to us, facing the dance floor once again to entertain themselves by checking out every woman who walks by, but Cody also does the same to a couple of the cowboys. Kai takes the opportunity to slide around the table to my now unoccupied side.
He leans on his forearms, sipping his beer, and he doesn’t look at me when he tries to casually throw out, “Travis is a good guy.”
Here we go. “Yeah. He is.”
He nods, still refusing to look my way. “Close to your age too.”
“Well, that’s too bad. As I said earlier today, I’m into older guys.”
His eyes flicker up to mine. “He likes you.”
He’s a good actor.
“Does that bother you?”
He exhales a humorless laugh. “Isaiah asked me the same thing.”
“And what did you say?”
Kai straightens to his full height again, deliciously overbearing as he stands over me. “I told him it would only bother me because you’re here for Max.”
“And is that the truth? Because of Max?”
The corner of his lip lifts in a smile he’s trying to suppress. “If I were to tell the truth, I’d say it bothers me enough that I’ve been spending my entire evening watching you and plotting a way to get Monty to trade him.”
I huff a laugh, a smile on my mouth mirroring his. “And you call me ridiculous.”
“I’ve had my moments. I was a different man before Max came along.”
“A man who punches other players mid-game.”
“A man who protects his teammate.”
I raise a questioning brow. “A man who now wants that same teammate traded.”
“Well, we all have our limits now, don’t we?”
“And I’m yours?”
His eyes trail my face, once again landing on my lips. “I think you might be.”
Fucking make a move, Kai.
I know he wants to. I can see it from the frustration that’s grown all night, but it’s as if he’s decided it’d make more sense if I were into Travis or any one of his teammates I’ve danced with, so he’s held back. And I’m worried the boys’ little game of forcing his hand has only revealed that Kai is no longer selfish enough to take what he wants.
That concern is only amplified when Travis returns to the table, the necks of bottles laced between his fingers. As he sets them down, Kai leaves my side, making his way back to the opposite end with his brother.