Page 40 of False Start
“You’ve been MIA for ages, and Weston’s miserable. My superior deductive reasoning tells me that one, or both of you have fucked up, and you need some girl time to get your head on straight. Ridley and Marina are meeting us at the diamond, sochop chop. Put on clothes you can run in because I’m going to teach you to play God’s game.”
I wasn’t really in the mood to be social. Or play sports of any kind. But I also wasn’t going to deny Cami when she was in this mood.
“Have you ever thought about running a boot camp?” I grumbled as I slinked into my bedroom and pulled out some of the activewear I’d been allowed to keep from theElite Mindshoot.
“I have,” she said, leaning against the doorframe and watching as I slid into a pair of black sweat pants. “But I’m thinking about teaching men to pitch properly instead. It’ll be so much more satisfying watching them break.”
I chuckled at her wicked grin and rifled through my closet for some running shoes.
“You don’t have to talk about what happened if you don’t want to, but we’re all here for you if you need to get it out.”
Cami’s face was softer than I’d ever seen it, and the compassion threatened to break down the walls I’d built. Before I could respond, she straightened and took a step backward.
“Full disclosure, I can only speak for me and Ridley. Marina will absolutely get you to talk.”
“Duly noted.” I finished getting ready and headed out the door with Cami a few minutes later, sliding into the passenger seat of her car with a sigh.
“I thought you guys wouldn’t want me around if Weston and I weren’t a thing,” I admitted as she pulled into traffic.
“Babe, that’s the first dumb thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
The welcome waswarm when we walked onto the baseball diamond in a park close to where Weston and Marina lived. Even Zara and Amber took a break from perusing the picnic basket someone had brought to come and say hello.
“Have you ever played baseball before?” Zara asked eagerly, her eyes shining with excitement. “Aunt Cami is kickass. She’s a better pitcher than any of the players in the men’s league.”
“It’s true, but don’t say kickass. Your father will kill us if you use language like that around him,” Marina admonished with a gentle smile.
I looked around the diamond, which was muddy from the rain overnight, and back at the women who were laughing and warming up like it wasn’t a miracle we weren’t standing knee deep in snow.
“You couldn’t have staged this intervention in a nice warm cafe, or at least somewhere we won’t end up covered in mud?” I asked, only half joking.
“It's ok. Mum says life is messy, but it's better to have to take a bath than miss out on the experience for a silly thing like staying clean,” Amber said, giving me a toothy grin before running off after Zara like she hadn’t just dropped a philosophical bomb on my head.
Had I been keeping myself on the sidelines to avoid getting messy?
“I need to talk to Weston,” I muttered.
“Later. For now, let’s play ball.” Cami practically danced onto the field and headed straight for the pitcher’s mound.
Over the next two hours I learned several things.
I couldn’t hit a ball to save my life.
Cami was scary competitive, and didn’t understand the meaning of a friendly match.
And these women had decided I was their friend regardless of how things stood with Weston.
After begging off a third game, I took a seat on the grass in the outfield. My ass was already covered in mud and numb from the cold, so I didn’t feel particularly bothered about ruining my clothing at this point. After a moment, Marina wandered over and dropped down beside me.
“Cami warned me you’d find an opportunity to talk.”
Marina huffed a laugh, but kept quiet as we watched Cami run the girls through a pitching drill.
“She’s really good with them,” I observed as Amber cocked her arm and mimed a pitch.
“She wasn’t always that good. When the girls were younger and Cami came to visit, before she moved here to help Christian, she acted like the kids were diseased. It was pretty funny, actually. You might have noticed that Cami can be an acquired taste. She had a pretty rough time through college. It wasn’t until she moved to Chicago that she started to open up to the idea that she didn’t have to fight everything.”
“She’s so tough. I’d love to be as strong as her.”
