Page 14 of Play the Game
“Oh my god, this is amazing!”
I glance around, grinning at my sister-in-law, Jo, as she bounces on her pink Converse and slides her arm through Jordan’s as we walk down the stadium stairs towards our seats. The baseball field stretches out in front of us, the players milling around as batting practice finishes up. Jordan leans over and kisses Jo’s head, tugging her tighter against him.
“It sure is,” Elliot says, swinging an arm around his fiancée Amelia’s shoulders. “You did good, Noah.”
“Fuck yeah, I did.” Noah grins and lifts Hannah’s hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her fingers just over her wedding ring and grinning even wider when she smiles at him and strokes her thumb over his cheek.
My stomach clenches even as my chest warms at the sight of all three of my older brothers happily coupled up with these amazing women. It’s not that I want that for myself, exactly. At least, not consciously. It’s more that I’ve been so unhappy at work lately, and it’s bled over into every other part of my life.Watching my brothers so wildly happy just highlights my discontent even brighter.
Without warning, my brain strays to Evan, where it’s been on and off since I left the office two hours ago. She left even before I did—the first time I’ve ever seen her leave early in the almost two years we’ve been working together—and I have no idea where she went. I’ve checked my phone more times than I can count, assuming I would find an email from her reaming me out for something I did or didn’t do, or reminding me to do something I would have remembered to do anyway, but my inbox stays stubbornly empty of her name.
I can’t figure out why I care, and why I can’t stop thinking about her, but I don’t like it. Or maybe I do. Ever since we fucked in a conference room, my head has been weird where she’s concerned, and I don’t understand it. It’s a new feeling for me because I always understand shit when it comes to feelings. Or maybe it’s that I always understand shit about other people’s feelings and less about my own.
I’ve never had to think too deeply about this before, and I’m kind of a mess over it, it turns out.
Shaking myself out of it because we’re at game one of the fucking World Series, I focus on the concrete steps in front of me. “Wait, literally behind the dugout?” I ask Noah, glancing down at the ticket on my phone and the row numbers of the field level seats as we pass them.
“You bet,” Noah says, bumping my shoulder with his. “I’m a really good surgeon.”
“Oral surgeon,” Jordan says with a smirk. I laugh, because Jordan, who is a pediatric surgeon, likes to rib Noah about how he’s not a real surgeon, and Noah almost always takes the bait. Except, apparently, not this time.
Noah just grins. “I’m pretty sure that shit doesn’t work when we’re at the World Series because I operated on the best second baseman in the league.”
Jordan slaps him on the shoulder. “You did good, little brother.”
“Aw,” Jo says, glancing between them. “Look how cute you are when you all get along.”
Jordan chuckles, tugging Jo even closer to him, as if any space between them is unacceptable. “Jo Jo, I’m cute all the time.”
Turning into our row at the very bottom of the field level, I freeze in my tracks as I catch sight of a very familiar head of blonde hair. The woman who has been invading my brain for the last hour sits right in the middle of the row, her golden hair practically glowing under the stadium lights.
Her jeans and striped Strikers jersey are such a stark contrast to the business attire I’ve never seen her without—except for that day last week when I saw her wearing pajamas for some weird reason and also the time I saw her mostly naked—that my brain can’t compute it. But it does compute the tall, very attractive dark-haired guy grinning down at her as he tosses an arm around her shoulders. I feel a hot rush of something as I watch her grin back up at him, my only thought being that she’s never smiled at me like that.
What the fuck is that all about?
“You okay, Cooper?” Hannah asks from behind me.
“Huh?” I spin around to face my brothers and the girls, who are all looking at me with quizzical expressions on their faces.
“You just stopped,” Amelia says. “Our seats are farther in.”
“You look weird.” Jo studies me, head tilted to the side. “You’re all flushed.”
“It’s hot,” I mutter.
“It’s an October night in Boston. It’s not even a little bit hot,” Jordan says, studying me just like his wife. “Why are you acting so strange?”
“It’s nothing,” I mumble, turning back around and walking down the row as slowly as I can, wondering if it’s too late to claim some work emergency and run out of here like my ass is onfire. And then I wonder why I care so much that she’s here and so am I.
“Man the fuck up,” I mumble.
She’s just a woman. A woman who drives me fucking crazy. In a bad way. Or maybe not a bad way. I don’t fucking know.
Evan must notice the movement in the row because before I make it to my seat, she turns around, her eyes widening, the bag she’s carrying slipping out of her hand and onto the ground when she spots me.
“Shit,” she mutters, her face flushing just slightly as she bends to pick up the bag and set it on the seat behind her. By the time she straightens, all surprise is gone, her face a hard mask of annoyance. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Rhodes, I think the better question is what the fuck are you doing here? I didn’t realize you existed outside of the office. I thought maybe you burn up like a vampire when you encounter fresh air.”
