I sigh and squeeze my eyes shut, because romance novels aren’t pornos, but there’s only so much I can do to educate people who are determined to believe otherwise. “Yes.”
“You know her in person?”
“Yes.”
“I want an introduction. She sounds hot.”
While I throw up a little in my mouth over the idea of introducing Uncle Guido to Knox’s nana, he hangs up without another word, which is pretty standard. He knows when we’ve been talking long enough for someone to get a trace on the call, and he always hangs up before The Man—or anyone else—can get a read on where he is.
Apparently old habits die hard.
Considering the amount of information he can find out in a matter of hours, I can see where Uncle Guido might have reason for paranoia.
He’s still remarkably connected for someone who’s supposedly retired.
My phone dings with a text message.
Had to see a man about a skillet. Also, this is the other embarrassing thing I found.
The text is accompanied by a picture of a baseball card.
I blow it up to look closer, and hello, young Tripp Wilson in baseball pants.
I didn’t know he played baseball. But that is definitely Tripp Wilson. It’s in the seriousness in his pale blue eyes. The way he holds his mouth in that determined line while he holds the bat behind him. The cut of his cheekbones.
After seeing him side-by-side with his brother, I can both understand how someone who doesn’t follow pop music closely could believe he’s Levi, and also how no one would ever mistake the two men.
Levi—the real Levi—strolled into the room with a friendly cheerfulness that just screams I like to have a good time and I’d like to show you a good time too, whereas Tripp has this grounded presence that would make me suspicious of him even on a good day for how reliable he seems.
Yes, I know. Trust people who seem reliable, Lila.
Except those are the ones who can so easily lull you into a false sense of security. Also, the Tripp of this morning wasn’t exactly the same man I met in that club two weeks ago.
Someone behind me clears his throat, and I leap, drop my phone, and come up in a ninja squat.
“Nice night for looking at the cleaned-up scene of so many massacres,” Tripp himself says.
He’s alone—no children clinging to him—and in jeans and a hoodie instead of the business suit that was stained with blood and snot when I last saw him earlier today.
And yes, he’s carrying that responsible, dependable, businessman presence.
My phone is face-up with his college baseball card showing.
Lovely.
“This is private property.” Way to be a prude, Lila.
“I picked the lock. No regrets. Can we talk?”
I squint at him.
He sighs and looks to the sky, hands in his pockets. “I bribed a security guard, but I’m not telling you which one, because I had an unfair advantage and I don’t want you to fire him.”
“What unfair advantage?”
“I know how much he likes to talk about his kids.”
My lips part, but only for a moment. I was expecting him to say I slipped him a dozen Benjamins, not I convinced him I was nice by asking about his kids.
“Would you fire him if you were in my shoes?” I ask.
“Only if I didn’t understand the extenuating circumstances.”
“Which are?”
“That if we’re going to work together to make this team the team they can be, then we need to clear the air.”
If we’re going to work together. Clearly, he’s talked to Pakorski, who has the distinct privilege of being the only person in the world who can actually make me do something I don’t want to do.
Namely, hire Tripp Wilson to be the Fireballs’ president of operations if I want to keep the team.
“Is that code for I will make you forget that I lied to you about who I am?” I ask Tripp.
Yep. I have trust issues.
It’s easier to squish them and be relatively normal when I’m not at the last place I have good memories with my mom, and in town to bury her brother, who wasn’t the guardian I wanted or needed, but he was all I had.
Maybe he’s with her in heaven now.
The thought sucker-punches me, and I have to work hard to get a grip on the hot wetness building behind my eyeballs.
I went through a phase in college where I read amnesia romances like they were candy, because I convinced myself that maybe my mom had amnesia and was still out there. Uncle Guido’s second wife finally came by and took them all away from me when my roommate hacked into my phone and texted him an SOS because I started missing classes to search out more amnesia romances at the library and asking my dormmates if they’d seen people matching my parents’ description wandering around campus lost.
You could say grief came late.
I don’t like grief. And I don’t like being vulnerable.
Tripp doesn’t sigh like I’m being dramatic and unreasonable in questioning him while poised to take him out with a ninja chop if necessary, though I’ve had enough self-defense classes that I could. He merely walks down the steps and sits two rows in front of me, twisting so he has to look up to me.
I slowly lower myself back to my own seat and retrieve my phone, shoving it into my pocket after I turn it off so he can’t see his baseball card showing on it.
“You ever lose someone you love?” he asks quietly.
“I did just bury my uncle.”
“You two were close?”
I don’t answer.
He holds eye contact, and there’s no small part of me that wants to leap over the two rows of bleachers to wrap my arms around him and hug him, even though I shouldn’t.
“I hadn’t,” he says quietly. “Not that I could recall, anyway. Never knew my dad. My grandpa passed when I was too little to know him, and I still see my grandma a few times a year. Which means losing my wife last year was the first time I’ve ever faced grief. Real grief. And it was big, and unexpected, and messy, and even though it’ll be two years in just a few months, I still feel it some days like it was yesterday. Especially on days when I leave my kids with her parents, and see all the pictures of her, and the pictures of her with the kids when they were babies, and remember how much she’s missing. Logically, I know she’s gone. Emotionally, most days I’m there too. Hell, I have those pictures at my house too. But that night…” He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have told you I was Levi. I just needed to be not me for a little bit.”
This shouldn’t be relatable, but it very much is.
I shift my attention to the field as a soft baSQUAWK! sounds somewhere nearby.
“Where are your kids now?” Yes, it’s a bad deflection. But it’s the first thing that comes to mind.
“Home sleeping. Levi’s keeping an eye on them. They asked for my buddy Beck, but he wasn’t available.”
Beck. That’ll be Beck Ryder. Former member of Bro Code and current fashion mogul best known for modeling his own brand of underwear.
Which I won’t confess to wearing—that would be awkward—but I will say they’re damn comfortable. And I need to be back on neutral ground. “You talked to Sam Pakorski.”
“I did.”
“And you’re willing to take the job.”