Perfect Catch(74)

“Ye-yes.”

She helped him to his feet, but when Jasper went to help him on the other side, he whimpered and shied away.

Fuck, Alex thought, once he understood what had happened.

Miles’s arm—literally the most important part of his job—was broken.





Chapter Thirty-Two

“Wait, what’s happening?” Emily asked, trying to see over everyone’s shoulders. “I can’t hear. Can someone turn it up?”

“Shhh,” scolded Jane.

All five sisters and most of the active staff of the diner were crowded around a small TV that had been pulled out of the break room and plugged in beside the coffee maker on the front counter. What few other patrons apart from the Ross sisters who had been in the diner were now sucked up into the excitement of the game, and everyone had relocated to the stools. Even those who admitted to having no interest in baseball were crowded together watching the game unfold on the tiny eighteen-inch television.

“I can’t see,” someone complained. “Who got hit?”

Alice, standing with a few of the line cooks on the staff side of the counter, had one of the better views of the set, but all she wanted to do was look away. Hell, she wanted to run away. Instead she watched the mayhem unfold with one hand clapped over her mouth and her eyes wide with a mix of stunned surprise and absolute horror.

First Matt got thrown to the ground, then the cameras had a hard time pinning down an obvious angle on the melee that followed. But the Fox Sports crew had no difficulty getting a perfect shot of Matt chucking Miles down in retaliation before getting punched himself.

By Alex.

Her ex, getting hit by her ex.

Everyone gasped collectively when Matt wobbled under the hit and stumbled back flat on his ass with a wall of arms ready to push him down or help him up.

“Turn it off,” Alice whispered.

“No, what?” There was a chorus of complaints from the crowd, but Alice was having none of it. She didn’t want to see anything else.

That hit hadn’t just been part of a simple baseball brawl. The camera had a great view of the look on Matt’s face when he squared off with Alex—pure venom. And ditto the way Alex had smiled with dark triumph when Matt toppled like a poorly constructed Jenga tower.

Their fight had been personal, and she had a good idea of what was at the crux of the vendetta. Alex knew about Matt because she’d admitted all the gory details herself.

But now, thanks to the widespread gossip mill that was the Internet blogosphere, Matt would also know about Alex.

About her and Alex.

She didn’t want to think so ill of Matt as to believe he would get on Alex’s case about the relationship, but she also wasn’t naïve enough to think it was impossible.

Or had Alex goaded Matt?

Either way, one of them must have overstepped the invisible line in the sand, and it showed itself with flying fists on the field.

She turned off the TV as Miles was led to the dugout, his face a grimace of pain. The feed cut to a shot of Matt’s earlier smug home run, and the announcers began to speculate it was the obvious cause of the fight.

Maybe it had helped, but Alice knew there was a secondary reason behind the real violence. Most bench-emptying scuffles—once quaintly called donnybrooks—were all for show. Guys would stand around and hurl insults at each other while the manager would turn a new shade of red screaming at the umpire. They very rarely resulted in actual injury. This one had been the Sunday Bloody Sunday of baseball fights.

She was at the root of the worst baseball fisticuffs of the whole damned season. They’d be showing clips of this game on SportsCenter and ESPN right up to the postseason, and she’d get to live with the reminder of her messy love life every time she checked sports stats or watched a Felons game.

Oh God. Liv had been watching the game.

Alice didn’t even question the likelihood. A game featuring Matt and Alex both? Of course Liv would be glued to the couch with Kevin, excited to see her two favorite players squaring off against each other.

And now she’d seen her father get punched out on national television.

Alice felt the bottom give way on her stomach, and she braced herself against the counter, trying to catch her breath and resist the urge to throw up all at the same time.

So much for keeping drama out of her life.

“Excuse me.” She moved towards the kitchen.

All the silent patrons waited for her to vanish from sight before someone whispered, “Can we turn it back on?” A moment later the Fox sports announcer’s voice returned, discussing the likelihood of suspensions and what they thought the status of Miles’s injuries might be. Alice went into the dish pit so she didn’t have to hear anything.