Wild(18)

            Don’t be him. That’s what she was saying. Without saying the words, that’s what she always managed to say. What I always heard.

            And I wouldn’t. Long ago, I had vowed to be the opposite of that man. The kind of daughter Mom needed me to be. Someone she could be proud of. Responsible and solid. The kind of girl who went to college and married a lawyer or doctor and took summer internships at a bank.

            Harris’s voice echoed in my mind right then. Boring.

            Sounds from the room next door drew my attention and I knocked lightly before entering Pepper’s room. She was changing from her work clothes into a pair of frayed denim shorts.

            “Hey,” she said, snapping up her shorts. “How’s it going?”

            “Good. Where are you headed?”

            “I’m meeting Reece at Mulvaney’s. We’re going to Logan’s game.”

            Everything inside me tightened at the mention of Logan. “He plays baseball, right?”

            “Yeah. It’s the playoffs. We missed the last couple games . . . been so busy with opening the new Mulvaney’s. I think Reece feels bad he hasn’t been there for him lately. He can’t miss this one.” Her freckled nose wrinkled as though she smelled something foul. “Their father won’t be there. I don’t think he’s left the house in months.”

            Reece and Logan’s father was confined to a wheelchair as a result of a car accident several years ago Not that that was the reason he wouldn’t go to his son’s game. He was a bitter man who spent most of his time drinking, and wasn’t the most supportive or attentive father even before the accident that put him in a wheelchair.

            Pepper grabbed her messenger bag and paused on the way to the door. “What do you have going on tonight?”

            I shrugged. “Pretty studied out for exams. Guess I’ll just start packing up a couple boxes.”

            “Oh. Want to come?”

            Did I want to go to a high school baseball game? Did I want to sit in the stands with a bunch of parents and high school kids and gawk at a teenage boy like some kind of cougar reliving the moment I had kissed him and he had kissed me back?

            With another shrug, I nodded once. “Sure.”





            Chapter 5

            THE GAME HAD JUST started when we arrived, and I could tell Reece was anxious to get a seat in the stands. Not an easy feat. It was loud and crowded and we had to climb to almost the very top of the stands and squeeze in between students.

            “There he is.” Pepper motioned to the field, pointing eagerly and bouncing on the balls of her feet.

            I searched, my heart hammering in my chest and then seizing altogether when I spotted him. I didn’t know a lot about baseball, but I knew he was the pitcher. Standing on the mound, he stared intently at the player coming up to hit. I’d never seen him wearing a baseball cap before and damn if it wasn’t a good look for him.

            He rotated a baseball behind his back with the sure movement of his fingers. He held himself still, waiting with seeming idleness, but there was a coiled energy about him that brought to mind the explosiveness of our kiss with a rush of awareness that left me breathless and turned on sitting there on the hard bleacher seat.

            I fidgeted, drinking in the sight of him. I’d never seen him so alert, so serious.

            Except that moment following your kiss. He’d looked serious then. He’d looked intense, his blue eyes deep and probing and so sexy it hurt.

            This Logan was unsmiling as he stood stock-still on the mound, his lean body rigid like a gun cocked and ready to fire.