“Nice job, Mayor,” a player says before fleeing the dugout to take the field.

“Don’t lie to him!” Lincoln shouts after him, making the rest of the departing guys laugh. “That was the shittiest pitch I’ve ever seen. I’ve been embarrassed by you before, but tonight tops them all. Fuck.”

“Good thing I’m not a player then,” I mutter.

What’s she doing here?

“The next time you need anything baseball related, call me or Graham,” Lincoln says, turning to our brother. “Shit, G. We should’ve had you stand in. Trade in your yuppie polo shirt and lose the glasses and you could pass as Barrett. It’d be close enough. At least you wouldn’t embarrass me.”

Graham leans against the wall and he and Linc engage in some conversation that probably involves making fun of me.

How can I see her?

I know it’s risky and stupid to want to see her now, right here in the middle of the entire city, basically. But I can’t help it. Just knowing she’s feet away from me and not being able to see her kills me.

As does the idea of her being here with someone else.

I leap up the few steps to the field and steal a peek up the stands. She sits with a raven haired girl that looks vaguely familiar and a little blond boy with a mitt.

Bingo!

“Hey, Linc!” I say, whipping around and descending into the dugout. “Remember the time when we were kids and you were getting your ass beat and I saved you?”

“Uh, no,” he says, his voice echoing off the now-empty walls of the room. The players not playing are talking to fans, doing promotional stuff. We’re the only ones around. “That didn’t happen.”

“Well, let’s pretend it did. And today is the day you pay me back.”

“What the hell?” he laughs, looking at me like I’m crazy. Maybe I am.

“What’s going on with you?” Graham asks, standing straight. He quirks a brow, just like our father, getting his contingency plan ready for action. “And don’t even tell me it’s ... that.”

“It’s that,” I grin widely.

“That? It’s what? What’s that?” Linc asks.

Graham groans.

I pace a small circle, trying to get a strategy in place to make everything work and not worse.

“Hello, assholes,” Lincoln says, throwing his arms in front of him. “What’s happening? I feel like you guys are talking in some language I don’t understand.”

“Linc, I need a favor.”

“Fuck me,” Graham mutters, collapsing back into the wall again. “You do realize whatever stupidity you pull tonight is on my watch, right?”

“You aren’t my babysitter, Graham. I’m a grown man.”

“So please make grown man decisions,” he fires back.

Linc’s head volleys back and forth. “You guys are losing me, but I do like the sound of this.”

“There’s a little boy about four rows back,” I tell Linc. “Blond hair, wearing a mitt. He’s sitting by his mom. She’s my age, blonde hair, white t-shirt.”

“And?”

“Go get the kid.”

He steps away from me and laughs. “Why? What do you care about a kid sitting in the stands? You don’t even like kids.”

“That’s not true. I just don’t like Sienna’s last boyfriend’s little kid. Fucker vomited on my suit.”

“Kids do that,” Graham points out.

“Not that one. He’s nine or ten or something.”

Lincoln looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but being the troublemaker he is, he kind of likes it. I can tell. The side of his mouth curls into a smirk and he shrugs, knowing his reaction, favorable to me, will piss off Graham and his carefully constructed and now void plans for the evening.

“I’m game,” Lincoln says. “I’ll get him. But what do you want me to do with him?”

“Just bring him down here like he’s won some sort of prize or something.”

“And his mother?” His smirk deepens, matching mine. “She’ll never let him come down here alone.”

“No,” I agree. “She won’t. I’ll bet she’s a good mom and won’t let her kid out of her sight.”

Graham pushes off the wall and stands between me and our youngest brother. “Are you sure you’ve thought this through? You realize that the wrong photograph can be, and will be, floated a million ways in the paper tomorrow.”

“How? Lincoln is going to be seen with a little boy, doing his baseball thing and making this random kid’s day. I’ll never be photographed with Alison, so there’s no problem.”

“I don’t like this. Just for the record,” Graham contends, scrubbing his hands down his face.

“Ah, G,” Lincoln teases, clapping him on the back. “Live a little, man.”

“Yeah, sure. Then who’ll take care of you assholes?”

“Mom,” Linc says and bounds up the stairs.