“How have you been holding up the past few weeks?” Caden asks, digging in for another scoop of spaghetti.
“Fine,” I say, shoveling another bite of strained peas into Ellie’s mouth. “I’m still in the friend zone, if that’s what you’re asking.”
My brother has come over at least once a week for dinner. Always at my place. Never at his. Just in case Grant is watching him. Caden and I have become close since my return, and he’s well aware of my feelings for Kyle.
“I kind of figured,” he says, glancing around the room. “You know, because he’s not here and all.”
“We live this symbiotic life now. Sometimes he cooks. Sometimes I cook. Sometimes I eat his leftover takeout. Sometimes he orders pizza for us. He doesn’t feel obligated to tell me when he’s going out. I don’t always inform him when I’m having guests. We’re living like roommates,” I say, looking over towards Kyle’s bedroom. “It’s torture.”
“I’m sorry, Lexi. I know it’s hard for you. You need to give him time. Maybe he just needs to see that you aren’t going to leave again.”
“I don’t want to leave,” I tell him. “But if all we are is friends, surely he’s going to expect me to at some point.”
“I think we are a long way from getting to that point, Lexi.”
I shrug negligently. “I hope so,” I say, topping off Caden’s wine. “But, hey let’s quit making everything about me. How are you doing? Why aren’t you dating anyone? Surely there is a plethora of women lining up to date a famous young ball player who isn’t even that ugly.”
He chuckles at my joke before shaking his head in disgust. “That’s the problem,” he says. “There are so many of them. And they all want something from me. Money. Fame. A baby.”
“A baby?” I ask, incredulously.
“You’d be surprised how many players in the league have been trapped by women getting pregnant on purpose,” he says. “Some of them end up married to women they don’t even like, just to give their kid a family. Others simply fork over eighteen years of child support.”
“That’s awful. Didn’t anyone ever teach them about birth control?” I ask.
“Some women are ruthless. Lying about being on the pill. Poking holes in condoms. When I got called up, they made me sit with their PR rep who basically gave me a talk about how not to get a girl pregnant.” He rolls his eyes. “It was humiliating. I felt like I was in middle school. But it happens so often, they’ve made it part of the transition from the minors. Always carry your own condoms. Never use one a girl provides. Put it on yourself. Make sure to flush it after, don’t just dump it in the trash and leave, because resourceful girls might dig it out and use what’s inside it.”
My hand comes up to cover my surprised gasp. “Oh, my God, Caden, really?”
“Really,” he says. “So you can see how it might be hard to trust anyone. Even getting set up with friends of friends is hard. You just never know their true motives. After a scare last year, I decided it just wasn’t worth it to try to find a girlfriend.”
“Scare? Did some girl say you got her pregnant?” I look at Ellie thinking how sad it would be for her to have a cousin she would never get to see.
He takes a big swig of his wine, then places it down on the table, tracing the mouth of the glass with his finger. “She didn’t just say I got her pregnant. I did get her pregnant.”
I look at my brother with wide eyes. “Caden, do you have a child?”
He shakes his head. “No. She had a miscarriage a week after she told me she was pregnant. But the whole thing scared the shit out of me, Lexi. What would I have done with a kid when I was barely twenty-three?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, hurt that he never thought to pick up the phone and get advice from his big sister.
“It was last March,” he says.
“Oh.” I disappeared in February. There was no way for him to contact me. “I’m so sorry, Caden. I wish I’d been there for you. Maybe I could have helped.”
“You’re sorry about not being there for me?” He looks at me sideways, studying my face. “Lexi, I’m the one who should have been there for you. I was so wrapped up in my own life—in baseball—that I couldn’t even bother to pick up the phone. Maybe if I would have, you’d have told me what was going on. I feel like all of this is my fault. I should have made more of an effort. Can you ever forgive me?”
I reach over the table and grab his hand. “Caden, there is nothing to forgive. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m the big sister. You shouldn’t have to look out for me. When Mom died, I should have made you my top priority. Instead, I was already in deep with Grant. I let him control me. I let him take me away from my friends. From you. If anyone is at fault here, it sure as hell isn’t you.”
“It’s not you either,” he says. “You know that, right? What he did to you—it’s not your fault.”
I nod. “I know that. I even knew it back then. I only stayed with him because I felt trapped. After he threatened you, I literally had nowhere to go.”
He smacks his palm on the table in anger. “You did, Lexi. You did have somewhere to go. You could have come to me anyway. I don’t care what he would have done to me. It would have been worth it to get you away from him.”
A tear rolls down my cheek as I smile at my little brother, knowing he’d sacrifice his career for me. I feel the same way about him. I’d do anything to keep him safe. “I wasn’t going to let that happen,” I say. “Baseball is your life.”
“But you’re my family,” he says, trying not to get choked up. “Family will always trump baseball, Lexi. Don’t ever forget that.”
“I love you, you know that, right?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says, getting up to come hug me. “I love you, too.”
I smile up at him. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that out loud.”
“Really?” he asks. “Well, shit. Plan on hearing it a lot more.” He does the sign for ‘I love you’ with his hands. He signs it to me and then he signs it to Ellie.
“You remembered?” I ask.
I showed him a few signs when he came for dinner last week.
“I’ve been practicing,” he says. “I happen to have the best niece in the world who has the coolest uncle who plans on talking with her every chance he gets. Don’t be surprised if I get her a phone when she’s two, just so we can text each other.”
I laugh, happy that he plans to spoil her. “Did you know that texting was invented solely to allow deaf people to communicate on cell phones?”
“No shit?” he says. “And now, it’s how everyone communicates. Imagine that.”
I clean up Ellie and then take our dirty dishes to the sink. When I come back out, Caden is holding Ellie and she’s laughing when he makes faces at her.
“Speaking of family,” I say. “I have something I’ve been wanting to ask you, Caden.”
He stares at me for a second. “This looks serious.”
“It is,” I tell him, motioning for him to sit down on the couch.
He puts Ellie between us, giving her one of her plastic picture books which she promptly puts in her mouth to chew on. “Whatever it is, the answer is yes,” he says.
“Don’t say that until you know what it is. This is a pretty tall order,” I tell him.
“I don’t care, Lexi.”
I nod to Ellie. “If something ever happens to me, will you raise her?”
He looks from Ellie to me and then back to Ellie. I’m not even sure he understands the question. I open my mouth to clarify, but he holds his hand out to shut me up. “In a fucking heartbeat,” he says. “It would be my absolute honor to raise her. Of course, yes, Lexi. But nothing is going to happen to you. I promise I won’t let that bastard hurt you ever again.”
“It’s not just about Grant,” I say. “I could get hit by a bus. Or I could fall down the stairs and break my neck. I could get bitten by a raccoon and die from rabies. Or get run over by—”
“Enough, Lexi. I get it,” he says, looking annoyed. “You really don’t need to chronicle all the ways you can die. It’s so morbid. And raccoons in New York City? I doubt it.”
I shrug. “I may not always live in the city.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “You’ll live in the city,” he says. Then he looks around the apartment. “If I were a betting man, I’d bet you’ll probably even live here. Or maybe someplace even bigger. I mean, I thought I had money. How rich is this guy?”
“I don’t know exactly. But I think it’s family money. You should see his brothers’ places. If you think this place is nice, it actually looks like a dump compared to Ethan’s penthouse.”
“You could definitely do worse, sis,” he says, looking out the massive picture windows.
“I’d love him if he had nothing, Caden.”
He laughs through his nose, nodding at me. “I know. That’s why he’s going to come around. He’d be a fool not to.”