Baseball and Other Lessons (Devil's Ranch Book 2) (29 page)

“Or maybe he’s planning on breaking up with me and just wants to get it done and over with.”

“Way to think positive there, counselor.”

Jo sighed. “I know, I know. I just can’t shake the bad feeling.”

“Well, then, we need to make sure you change his mind if he’s planning on making the dumbest move in the history of the universe.”

“And how do we do that?”

Jenn wiggled her eyebrows in an effort to make Jo smile. “We make sure he knows exactly what he would be missing. How about you wear what you wore on the Fourth? That sundress with those cowboy boots was kind of hot, and Chase definitely seemed to think so.”

Jo’s cheeks pinkened, but she smiled and said, “You do have a point.”

Chapter Twenty

“You’re sure you haven’t
seen anyone weird hanging around outside? No strange men with cameras or anything?” Matt asked.

Jenn sighed, acting like she was put out by his questioning, but Matt had a sneaking suspicion she liked his concern. “None. I haven’t seen a single strange person hanging around here. Except for you. You’re kind of weird.”

He flopped down onto her couch and pulled her down with him. “Admit it, you like my weird.”

“Kind of. It’s growing on me a little bit.”

Instead of sitting in the middle of the couch or on the other end, she surprised him by sitting right beside him, close enough that their thighs were touching. Speaking of thighs…he glanced down at her legs that were bared thanks to the pair of shorts she was wearing, and immediately grew hard.

Matt shifted, brought his gaze up from her legs and tried to focus on her face, the smattering of Spanish he knew, anything to help him keep his hands off of her. As much as he wanted to make a move, he was leaving the ball firmly in her court.

His fingers twitched and his dick swelled inside his pants.

Very firmly. In her court.

“Oh, hell,” Jenn whispered.

Matt swallowed. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel this, too, Jenn.”

She shook her head.

“Please don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not. I don’t want to feel this.”

Her desperately muttered statement hurt more than he cared to admit. “And yet you do. I do. We do.”

“Yeah, we do.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

She continued to unflinchingly meet his gaze. “What I want to do and what I should do are currently battling inside my head.”

He crooked up a corner of his mouth. “Which one’s winning?”

Her gaze dropped to his mouth and her tongue darted out to wet her lips. His cock surged again. “It’s a draw.”

“Bullshit.”

Her gaze flew back up to his. “Sometimes I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

She looked at his mouth again. “No, I don’t.”

“It’s up to you, Jenn. I told you I wouldn’t push, so I’m not.”

“And yet here you are. Every single night.”

“Ever stop to think I simply like you?”

She swallowed. “I like you, too.”

“Jenn, look at me.”

She looked back up at him, and he could see her fears shining clearly in her eyes. His fears probably didn’t come close to hers, considering everything she’d been through ten years ago thanks to him, but she wasn’t alone in the scared department.

“This is unfamiliar territory for me, too, and I’m a little scared, too, but this feels too right not to see where it goes.”

She turned her body into his. “I doubt you’re scared of anything.”

He tentatively pushed a curl behind her ear. “This feeling I get whenever I’m near you? This all-consuming need to be with you? The fact that I can’t stop thinking about you and the fact that I will rip someone apart if they try to go after you because of your association with me? Yeah, those feelings scare me.”

She grabbed his hand with her own and held tight. “What about after? After you’ve healed? After you’ve gone back to baseball? The aftermath from ten years ago nearly crushed me. I don’t think I can go through that again.”

“You slay me, you know that?”

“Ditto.”

“I’m not that guy anymore, Jenn.”

“I know that, Matt. That doesn’t make me any less scared of the aftermath, though.”

Fuck, he was scared of the aftermath, too, not to mention the fact that for the first time in his life he was beginning to seriously wonder if maybe he should hang up his cleats and walk away from the game he loved. Some of that was because of his head injury, some of it because of his age. He’d be lying, though, if he said Jenn wasn’t a part of that wondering.

God, the woman had him thinking crazy thoughts.

The doorbell rang before he could respond, causing Jenn to jump away from him like she’d just been burned.

“I should get that.”

She almost ran to the front door, and Matt tried to adopt a casual pose on the couch. Jenn opened the door, and he caught a brief glimpse of Jo bursting into tears. Oh, hell. His brother better not have done something stupid.

Jenn ushered Jo inside and closed the door behind her.

“Did you know?” Jo choked out.

A look of confusion passed over Jenn’s face, and Matt tried his damnedest to hide his own confusion.

“Know what?” Jenn asked.

“That he’s sick?” Jo sniffled.

“Who’s sick?” Jenn asked, still clearly confused.

Matt, however, was no longer confused and instead had the sudden urge to find his brother and pummel some sense into him. Apparently he’d finally gotten around to telling Jo about his Chronic Kidney Disease and apparently had botched the entire thing.

“Chase,” Jo choked out.

Jenn guided her to the couch, and Matt watched Jo warily, not sure what to say or do considering his relationship to the man in question.

Jo turned to Matt and pointed her finger at him. “You. You knew, didn’t you?”

He swallowed. Nodded.

Jo lunged for him, but before she could inflict any real damage he wrapped an arm around her, pinning her arms to her sides, and used his free hand to rub her back. In a soft, soothing voice, he said, “Just calm down, Jo. Breathe. That’s it. Breathe.”

Jo stopped fighting and buried her head on Matt’s chest, sobs wracking her body.

Jenn sat down beside them, and Matt kept rubbing her back, ignoring the moisture that had his shirt clinging to his skin.

“You’re kind of good at this whole comforting thing, y’know,” she mumbled against his chest.

Matt snorted. “It’s one of my secret talents.”

“I’m afraid I got snot all over your shirt.”

He shrugged. “That’s okay. I have plenty.”

She pulled back and looked. “It’s your World Series t-shirt!”

He was wearing a 2012 World Series t-shirt. The year the Wranglers’ won. He smiled at her. “Jo, it’s okay. I literally have a dozen of these. At least.”

She grabbed a tissue out of the box on the coffee table and blew her nose, somewhat calmer now but obviously embarrassed. “I’m sorry I attacked you.”

Jo managed to wedge her body in between him and Jenn.

“It’s no biggie. I have to admit, I was kind of impressed—I don’t think I’ve seen you that worked up since the time I stuck frogs in the back of y’all’s bathing suits,” he teased, trying to lighten the mood and coax out a smile.

It didn’t work.

“Still, though, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s okay. So what got you so worked up to begin with?” He asked, even though he figured he already knew the answer, or at least part of it.

She looked from Matt to Jenn, and he saw it in her eyes the moment she put two and two together. “Was I interrupting something?”

“Nope. We were just watching the game.”

The TV wasn’t on. Oops.

Jo looked from it to Jenn, who blushed.

“We were about to watch the game. I just got here,” Matt said, trying to throw Jo off the scent. Now was not the time to delve into that particular subject.

Jo’s face fell, her chin trembled and her shoulders slumped.

“So what did you mean, Chase is sick?” Jenn asked, worry in her voice.

Jo rolled her head towards Jenn. “So I take it you don’t know?”

“Know what?” Jenn asked, sounding a bit bewildered.

He was going to kill Chase for not telling Jenn anything about the CKD.

Jo sighed. Rolled her head to look at Matt. “What about you?”

He nodded, afraid his answer would effectively put a complete stop on his and Jenn’s budding…whatever it was…but knowing he couldn’t not be honest. “The family’s known since he was a teen, and then he found out in his early twenties, I think, that he had Chronic Kidney Disease.”

Jenn gasped and her face drained of all color. “He’s been sick that long and never told me?”

“Don’t get mad at him, Jenn. He probably kept it from you to protect you,” Matt said. Yup, he was so going to kill his brother when he got home later.

“Kind of how he just broke up with me to protect me, you mean?” Jo asked, her voice bitter.

“My brother’s a fucking idiot.”

“On this, I wholeheartedly agree with you.”

Jo sniffled, and Matt handed her the box of tissues while watching Jenn out of the corner of his eye. She was too pale, but he was afraid to reach out and touch her, to try to comfort her right now. Afraid she would push him away for unknowingly hiding something so important from her. “So I take it the CKD’s gotten worse?”

Jo nodded her head. “From what he just explained to me, yes. His doctor thinks he’ll probably need a transplant within a year.”

Jenn asked, “Hold on. He’s sick enough that he needs a fucking transplant? And he never told me? I’m his best friend!”

Jo closed her eyes as if she was in physical pain. “I’m his girlfriend. Was his girlfriend. Fuck if I even know what I am anymore. And he just now told me. So join the club.”

The three of them fell silent, each lost in their own thoughts. Matt finally broke the silence by asking, “So what are you going to do?”

Jo sighed. “I don’t know. I have to be back in Austin early next week for work, when what I want to do is stay here and show him I’m not that easy to push away.”

Matt met Jenn’s gaze over the top of Jo’s head, saw the confusion and hurt etched all over her face and quietly swore.

He was definitely beating the shit out of his brother.

#

As soon as Matt left about thirty minutes later, Jo turned to Jenn and demanded, “Okay, spill.”

Jenn got up from the couch and walked into the kitchen. “You want some wine?”

Jo got up and joined her. “God, yes. And then I want you to spill.”

Jenn grabbed a bottle from the fridge then concentrated on pulling the cork, using that as an excuse to not look at her best friend. “Spill what?”

“You know what.”

“No, I really don’t,” she said as the cork finally popped out of the bottle.

“What’s going on with you and Matt? And don’t you dare tell me ‘nothing,’ because I saw the way y’all were looking at each other.”

Jenn rolled her eyes and grabbed two wineglasses out of the cabinet. “How could you see how we were looking at each other when you were bawling your eyes out almost the entire time he was here?”

She poured both of them a healthy serving of the chilled Moscato before handing a glass to Jo.

“’Almost’ being the key word here.” Jo took a healthy sip of her wine. “Looks like you and Matt are doing more than simply hanging out.”

Jenn took a healthy sip of her own before asking, “Why the sudden fascination with Matt and me? How about we figure out what you’re going to do about Chase and Jo?”

Jo grimaced before taking another large sip—and by large sip Jenn meant gulp—of wine. “Honestly? Right now focusing on something other than Chase and me seems like a really good idea, otherwise I’m going to get really mad and possibly do something I would regret. I need a distraction, and whatever’s going on between you and Matt seems like a pretty damned good one right about now.”

Jenn sighed and rested her back against the edge of the kitchen counter. “It’s…we’re friends, I guess. Complicated friends.”

“You mean friends with benefits?”

Jo sounded way too excited by that. “Not exactly, no.”

“I’m sensing a story here. A really epic, possibly long and most likely juicy story. Please don’t deny me that in my time of need.”

Jenn chuckled before finishing off her glass of wine with one long drink. She refilled her now empty glass and stuck another bottle in the freezer to chill. Jo lifted an eyebrow in a silent question. Jenn said, “If I’m telling you this story, we’re going to need more than one bottle of wine”

“Sounds good to me. I think I’m definitely in the mood to get rip-roaring drunk.”

Jo held out her now empty wine glass and Jenn poured the rest of the first bottle of wine into it. They both quietly sipped for a few minutes before Jenn inhaled a shaky breath.
Am I really going to do this?