Page 120 of Hot Streak

“Honey. You just said it yourself. You chose. Doesn’t he get a choice, too?”

“He doesn’t know what he wants.”

“I don’t know him, don’t know what’s really happened between you,” she admitted, “but from everything you’ve told me about Connor Clark, I think he does, and you know it, and it terrifies you.”

“Of course it fucking does.”

She smacked him in the shoulder. “Jackson Calvin. Language.”

“Sorry, Momma,” he said, with a sheepish smile. “I’m just . . .”

“Messed up. I know. I can tell.”

“Great,” he retorted sarcastically.

He didn’t know why he’d thought he could hide this from her, but clearly, he’d been delusional.

But she was smiling. “You could still fix it, you know?”

“Fix what?”

Becca was back, a daughter on each hand, her eyes shaded by a Raleigh Rogues cap, her hair falling long and straight and brown, the exact same color as his own, down her back.

She didn’t look old enough to have two daughters—or to raise them by herself, but she’d done it, anyway.

“Are you okay, Uncle Jack?” Constance, barely six, let go of her mother’s hand and bopped right over to where he stood. He picked her up and set her at his hip.

“Now that you’re here, I’m just fine,” Jackson told her and meant it.

“Seriously, what’s wrong?” Becca asked under her breath as Jackson set Constance down and she and her sister ran to see the mascot, who’d just arrived on the concourse.

“Connor got called up,” Charlene said and Becca nodded knowingly.

“Wait, how did you even know about him?” Jackson questioned.

“Mom told me,” Becca said, very reasonably. “Told me how you acted whenever you talked about him. Honestly, it seemed pretty obvious.”

“Great.” Jackson couldn’t pretend to be happy about this.

“You know, you could make it right. Reach out to him. Apologize.”

It wasn’t like Jackson hadn’t thought about it. He’d thought about nothing else over the last three days. But he didn’t know how to ‘make it right’ without giving Connor what he wanted.

And he didn’t know how to give Connor what he—and Jackson too—wanted, without compromising his career.

They were right back to the same puzzle they’d faced at the beginning, nowhere closer to a resolution.

“How can I?” Jackson watched as his nieces high-fived the mascot—a racoon with a black mask strung across his eyes.

“You just do it,” Becca said bluntly. “You feel bad? You apologize.”

“When he’s making his first start?” Charlene asked.

“Good question. I don’t know.”

“But you could always look it up,” Becca pointed out dryly.

Ugh. He loved his sister. She was brilliant. But that brilliance cut both ways.

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