Page 32 of Play Along

“Yes, you can, Kenny. It’s one season. Seven months if we make it to the postseason.”

“Then what? We get a divorce and one of us gets fired? And by one of us, I mean me.”

“You get the job in California. The distance doesn’t work for us. We divorce amicably. No one in the front offices will even give a shit once you’re working for a different team.”

“And if I don’t get the job? If I’m still here next year?”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re getting the job, Ken.”

Isaiah’s voice is so even, so sure. The rarely serious Isaiah tends to be very serious when it comes to his confidence in me.

“Why would you go along with this?” I ask.

“Why would I go along pretending that the wedding I had with this girl I’ve had a crush on for years is legitimate? Why would I force myself to spend time with her for an entire season to make sure she lands her dream job at the end of it? Hmm, I’m not sure, Kenny. Let’s think about that.”

“Isaiah,” I sigh in resignation, because there’s no reason he should have a crush on me. After all these years, I haven’t done anything to make him like me. “You don’t even know me.”

“Everybody begins as strangers.”

“And it doesn’t bother you that I can’t really stand you most of the time?”

There’s a playful glint in his brown eyes. “I think that’s what I like most about you.”

“You like what you can’t have,” I correct.

“Nah. I just like annoying you. You get that flat line across your lips and that death glare. Very hot, Ken.”

My eyes roll.

“Mmm,” he moans. “The eye roll too.”

“Please try to be serious for once in your life. If we do this, I’m basically using you.”

“Sounds terrible. Please, Kennedy, use me all you want.”

“I can’t...” I gesture between us. “I won’t be able to fake this.”

I couldn’t even pretend for a legitimate relationship, let alone a fake one.

He shrugs his shoulders. “You heard Remington. We have to be professional while here at the field, and it’s not like he travels with us anymore. He’ll never see us during our time off.”

He’s really thought this all through. And he’s doing all of this for me. Isaiah gets nothing out of this arrangement.

Arrangement. This is yet another arrangement. I’m accustomed to arrangements.

It makes the idea a bit easier to swallow.

“You just did that all for me, but I thought you were mad at me?”

“I am.” He runs a hand through his hair, causing the veins in his forearm to flex. “Doesn’t mean I want you to lose your job.”

“You’d be married to someone as a business arrangement, you know? One day, you’re going to have to tell other women that technically, you’re a divorcé.”

He holds eye contact. “I’m not worried about other women. Haven’t been for a long time.”

That’s not true in the slightest.

Isaiah Rhodes has had plenty of women to worry about in the years I’ve known him.

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