Page 123 of The Foul Out

The camera zoomed in on Kyle as he rested his left forearm on the table in front of him and raised his brows in expectation.

My heart clenched as I drank him in. My worries about his hair were so silly. The short cut only made his deep brown eyes more fathomless. If possible, he looked sexier this way.

“Is it true your new tat is messing with your swing?”

He chuckled, and I swore the sound vibrated through my chest. “Wow, talk about the gossip mill working overtime.” He glanced at a person on one side of the room, just off camera, and rolled his eyes. “I will firmly deny that I have any issue with my swing.”

“But you don’t deny the new tat?”

“Nosy much?” Kyle teased, making the reporters and his teammates laugh. “But sure, I’ll tell you about it. My life is split into two parts. There’s the fun side.” He held up his left arm, showing off the words inked on his arm. “Then there’s the shit that matters.” He held up his right.

The camera zoomed in, and when it focused on Kyle’s new tattoo, I sucked in a hard breath. There, on the underside of his bicep, in matching script, were the wordsHarper,Piper, andSam. “This year, I just added some people to my life that really matter to me.”

We were broken up. We were over. Lacking a future. And yet he cared so much about us that he’d had our names permanently inked on his skin. And then he announced to the world that we were people who mattered to him.

I swallowed back a mixture of awe and heartbreak.

“Bloody hell.” Huffing, Zara shifted on the couch and hit me with a look. “How many gestures do you need?”

“I could ask you the same thing. Asher would literally buy you the world.”

“Buying things I haven’t asked for is not a gesture,” she argued. “Asher doesn’t do stuff. He throws money at it. To him, the kids and I…” Wearing an expression of pure misery, she sniffed and shook her head, as if shaking off the hurt. “We’re convenient when we’re convenient. And when we’re not, we don’t exist.” Slumping against the couch, she closed her eyes. “I told him I wanted a break, and he didn’t even put up a fight. He just left for spring training. He hasn’t called or texted to check in.He’s out living his baseball dreams. That’s what matters to him. That’s what he’d tattoo on his arm. Not our names.”

Heart aching, I sighed and slumped back too. I hoped she was wrong. Asher must have cared. Maybe he just didn’t know how to show it.

“Kyle is different. He sends you a message every day. And you don’t even answer.” She gulped her wine this time. “What would you have done if he’d told you he was your…” She frowned. “Your cousin?”

With my head dropped back against the cushion, I groaned. “We arenotrelated.”

“The King doesn’t have a problem with cousins marrying, and I’m certainly not going to judge.” She shrugged.

I chuckled. Zara was something.I couldn’t deny her humor made me feel a modicum lighter.

“If he’d told me…” I hedged, wishing I could say I would have given him a chance. That we would have had the same beginning, just without the horrible end. But that would be a lie. “I would have asked him to leave us alone. And I would have shut him out, just like I have with James.”

“So he wasn’t wrong to keep it from you?”

Irritation flickered through me. “He should have told me.”

“When, though?” She cocked one thin brow. “At what point could he have admitted his aunt was the shrew suing you without the threat of having the door slammed in his face?”

“She’s not suing me,” I said for what had to be the zillionth time. She hired an attorney so she could sue the estate. It had very little to do with me.

Zara only lifted that brow higher.

I sighed. “Lying isn’t the answer.”

“So you said, ‘Hey, are we cousins?’ and he denied it?”

Scoffing, I picked up my drink. “Of course not. Can you imagine if I’d said, ‘Hey, Kyle, do you happen to know if were related?’ How would that even go?”

She shrugged. “My father and uncle are lords. In some circles, asking is a necessity.”

Her life was so odd.

“Not telling me is still a lie.”

“Not telling you was a god-awful decision. But.” She held up a single finger. “Tell me about one time he actually lied.”

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