Page 81 of The Problem with Players

“I am, which is why I want to make you dinner tonight as a thank-you for taking care of my punk ass.”

The warmth that bloomed across her lips made me echo her smile. “You cook?”

“For you, yes.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What are you going to make?”

“Baked ziti and garlic bread.”

“Mmm,” she moaned. The sound was enough to make me want to start humping her leg like the needy dog I’d turned into whenever she was near. She could’ve put a collar on me, and I would’ve allowed her to dog-walk me all around town with a smile on my face. “That sounds like a perfect Thursday night dinner. But”—she pointed a stern finger at me—“if I hear one sneeze from you, I’m calling you a punk for the rest of your life.”

I laughed. “Deal.”

“And don’t read too much into this, Nathan. I still don’t like you,” she expressed as she started to walk off with that playful grin still on her face. “So don’t you think for a second we’re becoming friends.”

I shook my head in complete awe of her stubbornness and inability to express that she and I were slowly but surely getting on better terms with one another. “Whatever you say, Avery. Whatever you say.”

I liked her stubbornness.

Icravedher stubbornness. Avery’s attitude was one of thethings I found most attractive. I didn’t know if that meant I was mentally unwell, but that was where my state of affairs had been. The flu couldn’t take me out, but my damn crush on Avery Kingsley might’ve been the thing to do me in.

23

AVERY

One Sunday morning, I suddenly awakened from my slumber due to the sound of a rooster crowing. I groaned as I pushed myself up to a sitting position and rubbed the exhaustion from my eyes. The sun was hardly up as I yawned and stretched my arms.

To my surprise, it wasn’t a rooster shouting good morning to me. It was Nathan standing in my doorframe with a big goofy grin on his face, making the loudest rooster sounds I’d ever heard in my life.

“What in the living heck are you doing?” I grumbled.

He had a stack of clothes in his hand as he walked over to me. “Morning, sunshine. It’s the third Sunday of the month.”

I blankly stared at him, probably with morning gunk in the corners of my eyes, still. “What’s your point?”

“It’s Sunday Funday on the Farm!” he exclaimed, placing the clothes in my hand. “I guessed on your sizes. I let you sleep in a little longer, but everyone else is already out there warming up on the field. I wanted you to be on my team, Team Blue, but everyone said it would be an unfair advantage to have you play on the same team as me. So you’re on the yellow team.”

“Nathan, what the heck are you talking about?”

“Every third Sunday morning, starting in the spring, my family gets up and plays a baseball game at the crack of dawn. The losers have to go through the garden and prepare brunch for the winning team. It’s a tradition. Sunday Funday.”

“Oh my goodness,” I groaned, covering my face with a pillow. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those families who runs marathons on Thanksgiving morning.”

“Actually, we do.” He pulled the pillow from my face and smiled. “Since you’re here, you gotta play. Get changed. There are thirty people out there waiting.”

“Thirty people?!” I gasped. My eyes bulged out of my head. “What do you mean, thirty people?”

“My cousins, aunts, and uncles come over for it, too. A lot just stay in the bleachers and watch, but they have to pick a team, too. Then they have to help out with the meal if their team loses.”

“I hate everything about this,” I muttered as I dragged myself out of bed.

His smile stayed in place as he patted me on the back. “You’ll learn to love it.”

I hatedthat he was right, too, because the minute I got on the field, I was reminded of one of my favorite things about the Pierces—they took family to a new level.

Sure, I was close with my sisters and my father, but we weren’t really that close with our extended family. We saw them around the holidays, but that was about it. Nathan’s family—more than thirty of them—got together once a month to play baseball.

And they loved it!

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