Page 90 of Honey Pot

“That’s my girl,” Arlo praised.

“Have you been using the batting cages?” She asked Cael without remorse.

He chuckled, and I watched as the lie flickered across his features.

“Of course, I have been, Peachy.”

But he doesn’t lie like I expect him to, and it rattles me a little because it proves just how unafraid he is to get in trouble. Maybe it was how honest he was even when playing a kids' game that scared me, but our lives weren’t a game and he had never lied to me.

My heart raced at the thought.

Ella didn’t say much else, but she turned to me. “I sunk two balls, ask a question,” she whispered to me.

“That’s not the rules,” Cael groaned.

“You wouldn’t follow them even if they were, shithead,” Ella hissed, clearly upset with him but finding other ways to punish him for his secret activities.

Cael looked to Arlo for help but his friend just shrugged him off.

“She has a point,” Arlo said. He might have been on Cael Cody protection detail, but Ella was meddling and she was the boss.

“First time,” I ask him and the grin falls from his face.

He had been mine, despite everything that happened,he had been mine.

I could see the gears turning behind his eyes, the storm passing as he faked a smile and leaned over the table at me. “Her name was Clementine,” he whispered, his eyes flickering to the bracelet around my wrist. “Waste of a question.”

Dean looked on quietly, and Ella watched the two of us with a smile on her face that could only mean trouble. Cael was pissed off. Outraged that I would even ask him, I could see it in his shoulders and jaw. The huffy little smile that formed on his lips was a tell-tale sign that the question upset him. It brought his morals into question and rattled the walls around the memory we both held onto so desperately from that night.

Ella took another shot and sunk another ball.

“What about you?” Ella poked Dean in the chest with her finger and smiled at him. “First time?”

A blush crept on his cheeks, he scanned the room and leaned closer to her, lowering his voice. “Patrick Harvey.” He shrugged, “In the back of Van’s truck after we won the season opener two years ago.”

“That was your first time?” Cael looked at him surprised. “In College?”

Dean looked at him. “It’s not like I could bring guys home.”

“You fucked a Pittsburgh player in the back of my truck?” Van hollered. “You could have at least picked a piece of ass from a good team! Or screwed around with someone on our team. Now there’s bad juju in my truck.”

“That was two years ago, Van, I don’t fuck where I play,” Dean said.

“Yes, you do,” Cael and Arlo said in unison.

“I didn’t back then.” He rolled his eyes. “And can you all stop yelling, please? There are other people in the diner.”

“Take your shot,” Cael said to Ella. “Get this beating over with.”

“Dean,” Arlo called over to him and the first baseman wandered to the table.

He leaned over the table and Arlo whispered something to him that made Dean groan as he returned to the pool table and watched Ella miss her shot, which was strange because she was perfectly aligned. He surveyed the table before taking his own, sinking a ball without much thought.

“Who’s Julien?” Dean asked.

My heart seemed to sink into my stomach. I should have expected Cael to get curious. He had heard more of that conversation that I had wanted, and now… I looked at Cael, hoping that he’d give me an out, but he wasn’t on my side.

He was just as invested in the question as Arlo was.

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