Page 23 of Honey Pot

“Excuse my intrusion,” he said, as I set my laptop on the couch beside me.

The light from the grand window behind me made the chunks of ashy, nearly gray pieces of his beard and hair stand out more. He rolled his slim shoulders back in his shirt and danced around his question like it pained him to hold onto it.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Shore?” I asked, setting down my phone and giving him my full attention.

“You know the Codys, don't you?” His brows kissed in the center and created worry lines across his forehead.

“I do,” I answered honestly.

Silas clicked his tongue at me and sighed.

“Do you know the term ‘baby gloves’, Ms. Matthews?” He asked me, his tone dropping from polite to serious in a matter of seconds.

“It's a common term,” I said, and he raised a brow at my sass. “Yes.”

“Use them,” he said curtly, the muscle in his jaw ticking as he ground his teeth together.

“How did you know?” I asked him as he turned to leave me again.

“First of all, don’t insult my intelligence.” He laughed but it was tight as he stepped forward. “You'll come to figure out that this…” He waved a hand around to signify the house. “...is much more than a baseball team. It's a family.”

“Vague,” I said.

“Protective,” he corrected. “Be gentle, please. They’ve struggled enough this year, they don’t need anymore character growth.”

I bit my tongue to keep from saying something I shouldn't but desperately wanted to. The Codys weremyfamily first. This team, this house, took them from me. I was alone.

I finished setting out my things and grabbed my cell phone from the table.

“Hey, Lovebug.” Momma's voice nearly made me cry every time.

“Hey, Momma.” I leaned back on the couch and looked around at the dark green wallpaper and fancy, mahogany crown molding.

“How are things going?” She asked. I could tell she was mucking around in the garden because I could hear the birds in the background chirping circles around her head.

“This might have been a mistake,” I said, picking at the hem of my shirt. “I thought he would at least want to see me, or even talk like adults.”

“And he doesn't.” She sat in one of the rickety steel lawn chairs; the squeaky sound of the old metal echoed through the phone. "So much like his Daddy," she groaned. I know that tone in her voice. She had predicted this but had kept her thoughts to herself so I would learn something.

“He's so different,” I whispered, trying not to let my emotions get the best of me.

I had come here with a plan. I'd held on to the idea that Cael was the monster under my bed for so long. My loneliness had turned to resentment over time. He had ruined so much of my life because, no matter what I did, he was there, tainting it and reminding me it would never feel as good as I felt when he smiled at me.

He was the sun and I sat in darkness when he’d left. I became a person no one would recognize, because if I wasn't his Clementine, he wasn't my Cael.

But I was wrong.

And he had proven it in one conversation.

“You're mine, and I'm yours.”

He hadn't changed as much as I had hoped, and now I was left disappointed.

“Do you remember that summer when you found that injured bird?” She asked me, and I said yes. I remember every summer with Cael. “You were so young, maybe ten. Do you remember what Ryan said to Honeybug when he declared he would make the bird a bed with hay and blankets?”

I hummedat the nickname. It had been a long time since I had heard it. It was a pair of names given to us when we were young: We were both bugs; I was love and Cael was honey.

“He told him it was foolish because the bird would never fly again.” I bit down. I could picture the defiance that had flickered in Cael's pretty blue eyes, even then, butting heads with his Dad.

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