Page 106 of The Shake Off

“Oh,” Chester blushed. “Thank you for my gifts. I took the ball and glove to school for show and tell.”

“You’re very welcome, little dude.” I grinned back, as a thought occurred to me. “Hey, do you have them here now?”

He nodded, his dark hair flopping in his face as he did. “Yeah, they’re in my bedroom.”

“Why don’t you go and get them, and we can play a bit of catch.”

His eyes flared, then he took off quicker than Lux at home base.

“You just made his year,” grinned Blake.

I chuckled and stood back up. “Hey, he made mine. Don’t often to get to play with my biggest fan.”

“I’m warning you now, he’s not that great. Neither of us can figure where this baseball obsession has come from.”

“You’re not into baseball?”

“Yeah, I’ll watch.” Blake slapped my arm with a laugh as he caught the expression on my face. “But this is a football house. The rest of the kids are at football camp this week, but all Ches wants to do is watch The Lions.”

“Step aside, then. I’ll teach him what he needs to know.”

Blake huffed out a laugh and sipped his beer. We stood shoulder to shoulder, peering around the gathering in his yard. At the back, near where a jazz band was playing, a thin stretch of grass ran alongside the high fence adorned with twinkly lights surrounding the end of the property, along with a small basketball hoop bolted to the wall halfway down. For a New York Brownstone where space was at a premium, they managed to find somewhere with a decent sized back yard, but they must have paid upward of twenty mil for the pleasure.

Payton was now sitting on a long bench with two women and a man, listening intently. She was nodding in a way I knew meant she thought whatever was being said was bullshit; I’d learned that expression a long time ago, including the way she was now tucking her hair behind her ear.

“How long have you two been together? Nathalie hasn’t stopped raving about her since they met. A book she edited last year is one of the kids’ favorites.”

I side-eyed Blake to see him also watching the group. It was a question I didn’t have an answer for. We weren’t together, not in the way Blake meant. We hadn’t even talked about being together. And if you didn’t count the mornings after when she’d leave me in bed, I’d never seen her in daylight before today.

Not to mention, me attending this party was the last part of our bargain.

But on the other hand, if anyone so much as looked in her direction with anything other than innocent intention, I’d want to pummel them so hard they’d be eating through a straw for a month.

You can see my predicament.

All I knew was that I wasn’t ready to give her up. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready.

“Not long.”

“Settle in for the long run, bud. You’re looking at her the way I looked at Nathalie when I first met her.”

I was stopped from trying to figure out a response by Chester returning with more excitement in his eyes than Tanner when he first beat Parker at PlayStation.

He thrust the ball and glove at me. “Here, Ace. I got them.”

“Awesome job. You wanna pitch or catch?”

Chester’s smile dropped a little. “Pitch, like you, but I’m not very good.”

“Oh, c’mon, I bet you are.”

His head dropped as he shook it. “No, Coach said I wasn’t, but I try hard.”

“Well, that’s gonna get you halfway there. Trying is what counts.” I ruffled his hair. “Come on, let’s go and practice on the grass.”

I grinned at Blake as Chester ran off, and turned to the guys who’d all gone back to their conversations about books. “Good to meet you gentleman. If you’ll excuse me…”

I walked over to Chester, turning his shoulders around so he was facing me, and took six paces back. “Okay, bud. Let’s see what you got.”

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