Page 27 of Honeysuckle
Letting my parents down isn’t an option. The statement went unsaid, but Silas knew better than anyone what it meant.
“I need Joshua Logan to be a fucking pitcher, and I can’t get him to doanythingwith the team that he’s meant to lead out onto the field every inning. He gets uncomfortable during family meals, he gets angry during team exercises, he doesn’t fucking talk during practice!”
“Dean, take a beat.” Silas put his hand up to slow me down.
“Letting him just play baseball is easier said than done,” I grumbled and slumped back into my chair. “It’s like bathing a cat.”
Silas chuckled. “Alright, listen. Josh had issues at Lorette—ones that couldn’t be solved with tough love or gentle nudges. He was growing more volatile.”
“So you and Coach thought‘hey, the Hornets don’t have enough trouble, let's bring the spark to the powder keg?’” I said in shock.
“The problem wasn’thim, Dean.” Silas looked out the window as everyone started to flood into the mess hall for breakfast. “He was expelled for putting a kid in the hospital,” he explained, and before I could freak out, which is very much what I wanted to do, he stopped me with a hand. “But Coach and I have a reason to believe that he didn’t start the fight. We’re trying to figure out what happened but Lorette locked us out of the incident reports.”
“So you brought him here knowing what he was capable of and thought, what?” I asked.
“We wanted him under our wing until we could get to the bottom of things, find out what really happened in the locker room that night. It was Ian Peck he put in the hospital.”
“Ian? Notorious for his homophobic jokes and relentless taunts, Ian? Those two were thick as thieves on the field. There’s no way.” The words came out strangled.
Arlo had prevented more than one incident between Cael and Ian in the past. He was infamously big and played first base like a tank. He was a ruddy thing, with beady eyes and a big mouth. Ian was, simply put, a bully, he used the words of my insecurities to get under my skin until I…snapped.
“Say they fought, I believe that, but Ian is twice his size,” I said in shock. “What was the damage?”
“Three broken ribs, two broken fingers, a shattered orbital bone and a few missing teeth.” Silas swallowed tightly. “It was bad.”
I sat in shock for a moment. Was he really capable of that kind of carnage? Beating the life out of a guy so badly they had to take him to the emergency room? The thought turned violently in my stomach, and suddenly I wasn’t hungry. I had gotten mad before, but never like that. I don’t even think I’d ever seen Cael or Arlo that mad, Van maybe, sometimes, but not…like that. Not even in defense of each other.
“Do you think Logan was protecting someone?” I asked.
Silas stared at me for a long moment. "I think Josh was protectinghimself.”
I considered what he was implying, the words unsaid floating between us and it took me too long to put the pieces together.
“You’re telling me you think Ian was targeting Josh because he’s…” I raised my eyebrows.
“You say that like you aren’t…” Silas chuckled tightly. “But yes, Ian isn’t exactly known for anythingbuthis homophobia. I can’t see Josh going that far for anything else, can you?”
“I’ve seen him have a meltdown about the grass tickling his ankles, so at this point…” I shrugged, there was a chance Ian did nothing. “He really hates being touched, did you know that?”
Silas stared at me and shook his head. “No, what do you mean?”
“I mean, Cael tried to break up a fight and got punched for touching Josh. He’s jumpy and unpredictable,” I explained, shifting uncomfortably in my sweaty tank top. “Did you—” I stopped myself for a moment, thinking about the implications of the question, and steadied myself on the arms of the chair. “Did you do his physical?” I asked.
“No,” Silas shook his head. “He brought signed forms from the Lorettes’ Doc that cleared him for play.”
“You never looked him over at all?” I asked, just to make sure.
“He insisted he was good to go,” Silas said.
“And you just took his word for it?”
“I did.”
I stared at Silas wondering what else he was excluding from the conversation. I’d never once, not in the three years of knowing him, known him not to do something himself just todouble check.He was thorough, direct and careful with every single one of us, but he wascautiousabout Josh and it made me nervous.
"He’s covered in scars."
“Everyone has scars, Tucker. It’s not exactly cause for alarm,” he said.
