Page 89 of Honeysuckle
Dean shook his head.
“Not here.” He stepped aside to give me room to walk toward the door, guarding my back, even if that wasn’t his intention. I looked over my shoulder, feeling guilty for leaving her like that, but there wasn’t much more I could do for her right now. She was too worked up. She would just have to stay angry with me.
TUCKER
“Practiceisn’tforanothertwo hours,” Josh said as we pulled into the stadium.
My mind was still spinning from what his mother said. Josh was somehow mixed up with Silas and the Shores and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how or why. I shut off the engine and hopped out without answering him before wandering over to the players entrance and going inside. I needed to talk to him but I didn’t know where to start. All I knew was that if I wanted him to be honest with me I needed to distract him from what was really going on.
I stopped by the medical offices to grab a first aid kit. Josh followed behind, still grumbling and muttering questions about what we were doing.
“Do you ever stop being cranky?” I laughed and pushed open the main doors that led out to the concourse. I waved to one of the security guards and started out on the field with the kit and on a mission. “Sit,” I said to him and pointed to the dugout bench.
“I don’t need first aid for a scratch, Tuck.” He scowled and stayed standing.
“Humor me?” I asked, and it took him a minute, but eventually he caved.
I pulled some of the antibiotic wipes out that Silas always uses on our scrapes and handed them to him, but he’d already got his arm out to me. I looked down at it, and when my brows furrowed, he huffed.
“Fine, I’ll do it myself.” He tried to snatch the wipe, and I held firm to it.
“No it’s just… I wasn't expecting you to let me,” I said. He stared me down, the angry expression on his face never faltering as I worked up the courage to take his arm in my palm. When my fingers brushed against his skin I felt him bristle but he sat as still as possible as I cleaned the scratches.
“Are you okay?” I asked him when he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, but he nodded and I tried to finish up as quickly as possible. “Done,” I told him as I pulled away and headed toward the bats. I turned my back to him to give him a moment to regain his composure and grabbed the handle of my favorite bat.
“Here,” I said, extending it to him.
“What the hell are you doing, Tuck?” He asked, but took the bat.
“Distracting you. Arlo does it with us sometimes,” I explained and climbed from the dugout. “Makes it easier to talk about shit if you’re concentrating on pitching balls.”
“What do you think I need to be distracted from exactly?” He asked me but followed me out to the batter’s box.
“The questions I’m about to ask you,” I said, with unbridled honesty.
“I don’t want to do this.” Josh shook his head and turned on his heel, but I caught the bat he was holding and pulled him back.
“Doesn’t matter, you either answer my questions or I’ll go ask Silas,” I said and Josh rolled his eyes. It was glaringly obvious that Josh did not want Silas’s side of the story told. “Give me the bat,” I said and handed him a crate of baseballs.
He huffed, trading me and wandering out to the pitcher's mound with a scowl on his face and an attitude in his step. “This is stupid,” he said, but rolled the ball in his hand.
“What did your mom mean?” I asked him and he looked up at me with a frown. “She said a lot about the Shores, what did she mean?”
“Maybe you should mind your business,” he said, his arm pulled back, and he let go of the ball in a smooth motion that looked like a rolling wave. I wasn’t ready for it, but I made contact regardless, and the ball cracked against the wooden bat, soaring through the infield and landing deep in the left grass.
“You are my business, tough guy,” I said softly, smiling at him as I readied for the next pitch.
Josh scowled at me, his dark brown eyes narrowing at my jab, and he threw a second ball. That one flew right out of the box and almost hit me in the shoulder before it bounced off the back cage and into the dirt.
“What did your mom mean?” I asked again, my mind twisted in knots of possibilities, each one worse than the last. “Do you owe the Shores money?” I asked him.
“No,” he laughed, like it was a ridiculous stream of thoughts.
“Then what?” I got frustrated and snapped at him. I fought against the urge to push him, the deep down need to know that it wasn’t bad but that wasn’t me, and that wasn’t us.
“Silas is my brother,” Josh said and suddenly everything that I had been thinking of wasn’t so bad. “Half brother,” he corrected himself.
“What?” I asked, stunned by the confession, dropping my bat from my shoulder.
