Page 90 of Honeysuckle
“When a man gaslights a woman…” Josh started in a grumpy tone.
“So your dad is Charles Shore?” I asked, cutting him off from his angry explanation of the birds and the bees.
“My biological father is Charles. I never had a dad,” he corrected and threw the ball hard that time. It whizzed by my head and I ducked to the side before it hit my face, a stinging sensation telling me it didn’t miss clipping me in the ear.
“Hey!” I said, pointing my bat at him.
“This was your idea,” he snapped, hurling another ball. Each one was harder than the last, and he wasn’t giving me much time to prepare for them.
“You seriously have anger issues,” I muttered, shifting the bat in my grip.
“Get better insults, Tuck.” His serious expression faltered for a second with the twitch of his lip as it curled into a tiny smirk. He threw a few more balls and I hit each one without effort, cursing myself each time they dropped into the outfield. I’d have to collect each one when we were finished.
“When did you find out?” I asked him between the next pitch.
“A couple of months ago.” He shrugged. "I guess Charles was frozen out of his accounts, cut off from the family. So Silas took them over. He found out his dad was giving my mom money, and the bastard didn’t hide his trail very well. I’m just another one of his indiscretions, he was paying her to keep her quiet.”
Charles had been cut off? That was news to me. Silas was pretty good at keeping things close to his chest, but that seemed big. I wondered if Arlo knew about Josh…
“Does Arlo know?” I blurted and missed the next ball in my confusion. I caught the tail end of it and it skipped through the out field near Josh, who scooped it up into his glove effortlessly.
“I don’t know.” Josh shrugged. "If he does, he hasn’t said anything to me.”
I chewed on the inside of my lip and nodded. "So no one knows but you and Silas?”
“And you,” he added.
“And me…” I huffed. “Your mom doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of person to keep secrets.”
“She told me, she’s been telling me my entire life. I never believed her. She’s a drug addict, Tuck, she said a lot of shit to a lot of people. Would you have taken her at her word if she told you that your father was one of the richest men in Harbor?” Josh rolled the ball in his palm but kept his eyes trained on me. Waiting for an answer.
I couldn’t understand how he was so nonchalant about all of this, his mood never shifting even after telling me his secret. Joshua Logan wasn’t even Logan. He was Joshua Shore.
“Yeah, right…” I processed the information. “And Silas knew before your hearing?”
“He did,” Josh said. "I didn’t want his help, though. This wasn’t some weird blood-pact thing. I didn’t want to come to the Hornets. I still don’t want to be here,” he added.
Ouch.
I guess I couldn’t expect him to change his tune, after all, it was he who kept swearing we were nothing but a necessity to each other.A way to survive.What I didn’t understand was the definition of necessity because it clearly meant something different to him.
As if I was like sleep or food, he needed it in his daily life to get through the day but to me necessity meant something so much more. It was water, it was air… I looked at him, the way the sun kissed his sculpted cheeks and scarred skin under the light of the open roof. His eyes casted upwards and the sun reflected around in the hazy gold color that hid beneath the darkness.
When did needing Josh to survive become second nature?
His shoulders were so tense, and his strong arms flexed as he focused on the ball in his hand and the stadium around us. The breeze kicked around his chocolate curls against his neck, and he shifted in his hoodie as he prepared to throw another ball, distracting himself like I meant for him to do, but suddenly it was me who was in knots.
“So you’re a Shore…” I whispered as it all fell into place. “And he knew it and he left you…he left you in that place?”
Josh growled, the memory of his childhood bubbled up so quickly he couldn’t prevent the animalistic reaction.
I dropped my bat again, my arms going slack and swallowed tightly. “I get your anger now,” I said after a beat, watching his expression harden. “But I don’t know how to help you with it…”
“I didn’t ask for your help, Tuck.” He pulled his mitt off and chucked it into the crate.
“You should go see Ms. Cody,” I said to him, ignoring the way the heat and stress rolled off of him in waves as he turned around on the mound to avoid my gaze.
“No.” He shook his head. "I don’t need another Cody telling me how to feel about something they don’t understand,” he grumbled.
