Murphy takes a break from helping Lexi and sits on the armrest of my chair. She leans over and whispers in my ear. “Do you know that yesterday, she asked me to ask you if your dad said anything about her?”

I laugh and smile, looking over at them. “It makes sense, you know? They both lost someone.”

“Yeah, but why now?” Murphy asks. “My dad has been gone for eleven years, Caden.”

“I don’t know, babe. God works in mysterious ways.”

Her face breaks into a slow grin at my use of the endearment. I pull her down onto my lap and kiss her forehead.

“You two are adorable, you know that, don’t you?” Mallory says.

“We all knew you’d end up together,” Charlie adds.

“I called it first!” Lexi shouts from the kitchen.

I look around at all of them, shaking my head. I turn to Sawyer. “See what happens when you hang out with a bunch of chicks?”

Lexi told me to invite anyone on the team who didn’t have a place to go. Most of the guys got invites of their own. All but Brady and Sawyer. And Brady doesn’t do ‘family shit.’

“Yeah, well, I hope it’s not contagious,” Sawyer says. “I’m perfectly fine the way I am.”

Murphy studies him for a minute. “Doesn’t it get old, Sawyer, having a new girl on your arm every night? And I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

He laughs. “Sure you do. But, that’s the point. It never gets old. No one gets bored. Nobody ever has expectations.” He looks out the window. “Nobody ever gets hurt.”

Damn. That is the most introspective thing I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth. I’ve had my suspicions over the years. The man’s been hurt. It makes perfect sense now, why he won’t ever take a girl out more than once. I knew his reasons weren’t the same as mine. Unlike me, he never gives a rat’s ass if girls are using him for what he is. Maybe he likes it that way. It protects him.

Man, if I ever can’t play ball. I should be a fucking psychiatrist. I’m good at this. I look at Murphy. Maybe she’s the reason I’m so good at reading people. Ever since I met her, I’ve felt more in tune with my emotions.

I practically dump her off my lap in search of my balls. “Who wants to do a shot of Wild Turkey?”

“I’m down,” Sawyer says.

“Pour me one!” Kyle calls from down the hallway where he’s changing Beth.

My dad takes a break from courting Irene and comes over to join us.

“Want one?” I ask, holding a shot out to him.

He holds up his hand, refusing it. “Never touch the stuff. Not for more than twenty years.”

I cock my head and stare, remembering something he told me the day we met in the bar. “You mean to tell me you hadn’t been in a bar in that long?”

He nods. “That’s what I’m saying. I’m a recovering addict, son. I’m not about to take any chances.”

I down the shot myself, realizing he called me son and I didn’t tell him not to. I look at him and see that he noticed the same.

He pats me on the back and I think we share a moment.

Scott comes up beside me. “I’ll try it,” he jokes.

We all laugh. “Come back in about nine years, kid,” I say, ruffling his hair.

“If we move here, are we going to live with you, Caden?” Scott asks.

“Well … uh …”

“No, son, we aren’t going to live with your brother. He’s a grown man with his own apartment. We’ll find a nice place of our own, one with good schools around.”

“Mallory can help you with that,” I say, loudly enough for her to hear. “She used to be a teacher here in the city. Now she travels a lot with Chad when he films on location, tutoring kids of the cast and crew.”

“I’ll get you a list of the best schools,” she says.

“I’d appreciate that,” my dad tells her. “Nothing’s set in stone yet, but I’m optimistic.”

Scott turns to Murphy. “Are you going to travel with Caden like Mallory travels with Chad?”

My little brother is not exactly indirect. If I’ve learned anything about him in the last few weeks it’s that he speaks his mind. And he’s a very curious twelve-year-old.

“Um, no, Scott. I have a job.” She looks over at me with sad eyes. I’m wondering if this is the first time she’s thought about it. We haven’t talked about what happens next. About what happens when I leave for spring training in February. About what happens when my life isn’t my own for well over half of every year.

“A darn good one, too,” her mom says. “Must pay well, because even before she got her promotion, she was able to pay off every single one of her medical bills.” She turns to Murphy with prideful eyes. “I’m proud of you.”

“What?” Murphy questions her mom with raised brows. “But I never even got a bill.”

“They came to me,” her mom says. “But they were marked as paid.”

Murphy’s unamused eyes snap to mine.

Shit. This is not exactly the right time to get into this.

She walks up to me and puts an angry finger on my chest. “You paid them, didn’t you?” When I don’t say anything, she shakes her head in irritation. “Caden, I told you not to do that. You did enough.”

“It was my fault, Murphy. It’s only right that I should pay for it.”

“It doesn’t matter. I asked you not to.”

I put my hands on her shoulders in an attempt to calm her down. “By the time you told me that, I had already paid. I guess I didn’t know what to say or how to tell you.”

She shrugs my hands off. “And you thought, what, that I’d be okay with it once you were sleeping with me?”

I glance over at Scott, who is trying not to laugh. “No. Of course not. I wasn’t even thinking about you that way back then.”

“Great. That makes things so much better,” she says, turning to walk away.

I follow her.

“Please don’t,” she begs. “I just need a minute.”

She walks into the kitchen, leaving me a confused, guilty, stupid son-of-a-bitch.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Murphy

“Ugh! Can you believe that?” I say, fuming my way over to the far end of the kitchen.

“Believe what?” Lexi asks, pushing the turkey back into the oven after basting it.

“I know he’s your brother and all, but he can be infuriating. He paid all my medical bills, Lexi. After I told him not to.”

Lexi laughs. “The way I heard it, he paid them before you told him not to.”

“You were listening,” I say.

She rinses off her hands and walks over to the kitchen table, taking a seat and patting the one next to her. “Yes, my brother can be infuriating. Most men can be from time to time. And yes, he paid your medical bills. But, Murphy, he was the cause of your injury and paying those bills was much less of a burden for him than it would have been for you.”

I plop down in the chair beside hers. “I can’t stand rich people who throw around their money.”

She eyes me as if I’m being a petulant child. “He throws around his money, huh? How has he ever done that? Tell me how my rich brother flaunts his money, Murphy.”

I shrug thinking about how the man lives modestly even though he’s making millions. I finally think of something. “The park. He rented a ball field in the park.”

She smiles. “Yeah, he told me about that. But try again, because he said he only had to pay a few bucks for a permit.”

“What about the VIP tickets. And the phone—he bought me a new phone.”

“He’s a ball player. You don’t think he has to pay for those tickets, do you? And a phone. Really? You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“So, you think he’s right and I’m wrong?”

Lexi puts her hand on mine. “It’s not about being right or wrong, Murphy. It’s about finding a balance. It’s about not letting the little things turn into big things. Because big things can ruin you.”

“You say that as if you have experience with it.”

She nods. “You’ve no idea just how alike we are, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

Kyle comes into the kitchen to check on us. He leans down and gives his wife a kiss, looking at me with empathetic eyes. “Everything okay in here?”

“Everything is fine. Just give us another minute,” Lexi says.

When he leaves, her eyes follow him. I can tell how much she loves him just by the way she looks at him.

“He did the same thing, you know,” she says, looking back at me. “Kyle paid my hospital bills when I had Ellie.”

I look at her, confused. “That’s different. He’s Ellie’s dad.”

“Not biologically,” she says. “Kyle didn’t even know me when I showed up pregnant at his hospital.”

“Really?”

Lexi and I have gotten close and we know a lot of things about each other, but this comes as a huge surprise.

“Really,” she says. “And when I found out he paid my bills, I freaked. It almost ruined us. It did ruin us for a while.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“It’s fine. We’re fine. I just don’t want the same thing to happen to you and Caden. Your relationship is fragile and new. He told me yesterday that you’re officially a couple. I think that’s wonderful, Murphy. You’re the one for him. I know it.”

“How do you know it, Lexi?”

She smiles. “Are you kidding? You should see the way my brother looks at you. It’s as if you are the Mona Lisa. The game-winning home run ball. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

I roll my eyes. “Caden does not need any more pots of gold.”