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She was at the root of the worst baseball fisticuffs of the whole damned season. They’d be showing clips of this game on SportsCenter and ESPN right up to the postseason, and she’d get to live with the reminder of her messy love life every time she checked sports stats or watched a Felons game.
Oh God. Liv had been watching the game.
Alice didn’t even question the likelihood. A game featuring Matt and Alex both? Of course Liv would be glued to the couch with Kevin, excited to see her two favorite players squaring off against each other.
And now she’d seen her father get punched out on national television.
Alice felt the bottom give way on her stomach, and she braced herself against the counter, trying to catch her breath and resist the urge to throw up all at the same time.
So much for keeping drama out of her life.
“Excuse me.” She moved towards the kitchen.
All the silent patrons waited for her to vanish from sight before someone whispered, “Can we turn it back on?” A mo
ment later the Fox sports announcer’s voice returned, discussing the likelihood of suspensions and what they thought the status of Miles’s injuries might be. Alice went into the dish pit so she didn’t have to hear anything.
Removing her phone from her apron, she speed-dialed the number for her home phone. It rang once before Kevin answered, “Uh, hey?” He sounded uncertain of how a phone should work.
“Did she see it?” Alice already knew the answer, but she was hoping for some random miracle that might have saved the inevitable questions.
“I tried to convince her to change the channel after he got hit the first time, but she wasn’t having any of it.”
“Did you…?” She had no idea what she wanted to ask. Why he hadn’t turned the TV off? Why he hadn’t changed the channel? “How’s she dealing?”
“Talk to her.”
Before Alice could protest—since she had no idea how to respond to any questions Liv might have—the phone was handed off to her daughter. “Mom?”
“Hey, baby.”
“Is Daddy okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine.” It would take more than a punch to bring Matt down for long. He’d be bragging about the bruise for a week, knowing him. Making himself into some kind of martyr.
Skanky baseball groupies would eat that sort of thing up, coddling him with oh, you poor baby and offering to nurse him back to health. Alice swallowed back the bile swelling up in her throat.
“Is Alex okay?”
That question took her by surprise. She’d been expecting Liv to immediately vilify the other man and pin the blame on him as easily as Alice had. Instead Liv cared as much about his wellbeing as her father’s.
“I…I don’t know, baby. I think so.”
“Is he going to get in trouble?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is Daddy going to get in trouble for hitting that pitcher?”
“Maybe. But not a lot. He got hit first.” How to explain the politics of baseball suspensions to a kid was not something Alice was prepared for. She knew, generally speaking, how much trouble the guys would be in for. Alex, Matt and even Miles would all be facing suspensions, but the length would depend on the severity of their involvement. Matt, in spite of his assault on Miles, would probably get off lightest since he was seen as the injured party.
Miles…well a lot would depend on how badly hurt he was.
“They’ll have to sit out a few games, that’s all,” Alice added, when the silence spread too long and she was worried about scaring Liv.
“Can we call Dad?”
Alice fought against the lump in her throat. “Yeah. But not tonight. He’s going to be too busy tonight.”
