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“That fucking bitch,” Alice snarled.
She’d known her mother wasn’t the most loving or supportive person, but she’d never thought Misty would literally sell her out. But it all made sense now. Misty had been staying with them when Alice started seeing Alex again, and though she’d made a point of telling Alice she didn’t approve, she was clearly seeing dollar signs in the whole thing.
Misty knew.
Misty had known all about her relationship with Alex, and she’d known when Alice would be out and when she’d be expected home because Misty had been looking after Liv those nights.
Alice’s hands were shaking.
“I can’t…” Her sentence fell apart, defying completion.
“I know.” Kevin had long ago stopped thinking positive things about their mother.
“How could she?”
“Easy. Money.”
Alice went to play the message again, but Kevin stayed her hand. “You don’t need to do that. You’ve heard it,” he said, giving her a gentle squeeze.
“I blamed Alex,” she whispered. “I asked him if he’d sold me out, and then ended things with him, Kevin.” Tears filled her eyes as she searched the room for something that might keep them from falling. Too late. Her lip trembled, and the unwanted tears streamed freely. “God, I wouldn’t listen to him, and I’ve ruined everything.”
Her brother hugged her tight, the smell of his skin a comforting and familiar thing, something she’d known her whole life. “You can’t blame yourself. You had good reason to believe he might be responsible.”
She wrapped her arms around his middle and cried until the front of his shirt was damp and smeared with mascara. The last time she’d cried so hard was the day she found out she was pregnant with Olivia, and Kevin had been the one to comfort her then too. In spite of all his failings and all the fuckups he’d made in his life, he was a constant presence of comfort to her. That was the precise reason she’d never been able to give up on him when everyone else had, because she knew the person inside him. She knew the man he was capable of being, even when others only saw the miserable prick on the surface.
Alice loved her brother unconditionally.
Just like the Ross sisters loved Alex.
“Oh, God. Kev… I need to go, can you stay wi—”
“Like you even need to ask at this point?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
A six-game suspension wasn’t the worst punishment for punching a giant douchebag in the face. If Alex was being honest with himself, he’d have willingly sat out the rest of the season if it meant he’d gotten to knock Matt Hernandez on his ass.
Lesson learned?
Not hardly.
Of course Emmy and Jim, the batting coach, had ridden him like crazy in training after the suspensions got handed down. If he wasn’t playing, he was going to be sweating hard in the cages and doing extra workouts to make up the difference. They made sure he wasn’t going to go soft during the week he was off. More specifically they were doing their own form of in-house punishment to keep him from acting out in the future.
Because laps and jump squats would stay his temper somehow.
Honestly, Alex wasn’t a violent guy. The idea of lashing out physically wasn’t his typical nature. But he’d made a glad exception for Matt, and he would do it again in a heartbeat. It was a good thing the Mets and Felons didn’t meet all that regularly. But if they butted heads in the World Series, things might get interesting, and the network would get a lot of mileage out of the fight clip.
Matt, from what Alex heard on the MLB Trade Rumors website, had gotten an identical suspension, primarily because of what had happened to Miles.
Miles’s injury was the only part of the whole situation Alex felt guilty about, in spite of the young pitcher telling him he wouldn’t change a damned thing given another go at it.
A fractured clavicle on his right side—his dominant pitching arm—meant Miles was out for a minimum of six weeks. Since the fracture had been complicated, he’d needed to undergo surgery to have a metal plate put in for reinforcement. Miles was a good sport about the whole thing, asking Emmy if being a cyborg would put him in an unfair position against other starting pitchers.
Even his cheerful sense of humor about the whole thing didn’t make Alex feel less guilty. The kid was having a great season, and now he’d be out until the postseason started, possibly out until the next season altogether. Sure, he wasn’t totally innocent—after all, he had thrown the pitches that hit Matt—but Alex still felt responsible for the break and the subsequent fallout for Miles.
It was shitty to know your friend was suffering all over some stupid fight. Even knowing the price that was paid, Alex wasn’t sure he’d take any of it back.
“Prick had it coming,” Miles had reminded him, with his arm bandaged and set in a sling. “Did you see the way I flipped him over?” Indeed, most of the sports-loving world had seen the kung-fu-style flip Miles had used on Matt, though it was Alex’s right hook that got most of the headlines.
