AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jenna sat down next to Bean, who was morosely sucking his thumb. He’d been growing out of that habit lately, but still went back to it in stressful moments. He snuggled against her, his warm weight making her heart ache. She wasn’t sure how to make him feel better. Being the youngest could be tough—she and Billy both knew how that felt. And on top of that, his accident-prone nature made them all extra-protective of him.
“If you ask me, you’re all heroes for getting through that without any trips to the emergency room. Well done, all of you.” She squeezed Bean against her side. “Excellent rolling, Bean. That’s something that firefighters teach, but you already know it.”
“It was so funny when Daddy threw him!” Zack crowed. “Just like, boom. Here, have a kid.” He mimicked Billy’s dramatic action.
“It wasn’t funny!” Bean pulled out his thumb to fling those words into the world, then put it back in.
Jenna shot a glance at Billy. Sometimes these competitive brother dynamics got away from her. But they came naturally to Billy.
“It sure wasn’t funny to me,” he agreed. “If I missed, Bean might have gone right into the pond, or hit a log or a tree.”
“Exercising your baseball skills?” asked Lacey.
“Maybe so. But it’s a team sport, and so was this. It was like the perfect double play, me and Bean. Right, Bean? And you hit that landing just right.”
Jenna could sense Bean coming out of his funk. He yanked his thumb out of his mouth and didn’t put it back this time. “It was like flying.”
“You know it.” Billy put out a hand for a high five, and Bean slapped it enthusiastically.
Jenna’s heart swelled. She was so grateful for Billy, so thankful that they generally agreed on things involving the kids, and that he always wanted to do his part. That was all she wanted from him. He could forget all about her and their marriage, so long as he stayed present for the kids.
She poured all of that emotion into a warm smile for him, forgetting for a moment that they had a highly observant witness. Billy’s lips quirked and he tilted his head to acknowledge her unspoken message.
Her gaze caught on his mouth and a thousand kisses flashed through her mind. Young voracious kisses, punctuated by laughter and fumbling under clothes. Sexual kisses, the intimate kind you shared when you knew how to please someone. Blissfully hopeful kisses, like the first married kiss on that ballfield in the park. Profound kisses, such as when each boy was born.
So many kisses.
And here they were, sitting on opposites sides of the living room, a legal partition separating them.
It wasn’t just the legal division, she reminded herself. That was just the official part. Behind that was the anxiety of reading about the clubs, the parties, the baseball groupies. The pain of listening to Billy lie about them.
There final blow was a whispered conversation on the back porch out of earshot of the kids, just after photos of Billy were posted on a popular sports blog called The Dugout.
In the photos, he was surrounded by girls doing tequila shots with him. “The Billy Club lifestyle,” screamed the headline. “Play all day, party all night. How long until he burns out?”
“They’re all over me, it’s not like I chase after them,” Billy kept saying.
“Can you swear to me that you’ve never done anything with any of them?”
That pause. That fatal pause. That flicker in his eyes. The way he couldn’t quite meet hers as he shook his head. All of it like a dagger to her core.
“I didn’t think so. I can’t live like this, Billy. I can’t do it.”
“What do you want from me?”
She wanted so much. She wanted him to quit drinking, to deal with his emotional issues, and to be a husband who didn’t cause her pain.
“Out. I want out.”
“You must be accustomed to handling injuries in the family,” Lacey was saying. Jenna startled as she dragged herself back to reality. Living room. Fireplace. Ex-husband. Reporter.
“With a baseball player husband and two active boys, I mean.” Lacey lifted her eyebrows at her.
Jenna cleared her throat. She had a role to play here, and it wasn’t to relive the past. “Billy’s been lucky so far.” She crossed the fingers on both her hands. “He’s only been on the DL twice during his career.”
“You keep track?” Lacey tapped a note in her ever-present iPhone. It had survived the incident with only some new scratches on the screen.
“Of course I keep track. Not the way I used to,” she confessed. “I used to watch or listen to every game. I don’t have that kind of time anymore, thanks to these two.” She gestured at her boys. “But we do watch quite a few games,” she added. “And we see several in person every season.”
