Pitch Please (There's No Crying in Baseball 1)

Instead, I busied myself with leaning forward and eating the soup she’d made.

My diet was shot to hell this week, and I promised myself that I’d try to do better.

“Darling, do you need some bread with that?” my mom asked.

I had just opened my mouth to reply to that when Sway jumped.

“Oh!” she clapped. “My mom brought some of hers over earlier. Let me go get you some.”

My mother glared at her back the entire way into the kitchen.

Once she was completely in the kitchen, the questions started.

“When did you meet her?” Hunter asked.

“Where did you meet?” Holden questioned.

“She’s cute,” my father grinned.

“Isn’t she the athletic trainer I saw helping you when you got hit in the throat at the game?” Harrison asked.

“What is she wearing?”

That was my mother.

I turned to survey my mom.

“She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt. What does it look like she’s wearing?” I snapped at her.

My mother sniffed.

“I can see too much cleavage,” she hissed.

I rolled my eyes, which only seemed to infuriate her more.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, boy.” She pointed her finger at me. “I’ll have you know that I brought you into this world, and I sure can take you out of it.”

Holden laughed, as did my dad.

“Take a chill pill, Sally,” my father said as he took a seat on the couch and lifted his feet to the coffee table I was eating on.

“Dad, you have cow shit on your boots,” I told him. “Please remove them from my face.”

Dad didn’t remove his boots.

He never did.

Everyone, even me, was used to cow shit.

When you owned a ranch, shit was normally part of the equation.

It just wasn’t in my fucking house, which was why I picked my soup up and walked to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living area.

Each step I took jarred my head.

My throat felt like fire, and my eyes were getting heavy.

I would eat, though, because I knew if I didn’t, I’d likely wake up in the middle of the night starving.

The moment I sat down I could see into the kitchen, and my head tilted as I watched Sway stare blankly out the window. Her eyes watched the river flow, and I wondered if she liked my sanctuary as much as I did.

Then a rough cough tore from between my lips.

“Oh,” Sway jumped, startled when she turned around. “I was just about to bring this out to you.”

She held up a couple of slices of bread.

“Just one, please.” I held out my hand for it. “I’m not sure I can swallow it.”

She smiled and came unstuck from where I’d caught her contemplating the lake.

“What’s wrong?” I asked once she was close enough.

She shook her head, and before she could retreat from handing me my bread, I grabbed her hand and pulled her to me.

She couldn’t get very close, but it was close enough that I didn’t worry that my family would overhear what I had to say next.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” I demanded gruffly.

She pursed her lips.

“I just think it’s time for me to leave,” she admitted. “Now that your mom is here, I don’t think you need me anymore.”

“Do you need to leave?” I tilted my head.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Do you want to leave?” I continued.

She shook her head, not replying this time.

“Then stay.”

“But your mom,” she whispered, looking over my shoulder. “She doesn’t look like she wants me here.”

“My mom’s like this with all the new women that enter her boys’ lives,” I told her bluntly. “It’s like she wants to test their will or something. See if they have any gumption.”

I had no doubt that, by the end of the night, Sway would have my mother wrapped around her finger.

Sway was easily the funniest and sweetest woman I knew.

Not to mention she wasn’t a gold digger like the rest of the ladies I met nowadays.

I’d never met someone that I wanted to spend more time with…not until Sway.

When I woke up in the hospital and saw that she was no longer with me, I demanded for her to be brought back to me for over thirty minutes.

The only reason she had been brought back to me was after the doctor overheard. Then he’d intervened on my behalf and demanded the nurse go and get ‘my fiancée.’

Not that Sway had heard that little tidbit.

“Hey,” Holden called as he marched up to my side. “Do you have any extra of that?”

He pointed to my soup, and she nodded.

“I do. Do you want some?” she asked.

“Yep.” He sat down. “Order up.”

I elbowed Holden in the ribs and gave Sway an apologetic look.

“My brothers are heathens,” I told her. “Ignore them if you need to.”

She grinned, but got my brother some soup, and then sliced him off his own slice of bread before placing both in front of him.