Check Swing (Callahan Family Book 3)

by Carrie Aarons

  I’m not ignorant to what Hannah went through with her first marriage; you’d have to be living under a rock to not hear about Shane Giraldi’s trial in the baseball world. What she’s overcome … I can’t even imagine that. The man put her through hell and she came out on the other side. Then found her Prince Charming, because you’d also have to be living under a rock not to have heard about how she and Walker Callahan fell in love.

  “Thank you.” My smile is genuine as I really think about her words.

  This woman is wise and comes from an outside perspective when it comes to the Callahans. She’s right, I really need to think about how I’ll feel if my son takes Sinclair’s last name.

  The bartender calls out my order and holds up the takeout bag so I can see it where I sit at the table. “Oh, that’s me. I should go …”

  “Oh no, would you please stay for a drink with us?” Hannah asks, pushing out her lip in a pout.

  “Well, I can’t really indulge with you.” I point to my belly and chuckle.

  “We’ll get you a virgin, or a lemonade! Come on, chat with us for a little while longer. I want to get to know you, and for you to get to know us. Maybe then you’ll stop dodging me.”

  Oh shit, Colleen just called me out, red-handed.

  “You’re too much.” I roll my eyes, but relax into the chair. “Fine, I’ll take a Shirley Temple, because I’ve been craving one.”

  In the end, I stay for two Shirley Temples and a lot of girl talk. It’s the first time I feel like I truly make some friends here in Packton, and by the time I make it home, full from the takeout food I ate right there at the table, there is a shift in me.

  For the first time, I feel like I could really raise my son in that family.

  28

  Sinclair

  It’s not even a game day, and the stadium is packed to the gills.

  To honor the hardworking employees of the Pistons organization, my family and the high-up executives hold a Family Carnival every October. Each player can bring his whole family, no matter how extended. Same goes for the office workers, ticket-takers, janitorial staff, coaches, trainers, and pretty much anyone else who earns a paycheck here at the ballpark.

  Needless to say, there are hundreds of people making their way from the Ferris wheel set up on the infield to the carnival game booths lined up on the first base line. Near the visitor dugout, there are a dozen food trucks set up, and the stadium smells of funnel cake, cotton candy, and Mexican street corn. Kids run rampant; enormous stuffed animals gripped in their little arms. Some of the single players have been challenging each other to turns in the dunk booth, where the pitchers are serving up ice baths in spades.

  And I just look around with pride. Yes, I work in the marketing department, but we work closely with events. I was one of the people on the committee who helped the carnival come to life this year, and so my ego is getting a bit of a boost today. A lot of members of my family would argue I don’t need this to go to my head, that it’s already big enough, but I’ve taken some blows the past couple of years. I needed this, and it feels good.

  “This place is a mad house,” Walker observes, strolling up while carrying Breanna in a piggy back.

  “Uncle Sin! Do you see I’m a pig on Pop’s back?” She cackles as if it’s the funniest thing in the world.

  “A little piggy? Does that make me the big bad wolf, come to blow your house down?” I blow out in mock exhaustion, then grip her sides in a tickle.

  She squirms on Walker’s back, shrieking with laughter, as I chant, “little pig, little pig, let me in!”

  “I have to go potty!” she cries out.

  “Thanks, Sin.” Walker rolls his eyes, looking around for the nearest facilities.

  “I’ll take her.” Hannah comes up, her mom sonar on full display, and plucks her daughter off of my brother’s back.

  “You see what you have to look forward to? Wiping someone else’s butt, while they sing you the ‘Five Little Ducklings’ song at the top of their lungs.” He says it sarcastically, but his eyes are moony as he watches his wife take his stepdaughter to the bathroom.

  We’ve had more than one talk about my son, about me getting Frankie pregnant. Walker was the only one who knew we were involved down in Florida, and he knew how much I cared about her then. I appreciate that my older brother is actually giving me space about this, trusting me to figure out what I’m going to do.

  If that near-kiss the other week is any indication, I’m going to try like hell to win Frankie back. Not just because she’s having my baby, but because I’m … well, I love her. There is no other woman who can make me feel the things she makes me feel. And we’re meant to be a family; there can be no other explanation to how this happened. Sure, we weren’t exactly careful during our months of hot, intense sex, but I do believe everything happens for a reason. We made this baby so that I would have to man up, so that Frankie was brought back into my life.

  “Wiping butts? Sounds like Sin’s future,” Colleen quips as she walks up.

  I jump a little. “Does every member of our family just invite themselves into conversations no one asked them to be a part of?” I huff.

  “It’s kind of how we roll, little bro,” Walker points out.

  “Everyone has always been in everyone else’s business,” Colleen agrees.

  “Is that why your family won’t leave me alone?” A raspy, sweet voice floats into my ears from somewhere behind me.

  I turn, and there is Francesca.

  Fuck, does she look gorgeous. Her hair is longer than it was in Florida, her wild curls tumbling past her shoulders and disappearing over her back. The autumn air does magical things to her creamy, freckled skin, leaving pink circles on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. Those violet eyes still seem to stare down into my soul, and a rush of lust hits me square in the balls when she lifts them shyly in my direction, her black lashes fluttering over her wind-blustered cheeks.

  She’s wearing a cream-colored sweater that looks so soft I’m tempted to reach out and touch it, with a long camel-colored coat almost reaching the ankle of her blue jeans. The top molds to her, tucking into all the right places around her breasts and bump. Jesus, if I thought Frankie was beautiful when I first met her, there is something magnetic to me about seeing her pregnant. It’s so hot. I wonder what her boobs, now twice the size they were when I used to bury my face in them, feel like with the weight of them in my palm. There is something so sexy about the way her curves have all become rounder and something raw and animalistic about knowing that my child is inside her.

  “You look gorgeous,” I blurt out.

  Walker laughs, Colleen smiles, and Clark, who walked up at the same time Frankie did, whistles low under his breath.

  “Guys got it bad.” Clark hikes a thumb at me, and my brother and cousin nod in agreement.

  Frankie, for her part, blushes furiously. “Thank you.”

  We’re in this weird space, a purgatory, if you will. There isn’t much anger left between us, though I know there is still distrust. We have lunch or a meetup, usually once or twice a week. But aside from texting about the baby, we don’t communicate more than that. It’s been about three weeks of this, this … middle space. We’re not enemies anymore, but we’re not allies. I’m not her partner, her lover. I’m scraping away the ice block she put around her heart, it feels like I am inch by hard-fought inch, but we’re nowhere near where I wish we could be.

  “You asked for it, Frankie. We’ll just leave you lovebirds alone,” Walker insists, pulling the other two away until it’s just her and me.

  “I’m sorry if they are trying to be all up in your business,” I apologize, not knowing that my family had that much contact with her.

  She waves a hand in front of her face. “Don’t worry about it, I was just kidding. It’s actually kind of growing on me, having so many people around and caring about me. I’m just not used to it.”

  Last week at our lunch, where I took her to a taco join
t two towns over that I kept a secret, or my family would swarm it, she told me about her mom, how their relationship is solid but somewhat distant. It sounded like Frankie never really had a family, not one like mine that was enormous and always way too nosy. Her mother barely kept in touch, and although she knew about her pregnancy, she hadn’t really been all that involved.

  She spent eighteen years as a single mom, making sure I was clothed and fed, and I think she’s just tired. That’s what Frankie had told me. My heart ached for her. My parents wanted to know everything about my life and were a huge part of my sobriety journey. They didn’t yet know I was going to have a son, but when they do, after the initial shock wears off, they’ll be over the moon. It will be a task trying to keep my mother from buying every baby item within a fifty-mile radius.

  “I’m glad they’re here for you, though. You’re going shopping with Hannah this weekend?” My sister-in-law let it slip.

  As we start to make our way around the carnival, Frankie talks to me. “Yep, she wants to give me the full baby registry immersion.”

  Something low in my gut roils. I wish I was doing that with her.

  “If you want some more company, I’m around.” I’m too chickenshit to express how much I want to be there, for fear she’ll shoot me down.

  “You don’t have to come, it’s just boring shopping.” She shrugs.

  “For items that our son will use. I-I bought him a blanket last week. One with tiny little dinosaurs all over it.”

  I’d ordered it from an ad that popped up on my Facebook. Damn, those social media bots really know how to do their job well.

  “You did?” She sounds surprised. “I didn’t know … I guess, should there be a nursery at your house, too?”

  She’s six and a half months, these are things we should be talking about. How do I tell her that I want one house, with both of us in it, with one nursery?

  “We can make the main one at your house. I’ll come over, take the night shift, draw you a bath, make bottles. Whatever you need me to do.”

  We’re getting looks as we walk around. I think it’s the energy around us, the way I can’t keep my eyes off her. The way Frankie keeps drifting into my side, our elbows bumping as we pass the ring toss and balloon dart popping booths.

  “I guess this is something we should be thinking about.” The look she gives me is far too intense to be platonic.

  My hand on her elbow stops our forward progress, and I shift her slightly so that we’re almost standing chest to chest. It’s too intimate for this venue, but I don’t care. I’m tired of playing it safe, of not saying directly what I want. That’s not who I am. I need the black sheep Sinclair to come out of hiding, the guy who dared to bring the controversial things into the light.

  “I want to do the registry with you. I want to pick his crib and his sheets and all of those useless toys babies barely even play with. I want to come to your appointments and be the one you call if you don’t feel well. I want to build our son’s crib with you and struggle to put up his wallpaper. I want to … to be there with you when he comes into the world. I want to get you ice chips and harass the nurses about taking the best care of you. I want … I want it all, Francesca.”

  The truth is, I want to do a lot more than that. When I say I want it all, I mean all of her. I mean a house and the kids and a ring on her finger. It’s daunting, knowing that I’m ready to take that leap. But we’ll start there when it comes to expressing those things to her. I hadn’t mentioned the birth yet, but now it’s out there. And I’m not sure she’s going to agree with me being there.

  “Okay.” Her answer is simple and comes with a smile.

  “Really? I thought you would fight me more on this.”

  Frankie shrugs. “I want those things, too. The birth … that’s one we can talk about further. But, I’m craving a caramel apple and they’re right over there and the smell is driving me insane.”

  I wrap my arm around her shoulder, and she lets me. “Then it’s my responsibility to buy you a caramel apple.”

  It might just be for half an hour that she lets me touch her, that she lets me spend time with her and buy her something, even the smallest thing. But I feel the obstacles waning.

  With enough patience and perseverance, maybe I can actually have, and give her, all the things I want.

  29

  Frankie

  “Two more reps. Come on, Garrett, give me everything you’ve got.”

  I clap in the hotshot rookie’s face, jarring him a bit. Sweat beads at his temple and there is a ferocity in his eyes through the sheen of exhaustion.

  I’ve worked him to the breaking point today, but this kid needs a reality check. He’s been walking around the facilities like he owns the place, just because he had eight strikeouts last playoff game. Then he strolled into his training session with me, fifteen minutes late, acting like some millionaire asshole. Which he is. But I’m not about to let him get away with that.

  So I scrapped the workout I had planned and decided to kick his ass instead.

  He struggles through the last two reps, then drops the bar with a thud.

  “You’re a dictator, Kade. That’s what they say about you. Even pregnant, you’re a ball buster.” He pants through his teeth.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You know, after you have the baby, we could go out for—” I tried to kill him with weight training, and the player is still trying to wink at me.

  “Get the hell out of my weight room, Chester.” I point a finger to the door, not wanting to hear any of his bullshit pickup lines.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Garrett drawls in his thick southern accent, then whistles as he strolls out.

  I shake my head in amused irritation. The kid has that star quality, I’ll give him that.

  “You nearly killed him.” Seth chuckles under his breath as he checks something on his infamous clipboard.

  I’m more of a digital planner, using an app on my phone that was developed to train athletes. But Seth chooses to go the old-school route, with an actual clipboard and printer paper.

  “He deserved it, little punk.” I grab my water bottle and chug some down.

  Ever since I hit twenty-six weeks, it’s like my throat is the Sahara desert. I can’t drink enough water fast enough, and I’m also rubbing the bottom of my belly constantly. The pelvic pain is intense. Sometimes the baby kicks me right in the vagina, which I didn’t know was a thing. I’d be furious if it wasn’t the little human who already held my heart in his hands.

  “Is it too much?” Seth points the capped end of his pen at my belly. “You tell me if you need to ease up.”

  I rub the spot where baby boy just kicked me, and the skin is currently burning from the inside out. “No, I’m good.”

  Although, I’m kind of not. I’m getting more and more tired, and my ab muscles are barely there, which causes for a lot of pain by the end of a long day of training sessions. I find myself getting dizzy at times and needing to excuse myself to sit in the office where no one can watch me catch my breath.

  I’m not about to admit that, though. This is my big break, one that will soon be derailed because I’m going to have a baby that I never expected to have. Thankfully, most of my maternity leave will fall in the off-season, so I won’t miss as much as I typically would. But I am still miffed by it. I hate that I feel this way, that I’m annoyed at bringing a child into the world in this season of life. But I’ve been waiting years to be promoted to the big time, and now it’ll be put on pause again.

  I’m not about to hit that button before I absolutely have to. I’ll suffer through these last hard stages of pregnancy in silence so that I can show this organization just how stellar and necessary it is to have me on their strength staff.

  “Have you been able to meet many of the Callahans?” Seth asks, somewhat out of the blue.

  My palms spark, turning sweaty as anxiety claws at the base of my throat. Does he know? Do other people o
n the staff know? Why else would he be asking? Maybe I’m just being paranoid.

  “I have. Colleen Callahan is the one who hired me and promoted me back in Fort Myers. I’ve done workouts with Walker and had passing conversations with some of the other family members. They seem like a very dedicated bunch. Obviously, with all the work they’ve put into the team. And how they recovered after …”

  I trail off because I’m sure Seth was here when everything happened with Jimmy Callahan. He would have been one of the coaches affected by the shakeup. We were all so scared in Florida, about what it meant for our jobs and the club. I can’t imagine what the staff here would have felt like.

  “It was a dark time. Very dark. There was a lot of distrust and animosity, a lot of people who thought they’d be getting turned out on their asses. But Colleen and Daniel, have done a very good job of bringing it all back around.”

  Seth looks like he’s pondering, thinking about what that time was like when the media and analysts were calling the Pistons corrupt.

  A beat of silence.

  “He’s the father, isn’t he?”

  So, no, I apparently wasn’t paranoid enough. Should I act like I have no idea what he’s talking about? No, that would make us both look stupid. And I’m over the dishonesty of it all. It’s not anyone’s business, though that won’t stop the rumors. I’m not naive enough to think that. None of them will know the whole story, though. I won’t tell it, and I’m sure Sinclair won’t either.

  “He is.” I nod once and don’t meet my boss’s eyes.

  We both know we’re talking about Sinclair.