Loving Him Off the Field (Santa Fe Bobcats #2)(73)

She was going bowling.

*

Killian sat back on the kitchen chair he’d pulled to the living room, suddenly wishing he’d had more seating. But other than Aileen, he’d never had guests over. His living room was currently packed to capacity, thanks to the large bodies hovering in his apartment.

Well, four large bodies and one pint-sized one.

“So this is the little man, huh?” Trey held out a hand and Charlie slapped it, looking a little awed. “Nice to meet ya, Charlie.”

Charlie nodded solemnly, looking much more mature than his five and a half years. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Owens. When we picked numbers for T-ball last summer, my best friend picked sixteen, for you.”

Trey’s face lit up. “Hey, nice taste your friend’s got there.”

Josiah and Michael both grumbled about taste. Then Josiah knelt down. “So if you know who he is, who am I?”

Charlie’s face screwed up in thought, analyzing Josiah from where he stood next to Killian’s leg. “You’re . . . a Bobcat.”

Michael laughed and nudged Josiah hard enough that he fell over from his crouch. “Face it, we don’t compare to the mighty Owens.”

“But my dad’s a Bobcat, so you must be okay,” Charlie finished, hugging Killian’s leg. Killian’s throat contracted, and he stroked a hand over his son’s soft hair.

“Smart kid,” Michael said softly, holding out a fist for Charlie. His son gave it a bump, then backed up to hug his leg again. “So all this time you’ve been a family man, huh?”

“Most of it.” He knelt down to Charlie’s level. “Hey, I’ve got a new video in your room. You wanna watch?”

Charlie gazed at the three other men in the room, as if weighing whether he wanted to give up being the center of attention for three men he looked up to. In the end, the movie won out. After Killian set him up and closed the door quietly, he walked to the kitchen. The other three followed and sat at the kitchen table, Josiah dragging the abandoned chair with him.

“Grab me a water, would ya?” Michael called out as Killian headed for the fridge. Josiah punched him in the shoulder. “What? I’m thirsty.”

Grabbing four bottles, he brought them back to the table. “Sorry I called you guys out here this late. We’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning and—”

“Don’t.” Josiah held out a hand for a bottle. “You asked us to come, and we did. Don’t start regressing now.”

“Yeah.” Twirling the bottle between his palms, Trey agreed. “You’ve gotta let the whole ‘standoffish’ crap die. So you’ve got a kid? Two-thirds of the guys on the team do, and less than half of them are married.”

He took a swallow of water, then sighed and replayed the story for them he’d told Aileen only two hours earlier, skipping the bits they would understand, like Jerry’s reputation.

“Seriously? You got caught up with Jerry’s BS? Damn, and you would have been just a baby back then.”

Killian flipped Michael the bird. “I’m only a year younger than you.”

“You’re one to talk, Lambert,” Trey added. “You’ve got the thirty-year-old baby face.”

Michael smoothed a hand over his chin, grinning. “It’s a winner, what can I say?”

“Back on topic,” Josiah said quietly. “So you’re sharing all this now, I assume, because you know we’re not going to be douchebags and spread this around.”

“Partly.” He nodded and tried to take another sip, then decided against it. “And partly because I’m just tired. This whole thing with Freckles . . . Aileen,” he clarified when they gave him odd looks. “Aileen Rogers.”

“Oh, Aileen. Right.” Michael nodded, smiling slowly. “She’s cute.”

Killian couldn’t hold back the growl, which only made Michael’s smile widen.

“Aileen’s not the type to want this kind of story.” Josiah shook his head in denial of something nobody had said out loud . . . but they’d all been thinking. “It’s not her style. She doesn’t take pleasure out of hurting people.”

“Look at how she handled Cassie,” Trey pointed out. “She was upfront about being a journalist instead of trying to trick her into getting little bits of privileged info. I think if you told her not to use it, she won’t. She’s honest like that. Cassie thought she was great, and trusts her. I would, too.”

“I didn’t tell her not to use it.” Killian shrugged when all three men stared at him. “It felt insulting to say it. Either she’s going to use it, or she isn’t. Me asking her not to wouldn’t stop her if she was the type of person to do that. If she wasn’t going to anyway—and I don’t think she was—asking her not to would have insulted her.” He trusted now she wouldn’t use the story. He just didn’t know if she would want anything more to do with him, now.

Michael blinked a few times, slowly. “The female thought process is some of the most f*cked-up stuff I’ve ever heard of.”

“You really put yourself out there with this one.” Trey winced. “Laid your head on the chopping block and handed her the ax. That takes balls. She’ll respect that.”

He didn’t want her respect. Okay, yes, he did. But he wanted more than that. He wanted her love, too. He just had no clue how the hell he was going to show her that now.