More Than This (More Than, #1)(24)

A couple hours later the funeral director is sitting opposite me in the family room. He’s bought a bunch of brochures with him and they’re sprawled all over the coffee table. I space out through most of it, but I know that I have some decisions to make.

“Will the gathering afterwards be held at our establishment or elsewhere?” The funeral guy asks, his name is Wes, or Des, Les maybe? I’m not sure.

“It will be held here,” Mandy says.

I whip my head to face her, she just smiles and nods, leaving me speechless.

“Okay,” Wes/Des/Les confirms. “Have you got a budget in mind?” he asks me.

Me.

I shake my head.

He huffs out a breath, like I’m a useless nutjob.

“Have you got numbers on how many guests?”

Guests? Like it’s a f*cking party.

I shake my head again, staring past him.

He sighs, a loud, audible, f*cking sigh.

“Let’s have a look at the caskets then, shall we?” he says it like he’s running out of patience. “We’ll start with what we call the junior range, for the child…”

He hands me a brochure and I tense. I cannot breath. The blood has drained from my entire body and my sight is blurry from the tears in my eyes.

In the distance, I hear a door open and close.

“Excuse me,” Mandy announces, as she steps out of the room.

I’m still staring into space when I see Jake's face in my vision. He’s crouching in front of me, cap on backwards, hands on my face trying to get my attention. I focus on him, on his face, on his concerned look.

“Hey…” he whispers.

“Hi,” I return.

“Would you please give us a minute?” Aunt Lisa asks Wes/Des/Les a.k.a Dickface.

“No problem, I’ll just be outside.” He closes the family room door behind him.

“Are you okay, honey?” Lisa asks.

I nod my head, never taking my eyes off Jake.

“Honey, if you don’t mind, why don’t you let Mandy and I take care of this part?”

“That’s a great idea,” Mandy agrees. “Why don’t you let Jake take you out of the house for a bit?”

I nod again, and a second later Jake is leading me out the door. He purposefully, and aggressively, bumps shoulders with Dickface as we pass him.

The family room door closes behind him and Jake leads me out the front door, but not before I hear Mandy screech, “How dare you!”


Jake places me into the passengers seat of his truck and puts my seatbelt on like I’m a child. We’ve only said those two words to each other since he’s come back.

“Wait here, okay? I’m just gonna run in quickly and change.” He’s still in his baseball gear.

He comes out a minute later wearing dark jeans, light grey henley with the sleeves pushed up and the same cap on his head.

“Feel like hitting some shit?” he asks, getting settled in the drivers seat.

“You know a way to a girls heart.” I mock swoon and bat my eyelashes at him.

He reverses out of the driveway, changes gears, then holds my hand the rest of the way.

We end up at the batting cages.

Of course we do.


***


Jake’s standing at the pitching machine adjusting some dials while I stand in the cage, bat in hand.

He comes over to me and adjust my body to how I should be holding the bat, and tells me when the right time to swing is. I take in everything he says.

He goes back to the pitching machine and presses a couple buttons. The balls start shooting out. I hit the first six ‘out of the park’.

His eyes bug out of his head. “Okay, smartass,” he yells, but it comes out ‘smuuhtuhhs’. Australian’s don’t use ‘R’s apparently.

He plays with some more buttons.

The next few pitches come out faster, but I still manage to hit every one. He’s chuckling and shaking his head in disbelief.

He turns it up faster again.

These next lot get me, and I’m probably on 50/50 of hits to misses. After no less than 30 swings I shout out, “I’m done!”

He turns the machine off and strolls over to me.

“Wanna tell me what the f*ck that was?” he asks, chuckling in amusement.

I ignore his question and hand him back the bat and helmet. “Thanks, Jake. I really needed that.” And I did, I really did.

“Seriously though, where did you learn to hit? I would not have expected that.”

Just as I’m about to answer, someone yells out his name.

We turn to see about five guys walking over to us, they reach us and each do that weird bro code hand shake fist bump shoulder slap half hug greeting.

The guys shoot the shit for a few minutes, then I see one of them staring at me, eye’s roaming my body up and down. He creeps me out.

“Who’s your friend here?” Creeper says loudly, interrupting their conversation.

Jake throws a possessive arm around my shoulders, I lean into him. “Guys, this is Mikayla, Mikayla, these are-"

“She your girl?” Creeper asks interrupting him again, his eyes trained on my tits. ugh.

“For now,” some girl coos from behind them. She makes her way to the front of the group.