I laugh. “I think you’re off by a few hours. But yeah, the doctor said I should get a lot of sleep the first week to help with healing.”

“You look great, you know. Much better than I thought you’d look less than a week after surgery.”

“Thanks. I’ve come to accept that my face won’t be perfect, but then again, it never was in the first place.”

“Nobody’s perfect, Murphy. And I’ll bet in a few months, no one will be able to see any of your scars. And if they do, they’re not looking hard enough.”

I absorb his meaningful words and smile.

On our way out, Caden gives me a quick tour of the clubhouse, which is just a fancy term for locker room, a place that is normally off-limits to anyone who isn’t with the organization. Then we track down Harold and thank him profusely.

We walk to the nearest intersection and I look around as Caden hails a cab. I adore New York at night. The lights, the activity, the endless stream of pedestrians. I close my eyes and inhale. I’m not sure why I do it. I think the city just has a certain smell. If busy were a scent, this would be it. And I love it.

When I open my eyes, Caden is studying me. He holds the door of the cab open for me and we scoot in. “What made you finally do it?” he asks. “Move to the city.”

I fumble with the ring on my thumb. Kelly’s ring. The only one I never take off. “One of my friends from high school was always encouraging me to do it.”

“Sounds like a good friend,” he says. “Do you still keep in touch?”

I shake my head sadly. “She was my best friend. She died in late February,” I tell him. “We were in the middle of an Indian summer. Kelly and I were out jogging when she complained about a sharp pain in the back of her neck. Turns out she got stung by a bee. She didn’t even know she was allergic. I tried to get her back, to keep her breathing, but the doctor said there was nothing I could have done.”

“Jesus, Murph. That’s horrible. I’m sorry to hear that. You’ve experienced a lot of loss in your life. But that explains why you had the guts to follow your dream. Life’s too short not to.”

I nod. “Yeah, that’s what Kelly always said. My other friends, Tami, Megan and Hannah, they had all taken jobs in other cities or got married and moved away. Kelly and I were the only two left, and when she died, there was nothing more to keep me there.”

“No boyfriend?” he asks.

“No. I had a few on and off. Nobody I cared enough about to bring home to my mother.”

“How did your mom take your leaving?”

“She didn’t want me to go. She thought I was making a rash decision too soon after Kelly died. But she’s gone a lot. She’s a travel agent and she’s always taking trips here or there, either to scope out places or because she won them from her company because she’s so good at what she does.”

He stares me down. “You still haven’t told her what happened, have you?”

“No. She’d only worry about me more than she already does. But I’ll have to face the music soon enough, there will be no more hiding it when she starts to get insurance statements after my medical bills begin rolling in.”

“About those, I’d like to take care of them,” he says, looking guilty.

“What? No. Besides, my mom has really good insurance.”

“We’ll see,” he says, refusing to look directly at me.

“We will not see, Caden. Thanks to the job you got me, I can pay my own way. You’ve done enough. You’ve done more than enough.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “You sure do have a stubborn streak, don’t you, Danny-girl?”

“Danny-girl? What is it with you and all your nicknames?”

“You know, Daniel Murphy.”

I look at him with a blank stare.

He laughs. “Oh, I have so much to teach you. Daniel Murphy plays second base for Washington. Great player. Good guy.”

“Maybe I need to come up with a nickname for you,” I say, as the cab pulls up to my building.

A smile grows up his face. “I think I might like that,” he says. “But my name’s pretty boring.”

“Your name is anything but boring,” I say. “It’s quite original. What do your friends call you?”

“Nothing really. The guys on my team call me Kessler, or just Kess.”

“Maybe I’ll try it out sometime. Or maybe I’ll come up with another one.”

“Give it your best shot, Murphy Brown.”

I swat him as I exit the cab.

“Thank you, Caden. I had a really good time tonight.”

“Mission accomplished then,” he says, getting out behind me.

I shove Caden back into the cab, remembering how he almost got mobbed by girls when someone recognized him earlier. I was genuinely fearing for his safety. “Don’t get out. I don’t want people to swarm you.”

He sits back down but instructs the cabbie to stay put until I’m inside the building. Then he turns back to me. “I’ll see you Saturday. I gave Lexi your number and she’s going to call you this week to set things up.”

“I’m looking forward to it, now that I know what … wait, what is that stick you hit the ball with called again?”

His laughter trails after me as I walk away.

When I walk into my apartment, three heads turn my way. I find it hard not to roll my eyes when I see Tony sitting on the couch with Kirsten and Tori. They were probably having some kind of threesome.

I walk past them into the kitchen without saying a word. I grab a bottle of water and head to my bedroom when Tony stands up, blocking my path. “What’s with the Hawks hat?” he asks.

I reach up and take the hat off my head. I study it for a second. “Oh, I forgot I was wearing it.”

“You don’t wear ball caps,” he says. “And you don’t like baseball.”

I crinkle my nose at him in disdain. “And yet you took me to a game,” I say dryly.

“Can I have it?” he asks.

“Do I look like I was born yesterday?” I say, pushing my way past him.

I shut my door and lean against it proudly, thinking of how that was the first conversation I’d had with him since he became my ex. I can almost hear Caden’s voice in my head. Good girl.

Chapter Thirteen

Caden

As a favor to Sawyer’s cousin, Rob, Sawyer and I are on a triple date with Rob, his girlfriend, and a few of her visiting friends. As luck would have it, bad luck, the friend I got paired with is a huge baseball fan. I give Sawyer the evil eye for the second time tonight when the girl takes yet another selfie of us at the dinner table.

It’s not that I don’t like baseball fans. I do. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do. But I like them more from a distance, not when they are draping themselves all over me.

Like the older gentleman at the bar. He’s been staring at us all night. He obviously recognizes us, but he’s nice enough not to interrupt our dinner. He’s the kind of fan I’d gladly sign an autograph for if he asked us on our way out.

“Want to head back to my place?” Rob asks the group. “My roommate is out of town. We can have a few drinks or something.”

When Sawyer looks over at me, I give him a punishing stare, making my answer crystal clear.

Sawyer is a nice guy. Like me, I think he’s wary of women and their intentions. But he takes it to the extreme. Instead of a three-strikes rule – his dates never get past one.

“Come on, man. One drink,” he pleads.

It’s not that I think he necessarily cares about hooking up with the girl he’s with, I just think he’s trying to appease his cousin. Rob is in the construction business and he renovated Sawyer’s townhouse for barely more than cost when Sawyer moved here two years ago.

“Fine. One.”

Brandy, my … uh, date, claps her hands and squirms in her chair, apparently excited that the night isn’t going to end after dinner. “Maybe we should go back to your place, Caden. Rob’s is hardly big enough to hold all of us.”

I refrain from looking at Sawyer, because I know we’ll start laughing if I do. I don’t take girls to my place. Lexi and a few of her good friends, they are the only females who have ever been there. I’m very protective of my privacy. “It’s not clean. Better not.”

Brandy brushes off my comments. “Who cares about that? It’s not like we’re going to see your bedroom with your skivvies all over the floor.” She leans over to me and whispers, “Not unless you want me to.”

I look at Rob, who thankfully reads my expression and saves me from Brandy. “My place is just around the corner. We’ll go there. And it’s clean,” he says, shrugging an apology at me.

I take my ball cap out of my back pocket and put it on my head when we leave the restaurant. Sawyer does the same. Even though it’s clearly a Hawks hat—I mean what else would we wear—it does provide some camouflage if we pull it down low enough over our foreheads.

Brandy plucks the hat from my head and puts it on her own. “Can I have it?”

I study her for a second, thinking how it doesn’t look that good on her with her poufy hair. I carefully remove it from her head and return it to mine, pulling it down low. “I’d really like to wear it myself if you don’t mind.”

I think about last Saturday night and how I gave Murphy my hat. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a girl look so natural, and … so fucking amazing wearing one. There’s nothing natural about Brandy. Not her lips, not her voice, not her tits that are practically falling out of her dress. And there is definitely nothing amazing about her.

I need to text Murphy. Find out how her first day at the gym went. I hope she likes it there. Mason did me a real solid hiring her. They were in a bind and needed someone immediately. I talked him into getting someone from a temp agency until Murphy could start. For all I know, she might hate it. It’s far from a modeling gig. But the people there are great. It’s where I work out in the off-season.