Jennifer Seasons - Throwing Heat

She stopped what she was doing and leveled him with a hard stare. “You really don’t know?” The way she said it made it sound like an accusation, not a question.

It was damn irritating. “No, Leslie,” he drawled. “I really don’t know.” How could he? From where he was standing things were way good.

Her face contorted in anger and she flung her arm out toward the wall, pointing. “You won. Are you happy?”

Peter saw the wall clock, noted the time. It wasn’t quite midnight. Well, damn, it looked like he actually had won the bet after all.

Amused, Peter zipped his fly and laughed softly. “Of course. It’s been a damn good day.”

His T-shirt suddenly hit him in the chest and he looked up quizzically just in time to see tears fill Leslie’s eyes. “For you. It’s been a good day for you, Peter.” She fisted a hand in front of her mouth, sucked in air. “I lost.”

She was upset about the bet? “It was just a bet, princess. No big thing.”

Her eyes went huge and she huffed, clearly offended, “No big thing?”

The sudden glint in her eye had him reassessing, backtracking. “Well, that’s not maybe the right wording.” Then he shrugged it off, because yeah it was. “We both know it was nothing more than an extended game of foreplay, an excuse for this.” He gestured between them in their respective states of undress. “Why so upset?”

Leslie exploded. “Because it was my life! It was my chance to reclaim what’s mine—my career, my self-respect. It was my new start.” Her eyes were dark as forests and full of bitter heartache. “The bet was everything, and I went and fucked it up just like usual.”

Peter could see she was working herself into a big tizzy and was about to respond when his cell phone went off in his pocket. What the hell? Nobody called him this late at night.

Reaching into his jeans for it, he glanced at Leslie, who was busy crossing her arms and muttering to herself, and spared his caller ID a quick look. His blood went cold. Shit.

“I have to take this.” He didn’t even wait for her acknowledgment.

His cell continued to ring and he hit the talk button. “This is Peter,” he said tightly in Ukrainian.

The voice on the other side was gruff and spoke only in the Slavic language. Peter listened to the message and responded in his father’s native tongue, his good mood morphing into something else entirely in an instant. By the time the call disconnected his mind was a million miles away and his gut felt hollow.

It must have shown on his face because when he shoved his phone back in his pocket Leslie reached a hand out and placed it on his arm. “What’s wrong, Peter?”

His gaze slid from her hand to her face, and he took in her big, concerned eyes. And he felt nothing. Nothing at all, only numb. “I have to go.”

The moment was gone, his perfect day completely ruined with one phone call. He didn’t see Leslie standing there with her heart on her sleeve. Didn’t see beyond the sudden whiteout in his mind.

“What? Why? What happened, Peter?”

He looked at Leslie without really seeing and said flatly, “My father is dead.”

Then he walked out on his dream to go deal with his nightmare.

“AND THEN HE just left, y’all.”

Drake rubbed his chin, confused. “You’re saying he told you his dad died and now he’s gone? Where?”

Leslie shrugged her bare shoulders, worry for Peter tying her stomach in knots. “Not sure, but I’m assuming Philadelphia. Isn’t that where his dad lived?”

Everybody shrugged back.

“Doesn’t anybody know anything about his family?” she asked with mounting frustration. Her heart ached for Peter and she wanted to help. It was damn aggravating that nobody seemed to have any useful information. How could she go after him if nobody knew where he was?

“Not to complain, sweet thing,” started Paulson, “but maybe we could remember things better if we weren’t all stuffed into your office and could breathe.”

There was a murmur of agreement.

Leslie huffed, crammed in between Mark and Lorelei. “Nobody could hear me out on the floor when I first tried to explain, y’all. It was necessary.”

“Squished in like a can of sardines,” came a disgruntled voice. That was Mark, standing next to her.

Leslie elbowed him in the ribs and said to everyone huddled in the space. “Look. I need to know he’s okay. Somebody has to call him. I’ve been trying since he left, but he’s not picking up. Who’s going to volunteer?” Maybe he was on a plane and that’s why he hadn’t picked up. But given the way he’d ignored her attempts at contact the last time he’d been upset, she wasn’t willing to put money on it. And right now his heart must be broken. It was killing her, not being able to comfort him.

JP spoke up from behind Paulson. All she could see was the top of his hair behind a massive green shoulder. “I’ll call. It’s time Sonny and I got home anyway and relieved the babysitter.”

She called out a “thank you” to the couple holding hands as they waved goodnight.

Turning back to find three people staring at her expectantly, Leslie said, “What are y’all looking at me for?”

Everybody shrugged.

Deciding that the night shouldn’t be ruined for everyone, she pasted a smile on her face and said, even though her heart was hurting, “Let’s head back out, shall we?”

The relief was palpable as two very large professional ballplayers vied for prime position, trying to be the first to exit. Drake and Mark reminded her of cattle being shoved down a chute. If she wasn’t so worried about Peter she’d laugh over all the jostling.

Lorelei hung back and leaned into her side then, saying quietly, “Don’t worry, hon. I’m sure he’ll be just fine.”

Yeah, maybe. “I want to go after him so bad.” She sighed and hugged her sister-in-law briefly with one arm.

“I know, sweetie. But nobody knows where he is. It’s best to stay put—for now,” she ended hastily when Leslie frowned.

Lorelei was probably right, but she hadn’t seen the look on his face when he’d been talking in Ukrainian. Peter had gone so cold and detached that he’d looked like a marble statue.

Which meant he was really hurting.

Knowing that pushed the disappointment over losing the bet right out of her mind. There were more important things to worry about now. Things like Peter handling his dad’s death alone.

And things like how she’d told him that she loved him.

She hadn’t missed that fact. As much as she might like to lie and pretend that she didn’t remember declaring her love for him, it just wasn’t true. Leslie remembered all right. It had come back to her when she’d thrown his T-shirt at him. She just wasn’t going to remind him.

When he returned she was just going to hug him hard and pretend like she’d never uttered such nonsense. Maybe he hadn’t even heard her. There was always that possibility. If he never heard her then it wouldn’t even be an issue. They could just go on.

Yeah, that would be great.

Wasn’t going to happen, though. She knew Peter and he was going to pick at her, poking and prodding until she lost her shit and told him everything he wanted to know—and a whole lot of what he didn’t.

PETER STEPPED OUT from the shabby corner Dunkin’ Donuts into the freezing Philadelphia air and huddled into his leather coat, one hand cradling his coffee. The heavy gray sky that was just starting to snow perfectly matched his mood.

He’d been in the city for almost a week handling the details of his father’s death. Not that there was much to handle, truthfully. Mostly he was there out of a sense of obligation and to see that he was buried properly. It was the first time since he’d turned eighteen that he’d been back to the city for anything other than a ball game.

It was hard.

Flipping up the collar of his coat, Peter shoved his free hand in a front pocket and glanced around at the urban decay of South Philly. He had decided to park his rental car in a more stable neighborhood and walk the rest of the way to the house where he’d grown up; a long stroll was preferable to a car-jacking and he wasn’t concerned about being mugged. He knew how to handle himself. Along the way he passed crumbling structures covered in colorful graffiti. One of the dilapidated brick buildings had a two-story mural of a smiling Jamaican woman at home in her native land, lush palms behind her and a basket full of plump sweet potatoes.

The juxtaposition of such hope, pride, and beauty amidst such poverty and despair was beyond jarring. But it spoke to the heart of the people that made their home there. In a land that was supposed to take care of its own, they were living in a third-world country. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t even close to right. Still, they kept the hope. They saw beauty.

They were his people.

He hadn’t helped his father.

The thought came at him from left field, catching him unaware. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. Considering his pop was the only family he’d had, Peter had gone to the mat for him and tried to get him clean, tried to get him help. But Viktor Kowalskin had wanted nothing more than to kill himself with drink.

At some point in the last two years, Peter had just quit trying. And now his pop was dead from liver failure and he felt guilty. Like he should have tried harder. Like he shouldn’t have given up on his old man. But what was he supposed to do? The man was an abusive drunk, unwilling to change. And now he was gone.

There was a part of him, although tiny, that felt relieved. It was over. Now he could move forward without this always around his neck, weighing him down. It was a crappy, selfish feeling and he knew it. But he was just so tired of fighting against everything. It had made him weary.

He’d fought against the inevitable and lost. His pop, his eye disease, Leslie. In the end, no matter how much of a fight he’d put up, it hadn’t been enough.

His life felt a lot like the wreckage and rubble that he was strolling through.

He crossed the street as a low-rider Buick painted in gray primer cruised down the street past him very slowly. A group of young thugs were huddled inside the car, giving him a very thorough shakedown. Any other person would be perturbed by the territorial display.

But they weren’t Peter.

His body posture changed and he morphed into the kid who’d known these streets, who’d known how to act. He wasn’t worried. Hunching his shoulders, he continued walking, sipping casually from his to-go cup of coffee.

The car sped up suddenly, the juveniles shouting obscenities at him as they whipped past and threw a beer can. But then they rounded a corner and headed out of sight, the sound of the souped-up Buick fading in the distance.

Peter took a left as he got closer to his old neighborhood and felt anxiety twist painfully in his gut. A pit bull on a chain rushed him from the right, barking hard and slobbering. The clearly underfed dog was crazy-eyed. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the last of his breakfast burrito and unwrapped it. Then he tossed it to the foamy-mouthed canine. “Here, dog. Eat.” He knew all too well what it was like to starve in this place.

The busted sign declaring that he’d arrived at his designated street came into view as a damp, frigid wind blew a gust hard enough to have him sucking in a breath. Damn, that was cold. He’d forgotten how different Philly winters were from Denver. The cold here was wet and heavy and had a way of seeping right into the bones, chilling a person to the core.

Turning off the main road into a small, sad-looking ethnic neighborhood, Peter scanned the barely-habitable shacks, noticing a curtain flutter in one of them as he went by. It wasn’t every day that these people had a random guy walking in their hood. And if they did it was normally a cause for concern. If it was him, he’d be peeking out his window wanting to know who the hell was out there too. It was a matter of safety.

He didn’t have to be there. Didn’t have to go back to his roots. But after avoiding it for almost a week by busying himself with all the legal hoopla and logistics of burying his old man, he’d finally accepted that he couldn’t stay away. Who he was now stemmed from growing up in this place.

The shacks he walked past were really worn-down, buckling old bungalows. Nothing more than rectangles with front steps, the tiny houses butted right up to the street. There was no grass, no green. Lawns were for rich people.