Two more half-siblings? Whoa. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-one."
"And you all have the same dad?"
"Yep." Her lips pressed into a thin line. "But James has more than made up for him. He stepped in and has been amazing to all of us."
"I'm glad for that." Blown away by more information—hell—more family than he'd expected, Slade's heart felt like it had swelled to the point of bursting.
"Don't think that Mom and James have forgotten you. And all of us kids know about you. They talk about you all the time."
"They do?"
"Of course, they didn't name you back then, so they refer to you as the baby. Considering you're, what, six-foot-three? That's a pretty big baby."
"He is a big baby," Liam taunted from the neighboring table, obviously unashamed to be listening.
Laughing, she reached for her cup again. "James is built like you, long and lean with blond hair and blue eyes. Mom is on the shorter side, but still taller than me. She has hazel eyes and brown hair."
"I always wondered who I looked like, if I looked like either of them." He stroked his hand over his close-cropped hair. Savanna had said she liked the way it felt against her palms. Two days had passed since their date. He wondered what she was doing, how she would react if she'd seen him so on edge. He'd told her that he didn't experience fear.
He'd lied.
Melanie pulled out her phone. "I can show you some pictures."
"Please." He scooted closer.
The screen lit with a smiling woman. She had kind eyes, polished hair, and her arms around two kids. Melanie pointed, "That's Mom with Chloe and Caden."
Stomach tight, Slade curled his fingers into his hand to stop from reaching out and grabbing the phone. He scoured the photo. This wasn't a stranger. This was his mother. And she was hugging the kids with more affection than he'd ever experienced with Liz. Twin blades of resentment and longing stabbed his gut.
The next picture showed a tall man wearing a tattered baseball cap. "That's James when he coached Caden's baseball team last summer."
Slade's heart jerked. James had his height and build, and similar facial features. He definitely looked like his dad. Comfort softened some of the resentment.
Dom leaned forward and snagged a coffee. "I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
"Tree?" Melanie glanced between them. "What do you mean?"
"Baseball."
She twisted toward Slade. "You play baseball too?"
"First baseman for the Riptide. Actually, we all play for them."
"Wait, like the real major league baseball Riptide?"
Slade nodded. "Yeah."
"Holy shi—I mean, I don't follow baseball, but James does. I know he's taken Chloe and Caden to Riptide games. I think Mom may have even gone with them once or twice. This is too weird. It's like they saw you without knowing who you really are."
Slade's skin tingled. His biological parents had been in the ballpark, watching him play, and he hadn't known. Shouldn't the universe have sent him some kind of sign? Jealousy throbbed that James would've been the type of dad that Slade had always wanted—someone to come to his ball games, to discuss statistics and averages, someone who just cared. Maybe the love of the game had been ingrained in his genes.
Melanie tucked her phone away and stood. "The shop's going to close soon, so we should go. Mom and James are really nervous about meeting you. They're leaving tomorrow for Haiti. James is spending a few weeks working in a clinic there, while Mom volunteers at an orphanage. When they get back, we'll do another get-together. Maybe you can come to our house."
His mind whirling, Slade stood and motioned for the guys to do the same. "Sure. Sounds good. I’ll see what works out with my game schedule."
"I'm so glad I got to meet you. Before I knew about you, I'd always dreamed that I had a big brother. And now I do." She blushed and then rushed on, "I mean, if you want to. I don't want to interrupt your life if you don't want that, but can I maybe text you sometimes?"
Warmth washed into his chest, easing the nerves trampling his stomach. "I'd like it if you did."
"Me too." She hugged him and then stepped back. "Thanks for coming to meet me."
"Hey, do you need a ride anywhere?" He wasn't going to leave her to walk home amid darkened streets.
"Nah. The barista is my boyfriend. He'll give me a ride home after he closes and cleans up."
"All right. But be careful." The words sounded foreign to his ears. Who was he to tell her anything?
"That's very brotherly of you." She grinned again and practically skipped up to the counter.
Dom's hand fell heavy on his shoulder. "You all right, bud?"
"I don't know yet."
Liam joined them. "That's fair. This was a lot to take in."
Adam flanked Slade's other side. "Let's go home."
Slade followed his friends out into the night. He felt both less and more unsettled than he'd anticipated. He hadn't learned why his parents had given him up, or anything about what his father’s life had been like before he’d reconnected with his mother. After a lifetime of wondering, not having answers when the sources were so close was driving him crazy.
His parents were back together, and their lives seemed happy and perfect. What if he didn’t fit in with them? Old feelings of worry and worthlessness, the ones he’d lived with on a daily basis from age six to eighteen surged forward and simmered under the surface.
Dom drove them back to Slade and Liam's apartment. They settled in the living room with beers and baseball highlights playing on the huge TV. Slade tipped back his bottle, draining half. "Tonight was..."
"Frustrating," Dom supplied.
"Yeah. Surreal in that I met my sister. For twenty-six years I've been wondering about my family and now I've met one member. But the rest? The thing with my birth parents getting back together, going to our games, and yeah, frustrating
