Moonshot

by Alessandra Torre

  “Shit, Ty.”

  “It started way back,” I said. “When I was a ball girl. But then—”

  “…you got pregnant,” he said flatly.

  “Yeah.”

  I said nothing, and neither did he, a long moment of silence, the air vent in the room humming to life, cool air hitting my face, and I shivered. He noticed the movement and wrapped a hand around my shoulders, pulling me carefully into his chest, a kiss pressed against my head. “Love you, Ty.”

  Part of me hated him. For his weakness. For keeping the key to all of this from the police. He’d cheated. He’d put our lives in jeopardy. But we had also shared so many years, so many memories, such a large chunk of our lives. “I love you, too.”

  “I’ll miss you. So will the team.”

  I nodded, without speaking, more tears threatening. The team. My relationship with them had changed so much in the last four years, my life from them more removed when up in the skybox, a new distance present when my last name changed to Grant. I wasn’t really losing the team. That loss had started four years ago, the last day I dressed out.

  “I’ll have to trade Chase.” He looked away, stepping back. “I can’t … I’m sorry. I know what the team means to you.”

  “I know.” I nodded, wiping at my eyes before the tears fell.

  “I want you to be happy. You know that, right?” He rolled his lips tightly, the tremble of them almost hidden by the movement, his own eyes wet as he looked at me. I didn’t care what secrets he’d hid. There was good in him. There was love between us. It just wasn’t true. It just wasn’t enough.

  I nodded and stepped away from him before I reached out. “I’m gonna go.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “I’ll go home now and pack a bag.”

  “Wow.” He winced. “Not how I pictured celebrating the win.” I started to speak, and he stopped me. “No. I’m fine. Go. Take Titan with you.” He reached forward and pulled me into another hug, this one hard and tight before he roughly stepped away, nodding to the door. “Check in with the doc. I’ll have him call you in the morning.”

  Goodbye seemed too trivial of a word, so I only nodded, turning on my heel and walking out the door, Detective Thorpe pushing off the opposite wall, his eyes meeting mine.

  “Do you have anything else for me?” I asked.

  “Not that can’t be done tomorrow via phone. Take care of yourself, Mrs. Grant.” He held out his hand, and I took it, shaking it firmly.

  “It’s Ty.” God, that last name haunted me. I would reclaim Rollins as soon as I could.

  I think he understood, his kind smile the sort that spoke volumes. “Be safe, Ty. I’ll have a deputy escort you home.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” I said the words without thinking, no ride set up, no one waiting outside. But the thought of a uniform, the thought of someone guarding me … it was stifling at a time when I only wanted freedom. And it was unimportant when the threat to my life was now behind bars. I smiled a goodbye and moved past him, down a long hall, then to an elevator, people everywhere despite the late hour. My hands trembled around the strap of my purse, my throat dry when I swallowed. I wanted to run, to kick off my shoes and sprint out the double doors. My steps quickened, a click clack along the concrete floor, the glass doors closer, closer, closer. Then I was through, the night air cool and clear, a shot of adrenaline zipping through me. I was free. I was alive.

  Back home, my dad and Carla waited, expecting for me to ride home with Tobey. I had no idea where Chase was, my phone breaking in its tumble down the stairs, the touch screen useless, calls unanswerable. My frustration and elation warred, my desperation to see Chase competing with the need to hug my father, to tell him everything, to grab my bag and Titan, and get in my car and GO—out of the Grant world, out of the Yankee bubble.

  My bags were already packed and tucked into the back of my closet. Monday, I would have our house manager pack my items and send them to the auction house. I had no need for the furs and gowns, the matching luggage sets and jewelry. They would bring a high price at auction, the proceeds sent to the Boys and Girls Club.

  I looked down the street, the wind whipping between the tall buildings, the night alive with the smells of the city, trash competing with a food truck, cigarette smoke drifting over from a nearby group. There were no taxis in site, and I waited, wrapping my arms around myself and taking a deep breath. I was alive. It was a blessing easy to forget, in the rush of everyday life. How precious that simple gift was.

  A navy sedan skidded to a stop beside me, and its door opening, Chase stepping out. He stood for just a second, looking at me as if testing his sight, and then everything inside of me broke open as he rushed forward.

  “Oh Ty.” He clutched my face, his eyes searching over me, noticing the bandage, the bruises. “Fucking game traffic. I didn’t hear the news until I got home. Then I went to your house, and th—”

  I shushed him, grabbing at the front of his T-shirt and lifting to my toes, pressing my lips to his. “Take me there?” I asked.

  “I’ll take you anywhere.” He kissed my forehead so gently I wanted to cry. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  In his arms, in the back of the car, shuddering over potholes as it carried me to the house, I cried. I cried out every emotion left inside of me. And somewhere between the Bronx station and the security gates of my home, I found peace.

  It was over.

  All of it.

  114

  Six Months Later

  “Let’s talk about your happiness.” My therapist’s favorite topic. I often wondered, hitting this stage of the appointment, if Tracy recycled the question with everyone in her life, every damn member of her family forced to prove, on an everyday basis, that their smiles and laughter were real.

  “I’m happy.” I looked away from a wrinkle in her cleavage and to her eyes, sharp holes of black behind bright red glasses. “Everything is great.” It was. It was better than great. It was a painful happiness, the kind so precious that it scares, each moment filled with an edge of panic that it will all be lost. A person should not be this happy, our love should not be this strong—it just didn’t seem fair, seem possible, to be so blessed.

  “How is the public handling your engagement?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I haven’t paid attention.” Probably not well. Yankee Nation hadn’t been pleased when their first lady had abandoned her post. They’d ignored the carefully worded press release that Tobey and I had given. The one that emphasized our continuing friendship, and the joint decision we had made to end our four-year marriage. The paparazzi had caught my climb onto the private jet, Chase behind me. They’d seen our kisses on the beach in Bali. Overnight, I’d been branded a cheater. I hadn’t cared, not when it had been the truth. I had cheated. There wasn’t really any getting around that. Besides, Tobey had been in the trenches right next to me, Dan’s mouth as loud in prison as it’d been outside of it. Everyone knew about his affairs, the media all but having a field day between the two of us. It was comical, though I seemed to be the only one seeing the humor in all of it.

  “When is the wedding?”

  I glanced down at my hand, at the simple band there. We’d skipped a diamond, Chase wanting something that could be worn under a glove. I preferred it, every giant rock reminding me of my first one, the stone that had seemed more like a shackle than a symbol of love. “In six months.” I wasn’t in a rush, though Chase seemed to be counting down the seconds, frantic to change my name and haul me off to his cave where he could properly claim me as his own.

  “Anything else happen since our last session?”

  “I visited Dan again.”

  Her brows raised. “Why?”

  I didn’t know. But she didn’t like answers like that. She liked to dissect, the process exhausting yet helpful. Every session, I told myself I wouldn’t come back. And every session, when I che
cked out and the perky receptionist asked if I wanted to book another appointment, I did. It was a cycle I wasn’t yet ready to stop. Like peeling chapped lips.

  I slid my palms under my thighs, knuckles against jeans, and tried to work through her question. “I like seeing him. It makes me feel in control.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Love.”

  “You know what I don’t understand?” I folded over the gum wrapper, my nail sliding across the edge, each bend in the foil drawing Dan’s eyes to it.

  “What?” There was glass between us. Dirty glass, fogged at the top, a few greasy handprints scattered over its surface. He peered at me and waited.

  “You wanted Tobey and I to be together—that’s why you did all of it, right?” He said nothing, and I pressed forward. “But then you were going to kill me. Which would have meant that we wouldn’t be together. It would have defeated the entire purpose.”

  I don’t know how I never saw his crazy before. Maybe I just hadn’t known where to look. Didn’t know that the slow tilt of his head meant that he was turning over a lie in his head before he spoke it. Or that he smiled when I said something that angered him, and he frowned when he was thinking. Now, he smiled, but it was a sad one. An almost genuine one.

  “I read an article about you and Stern. A nice piece actually. Vanity Fair, I believe.”

  I nodded. The only interview I had done, one published just last week. An interview where I had bared my soul, my first time speaking aloud the thoughts, the dreams, the feelings that I’d hidden for so long. The piece had been my confession, and the only time I would speak publicly on any of it. After that, should the fans hate me, so be it. But at least they would know the how. The when. The why.

  “The last line of it. Powerful stuff.” He saw my confusion and leaned forward, so close that his breath fogged the glass. “Our love … I knew I would never find another like it. I had to protect it. I had to respect it. Even if it hurt Tobey. Even if it hurt the fans. Even if it meant leaving everything that I knew. I had to choose him. And I’d make the same decision now, even if he didn’t love me back. Because next to it, anything else was a lie. And anything else wasn’t fair to either of us.”

  “I meant it. I love Chase. And I never felt—”

  “I know you didn’t.” He cut me off, his head shaking but staying in place, close to the glass, his fingers biting into the table. I glanced at those fingers, the same ones that had held the knife to my skin, the same ones that had wrapped around my throat and squeezed.

  “Then …” I flicked my eyes back, suddenly understanding.

  “I thought he was happy with you.” He said softly, and there was madness in those eyes. Love does that to a person. I understood that, on a much milder scale. “I’d wanted him to be happy. And I thought you were worthy of him.”

  “Until I wasn’t.”

  He smiled, a slow one that showed a piece of food stuffed near an incisor. I couldn’t believe that this was the man, the one who terrorized our lives, our team, our city. This man who settled back into his plastic chair, scratching at a place on his neck.

  “I don’t understand.” Tracy tilted her head, her pen tapping at the edge of her notepad, toes curling into the brown cork of her sandals.

  “Despite the ten-year age difference, despite Dan’s ex-wife, we never saw it. We had simply appreciated his undying loyalty to the Yankees. But it wasn’t about them.” I paused, weighing the words in my mind before using them. “He loved Tobey. That’s why he did it all.”

  So simple. And so heartbreakingly stupid.

  I glanced at the clock, then at her face, three minutes left in this examination of my sanity. “I don’t think I’ll see him again. I think I’m done.”

  It’s odd that I chose that day to make that decision. Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure it was final. I had some perverse need to stare at him, locked in that prison, on the other side of that glass. But, I never had another opportunity to. That night, Dan Velacruz hung himself in his cell.

  115

  Four Years Later

  I’m a Texas Ranger now. I wear red and navy, drive a pickup truck, and run with Titan through horse pastures across our ranch. We have two goats and four horses to keep him company, all but one named after baseball players. Moonshot is the exception. Chase spent a month tracking him down, following racetrack records and stud channels until he found him, retired from a sad career and studded out. He flew him to Dallas with some romantic notion that I’d care. I did. I almost fell out of the truck when we pulled up to the ranch, and I saw him trot across the field.

  Right now, at nine o’clock on a Friday night, I’m in Globe Life Park in Arlington—Section 34, Row A, Seats 1-5—and that’s our home, the seats right next to the dugout, close enough that I can hang over the side and pretend, for a brief moment, I’m in it. Close enough that my husband can look over and catch me when I try to sneak our daughter a sip of my soda. Close enough that when I scream at the ump, he can hear my voice. Close enough that when my man rips a homerun, he can lean over the rail and get a kiss. He gets lots of kisses. And his team is keeping up, their record putting them in the standings for the American League Championship. Never mind that the Yankees are the other front-runner. We aren’t focusing on that right now.

  We are focused on juggling life with a toddler. One hundred sixty-two games are a lot different with a two-year-old in hand. Dad and Carla sold the Alpine home and moved to Dallas. They have a ranch a half-mile away from ours, and keep Laura during most of the home games. The away games are still a work-in-progress. I now understand why Mom had stopped traveling with the team when I was born. My love for baseball is nothing compared to my child. Everything changed the moment she was born.

  I avoid New York entirely. Haven’t set foot in Yankee Stadium since that last game. I don’t think I ever will. Partially out of respect for Tobey, and partially out of respect for my heart. I think it would be too hard for me. I’d rather my last memory of that field be that championship moment. I will always, secretly, be a Yankee, no matter whose colors I’m wearing.

  My divorce with Tobey was quiet and quick, no child to fight over, no assets contested. I got Titan and my car. He offered more, a bulk settlement with alimony, but I refused. We had taken four years out of each other’s lives. Anything else was ridiculous.

  He’s dating a supermodel now, one of those Victoria’s Secret Angels who wears million-dollar bras and blows kisses into cameras. She looks good in pinstripes, and in every photo I’ve seen of them, he looks happy.

  Chase steps up to bat, and I stand, my daughter peeking up at me, her pink Converses sparkling as they jut out from her seat, not long enough to hang over the side. “Daddy up?” she asks.

  “Yep.” I lean forward, watching, her attention returning to the coloring book before her, a big chubby marker awkwardly gripped in her hand, purple colored over half of the page.

  “Come on…” I breathe, wrapping my hands around the railing and watch him, the strong line of his back, the cock of his head, the slow roll of his bat before he settles into place.

  “Mom.”

  I ignore the command, my eyes darting from the pitcher to Chase.

  “Mom,” she insists.

  “Wait.” Pitch. Swing. High and left. Foul. I sigh and glance back at her. “Yes?”

  “Need new marker.” Laura holds out the grape-scented stick. We named her after my mom, all other ideas abandoned once Chase made that suggestion.

  “Daddy is at bat, don’t you want to see?” I bend down and pick her up, holding her against my chest until her soles rest on the railing.

  “New marker.” She waves it in the air, her eyes away from the game, still stuck on her coloring book.

  “She’s two,” Dad calls, from his seat next to us. “You think you cared anything about baseball at two?”

  “I was young and dumb,” I remark, watching as the pitcher throws to first, tryi
ng to catch Cortez as he dives back to the bag.

  “Give her time, she’ll come around,” Carla coos to Laura and lifts her away, my hand-off quick, eyes back on the field, and there is a moment of hushed silence before the pitcher curls, Chase tenses, and then…

  Action.

  Contact.

  High and up…

  Moonshot.

  Thank you for reading Moonshot, by Alessandra Torre. If you would like to be notified when Alessandra's next book releases, please click here.

  note from author

  Each book has a different journey and I feel differently at each completion. With Tight, I was exhausted, having gone through four complete rewrites, with completely different story lines and endings. With If You Dare, I felt a sad elation--similar to the last day of high school when you are happy, yet miss that part of your life already. With Moonshot, I wasn't quite ready to let go. I finished this book and didn't want to leave its world. I didn't want to step out of Ty's head and back into my life. I loved so many parts of this book and wanted, for just a few more hours, to savor it.

  I have never been an athlete. I am terribly uncoordinated. I was more interested in horses than tennis. I played the piano instead of soccer. During PE, I prayed fervently that the ball would never head in my direction. I knew nothing about sports and couldn't tell you if a first down was a football or basketball term.

  Then, I met Pudge Rodriguez. Well ... I didn't exactly meet him. I stood, way up in the nosebleed section of Ranger Stadium, a foam finger firmly on my ten-year-old finger, and watched him play. Me and fifty thousand other fans.

  I don't know why I liked Pudge. Probably because his nickname was Pudge and it stuck out to me. All I know is, I left that stadium and knew something about sports. I had a team. I had a t-shirt! And later that summer, in a small sports store in Dallas, I bought his baseball card. Baseball, unlike football, was easy for me to understand. I didn't feel like an idiot, or cheer at the wrong time. It was my first step into the world of sports, but it wouldn't be my last.