Between the Seams

by Aubrey Gross

  “You really have been busy, haven’t you?”

  “Just a little. I couldn’t help it, though. I wanted to better understand what’s wrong with you and what you were dealing with. From what I’ve read, you’re not the only person to kind of freak out when given a less than stellar diagnosis. I’ve also read so many stories about people living pretty normal lives while on dialysis or after receiving a transplant. It’s not a death knell, you just have to adjust to a new normal.”

  He tightened his hand around hers. “Are you sure you’re willing to go down that road with me?”

  She nodded and looked up at him. “Absolutely.”

  His heart swelling with an emotion that went far beyond love, he leaned in and kissed her, just a light brushing of lips over lips. “God, I love you.”

  She smiled and kissed him more fully, nibbling on his lower lip until he opened his mouth and met her tongue with his. They caressed each other with lips and tongue and hands, saying “hello” and “welcome home” with touch rather than words.

  After long moments he broke the kiss, remembering the box in his pocket. “Oh, yeah, you never got to open your gift.”

  He pulled the box out of his pocket and held it out to her. She gently took it from him and just as slowly opened the lid before peering down and gasping.

  “Chase! This is beautiful.”

  He’d contacted a jeweler friend of Matt’s and found something he thought fit Jo perfectly—a thin silver chain with a horizontal infinity pendant. One of the curves of the infinity symbol held the word “love” in cursive, accented by both of their birth stones.

  He didn’t give a shit how corny Matt had said it was—the look on Jo’s face let him know he’d chosen well.

  She removed the necklace from the box, unclasped it and turned so that the back of her neck was presented to him. “Help me put it on?”

  He took the necklace from her and clasped it around her neck. When she turned back around, he was relieved to find he’d chosen the correct chain length. She smiled up at him and kissed his cheek.

  “Y’know, I was pretty determined to make you squirm, but it ends up I don’t have it in me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Hell, me too.”

  Chase rested his forehead against hers and simply breathed her in. Jo closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his waist. They sat there, silent, for long moments until Chase spoke. “So I was going to wait until tomorrow, but there’s something I need to show you.”

  Jo pulled away and glanced up at him. “Well that sounds vague.”

  “Sorry.” He got up from the sofa and then pulled her up, too, before leading her around the fireplace wall and into the bedroom. “Wait here.”

  “Okay…”

  He turned and walked over to his suitcase, unzipped it and pulled the box he was looking for out of it. He then walked back over to Jo, his hand curled around the box so she couldn’t see it, and said, “Close your eyes.”

  She knitted her brows but did it anyway.

  He took a deep breath, and the sound vibrated through the room. “The thing is, when I said earlier that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, no matter how short it may be, I meant it.”

  He closed his eyes, opened them back up and cupped Jo’s cheek with his free hand. “I’ve loved you since we were kids, and I’ve been in love with you since I was fourteen years old. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, and the only one I want to spend the rest of my life with. I know there are no guarantees, and I feel like a selfish bastard even asking you this considering the road I have ahead of me, but I can’t not ask you to marry me.”

  He placed the box in one of Jo’s hands and wrapped her fingers around it. “We’ve already wasted so much time, and I don’t want to waste any more. I love you, Jolene, and would love nothing more than to be able to spend the rest of our lives together—no matter how long or short those lives might be.”

  Jo opened her eyes and looked at him and then down at the box in her hand. He swallowed past the lump in his throat, his heart pounding in his chest. This felt like every last out he’d ever thrown rolled into one, multiplied by about a hundred.

  Or maybe a thousand.

  After long moments of Chase feeling like he could throw up at any time, Jo finally spoke. “First, I love you, too. Second, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, too. Third, yes, I will marry you.”

  He stepped closer, joy bouncing through him, but Jo pressed a finger to his lips and held him in his place. “Fourth, you’re not a selfish bastard. And fifth, if I ever hear you say again that I don’t deserve this, that I don’t deserve the stress and worry and fear that goes along with loving someone who one day will be very, very sick, I will kick you in the balls and leave.”

  He couldn’t hold back the chuckle that escaped.

  “Oh, you think I’m not serious? Believe me, Chase Ashley Roberts, I am very, very serious about that last one. And I may not literally kick you in the balls, but I will not tolerate you talking down on yourself for something that isn’t your fault to begin with, and I definitely won’t tolerate you thinking you know everything that’s best for me.” Her brow was knitted in frustration, and the finger she’d had at his lips was now poking him in the chest. “No one deserves to go through what you’re going through and what you will go through. But no one deserves to go through that alone, either. So if we do this, it’s not just a marriage, Chase, it’s a partnership. We’re a team. And you know how in wedding vows there’s that whole part about ‘in sickness and health’? That’s there for a reason, and believe me when I say that when I speak those vows I will mean them with every fiber of my being. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do us part, for as long as we both shall live. You better believe that as much as I do, or else the ring I suspect is in this box won’t be going on my finger.”

  Chase fought the smile that wanted to spread across his face, and instead pulled her to him until she was flush with his body, the hand holding the box trapped between them. “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do us part, for as long as we both shall live.”

  Jo sniffled. “Now that we’ve got that settled, can I open this box?”

  He stepped back, and Jo slowly opened the box, revealing the engagement ring he’d had Matt’s jeweler friend find. The ring with a vintage vibe had screamed “Jo” as soon as he’d seen it; the ring was white gold, with a thin infinity band of diamonds, topped by a traditional round-cut diamond surrounded by smaller diamonds set in rose gold.

  “Oh, wow.” She looked up at him, tears swimming in her eyes. “Chase, this is…holy…have you been looking at my Pinterest account?”

  “I didn’t even know you had a Pinterest account.”

  “Please. I’m a woman in my early thirties who up until a couple of months ago was woefully single yet dreaming of her wedding day. Of course I have a Pinterest account.”

  He smiled and took the box from her, removed the ring and took hold of her left hand. “So I guess that means you like it?”

  She smiled. “Like it? I love it! Put that thing on my finger already!”

  He chuckled and slid it onto her ring finger, smiling as he did so. She laughed, looked down at her hand in the way that all females do, and then wrapped her arms around his neck and met his mouth with hers.

  After long moments, she pulled away just enough to say, “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” And then he kissed her again and there was no more room for words or worries about the future. In that moment, it was just him and the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with—no matter how long that life may be.

  ~~*~~

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for taking a chance on this book--and me--and purchasing it. I hoped you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoy
ed writing it.

  Like it often does, art certainly imitated life while I was writing this book--or maybe it was the other way around and life ended up imitating art. The idea for this book first came to me while listening to a local sports reporter talk about a childhood illness of a particular quarterback, and how he’d overcome that illness. This quarterback happened to be the younger brother of another quarterback who went to the same university. The older brother was successful and is to this day beloved by university fans; the younger brother, not quite as much. But it got me to thinking--what must it be like to have that kind of pressure on you, to be the younger brother of someone who’s beloved by a pretty rabid fan base? And what must it be like when you throw in an illness no one knows about on top of that?

  As I began writing the book, I changed Chase’s illness to something vaguely involving his kidneys, just needing a jumping off point for research. I was about halfway through writing Between the Seams when my husband got sick. For months my writing went almost completely on hold as we tried to figure out what was wrong with him. Six months later we had an answer--he was in renal failure, and we’d had no clue. What followed was a crash course on End Stage Renal Failure (sometimes also called End Stage Renal Disease), dialysis (which they put him on while in the hospital, just days after finding out his kidneys were functioning at around 10%) and transplants.

  The scenes in which Chase are talking to his doctor, and then his interactions with people immediately afterwards are all drawn--at least partially--from my life and from the reality of facing dialysis and/or a transplant. The cause of Chase’s kidney disease is different from what caused my husband’s, but the emotions that Chase and Jo feel while dealing with this disease are very, very real. The reality of kidney transplants is sobering: according to the National Kidney Foundation there are currently over 101,000 people on the kidney transplant waiting list. The average wait for a kidney from a deceased donor is 5 years, but in some states it’s closer to 10. There are fewer than 17,000 transplants performed each year, but nearly 3,000 people are added to the wait list each month. In 2013, 4.453 people died while waiting for a kidney transplant. I’m not one to use fiction as a platform, but in this case I do hope that my writing about such an awful (and widespread) disease causes at least one person to register to be an organ donor.

  So where do Chase and Jo go from here? Never fear--their story will continue over the course of the next three books in the series as their relationship and Chase’s looming need for a transplant will play a role in upcoming books.

  Next up, though, is Jenn and Matt’s story, which has been incredibly fun to write. Keep reading for an excerpt of Baseball and Other Lessons, and feel free to follow me on social media and sign up for my newsletter to be the first to know when Book 2 of the Devils Ranch Series will be released.

  Cheers!

  Aubrey

  Between the Seams Playlist

  Honeybrowne – “Texas Angel”

  Josh Abbott Band – “Touch”

  Reckless Kelly – “Nobody’s Girl”

  Miranda Lambert – “Mama’s Broken Heart”

  Aaron Watson – “3rd Gear and 17”

  Imagine Dragons – “Demons”

  Randy Rogers Band – “Kiss Me In the Dark”

  Casey Donahew Band – “Give You a Ring”

  Gary Allan – “Watching Airplanes”

  Josh Abbott Band – “Oh, Tonight”

  Jon Wolfe – “I Don’t Dance”

  Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison – “Border Radio”

  Radney Foster – “Nobody Wins”

  Eli Young Band – “Guinevere”

  Eminem f. Rhianna – “The Monster”

  William Clark Green – “Rose Queen”

  Alex Clare – “Too Close”

  Matchbox twenty – “Busted”

  Wade Bowen and Brandy Clark – “Love In the First Degree”

  Jack Ingram – “Barefoot and Crazy”

  Pat Green – “Take Me Out to a Dancehall”

  Sugar Cult – “Pretty Girl (The Way)”

  Preview: Baseball and Other Lessons

  Matt Roberts had it all. Fame. Fortune. His dream job and a fancy condo in THE place to be in Dallas. With one pitch and one line drive, it was over. Well, at least it was according to a tweet from ESPN. In an effort to lick his wounds and evade the Dallas media, Matt comes home to Del Rio while his fractured skull heals. Meanwhile, his team’s heading towards a pennant race and he’s not there on the mound. Add in redhead who’s so not his type (she’s a teacher, for God’s sake!) and yet who seems to know how to push ALL of his buttons, and Matt suddenly finds himself at a crossroads between the career he’d loved and worked so hard for, and a future that’s far too uncertain. Can Jenn McDonnel teach Matt that there’s more to life than baseball, or is this relationship doomed to strikeout?

  Chapter One

  Matt Roberts’ career ended with a tweet.

  @ESPN: Sources confirm @MattRobertsTX career likely over. 35yo pitcher suffered cracked skull, brain bleed. Surgery successful.

  Next came the Deadspin article.

  ESPN Reporting Matt Roberts, Texas’ Ace, Out Forever

  Followed by the piece from Bleacher Report.

  Texas’ Matt Roberts’ Career Over, Next Steps for Texas to Fill Gap

  Sports Illustrated jumped on it next, followed by the Sporting News, Yahoo! Sports, The Dallas Morning News and SB Nation. From there, the barrage was endless as social media took one stupid—and highly inaccurate to his knowledge—tweet as gospel.

  Matt’s head pounded. He wasn’t sure if it was because of his stitched up skull or if his blood pressure was getting too high. When he noticed his hands were shaking, he figured it was probably his blood pressure.

  He sat back on his brother, Chase’s couch, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, tried to find some internal peace. Instead, all he could find was that damned tweet. Sighing, he opened his eyes and looked back at his open laptop, giving the offending tweet the evil eye, before picking up his cell phone and dialing his agent.

  The man answered on the first ring. “Hey, Matt. Don’t worry, man, we’re on it. I don’t know who ESPN’s sources are, but they’re wrong. We haven’t heard anything from the front office other than they want you to have a full recovery and that your health comes first.”

  Matt sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dammit, Darrin, where the fuck did this shit come from? I’ve barely been out of the hospital for a week. Nobody knows the future of my career right now, especially not some lowlife who’ll give crap information to ESPN.”

  “I know. Like I said, we’re trying to track down the source. I also have a call in to Reed. Hopefully I’ll hear something soon and can get this mess cleared up.”

  Reed Thornhill was the team’s president and general manager, and the person who would ultimately decide Matt’s professional fate. He and Reed had a pretty good relationship, and Matt couldn’t see him making such a definite statement without having all the facts. And the facts were, Matt couldn’t even begin rehab until the fucking stitches were out, and that wouldn’t be for a couple more weeks probably.

  “Thanks, Darrin.”

  “No problem, man. So how are you doing?”

  Matt blew out a breath and looked around his brother’s living room. How was he doing? He was going fucking stir crazy. That’s how he was doing. “Effing crazy, D. I’m bored out of my mind.”

  “You know you could have stayed in Dallas, in the comfort of your own condo and all the take out you desire at your fingertips.”

  Matt snorted. “I know. Mom was worried sick, and I knew she’d be calling me multiple times a day. I also didn’t feel like having the media breathing down my neck.”

  “How’s the ranch doing?”

  Matt, along wit
h Chase, Chase’s friend Owen, and Darrin were all owners of a managed game ranch just north of Del Rio, on the Devils River. “You know about as much as I do. Chase and Owen do a great job keeping up with it, and Daniel runs the place flawlessly. I’m hoping to get up there some time soon, just have to have clearance to drive.”

  “Any word on when that’ll be?”

  “I have an appointment in San Antonio next Monday. Hopefully he’ll give me the go-ahead then.”

  “Keep me up to date. In the meantime, I’ve gotta go—lunch with Mercer to discuss the contract extension the Cowboys offered him.”

  Clint Mercer was the Dallas Cowboys’ all-pro tight end, Darrin’s client, Matt’s friend, and all-around good guy. “Getting ready to milk the Cowboys dry?”

  “As dry as I can.” Darrin chuckled. “Anyway. Stay off of Twitter and message boards for a while, and I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

  “Thanks, D.” Matt ended the call and tossed the phone back onto the couch beside him. He rested his head against the plush back and looked up at the ceiling. God, he was bored.

  ~~*~~

  Jenn McDonnell surreptitiously watched Matt as she and Owen played a game of pool.

  She didn’t like Matt. Didn’t trust him. Sure as hell didn’t want to be around him.

  It hadn’t always been that way. Once upon a time they’d kind of been friends. Not great friends like she and Chase, but kind of friends, the type that are just above acquaintance but not someone you would exactly tell secrets to. They’d once gotten along okay, kind of like siblings but not quite.

  Somewhere along the way, though, her feelings towards Matt had changed. People sometimes asked her what had happened to make her dislike Matt so much. She would just shrug her shoulders and say something flippant, or that maybe it was the fact that since he’d made it to the Bigs eleven years ago he’d rarely come back home to see his family (and Jenn knew for a fact that Mrs. Roberts missed her “baby boy”). Or maybe she’d tell people that it was because he came across as an arrogant dick, like being blessed with a 98 mile per hour fastball and a nasty slider somehow made him better than the mere mortals who wore his jersey and cheered his name.