Unforgettable: A Small Town Second Chance Sports Romance

by Melanie Harlow

  A crooked grin appeared on his face. “Don’t worry about it. I’m eighteen anyway.”

  “Eighteen.” I shook my head. “It’s a good age to be. And in that case, I meant what I said—you’re really fucking talented.”

  The grin widened, and a dimple appeared in his cheek. “Thanks.”

  Sadie had asked me if I’d stop by after practice, so I swung by her house before heading back to my hotel.

  “You’re still here!” she squealed when I walked into her kitchen, rushing over to give me a hug. “I don’t believe it!”

  “I’m still here.” I hugged her back, let her go, and mussed her hair. “Who else would have brought in your mail or taken out your trash?”

  She swatted my hand away. “Thank you for doing that. We appreciate it.”

  “No big deal.” I leaned back against the counter. “How was your trip?”

  She sighed. “Over too fast. But New Orleans is always a good time.”

  “You flew in this afternoon?”

  “Yes. And I’m so tired. I wish I had tomorrow off too, but I already took six full days off for this wedding.” She pulled a bottle of water from the fridge. “Want one?”

  “Sure, thanks.” I took the bottle she offered and twisted off the cap.

  With her back to me, she reached into the fridge again for a second bottle. “Josh went out to grab some groceries. I have no idea what we’re doing for dinner, but you’re welcome to stay.”

  I hesitated. Took a sip of water. “I’ll probably eat with April.”

  She shut the fridge door and spun around. “You will?”

  “Yeah. We’ve been hanging out.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And by hanging out, you mean . . .”

  I shrugged.

  Her mouth fell open. She uncapped her water bottle and took several big swallows. “Come on. Let’s go sit on the porch and you can fill me in. I have a feeling I’ve missed a lot since the wedding.”

  We went out her front door and sat on the front porch steps. It was a warm, mild evening, and the sun was just starting to slip behind the houses across the street. “Remind me to buy you guys some chairs for out here,” I said, lowering myself onto the cement.

  “Josh wants to put a patio in the back. This porch isn’t even big enough for furniture. This is more of a slab.” She sipped her water and sighed. “Although the patio will probably be put on hold with the baby coming.”

  “See? Kids ruin everything.”

  She kicked me with one foot. “So tell me about you and April. Is that why you’re still here?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Not entirely.”

  “But partially?”

  “You could say that.” I took another drink of water.

  “What’s the other part?”

  “I’ve been working with the baseball team over at the high school. David and Virgil Dean kind of guilted me into it, but it’s actually been a pretty good time.” I sipped again, remembering the talk I’d had with Virgil today.

  “That’s great.”

  I watched a few kids go by on their bicycles. “I wasn’t sure how I’d feel getting back into baseball without playing the game myself. I thought I might hate it.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “Not really. I mean, I’m always going to be angry that my career ended the way it did. It’s never going to make sense or seem fair to me. But . . . I guess I shouldn’t let it dictate the rest of my life.”

  “No. You shouldn’t.”

  I tipped up the water bottle, finishing it. “April has been on me this week about how I need to stop wallowing in the past and decide what I want the future to look like.”

  “You mean she wants you to stop being a grumpy old man? Stop living like a hermit? Admit there’s life worth living off the pitcher’s mound?” My sister poked my shoulder. “Gee, where have you heard that before?”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t have long red hair and dimples.”

  She laughed. “Okay, fine. I guess it doesn’t matter who got through to you as long as someone did. I was getting worried about you. And you live so far away, I can’t check up on you like a sister should. You make it hard to meddle.”

  “Well, guess what? I’m about to make your life easier—and mine harder.”

  She looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  I readjusted my cap. “I’m thinking of moving back.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her spine straightened. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah.” I laughed. “Are you glad to hear it or not?”

  “Yes, I’m glad! I’m just shocked.”

  “You’re not the only one.” I shook my head. “A week ago, I wouldn’t have considered it for a minute.”

  “That’s because you were too busy wallowing.” She poked my shoulder again. “So what changed your mind? Wait, let me guess—red hair and dimples.”

  I laughed a little. “She’s part of it. I like being around her. But also . . . I guess being back here isn’t as painful as I thought it was going to be. I mean, I still don’t like when people come up to me and ask me what the fuck went wrong, but I suppose they’re going to do that no matter where I am.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “It’s not like bad manners are limited by state lines.”

  I remembered something Virgil had said. “And hiding out was only going to work for so long. It’s not like I’m eighty. I’m not even forty. I don’t want to spend the next half of my life obsessing over the first half, wondering what the hell went wrong.”

  “That sounds like a lonely, miserable way to live,” she said softly. The kids on the bikes rode by again, and this time they waved at us. We both waved back.

  “And this thing with April,” I said, but then I couldn’t think of a way to finish the sentence. “I don’t know. It feels good.”

  Sadie said nothing but out of the corner of my eye I could see her smile.

  “What?” I said accusingly.

  “Nothing. It’s just a smile. It means I’m happy.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I have questions.”

  I groaned.

  “First, where are you going to live?”

  “No idea. I haven’t even looked yet, since I just started thinking about this last night.”

  “When would this happen?”

  “Don’t know that either. Summer? Maybe I can check out some listings over the weekend.”

  “Perfect. Finally, this thing with April. . . is it serious?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  She sighed in exasperation. “Because I need to know how excited to be on a scale of one to ten that you actually might, for once in your life, have an honest-to-goodness adult relationship.” She clutched her heart. “A—gasp—girlfriend.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I thought about it. “Seven.”

  “Seven?”

  “Maybe eight. I might even go as high as nine, but remember, it’s only been a week.”

  “Romeo and Juliet met on a Sunday, got married on a Monday.”

  “And weren’t they dead by Tuesday or something?”

  “No,” she said, as if she were offended. Then she quietly added, “It was Thursday.”

  Laughing, I shook my head. “We will not be getting married—or dying, I hope—anytime soon. But yes. I might have a girlfriend.”

  She swooned, tipping back on her cement porch and shouting at the sky. “You hear that, Dad? It’s a miracle!”

  Later, I took April out for dinner, and we talked more about everything—when I’d move, where I might look for houses, how much I’d miss Anna, what else I might do once I was back for good.

  “What about owning a business?” she suggested. “A sporting goods store? A sports bar? Batting cages?”

  “I don’t know anything about running a business.”

  “Well, you could hire people to run it. You could be the silent investor. Or the loud investor, whatever you prefer.
You could be as involved or as uninvolved as you chose.”

  “I’ll give it some thought.” I took a bite of my New York Strip. “I talked to the lefty about his scholarship.”

  “Did you get through to him?”

  “Maybe? Hard to say for sure, but—”

  “Excuse me for interrupting.”

  Even before I saw who was standing there, I recognized the smooth feminine voice dripping insincerity—it was that fucking reporter, Bethany Bloomstar. “I told you before,” I said without looking up from my New York Strip. “No comment.”

  “I was hoping maybe you’d changed your mind,” she said. “The piece is running tomorrow, and there’s still time for changes. Are you aware that some local parents have a problem with you coaching their children?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “And hello, April. We meet again,” she said.

  I looked up. Again? What the hell?

  “Yes. Hello.” April cleared her throat and met my eyes.

  “You two have met?” I asked.

  “Bethany and I had a meeting earlier in the week about having her wedding at Cloverleigh,” April said, her face flushed. “I didn’t realize you knew each other.”

  “We don’t.” I glared at Bethany, knowing a game player when I saw one. “Are you even planning a wedding? Or were you just digging around for dirt on me?”

  Bethany laughed and tossed her hair. “I’m practically engaged. And a woman needs to be prepared, right?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m confused.” April shook her head. “You’re not really getting married? That meeting was just an excuse to talk to me?”

  “Let’s just say I was killing two birds with one stone.”

  “Let’s just say you get the fuck away from us right now,” I told her, keeping my tone under control. The last thing I wanted was a scene.

  “Are you threatening me?” she asked loudly.

  A murmur rippled through the crowd, and I knew without even looking around, there were now phone cameras aimed at us.

  “Of course not,” April said, rising to her feet. “Why don’t we just—”

  “Because I’m only trying to do my job!” Bethany whined. “And I don’t appreciate being threatened by a man!”

  “Bethany, he’s not threatening you. He’s only—”

  “Forget it, April.” I stood up, grabbed my wallet from my pocket, and threw more than enough cash to cover the meal on the table. “Let’s just go.”

  Without another word, we grabbed our jackets and headed for the door, and just as I suspected, plenty of people took a video of us moving through the dining room toward the exit.

  In the car on the ride home, April took my hand. “I’m sorry, Tyler.”

  “Don’t be. Not your fault.”

  “It really stinks that people are so rude to you. They don’t respect your privacy at all.”

  I shrugged. “I can take it. I’m sorry your dinner was ruined.”

  She was quiet for a minute. “I feel so stupid about that meeting. I honestly thought she was getting married and wanted her wedding at Cloverleigh. But she asked me to please be discreet because she didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “Of course she didn’t.”

  “God, I’m so gullible. She went on and on about all the good things she’d heard about me, how incredible the place was, how it was exactly what she wanted.”

  I harrumphed. “What she wanted was dirt on me.”

  She slapped her hands over her face. “She asked about Sadie’s wedding and said she was a huge fan of yours, so I answered all her questions. I’m so sorry, Tyler.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t. I should have known something was off when she kept trying to bring you up. But I swear, I never said anything personal.”

  “She’s not worth getting upset over,” I said, even though I was upset too. When would people leave me the fuck alone? Now April was being dragged into this—and the last thing she needed was a reporter digging around in her life.

  “Do you think she’ll try to make it sound like you threatened her in there?”

  “Yeah. And she’ll have video to prove it,” I said sarcastically.

  “How? You didn’t do anything except ask her to leave!”

  “Doesn’t matter. People will see and hear what they want to.”

  She took my hand again. “I’m sorry. People suck.”

  I lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “Told you so. But let’s forget about her, okay? I’m still hungry, so what do you say we go back to my hotel room, order room service, and shut out the rest of the world tonight?”

  “Perfect.”

  Eighteen

  April

  I woke up in the middle of the night in an empty bed. The room was so dark I could hardly tell whether my eyes were open or shut. I heard a noise and sat up. “Tyler?”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  I reached over and switched on the bedside lamp. Blinking in the light, I saw Tyler standing as far back as possible from the full-length mirror, sideways, eyeing himself in the glass. He wore a pair of sweatpants, and his hands were balled at his chest, as if he were on the mound, about to throw a pitch.

  And then he did it—went through his entire motion, from windup to release, and I gasped, expecting the mirror to shatter when the ball struck it.

  But he hadn’t thrown a ball. He’d thrown . . . socks?

  “Hey,” I said, watching him retrieve the socks and go back to where he’d stood. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I do this when I can’t sleep sometimes.”

  I bit my lip. “Why can’t you sleep?”

  He shrugged, getting into position again. “I don’t know. I just can’t.”

  “Is it because of that reporter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Or the asshole dad you told me about? The one at practice?”

  “I told you. I don’t know.” He wound up and threw again, and even though I knew it was only socks, I still winced when they hit the glass.

  “Is it me?”

  He went over and picked up the socks. “It’s not you.”

  I didn’t believe him for some reason. Not entirely. “Come talk to me.”

  “I don’t feel like talking, okay? Just turn off the light and go back to sleep.”

  In my head, I went over the last couple hours before we’d gone to bed. Had I missed something? We’d gone up to his room, ordered dinner, watched a movie, and gotten naked before the credits even rolled. The sex had been incredible, as usual—maybe a little less loud and playful than usual, but he’d seemed fine afterward. Or had I fallen asleep so quickly, I hadn’t noticed that he wasn’t?

  Naked, I slipped out from beneath the covers and went up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my cheek against his bare back. “If you don’t come talk to me, I won’t be able to sleep either.”

  “Then I guess we’ll both be up,” he snapped. We stood there for a minute, then he exhaled. “Sorry. I had a bad dream. One I used to have all the time after I couldn’t pitch anymore.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Being buried alive.”

  “Oh.”

  “By a cement mixer.”

  “Yikes.”

  “And the wet cement starts to harden right away, so I can’t move. Can’t save myself. My arms and legs and hands are just . . . stuck. Useless.” He rolled his shoulders. “So I had to get out of bed and move. Remind myself I’m in control.”

  “Of course.” I kissed his spine. “Do you have bad dreams a lot?”

  “I used to. Since I quit baseball, not so much anymore.”

  “So what brought the dream back tonight?”

  “I’m not sure. Could have been that reporter, I guess. Or Brock, the asshole dad.” He paused. “Could have been the talk I had with Virgil this afternoon.”

  “About w
hat?”

  “Just some stuff about my father.”

  “Yeah?” I wouldn’t press. Instead, I gave him space to tell me about it if he wanted to.

  A beat went by before he spoke. “I asked Virgil if he thought my dad would’ve called me a quitter. If he thought my dad would’ve thought less of me for giving up the game.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said no, of course. That’s what he had to say.”

  “You don’t think that’s true?”

  “I can’t decide. I want it to be true, but . . . baseball was the only thing I ever did that made my dad proud. Without it, what’s left?”

  I swallowed hard. “How about the rest of your life? All the amazing things you’re going to do and be? Maybe you can’t see them yet, but I can.”

  He turned around and looked at me. Took my face in his hands. “No one has ever seen me the way you do.”

  I smiled. “Maybe no one ever bothered to look beyond the surface—I mean, you’re Tyler Shaw. The surface is pretty nice to look at.”

  He kissed me hard then, and deep, his tongue penetrating my lips, his hands sliding into my hair. The kiss grew hotter as he moved me backward toward the bed, shoving his pants down, and lifting me onto the sheets.

  “God, April,” he whispered as his mouth traveled down my throat and his hands roamed over my skin. “I want you so much. I want you so much it scares me.”

  “Why?” I arched beneath his lips and tongue and teeth and palms and fingers as they moved over my body. I put my hands in his hair.

  “Because I keep imagining this life with you, this life full of things I’ve never wanted before.”

  “What kinds of things?” As much as I loved his dirty mouth, his sweet words were just as thrilling, and I wanted to hear them all.

  “I want to share a bed with you every night. And wake up to you every morning. I want to make breakfast for you, see you in the stands at Central High baseball games, reach all the stuff in the high cupboards in the kitchen. I want to be the one you come home to.”

  I smiled. “Don’t be scared. I want all those things too.”

  “But what if I fuck it up?” He kissed his way up the center of my chest and braced himself above me. “What if I’m not good at it? What if I don’t deserve it?”