The Perfect Catch
Maggie Dallen
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
The Perfect Match
About the Author
Chapter One
Callie
My butt hurt from all the squats we’d done earlier that morning. My arms were sore from swinging the bat so many times I’d lost track. My thighs…oh God, my thighs were on fire from running. Really, there was no part of my body that wasn’t aching.
And I loved it.
“Way to go, Cooper!” The third base coach shouted after me as I ran all the way to home plate.
Once I’d passed the opposing team’s catcher, I slowed to a stop and bent over with my hands on my knees, grinning down at the ground as some of my new teammates came over to pat my shoulder and congratulate me on the home run.
It was only the first full day of the weeklong softball clinic at Fairfield University but after a grueling day of exercises and drills, I was already beat. In the best possible way, though. It was only going to get more intense from here, but that’s what this was all about. I mean, this was my chance. This was my year.
I’d be a senior in high school come fall, and this week of grueling training wouldn’t just enhance my skills. The last day featured three showcase games where recruiters across the country would be coming to watch us play.
If I was ever going to take my skills to the next level, this was it. And if I had any chance of landing a scholarship to Fairfield, my first choice, or any other school, this was my best opportunity. No pressure or anything. But I wasn’t worried, because this was what I’d come here for.
I was focused, I was determined, I was—
“Hey, there’s the hottie!” one of the girls in the crowd around me said.
The hottie? What luck. It just so happened I was on the lookout for a hottie. Granted, there was probably more than one on campus for the summer, but the one I was looking for worked part-time in the athletics department, so there was a very good chance that this was the one I’d been hoping to see.
Standing up straight, I ignored the girls who whispered and giggled around me as I scanned the area around the softball field for this alleged hottie. Last night all the girls in my dorm had been talking about the hot guy who’d been at the sign-in desk when they’d arrived yesterday and by their descriptions, the hottie in question was Noah.
My former neighbor and my brother’s best friend. I would have said my friend if things hadn’t been so awkward between us last time I saw him. I mean he was still my friend, I just wasn’t sure what to say to him when I saw him.
That was part of the reason I hadn’t called or texted to let him know I’d be here this week. I was sort of hoping that I’d see him and once we were together, in person, things would miraculously go back to normal between us.
But when I’d checked in yesterday I hadn’t seen him, or any other hotties, for that matter. I’d been greeted by Coach Everly, the middle-aged female coach who’d run the weeklong clinic the past two years that I’d attended. She’d barked at me to get my bags up to my room and be back down for drills in the half hour, and it had been nonstop training ever since.
Well, when we weren’t eating or sleeping. How was a girl supposed to hunt down a hottie under these conditions?
“Good work, Cooper,” Coach Everly said as I reached the sidelines.
“Thanks, Coach.”
“You keep that up. The college scouts will snatch you right up.”
I grinned up at her. Everly wasn’t known for being a sweet talker. If she said it then she meant it, and for a moment I forgot all about my brother’s best friend. “That’s the plan.”
“You know who got a scholarship last year? That Peggerton girl. Remember her?” Coach Everly kept talking—gossiping, really—about last year’s team. I tried not to let on that I was only half paying attention. One thing about coaches in general, and Coach Everly in particular—they really liked having your complete attention.
And if they didn’t get it there tended to be consequences, typically of the sprinting variety. My poor legs were hurting enough after last night’s drills. I so did not need to punish them any more.
So I held her gaze, nodding and smiling and avoiding the urge to sneak a glimpse over her shoulder toward the locker rooms where all the other girls were staring.
It was Noah, I knew it. I could just tell. Giddy excitement had me bouncing on my toes. It had been almost a year since we’d hung out. And no, I wasn’t counting Christmas break. He’d been in a mood to end all moods and had taken it out on me.
I mean, he hadn’t exactly been sweetness and light to my brother Eric either, but I’d been the one to get the worst of it. He’d given new meaning to the term cold shoulder.
I pressed my lips together in annoyance at the memory of the way he’d ignored me and glowered at me like I was some pest. My brother might have treated me that way at times, but never Noah.
But that was all in the past. He’d had his reasons for being a grouch, and while I didn’t condone his behavior toward me, I was ready to forgive and forget. Surely enough time had passed since they discovered the injury that had ended his baseball career. By now he had to be ready to be friends again.
“…pace yourself and make sure…” Coach was still talking.
I had to bite my lower lip to hold back an impatient sigh. I was so close to Noah and not being able to run over to him was killing me. Killing me. We’d known each other since forever so, while he might technically have been Eric’s best friend, he was a crucial part of my world.
He’d grown up in the house next door and had been in our lives for as long as I could remember. After he and Eric had graduated last year, they’d gone separate ways. Eric and his longtime girlfriend Miranda went off to school in San Francisco. He’d always been into the arts so California seemed like a good fit for him. He hadn’t even come home for the summer. He told my parents it was because he wanted to take summer classes, but I knew from talking to him that he was just having too much fun.
Which was good, it was fine. But I missed him, and I missed Noah, so when I found out that he was going to be staying at his school for an internship this summer—the same school where I was heading for a softball clinic…
Well, I was psyched. I missed my friend.
And there he was. The friend in question. I spotted him over my roommate Maddie’s shoulder just as he walked around the corner heading toward the admin building. Thankfully Coach seemed to be wrapping it up and I gave her one last nod and smile before bounding off after him, all thoughts of sore legs forgotten.
“Wait up,” Maddie called from behind me. She was a seasoned veteran of this clinic—partly because she was super serious about softball, but also because the campus was basically in her backyard. She still stayed on campus with the rest of us during camp, though, and we’d become great friends, even though this was the one week of the year we actually saw each other in person.
The rest of the year we relied on some video calls and texts to stay up to date on one another’s lives. But I hadn’t told her about Noah. I mean, there wasn’t really much to tell. So my brother’s best friend had been a jerk to me. It wasn’t the end of the world and telling anyone about his private health issues had just seemed like an invasion of privacy.
I turned ba
ck to watch the smaller brunette chase after me, a few other girls following close behind her. I loved these girls but I really needed to talk to Noah alone. He hadn’t spotted me yet, but when he did I sure as heck didn’t want him seeing me approach en masse like I was ganging up on him or something.
“Are you going to talk to him?” Maddie asked, all wide-eyed excitement like I was about to meet a celebrity and not Noah, my lifelong friend.
I hadn’t exactly mentioned to her that I knew a hottie on campus, either. Trust me when I said that giving Maddie-the-boy-crazed-flirt that sort of ammunition would have led to a week filled with teasing and innuendos that I was so not in the mood for.
“I can’t believe you’re going to go up to him,” one of the other girls said as she drew near.
Well, now I just felt bad for having to burst their bubble.
Sure enough, one of them asked, “What are you going to say?”
“I was thinking of starting with ‘hi,’” I teased. “But maybe that’s too forward. What do you think?”
They were staring at me like I’d lost my mind and I rolled my eyes. I mean, yes, everyone knew Noah was sexy as sin. He’d been droolworthy ever since he’d hit puberty. He’d shot up to six feet seemingly overnight and filled out in every other way as well. He was genetically blessed in the face—only amazing DNA could account for the strong jawline, the thick dark hair and those piercing blue eyes. But by the way he acted, one would think Noah deserved all the credit.
Yup, Noah was a sexy stud and he knew it. Just ask any of the girls from our high school. His player status was legendary.
But I loved him all the same. How could I not? He’d been Eric’s best friend since they were both in kindergarten. Which would have made me three? Yup, almost two years younger, so I was the little diaper-clad baby toddling around after them that first year we moved onto Devon Street.
“Relax, you guys,” I said as I turned back to follow him around the corner where he’d disappeared. “He’s just an old friend.”
He was just an old friend. So I shouldn’t feel this weird knot in my belly at the thought of talking to him. There was nothing weird between us. Nothing. Or at least…there shouldn’t be. He’d been going through a rough time, having to make some hard choices about his future. And of course it couldn’t have been easy to be around me, of all people. Baseball, softball…that was our thing. So yeah, of course he’d had a hard time being around me back then. But months had gone by. Surely by now we could go back to normal.
But much as I told myself that, I couldn’t quite convince my stomach to unknot itself as I drew closer.
I rounded the corner and spotted his back walking away from me. I’d know that lanky build anywhere, we’d chased after the same ball in my backyard more times than I could count. That killer right arm had taught me everything I know about throwing a curveball. And that butt…
Wait, what? No. Stop looking at Noah’s butt, weirdo. He’s practically your brother.
“Noah!” I called out.
He didn’t stop.
I ran a little faster. “Noah. Hey, Noah, wait up!”
He slowed and then stopped. He clearly didn’t recognize my voice. When I reached his side, I came at him with a nudge to his good arm that had him stumbling to the side. I spun around to face him, blocking his path, a big dumb grin on my face. Have I mentioned that I’d missed this guy.
Noah’s typical slow grin was slower than usual as his gaze moved over my me, taking in my heart-shaped face which was probably flushed pink from all the running, the long blonde ponytail, and the giant smile. His gaze clashed with mine and my smile faltered at the shuttered look.
It was only then that I realized his slow, sexy grin was so slow it was almost…nonexistent. It had stopped spreading halfway and the effect was disconcerting.
This was not his easy, affectionate smile I’d come to expect from him whenever he saw me.
It was more like a smirk, actually.
A lot of people would tell you that Noah was too serious. He had quite the reputation for being too intense—on the field and off. But he was never like that around me. With me he was different.
But now…well, now I didn’t know what to think. Part of me, an admittedly paranoid, crazy part—was debating the possibility that Noah had been possessed by an alien.
This wasn’t him.
This was so not the Noah I knew and loved.
There was none of typical amusement at the sight of me, none of that laughter sparkling in his bright blue eyes. The vivid blue eyes were cold and that ugly smirk was the only sign that he recognized me at all.
“Cooper,” he said with the tiniest hint of a drawl, the only sign that he’d moved to our tiny Upstate New York town from the South. “I’d heard you be here.”
No doubt from his mother, Elvira Mason, the former Southern Belle responsible for the subtle twang in his voice that I’d always found so soothing…until now. Because while he might have heard I’d be here at his college campus for softball camp, he hardly sounded happy about it.
He sounded resigned, at best. And that was me being optimistic. Others might have said he sounded unhappy that he’d run into me.
My smile was faltering big time but I clung to habit, to a million interactions that contradicted this moment. A lifetime of experience told me we were friends—more than friends. We were practically family.
With that thought in mind, I ignored his weird reception and threw my arms around his neck for a big hug.
One word came to mind.
Awkward.
It might go down as one of the most awkward embraces in history. Why? Because it was completely one-sided. I had my arms locked around him, up on my tiptoes with the full length of my body pressed to his long, torso.
As for Noah? He was doing his best impersonation of a Greek statue. I knew from past experience watching him mow his lawn without a shirt that he had the hard muscular perfection of a Greek god beneath that faded T-shirt of his, but it was the frozen rigidity of his body that really sold it at this moment.
He didn’t lift his arms at all, not even to give me a little pat on the back let alone an actual bear hug like he used to, back before things got weird.
I tried to ignore the hurt of his rejection. It was just my pride that was wounded, that was all. As I pulled back from the one-sided hug with an even more awkward stumble backwards, I spotted Maddie and half the other girls from camp watching this interaction from a few yards away.
Wonderful. My humiliation had an audience. I forced my smile back into place as I reminded myself yet again that Noah was just going through a rough time and seeing me probably didn’t help matters.
It’s not like I caused his injury or anything; torn labrums could happen to any pitcher. Granted, it sucked massively that it happened so early in his career. Before he really got to even have a career. There’d been talk of surgeries, but in the end he’d decided that his career as a pitcher was a done deal. So really, it was not my fault that he’d had to quit baseball. It was nothing so dramatic that had him giving me that cold, resentful glare.
At first I’d been just as confused as everyone else about his weird behavior toward me over Christmas break. I mean, his mom even apologized on his behalf, that’s how bad it had been.
But it was my brother who’d finally hinted at what was behind the sudden shift.
Eric had given me an impatient sigh when I’d asked him for the tenth time what Noah’s problem was. “Callie, the guy can’t play ball anymore. Give him a break.”
My brother hadn’t exactly spelled it out for me but that comment had opened my eyes. For the first time I’d put myself in Noah’s position. I’d tried to imagine how I’d feel if our roles were reversed.
What if I’d been the one who’d had my dream come true by being recruited for a college baseball team only to have it all ripped away because of a stupid injury.
And then, what if I had to go home for break and see my friend and
neighbor who shared my love of the sport and watch as she trains to do everything that I could not?
Okay, that might have been a little melodramatic, but that’s how I imagined it from his point of view, and that’s how I came to realize that his bad behavior had nothing to do with me and everything to do with what I represent.
His lost opportunities.
I tried reminding myself of that now in the awful tense silence that followed the epically bad hug, but it was so much harder to be empathetic when he was staring at me like that.
Like he didn’t know me.
Like I was some stranger—the annoying high schooler from the softball clinic sent over here to chat up the big bad college guy.
I could feel my friends and teammates watching us and that didn’t help matters. Humiliation burned along my skin at the feel of their curious stares, their no doubt pitying glances.
Because really, he was making me look like some high school girl with a crush. And that was so not the case.
All my sympathy went out the window and irritation took its place. Why did he have to be such a jerk when I hadn’t done anything wrong? And why on earth couldn’t he at least pretend to be normal in front of my teammates?
“Are you working on campus?” I asked.
“Yup.” His gaze was too knowing, and rightfully so. He probably saw the truth from a mile away. Of course I knew that he was working on campus. He was doing an internship at the sports health center and working at Cazmo’s, the local pizza place. His manager’s name was Sam. Nice guy, apparently.
I knew all this because his mother had told me.
Even Eric had mentioned it to me last time we’d Skyped. Not the pizza place part, but the fact that like my brother, Noah would be staying near campus for the summer. Apparently once you leave our tiny town, it’s impossible to return for long.
The Perfect Catch (Kissing the Enemy Book 1) Page 1
