He stopped kissing the woman. “Dude, we’re going to need your room for an hour.”
Then Danny turned his head, saw his wife and the expletive that fell from his mouth was totally accurate.
“Lane, what the hell? Dude,” Danny shouted at Roy, “you said no wives!”
As this weird buzzing noise filled his head, Roy tried to think through what was happening. The crazy thing was he really hadn’t expected the plan to work so well. Here he was, this grown man, not some actor in a soap opera, who had devised a nefarious plot. It should have completely backfired.
Only nope. It had worked to absolute freaking perfection. Which, of course, meant that it really did backfire.
Lane faced Roy. Not her cheating husband. Roy. “You knew he was coming? You knew he was coming with someone?” Her voice had a raw, harsh quality he’d never heard from her before.
Since it was hard to form words while his head still buzzed, he simply nodded.
“You did this? To me? On purpose? I thought—I thought we were...friends.”
Friends. She thought they were friends. She cared about him at least that much.
He’d had that and now he’d lost it. He could see it in her face.
“You bastard.”
The word hit as if she’d stabbed him in the gut. Yes, he’d done this on purpose. He’d humiliated and inflicted pain upon the only woman he thought could ever really matter to him.
Roy held up his hands as if to remind her she knew what an ass he could be.
He could see her shake as she approached him and he kept his hands down, opened himself to whatever she would say next.
She slapped him. Hard, across his cheek. As punishment, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“I hate you for this. I hate you, Roy Walker.”
Then she walked past Danny and his flavor of the moment without so much as a word.
* * *
ROY LATER LEARNED that Lane moved out of her home that night. She and Danny were divorced six months later. The Founders’ season collapsed as the locker room never got over the pure hatred the star pitcher and shortstop felt for each other. And Lanie left her sports therapy business, putting the world of professional baseball behind her.
Roy heard she’d taken a job working at a veterans rehab facility. Helping soldiers with missing limbs adjust to their prosthetics. Sounded like something Lanie would choose to do.
At the start of his final game in baseball, Roy focused on doing what he’d promised himself he would. Go out on top.
And he did. Pitched a “no-no.” No hits. Only one walk. It wasn’t for the playoffs, or for the World Series win. Just the end of a lousy season, but a great career.
In his heart Roy knew he did it for her. The princess of baseball deserved such a tribute. Even though he doubted she watched.
After, he changed out of his uniform, got into his car and drove away from the stadium and the game that had been his life since he was six years old.
It was time to start a new life. Maybe in this new life he could forget Lanie Baker ever existed. The way she had so obviously done with him. He’d written her a letter to try to explain why he’d done it and, more importantly, that he was sorry.
He never heard from her.
Yes, it was definitely time to move on and forget his princess. After all, everyone knew the villain didn’t get the princess. Only the hero did. And Roy was never the hero.
Copyright © 2015 by Stephanie Doyle
ISBN-13: 9781460378816
Mother by Fate
Copyright © 2015 by Tara Taylor Quinn
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