The Catch

by K. Bromberg

  “I don’t need anything from you.” And those words only serve to cut me deeper.

  “You refuse to go anywhere near the windows when I’m home. You say you don’t want to be reminded of what you’re missing, and yet every time I come home, you’re sitting there, staring at exactly that. You won’t go out. You won’t talk to me. You won’t do anything. It’s been two weeks since the surgery and I’m still sleeping in the guest room.” I’m whining. I know I am, but it’s only because I’m worried, and I miss him desperately, but feel completely helpless.

  “You don’t understand,” he finally says, gaze still fixed on the view beyond.

  “You’re right,” I say, dropping to my knees in front of him. “I don’t. So help me understand. Please, Easton. Just let me in.”

  “I told you I don’t need anything and I meant it.”

  His words sting regardless of how many times he says them.

  “I think you should talk to Finn and consider the offer,” I say, trying to get him to focus on something other than what he’s lost.

  “You also think taking a walk outside will make everything better. Why don’t you just kiss my boo-boo while you’re at it? I’m sure that will work miracles and heal me. Right?”

  “Don’t be a dick.”

  “Then don’t act like my mother.” His eyes meet mine. They’re hard and angry and unrelenting.

  “I think I’m going to sleep at my place tonight.” I choke back the sob threatening to come out.

  “Good idea,” he sneers and then looks back toward the window, effectively dismissing me.

  I stand there for a beat, hoping against hope that he’ll apologize for being a prick, that he’ll ask me to stay, but he does neither so I leave.

  When I exit the building, I stop in indecision but ultimately decide to walk the several blocks home to clear my head and dull the hurt. While I know he’s having a difficult time adjusting to the fact that he busted his ass to get back to the game to have it ripped back away just as he was making a killer comeback, I don’t know how to show him the bright side of things.

  I need to get him out of his funk.

  With each step, I realize I might have an idea how to help him. I dial my cell. “Scout?”

  “Hey, Drew.”

  “How’s the asshole?”

  I laugh because he has no clue how right he is. “If you want to know the truth, right now he’s been upgraded to fucking asshole status.”

  “Ohh. That bad, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I say, knowing I sound like I’m playing around. The hurt is still real, though. “I think he needs some testosterone intervention.”

  “We tried. I called him yesterday to get him to come out with us after the game. I even offered my chauffeuring service to him but he declined.”

  “That’s cuz you drive like a maniac.” I laugh.

  “Every man’s got to have one wild streak.”

  “Oh please.” I glance around as I approach the backside of the stadium, the halfway mark between both of our places. “What if you take the party to him? He won’t leave the house. I’m not sure if he doesn’t want people to see him with his sling or if he truly is pissed at the world . . . but he keeps pushing me away and . . .” My words fade off as I try to fight back my tears. I’m certain he can hear them in the waver of my voice, though.

  “You okay, Scout?” Concern floods his voice.

  “Yeah. I will be. We had a fight, and I just need a break for the night.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “Go home. Go out with friends. Do something and leave the fucker to us. I’ll call Tino and JP and round up a few others. We’ll head over. He won’t be able to refuse a pack of us. Besides, we have a long plane ride tomorrow to sleep it off.”

  I’m distracted by something to my left through the narrow opening of the exterior wall. For an instant I think I see Cal and Santiago talking in the stadium’s parking lot.

  “Thanks, Drew,” I say, distracted as I step back to look again.

  But when I look again, it’s just Cal, hands on his hips, and an expression I can’t make out from the distance.

  I jolt awake. I’m disoriented. I’m on the couch. My couch. Not Easton’s. My pulse races as I try to figure out what I was dreaming about.

  And just as my heart starts to calm, there’s a clink on my window. It scares the shit out of me, but also makes me wonder if I didn’t have a nightmare at all and that’s what woke me up. I glance at the clock—it’s three a.m.—and grab my cell on the coffee table beside me, ready to dial 9-1-1. Am I’m overreacting? Leave it to me to call the cops when there’s a branch hitting the window or something benign like that.

  Just as I have myself talked into that theory, the noise happens again—tink—but this time it’s several at once, almost as if . . . what the hell?

  I get up from the couch, crouch down, and creep over to the window. I probably look ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than thinking there is someone throwing pebbles at my window in the early morning hours. As I pull back the curtains to look out, the noise hits again. I’m startled by it, and surprised when I look out to see Easton standing in my front yard.

  I have the window open in a beat. “Easton. What are you—it’s three in the morning.”

  His laugh floats up to where I am and as mad as I am at him, the sound of it so very welcome.

  “Do you know how pathetic I am?” he asks, but finishes the question with more laughter as he stumbles and affirms my assumption that he’s more than a little drunk. “I can’t even be a decent Romeo. You’re on the first story and I can’t even throw rocks that high because I have to do it left-handed. As you can see, my left-handed aim is for shit.”

  I’m on the second story, but I guess he had a good enough time with the guys tonight to forget how to count properly. I fight the smile tugging at the corner of my lips just like him being here tugs on the strings of my heart.

  “Guess what?” he asks, lowering his voice to a whisper like he has a secret.

  “What?”

  “I’m drunk as fuck.” His chuckle echoes up to me. “But I needed to come here. To see you. Do you know you live a long-ass way from me? Too far. Way too far. That’s why you need to give up your lease because it’s way too far to walk when you’re drunk. And I’m drunk. Wait, where was I?” He scratches his head with his good arm and looks like a little kid who just woke up from a hard sleep—hair’s a mess, clothes are rumpled, and a sheepish grin is on his lips. “Oh. Yeah. Explaining. I needed to come here to apologize. Apologize? Is that the right word? Yes. I believe it is.”

  I can’t help but laugh. He looks adorable, and I swear he’s actually smiling for the first time since he was injured in New York. “And so you decided to walk here. You could have called, you know?”

  “Nope. Not good enough.” He shakes his head a little too hard and then basically giggles when the world around him spins from the alcohol. “I wanted to try and be like one of your romance books, so I decided to come and stare at you up on your balcony.”

  “But I don’t have a balcony.” This is too much fun, he’s too much fun, to not give him a hard time.

  “Where is your imagination? Pretend, will you?”

  “Okay. What am I supposed to pretend other than I’m on a balcony right now?”

  “That I look like Fabio.” He flips his pretend long hair with his hand.

  “Eeeewwww.” I giggle.

  “You’re ruining the scene I’m setting here,” he scolds.

  “Yes. Sorry.” I try to keep a straight face, but it’s incredibly hard to do when he’s so endearing. “Continue. Please.”

  “As I was saying, I thought I should come across town, and say, Scout, I was a dick. A big and fat and hairy one. Not a manscaped one. The kind that’s so gross you get pubes in your teeth and can’t get them out.”

  Oh. My. God. I double over with laughter. Tears well in my eye
s from laughing so hard and trying to take in what he just said. It’s a train wreck and hilarious and all I keep thinking is I hope my neighbors are not hearing any of this.

  When I stop laughing and can keep a straight face, he’s standing there with his hands on his hips and his eyebrows raised silently asking if I’m done yet.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh at you.” I snicker. “But how exactly do you know about a man’s pubes in your teeth?”

  “Oh. God. No.” And then his eyes grow wide as he realized how what he said sounded like. “I was just talking. Not from knowledge. That’s just . . . I’m doing something here. I’m apologizing, right?”

  He’s so damn adorable.

  “There’s only one problem with your apology, Hot Shot.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Romeo and Juliet both kill themselves in the end.”

  “Oh.” His face is a picture of shock, and regardless of how hard he tries to hold back his own laughter, the giggles hit him again. “I guess that shows you I can’t read for shit.”

  “We’ll just say that details aren’t your strong suit.”

  He shrugs. “Hey, Scout.” His voice is more serious now and pulls my attention.

  “Hey, Easton.”

  “I love you.”

  And there he goes stealing my heart again.

  “You’re forgiven.”

  “Good,” he says animatedly as he part-jogs, part-stumbles up the stairs to my front door. “Because when this alcohol burns off, my arm’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker, and I’m gonna need your nursing skills.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yep.” He looks back up to me. “Preferably the kind in a tight white uniform dress thingy with a zippered front and lots of cleavage. Oh, and garters. Garters turn me on.”

  I leave the window as he rambles and rush downstairs. When I open the door, he’s staring at me—three sheets to the wind—but he’s still the best thing I’ve seen all day.

  “Just checking in to see how you’re doing?”

  “I’m fine, Scouty-girl. Just fine.”

  “Liar.”

  “Perhaps.” His chuckle is interrupted by a coughing fit. “How’s the program coming along?”

  I look to the charts and dry erase boards I have lining my office walls and smile. “Good.” I think. “I have Ramos traveling with the team so I can stay back and work with Dillinger and Wiseman.” And to be home just in case you need me.

  “The knee and the elbow.”

  “Yes.” I shake my head at our shorthand. “I want to be the one to nurse them out of surgery.”

  “And I’m sure you sending Ramos on the road trip had absolutely nothing to do with Easton still being in town.”

  I smile. Sigh. And then lie. “Not at all.”

  “I’ll start believing that about the same time you start believing I’m doing just fine.”

  “Be sure to let us know when you need another break from East,” Tino calls from the locker room as I make my way out.

  “We had a great time.” JP snickers.

  “I don’t want to know,” I say, hands up in mock surrender. I’ve been in enough clubhouses not to be shocked by whatever it was they were talking about. Besides, ignorance is bliss.

  And yet as I push through the door, I can’t help the automatic smile remembering how that night ended. With Easton in bed with me for the first time in two weeks. Sure he was propped up on all kinds of pillows to alleviate any strain on his muscles and the healing tendons, but he was still in bed beside me, fingers linked with mine.

  “Privilege doesn’t guarantee you can handle the sport.” I hear Cal’s voice before I see him. And when I clear the corner, I’m startled to see Santiago opposite him. Both men startle back when they see me standing there, but there is no erasing the tension snapping in the air between them.

  “Everything okay?” I ask when I know damn well their conversation is none of my business.

  “Yes. Fine,” Cal says, taking a step toward me. “Just discussing a team matter.”

  “Oh.” My eyes flit from Cal to Santiago and then back to Cal, uncertain if I believe what he’s said. “Okay.”

  What the hell was that all about?

  The exchange is still on my mind as I head home but I’m probably making more of it than there really was. Maybe Cal was defending Easton. Maybe he was telling Santiago he’ll never be able to fill his son’s shoes. And maybe pigs can fly.

  I chuckle at the thought as I wait politely for sorority girl to exit the elevator, nodding to her in a brief hello, before getting on, turning my key in the panel to give me access to the penthouse.

  It’s not until I enter the condo that I realize how exhausted I am. When I find Easton reading some papers on the couch, I drop my purse on the counter and move toward him. He tosses his papers on the table the minute he sees me and smiles.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.” He looks so damn inviting that I sit down and curl up next to him as best as I can without hurting his shoulder.

  “Watcha reading?” I ask.

  “It’s, uh . . . nothing. I’m just looking over some of the examples and new pamphlets for the upcoming projects for the Literacy Project.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “I figure I might as well do something while I’m injured.”

  “That’s very honorable of you, Mr. Wylder. And very sexy.”

  He chuckles. “Sexy, huh?”

  “Incredibly.”

  “How sexy?”

  “Brownie points kind of sexy.”

  “I’ll have to keep that in mind and use it to my advantage in the future.” He chuckles and pulls me in tighter against him, and as the comfortable silence settles around us, all I can think of is that he smells like home. It sounds strange but after traveling so much in my life, never having anything of permanence, it’s a welcome thought. “I talked to Finn today.”

  Proceed with caution. That’s my first thought considering the last few times he’s talked to Finn about the offer to be a guest commentator for a game on Fox Sports has ended in a fight.

  “You did?” I ask innocently enough.

  “Yeah.” He falls silent as he fidgets with a lock of my hair. “I still haven’t decided what to do. I kinda feel like it’ll look like I’m giving up. Public perception is always harsh . . . one minute they’re gossiping I took the gig because I’m washed-up and the next thing you know, the Wranglers believe it and let me go . . . And then I am washed-up.”

  “You’re being absurd,” I huff, knowing how fragile a man’s ego is, but also thinking these kid gloves need to come off so he can face reality. “People will think just the opposite. You’re not washed-up and never coming back. Instead they’ll think you’re smart for hooking a second gig while you’re recovering for next season.”

  “I think you’re underestimating how vicious the press can be.”

  “Who cares what the press thinks? You sure as hell never have, so why start now?”

  “It’s not that easy, Scout. You look at the world through these rose-colored glasses.”

  “And what of it? Maybe I like pink.” I shrug, not offended in the least of my positive outlook. “And it is easy. You’ve talked baseball your whole life. You go on camera, talk about the one thing you know inside and out. Give some color commentary and insight during the game and that’s it. I’ve watched you do it numerous times with the local Aces broadcaster, and you’re a natural.”

  “That’s not the only thing I know inside and out,” he chuckles, voice full of suggestion, as his hand finds the curve of my ass and squeezes.

  “True,” I murmur, those warm fluttery feelings returning with a vengeance because he definitely does know me inside and out. “But there will be no cameras or color commentary in our bedroom.”

  “You’re such a spoilsport,” he says playfully.

  “And you’re changing the subject.”

  “You noticed?”

  I roll my eyes. “You’re a
fraid it’s going to make you look like a has-been . . . how about you look at it from the glass half-full perspective? It’s visibility. It’s keeping your name relevant in the game when you can’t be on the field. Who knows? Maybe it will lead to something you can do off the field when baseball is over some day.”

  “After baseball is death.”

  “Stop being so dramatic. You know that’s not true. There will come a day when you can’t play anymore. Why not start trying to figure out a way to stay in the game, but not be the game?”

  He falls silent and I know I’ve piqued his interest. “Baseball is all I’ve ever known.” His anxiety is palpable and for the life of me, I don’t know how he can’t see what I’m trying to say to him.

  “That’s my whole point. If it’s what you know, then try to capitalize on it and plan for the future.”

  “It’s scary to think about then. About what happens when my arm gives out for good or my knees can’t take the abuse anymore. About when this game is over, you know?” His voice is raw with a vulnerability I never expected.

  “I know,” I say and press a kiss to the center of his chest before shifting so I can see his face. There are lines there, concern marring his handsome features that I wish I could take away. “Easton, there is no other sport on the planet where you play one hundred and eighty-six games in a season. None. That’s a lot of wear and tear on your body. At some point in the distant future, it won’t be worth it anymore. You have to realize there is life after baseball. The question is, whether you want that life to be free and clear so you’re not reminded of what you’re missing daily, or if you want to be a part of it somehow because it’ll always be in your blood.”

  I hate to see the tears glisten in his eyes. I hate knowing he’s this upset by the mere mention of when he can no longer play. Then again, he’s been living in this state for the past year with a cruel glimpse of his greatness between injuries . . . so maybe he knows all too well the hurt leaving the game will cause him. The void that will remain.

  “You think I can do it?” I hate that for a man always so confident in himself he sounds like a little boy right now.