of Mr. Acosta’s talent and skills during his suspension. But in the physical sense, no, neither man
sustained game-threatening injuries.”
“Will they be able to play together as teammates following the suspension?”
“That will have to be a question you ask them. I understand Mr. Acosta will be speaking with you
shortly.”
“Do you have any information about what may have caused this altercation?”
Dylan held her breath and closed her eyes, waiting for the answer.
“Again, perhaps that’s something to ask them. Mr. Acosta may be the best person to pose that
question to. Thank you everyone.”
The MLB executive exited the stage quickly, probably sensing that the turn the questions had
begun to take would not be helpful. Certainly not to the image of baseball, and not to that of either of
the players involved.
On television, the New York 1 sportscaster, Paige Allen, whom Dylan had met what seemed ages
ago was onscreen. Her face was a mask of false solemnity.
“Well, this has been a swift and sudden fall from grace for Mark Acosta who swept into town with
the mantle of . . .”
Dylan hit the mute button, preferring not to listen to the evidence of the damage she had done.
Ava was looking at her as though trying to decide whether she should speak or let her alone. Dylan
stood and went to her dressing room to find her tennis shoes.
Afterwards, she went to the bathroom and silently combed out her hair, pulling it back into a
ponytail and applying concealer beneath her eyes. When she re-emerged, Ava was looking at the
television screen. There was another flurry of activity which made it clear something else was about to
happen. She shot Dylan a questioning look as though asking whether she was up to watching. Dylan
nodded and Ava turned the sound up.
It seemed like forever before someone came out. It was Corey and moments later, behind him was
Mark. As soon as he came into view, Dylan’s heart began pounding. She leaned forward as though she
might see some detail about him not revealed by the high definition television. He was wearing jeans
and a button-down shirt. His face was a mask, but he looked tired. Dylan felt a profound urge to touch
him, to hold him overcome her.
She didn’t hear a word Corey said, she was so focused on Mark. When he blinked, it was slowly.
He almost looked medicated but she knew from experience that it was exhaustion and detachment. It
was a look that said he would do what was necessary of him in the moment, but was emotionally and
mentally elsewhere. She could only speculate about where that might be. Not with her, that was for
sure.
Then he was moving towards the podium, his face grave. It took him a moment to speak. He first
pursed his lips and took a deep breath, then he looked into the camera.
“Last night,” he began. “I let myself down. I let my teammates down. I let the fans, Major League
Baseball and the Mets organization down. My behavior was outside of the bounds of what was
expected of me, and the penalty I suffered for it was fair and appropriate.
“I also want to take this time to apologize to my friends and my family, to people who supported
and were proud of me. Going forward, my focus will be on serving out the period of my suspension in
a productive manner and getting my head back into the game. Thank you.”
“Mark do you also want to apologize to Ray Hernandez at this time?” someone yelled. Corey looked irritated at the question and seized Mark’s arm, trying to pull him away from the
podium, but he was not quick enough. Mark leaned toward to the mike one last time. “No,” he said, his face and voice hard. “I do not.”
At that, a cacophony of questions were hurled in his direction, but Corey was already pulling him
away and offstage, obviously giving him an earful as he did.
Ava looked at Dylan, waiting.
“I have to go,” she said finally.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Ava asked.
Dylan smiled without humor. “I would love it. But I think it’s probably best that I go alone, don’t
you?”
Ava nodded.
16
The hush was immediate as she entered the room. Dylan looked around at the faces of Mark’s family—her family—and the only person who would meet her eyes was Miri. After a moment, she stood and came around from the dinner table, putting an arm about Dylan’s shoulder.
“Just in time,” she said, her voice a study in false cheer.
“Yes,” Mrs. Acosta stood as well and indicated the place at the table that was customarily Dylan’s.
“Come, come. Eat.”
“Dylan surveyed the table, her eyes stopping at the end where Mark sat next to his father, his gaze
trained at his plate of food. As she drew nearer, Peter didn’t have any trouble meeting her gaze and
his look was downright hostile. Matt seemed to be trying to read her, and Mr. Acosta was unreadable.
Xiomara gave her a small sympathetic smile.
Dylan’s place at the table was directly opposite Mark, which was where she wanted to be, but
dreaded being. Watching him ignore her would make the meal unbearable, but she also wanted to be
able to see his face without having to be so obvious about it.
As soon as she was seated, everyone tried to resume the meal, but having been to countless
Sunday dinners, this one was atypical, to say the least. There was scarcely any conversation, and
everyone seemed to be thinking of things to say. Dylan woodenly reached for rice and beans,
spooning some into her plate, took helpings of chicken and vegetables, all the while stealing glances at
Mark.
After an excruciating ten or so minutes of that farce, he was suddenly getting up from his place at
the table and walking around to grab Dylan’s arm and pull her up from her seat.
“¡Marcos!” his father snapped at him.”¡Cuidado!”
“She’s fine,” Mark said, pulling Dylan along behind him.
As humiliating as it was to be dragged away like a child, she was almost relieved because the
silence that preceded it had been far worse.
“Mark,” Miri stood, her expression frightened. “Don’t . . .”
And only then did Mark let go of Dylan’s arm. Instead he nodded toward the stairs and she
hesitated only a moment before going ahead of him up to the second floor. Dylan walked the hallway ahead of him, heading for his old room, feeling as though she was walking toward her execution. While she would certainly survive this conversation, it remained to be seen whether her marriage
would.
Once in the room, Dylan sat on the edge of the bed on her hands because she didn’t know what
she would do with them otherwise. Mark entered behind her and shut the door, leaning against it.
Afraid to look at his face, she instead picked a spot just above his left shoulder, but Mark wasn’t
fooled.
“You’re not looking at me,” he said, his voice surprisingly quiet.
With some difficultly, Dylan shifted her gaze so that her eyes met his. When they did, he stared at
her, searching. She knew he was looking for signs of deception, wondering whether he would know if
she was being honest or not. It hurt to know that his doubt was that profound.
“Did you fuck him?”
Until he asked it, Dylan naively thought she knew what was at the heart of the matter, and that all
Mark believed—and what had made him angry—was she had defied him and found he
rself in a
position where Ray Hernandez had the chance to make a pass at her. Foolish as it now seemed, she
had never contemplated that he would seriously think she would willingly become involved with
Ray. Sexually involved. One of the pictures showed her smiling, but surely, he had to know that . . . Her mind was still reeling when he asked the question again, this time not at all quietly. His voice
was loud, like the crack of a whip.
“Did you fuck him?”
Dylan sat motionless, numb. She could vaguely hear movement downstairs and then footsteps as
someone came running up the stairs.
“¿Por qué no me respondiste?” And then as if only just realizing he was not speaking English, Mark
shook his head, frustrated. “Answer me!”
“No! Of course I didn’t!”
“You seemed to need to think about it,” he said, his voice bitter, as he advanced toward her. “Are
you not sure what that entails, fucking? It’s what you did when you came home and found me in the
kitchen. You fucked me so I wouldn’t ask you any questions.”
“No, Mark, that isn’t what . . .”
“It isn’t?” he cut her off. “So what was it then, Dylan? You barely said a word to me before my
dick was in your mouth.”
She flinched at his words, at how loudly he said them and how disdainful he sounded. She had
never known Mark to curse before. Not at her, not at anyone. Not for any reason. Before she could
respond, someone was knocking loudly on the bedroom door. As though to brace it against entry,
Mark leaned against it again.
“Mark . . .” It was Matt, and he sounded concerned.
“Can I talk to my wife? ¡Coño!”
“Cálmaté . . .”
“Leave us alone, Matt,” Mark said, his voice slightly quieter.
“Matt, it’s okay,” Dylan managed to call out.
After a moment, there was the sound of him walking away and down the stairs, though very
slowly.
“We’re a long, long way from okay, Dylan,” Mark said, lowering his voice.
“I know,” she admitted.
This acknowledgment seemed to unsettle him momentarily.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why . . ?”
“Why were you with him?”
“I went outside to be alone. He followed me.”
“Did you want him to?”
“No, Mark, of course not, I . . .”
“You let him kiss you.”
“No!”
“I saw the pictures, Dylan.”
“He’s not kissing me!” she insisted. “It looks like it, but he isn’t. I would never . . .” “He was all over you. His hands were . . .”
“I know what it looks like, Mark, but I was walking away from him and he held my arm.” Dylan
took her hands from under her thighs, leaning forward with the palms turned upward like a
supplicant, pleading for him to believe her.
“You held his hand.”
“No. Yes. When he took my hand as we were crossing back to the club, I didn’t pull it away.
Maybe I should have, but it wasn’t anything like it looks, I swear.”
“What were you talking about?”
“Cindy, and then about you . . .” and realizing how that sounded. “He was saying she never
noticed when he was gone and that I would soon be the same. I told him I never would; and that I
always missed you, that I always would when you had to leave.”
Something changed in Mark’s face, around his mouth. He wanted to believe it, but wasn’t sure he
should. He closed his eyes, running his hands over his face.
“I rushed you,” he said, almost to himself. “I didn’t want to wait, so I rushed you into getting
married . . .”
Dylan felt a tide of panic. “No. I wanted to marry you. You didn’t . . .”
“You couldn’t even tell me you loved me, Dylan. You weren’t ready. I didn’t want to risk losing
you . . . so I pushed you,” Mark was speaking with conviction now, as though he’d made up his mind. Feeling what was coming next, Dylan stood and went toward him, not sure he wouldn’t push her
away, but knowing she had to take the chance.
She grabbed his shirt, gripping it tightly with both hands.
“Don’t you dare say what I think you’re going to say.”
“What do you think I’m going to say?” he asked wearily.
“That you’re leaving me. Or that I should leave you.”
He didn’t look at her, and she thought for a moment it might be because he was afraid, as afraid as
she was. And that was Dylan’s first glimmer of hope since this whole awful ordeal had begun. That
maybe Mark didn’t know how to leave her anymore than she would know how to leave him. Mark pried her fingers off his shirt.
“Don’t say it,” her voice shook.
She sounded desperate and she hated herself for it. She sounded so weak. And she was. That was
part of the problem, wasn’t it? She was too weak to simply walk away from Ray Hernandez in the first
place; to stand up for herself and for her marriage. And that was why she was here and why Mark
was in career limbo, suspended from the Mets.
God, his suspension.
She’d been selfishly thinking only about herself and hadn’t even given a thought to the fact that
just that morning he’d been forced to walk away from a big chunk of his first season in the majors
under a cloud of scandal.
“With your suspension and everything going on right now, it’s not the time to make rash
decisions,” she said, shamelessly exploiting it nevertheless.
“Is it rash? You were with another man in . . .”
“I told you nothing happened!”
“Why didn’t you go home when I asked you to? If you . . .”
“You never asked me,” she snapped. “You told me. You ordered me.”
“And so you decided you would show me, huh?” He shook his head and put his hands up as
though about to push her away.
“No, that wasn’t it.”
She grabbed his wrists and instead pulled him toward her so she was pressed against him and
looking up at him. This time he was the one avoiding eye contact. She could tell that having her so
close weakened his resolve and diluted his anger, and maybe he needed to be angry at her right now.
Dylan let him go, but to her surprise, he grabbed her, keeping her close.
“Tell me what happened with him,” he said, his voice low.
“Nothing, Mark. Nothing happened.”
“Then why were you looking at him like that? Why was he looking at you like that?” Did she dare admit that there was an attraction there? That she was not completely immune to Ray
Hernandez? But he knew that. He shouldn’t need to hear her say it.
“I can’t speak for him,” she said finally.
“Then speak for yourself!”
Dylan struggled to find the right thing to say, the least hurtful thing.
“You’re attracted to him . . .” Mark said, his voice bitter once again.
“He’s attractive, but . . .”
“. . . and that night you wanted him.”
“No!”
Dylan’s shoulders sagged. No. That night she hadn’t wanted Ray. She’d been sympathetic at first
and then after awhile eager to get away from him because she knew Mark wouldn’t like it. But Mark
wasn’t in the frame of mind to accept that. And those pictures certainly seemed to make a liar out of
her.
She took his hand and noticed for the first time that the knuckles of his right hand were bru
ised
and there were small abrasions crisscrossing it. She raised it to her lips, kissing it and he let her, his
eyes closing momentarily.
“Look,” he said, finally tugging his hand away from her. “Maybe it’s better for now if I stay here
or at the condo, so . . .”
“No,” she said, her voice solid for a change. On this she would not give an inch. Not even a
fraction of an inch.
“Right now, it’s not . . .”
“No,” she said again. “Where you are, that’s where I’m going to be.”
Mark looked thrown by her unyielding tone. He hadn’t expected her to take charge of any part of
this conversation. Things were not good between them right now, for sure, but this was where Dylan
would not compromise. She had been foolish and irresponsible, and hadn’t understood what it meant
to be the wife of a public figure and she would let him go through whatever he needed to go through
to get past her stupid blunder, but that did not include shutting her out. No way was she going to lose
him over this, over a stupid fifteen-minute conversation with Ray Hernandez. And there was also the
matter of his being suspended. Ava was right; he might not want her around at the moment but he
might need her.
“I don’t know how good for you I can be right now. I can’t get those fucking pictures out of my . .
.” He ran his hands over his face.
“Those pictures are the worst of what happened, Mark. That’s all there was.”
He pressed his hands against her shoulders, pushing her away from him.
“Believe me, it was enough,” he said. And then he’d opened the door and was heading back
downstairs, leaving her alone in his childhood room.
Dylan took a deep breath. It was bad, but there was something to work with. Not very much
admittedly, but it was all she had.
Miri was the only one doing any talking. While Mark drove, Dylan looked out the window and stretched her legs across the back seat. She hadn’t been particularly enthusiastic about the trip to Charlottesville, Virginia but when Miri assured her that Mark would still make the drive with them, she had allowed herself to hope that it could mean the beginning of the thaw. But so far they’d been driving for three hours and he had yet to say a single word to her.
Even when they’d stopped in New Jersey for gas, he’d gone into the convenience store and brought out refreshments for them without asking what she wanted. He’d simply gotten her an iced tea, which admittedly she would have asked for anyway, but he just circumvented the asking altogether, as though he preferred not to speak to her under any circumstances.
The Seduction of Dylan Acosta Page 26
