by Devney Perry
Go back.
I can’t.
Go back.
I press my hand to the row of buttons illuminating five random floors. The elevator stops abruptly at the next floor, its doors open to an empty hallway lined with expensive carpet and doors to other condos.
I stare at the emptiness as my heart fights against my mind.
Duty wars against desire.
Promises made battle against personal wants.
Responsibility clashes against recklessness.
Selflessness is pitted against selfishness.
The doors slide shut, and I close my eyes then press L for lobby.
When the doors open, my composure is held together by a thread. I need to get out of here, need time and space to think. Blinded by emotions I can’t process just yet, I accidentally run straight into a young coed, knocking her binder to the ground. I scramble to help her pick up the papers that have fallen out, focusing on the words on the pages—teaching credential requirements and adult development something or other—because it’s so much easier than meeting her eyes. Embarrassed, frazzled, and moments away from crying, I mumble an apology to the polka-dotted sorority letters printed on the front of her sweatshirt.
“Sorry,” I mutter, trying to sound sympathetic when all I feel is responsibility heavier than the weight of my world.
To my dad.
To the Aces.
To Easton.
And as I push open the doors to the street and suck in a huge breath of morning air, the first tear slips down my cheek.
I hate myself for it.
But I hate myself more when my phone vibrates in my purse. The panic I felt upstairs pales in comparison to how I feel when I look at the screen of my phone.
And in an instant, every reason I had for sneaking out and leaving Easton upstairs becomes validated.
The ring through my Bluetooth swallows the silence of my car. I startle at its sound, then cringe, because without even looking at it, I know who’s calling.
I ignore it.
He calls back.
I ignore it again.
He calls back again.
After three more rounds of ring, ignore, repeat, I’m more aware than ever that sneaking out was total chickenshit. And as much as I’d like to push ignore again, I can’t. I have to face him, I have to try and smooth this over without damaging our working relationship, so I bite the bullet and answer.
“Hello?”
“Where the hell are you?” Easton’s voice fills the line. Its confusion laced with disbelief mixed with anger and a touch of rejection.
“Good morning.” Keep it professional, Scout.
“It would have been an even better morning if you were still here. But you’re not. And I’m a little confused as to why.”
“Easton.” His name is a sigh. An olive branch. It’s anything to explain what verbally I can’t.
“Don’t ‘Easton’ me, Scout. Where are you? Because you sure as hell aren’t in my bed.”
My dad’s sick. Sally texted five times while I was lying in your bed, trying to tell me he was having a hard time breathing. Asking me if I could come home and visit with him, not only to brighten his mood, but to remind him why he needs to fight harder to get over the funk he’s in.
“I had some errands to run,” I lie.
I’d rather be with you, too. I’d rather have met you under different circumstances. That would have made all of this ten times easier.
“Errands? Wow. That’s a way to make a guy feel confident in his abilities. ‘Hey Easton, it was so great last night, but I’d rather go to the store to pick up some toilet paper than have sleepy morning sex with you,’” he says, but his attempt to sound like me does nothing to hide the irritation lacing its edges.
I glance over my shoulder then change lanes as I work up the courage to say the words I need to say but don’t really want to say. “Last night was a mistake,” I whisper as if I don’t want him to hear. Because I don’t.
It’s a lie.
“Come again?”
“We can’t do this.”
“Well, we did do this, and it was fucking incredible, so tell me something I’m actually going to believe.”
I’m afraid of what I’m going to find when I see my dad for the first time in a month.
I clear my throat but lose the battle against tears for the second time this morning, and it takes everything to sound unaffected when I speak. “If Cory were to find out, he’d fire me.”
“Bullshit.” He says the word, but we both know it’s true—the silence hanging on the line tells me, so I take advantage of the moment to try and reason with him.
“I’m contracted by your employers, Easton. I have to remain unbiased . . . and I sure as hell don’t look unbiased if I’m sleeping with you one minute and telling them to reinstate you the next. Call me crazy, but they’d second-guess every opinion I have when it comes to you. My credibility would be shot to hell when it’s a vital, necessary part of my job.”
“Credibility is one thing, Scout. Sleeping with me is another. Now find another way to spin this so you can avoid having to explain why you tip-toed out like you were some one-night stand. I’ll wait.”
I hate that his words make every part of me sag in relief and in sadness. But they do, because he didn’t consider me a one-night stand and because I know it can’t happen again.
“I just can’t right now. If someone found out, then . . .”
“No one’s going to find out. Are you going to tell someone? Because I’m not. Who else knows about last night and is going to say something?”
My mind scrambles for an explanation, a validation. “What if someone recognizes me leaving your place? Another player? The media? The damn girl in the lobby? And they go and tell the press?”
“Girl in the lobby? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. No one.” I shake my head and grip the steering wheel harder, knowing I sound schizophrenic but unable to stop. “Just never mind.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“No.” My voice breaks, and I clear my throat. “There’s nothing. It’s just . . .”
“It’s just? That’s all you’re going to give me?”
“I’ve gotta go.”
“This discussion isn’t over, Scout.”
Yes, it is.
I hang up the phone just before the sob breaks free. I know I’m being overly emotional. I know that everything with my dad is making me sensitive. But I also know that there’s something about Easton that I can’t let go of just yet, but I have to.
Is he the type who’d leave?
Of course he would. All men leave, Scout. All people leave. That’s what they do.
But what about last night? What about how he made me feel? And not just the sex—because that was pretty damn incredible—but all of the other feelings I went to bed high on and woke up still swimming in. Do they mean anything? And more importantly, do I want to let them mean something?
I fight the urge to call him back. To ask him if we could table this for another place and time. Tell him that my dad’s sick, explain why this contract is so important, and let him know I’m scared, because if I feel this much after spending only one night with him, how would I feel if we were to spend more together?
But I can’t call him back.
Because it all comes back to my dad.
To the promise I made him.
To the fact that anyone I’ve ever truly loved in my life has left me.
And the one I’ve loved most will be gone soon, too.
Scout
“He’s going to be pissed that you took the time to drive all the way out here, Scout.”
The lines of worry etched on Sally’s face warm my heart. “I know he will, but two hours isn’t that long of a drive. Besides, I’m sick of him being the one to dictate the visitation terms. And don’t worry, I won’t tell him you called.” I pull her into me for a hug and then chuckle. �
�Why, I just needed to take a drive to clear my head, Sally, and lo and behold I ended up here.” I bat my lashes and smile to reinforce the lie.
She smiles, but it does nothing to ease the weariness in her eyes. “He doesn’t want you to see him like this,” she whispers. “He’s got a lot of pride, and it’s hard for him to know you see him as weak.”
I sigh. “He’s the strongest man I’ve ever known. Even now. How can he—”
“Who are you talking to Sally?” My dad’s voice booms through into the kitchen where we stand.
My smile is as automatic as the drop of my heart into my stomach as I prepare myself for the unknown. What will he look like? Weaker? Bedridden? Gaunt? Has he gone downhill quicker than expected so that I’ll be shocked at the sight of him?
With a fortifying breath I walk into the living room where his hospital bed has been set up to make it easier for him to get around, for Sally to tend to him, and because it allows him to stare at one of his favorite places in the world, the endless fields of tall grass that stretch to the horizon.
Relief overwhelms me when I see him out of his bed, sitting in his favorite chair by the window. “She’s talking to me.”
“Scouty?” Love floods into his voice as he turns and sees me standing there, but it’s quickly replaced with upset. “Why are you here?”
“Because I needed to see you.” I’ve never spoken truer words. And while he doesn’t look any feebler than the last time I saw him, I know from Sally that he is. The cold he can’t shake has knocked him on his ass and taken its toll on his already weakened immune system.
“Nonsense.” Irritation litters the edges of his voice. “I told you that you could come to see me once you’ve won the Aces’ contract.”
I grit my teeth and bite back the hurt his disregard causes. “Well, you may want to shut me out, Dad, but you don’t get to control me.” My tone is no-nonsense while my heart aches. He must know that Sally called me, updated me on his rough week, but I refuse to let her take the blame. “I wanted to take a drive today. Clear my head, think about some things. So I ended up here. What are you going to do, kick me out?”
I hold his glare and tempt him to do just that, and I hate that for a minute I wonder if he actually will. He’s been so stubborn and difficult in the past six months that a part of me wouldn’t put it past him.
“You’re not going to prevent me from seeing you. If you try, I’ll let the player figure out his recovery on his own and take up residence here in my old room.”
“Your old room’s full of stuff.”
“I’m a big girl, I know how to throw stuff out.” And I know that will get him, break through his obstinacy—the fear that I’ll sneak in here with black trash bags and clean out his clutter of memories stacked in boxes in my old room. Newspaper clippings on giants of the sport he helped rehab. Articles highlighting Ford’s pitching stats and my softball career. Trophies and jerseys for the teams he’s worked for. It’s a treasure trove of memorabilia any baseball collector would die for.
He eyes me again, but I can see his lips fighting the smile I know he wants to give me for doing just what he taught me: giving as good as I’m getting. “You can stay for a bit, but one sign of waterworks and I’m kicking you out.”
I nod, understanding the hard-ass is giving me a mulligan so long as I don’t cry. Stepping beside him, I place my hand on his shoulder and squeeze, needing to touch him. And when he lifts a hand to place on top of mine, I’d give anything to be a little girl again. Then I could crawl into his lap like I used to do and listen to the rumble of his voice as he told me stories about a mom I never really knew, but who he swore loved me. The stories I now know to be lies, because a mom who walks out on her two children getting ready for bed while her husband’s washing the dishes without ever looking back never really loved them at all.
This house holds too many memories for me, good and bad, and I wonder if maybe that’s why my dad’s forcing me to distance myself from it.
“Tell me about how Easton is coming along.”
The pang in my chest is real at the mention of his name. The images of him last night—his smile when he was dancing with me, the adoration on his face highlighted by the bright lights of the stadium beyond, and the moonlight across his face as he sank into me—all flash through my mind and force me to act like none of it mattered when every single thing did.
Forced to switch mental gears, I try to care about work right now.
A safe middle ground for us. Well, safe for my dad, but not so much for me.
“The player is doing well,” I murmur, knowing damn well Easton’s cologne still lingers on my skin as I go into the details of his therapy, what still pains him, what I think he’s hiding, before I listen to the master of the trade tell me what he thinks I need to do differently or add to my regimen to help. “What I don’t get, besides the obvious—that the team needs him on the field because he’s just that good—is why rush it? Why give a timeframe for recovery on a franchise player?”
My dad angles his head as he contemplates the question. “Beats me, Scout. I learned a long time ago that front offices rarely do things that seem reasonable to the public, but in the long run make perfect sense.”
“Yeah, well, how about they make common sense instead of aiming for perfect sense,” I grumble in defense of Easton when there’s no need to defend him.
And it’s the look in my dad’s eye that unnerves me. The one that tells me he’s reading my thoughts when I sure as hell don’t want him to. “You like him, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do. He’s nice, easy to work with, and wants to recover. What’s not to like about that in a player?” I figure that’s as safe as anything.
“True.” He nods his head again and chews the inside of his lip. “Is this going to be a problem?”
There are so many ways I can take his question, so many ways I can answer it, and so I don’t say anything. Does he mean am I going to be able to get Easton back on the field in the allotted time? Does he mean that he can see right through me, knows something happened between Easton and I, and is wondering if it will jeopardize my standing with the club?
When he chuckles at my lack of response, it’s music to my ears. He’s let me off the hook without answering.
“How is it you can have two kids, raise them exactly the same, and they turn out so completely different?” he asks, and I know now that he didn’t let me off the hook at all. His chuckle was just prepping me for the schooling he’s about to give. “You were always pushing boundaries while Ford was . . . he was always so concerned with making everyone happy. You were always willing to take risks, and he was always the one who would stay the course. You were always so hard to read, and he was the open book. You were opposites in so many ways, and yet so very much alike it scared me some days.”
I watch him. The lines in his face may have changed over time, with age and illness, but he still looks the same, still seems the same, and it’s hard to believe he’s really that sick. That he’s mortal and not the invincible man the little girl in me still sees.
“But you changed, Scouty girl. After Ford died, I know you tried to be both for me. That you stepped into his shoes—tried to give me pieces of both of you—even though some days I know it killed you to be someone you weren’t . . . but you did it for me. So, thank you. I wanted you to know I appreciate that.”
“Dad . . .” I fight back the emotions his acknowledgement churns up. Hearing he knew how hard I’d worked to try and fill the hole Ford’s death left in our family—and in his heart—means more to me than he’ll ever know.
And at the same time, I hate hearing it. I hate wondering if he’s slowly checking items off his mental list of things left to say, and that this is the slow, winding path of him starting to say good-bye.
“You promised you wouldn’t cry.”
“I’m not.” I sniffle and swallow what feels like a boulder in my throat. “I just don’t understand why you insist on not letting
me—”
“I have my reasons,” he barks, and stuns me into wondering what the hell just upset him so much.
I stare at him, wanting to question him, to finish my thought. But I shift my gaze to the field outside again, to the good memories of playing hide and seek with Ford for hours, to try and abate the tears sobbing silently within me.
“He’d be thirty, this month, you know.”
“I know.” The silence stretches between us, interrupted only by the rattle of his breath. “No father should have to bury his son,” I whisper, not sure if it’s to remind me or to reassure him.
“And no daughter should be left all alone to bury her father.”
Easton
A fucking text?
That’s how she’s going to play this bullshit game with me? Leave me to do my rehab by myself because she can’t face me or the fact that the other night was incredible and she left without a word?
“I just can’t.” Seriously? Those three words were all she could give me before hanging up, followed by a text detailing my rehab routine for the day? Four reps of weighted arm swings and the rest of the regimen?
Total bullshit.
Fucking women.
But I should be happy about this, right? She’s not Doc. She’s nowhere near as skilled, experienced, or knowledgeable as him. So maybe if I bitch about her, tell the GM, then they’ll demand Doc come here instead. He’s the best after all.
If that’s the case, then why do I want her? How come I keep thinking about that look in her eyes and the feel of her body and the sound of her laugh?
She’s frustrating.
And sexy.
She’s stubborn and unrelenting.
And goddamn beautiful.
She’s fucking irritating is what she is.
She doesn’t want to pick up the phone? Then fine. I’ve got this. I’ll bust my ass on my own. I don’t need her. I knew that the first day I met her.
But I like her.
Fuck if that isn’t perfect. And fitting. Wanting a woman I can’t have.
