by Devney Perry
“For him.” He says the words, but I can see he’s questioning himself by the furrow in his brow and swallow in his throat. “This is a hard business, Scout. It’s not your right to judge me.” His tone is stern. The features on his face tell me he’s offended.
“You’re right. I don’t. I overstepped.” And I hate that a part of me feels the need to back down to make sure I don’t screw up my chance at getting the club’s contract, since he’s such an integral part of the front office. “But I’ve grown to care about your son, sir. You don’t spend all this time rehabbing someone, training them, celebrating their small victories to get them back where they can play the game they love without caring about their continued success. And I do care about it with Easton. He has more talent in his pinky than most guys would dream of having.”
“He’s definitely more talented than I ever was,” he murmurs, both of our attention pulled back to the field. To the man we both care about, whose swagger is back and unmistakable. We watch him for a few minutes, the silence settling between us.
“Maybe you should tell him that.”
In my periphery, I can tell Cal has turned his attention back to me. “He knows it.”
“Does he, though?” I meet his eyes. “He’s clawing his way back from an injury that was so severe it would be career-ending for most players. His team, which he’s been a part of for most of his life, traded for the man who caused the injury, currently in his position while he’s on the DL. Physically, he’s getting ready to take the field and kick ass . . . but it’s his mental game I’m worried about now. It takes a lot to come back from an injury and not be timid of reinjuring it and suffering through the pain again. Add to that the bullshit with Santiago, and a father who is the Iron Giant of baseball, perfect in every way. That’s a lot to swallow all at one time.”
“I was and still am far from perfect,” he murmurs, in a faraway voice that tells me he’s speaking of way more things than I am.
“Not in your son’s eyes.”
There’s a crack in Cal’s armor as he blinks away tears that well in his eyes.
There’s a commotion on the field that pulls our attention. The guys are practicing bunt plays, so that Easton has to run out from behind the plate, barehand the bunted ball, dying in momentum right in front of the plate, and then throw it in an off-kilter stance down to first base.
It’s a hard play for sure. One that makes you throw with your arm at odd and often inconsistent angles. It’ll be a test to his arm’s range of motion. If there is any scar tissue that’s going to cause a problem, he’ll notice it now because the guys are watching him, the adrenaline is pumping, and he’s nowhere near thinking about how to properly throw the ball. He’s acting on instinct, falling back on the motion he’s done hundreds of times over his career.
I cringe as he scrambles out from behind the plate, calls the other players off so they know he has it, picks up the ball with his bare hand, and then throws down to first base on one foot and off balance. And the throw is perfect, beating the runner by a few feet.
But more important than the ball’s placement is Easton. I watch him as he walks back behind the plate, raising his hand to acknowledge something that was said to him by J.P. before pulling his mask back down on his face.
“He’s an iron giant in his own right, too, you know.” Cal speaks so quietly, but the emotion packed into every word is unmistakable. “I never pulled his kind of stats. I never had his strength or understood the game like he does. I just used my natural ability, but Easton . . . he has the ability and then some. He’ll surpass every record, every career high I ever had, way before he retires from this game.”
“And how does that make you feel?” If I’m going to overstep, I might as well clear the line with a flying leap. I turn to watch him as he watches his son play the game he no longer can, and wonder what that does to a man’s ego when their ego has been on one of the biggest stages of the sports world for so many years.
He doesn’t turn to look at me, and I’m more than surprised when he answers. “Every parent wants their child to have more than they did. More opportunities. More success. More happiness. More life. More love.”
“It’s hard constantly living in the shadows; maybe it’s time you helped him step out from under them. Telling him what you just said to me might just do that.”
Scout
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
I glance over at Easton in the driver’s seat and take him in. And I’m just as knocked back by how attractive he is now as I was when he unexpectedly knocked on my door forty minutes ago with a bouquet of handpicked daisies and a request that I get dressed because he was taking me on a proper date.
“I’m not going to tell you, but I will say I like the skirt,” he murmurs as he reaches out and rests his hand on my bare knee and slides it slowly up my thigh, the fabric bunching with it. “And the boots.”
Without thinking about it, I slide my hand on top of his and link our fingers. It’s a natural gesture, so indicative of how he makes me feel. Comfortable. At ease. Okay with whatever this is.
We drive for a bit longer, leaving the city behind us with each mile. The houses grow farther apart. The wispy grass grows longer. The trees grow bigger. It’s so different than the brick buildings and high rises of the revamped downtown district around the ballpark. And while I love the new, trendy feel of the buildings the developers tried to make look aged, this is real. The country around us. It’s peaceful and idyllic beneath the blue sky, sitting beside Easton with Sam Hunt playing softly on the stereo.
“Scout and Ford. Did your parents have a thing with cars?” he asks out of the blue, and I laugh at the random but very valid question.
“Says the man named Easton,” I tease.
“No mystery what I was named after.” He laughs.
My smile widens as the country whips by outside my window and the memories come back. “Ford was conceived in . . . well, in the back of a Ford truck, from what my dad has told us. I guess he and my mom were having a hard time with names, and on the way to the hospital, he racked his knee on the bumper in excitement. As he was leaning over in pain, hand braced on the tailgate, there was the Ford decal, and so Ford was named Ford.”
“Logical,” he muses. “And you?”
“My brother loved the neighbor’s car. It was a bright yellow Scout International, but being two, all he could say was Scout. So, when my parents told him he was going to have a little brother or sister, he said, ‘No, I want Scout,’ and would point to the car next door.” Easton laughs. “And I guess he continued to say that all the way through my mom’s pregnancy, so at some point it became a joke and they would refer to me as Scout. Needless to say, they thought I was going to be a boy and thought Scout would be cute with the name Ford.”
“But you are definitely not a boy,” Easton says playfully, that hand of his sliding a little farther up my leg.
“No, I’m not, but the name stuck.”
“I like it. It suits you.”
“Yeah, well . . . people think my parents had a thing with To Kill a Mockingbird and named me after Scout Finch. I always disappoint them when I explain that my name has much less significance than that.”
“It’s unique. Just like you.”
I glance over to him and smile. “Thank you. I used to hate it but now I love its originality. I’m glad my mom went along with my dad’s suggestions.”
“Do you miss her? Shit. Fuck. I’m sorry. Don’t answer that.”
It’s cute watching him stumble all over himself. “No, it’s okay. People always want to know, but then don’t know how to ask.”
“Yeah, but it’s kind of a shitty thing to ask. I’m sorry.”
I nod to accept the apology and wonder exactly how it is I feel when it’s not something I think about much these days. “Do I miss her? Hm. I guess in a sense I do, because she’s my mom, and I hear other women talk about how they do this and that with their moms and how lucky they are
. . . and I don’t have that. In fact, I have the exact opposite. I’m close to my dad. I work in a business dominated by men. . . so maybe subconsciously I’ve surrounded myself with people who won’t remind me constantly and unknowingly that I don’t have a mom.”
“It has to be hard, though. I mean, I have a mom. She makes things hard for me, makes me have strings most grown kids no longer have . . . but she’s my mom,” he says, the love evident in his tone, just as sincere as the look in his eyes two nights ago when he received a phone call at one in the morning, crawled from my bed, and went to take care of her.
“I think . . .” I begin, and then pause before I start again. “I’ve spent a lot of time over the years wondering if I’m glad she left when she did or if I wish she’d waited and I’d gotten more time with her. And I think I’m glad. If she’d stayed, then I’d have gotten used to her. I’d have missed her more. The way she did my hair, or the way she made me lunch for school. I remember the songs she’d sing me good night, but I don’t remember much about the predetermined ways she did things, and that means I couldn’t miss them. I couldn’t compare them to my dad trying to fumble his way through them and learn . . . it was harder for Ford since he was older. And it may sound strange, but if she was going to leave, I’m glad she did it when she did. As much as I missed having a mom around, I think it would have been harder if I’d known what I was missing, if that makes any sense.”
He rubs his thumb back and forth on my thigh in reassurance. “Yeah, it makes sense. Thank you for talking about it. I know it hasn’t been easy . . . there’s no way it could have been, but it also tells me that your dad is as good of a man as I always pegged him for. Raising two kids on his own, giving them as stable of a life as possible, all the while being the best of the best in his job. I respected him before, but now . . .” He shakes his head, and his kind words about the best man I’ve ever known make me smile.
“Yeah, he’s pretty fantastic. I’m a lucky girl.”
We fall into our own thoughts again, our fingers linked as we hum mindlessly along to the music and just enjoy the comfortable silence between us.
“Speaking of dads, mine paid me an unexpected visit yesterday.”
His words ring out, and while I’m immediately curious, I’m also unsure whether I should tell him about my conversation with his dad, too. “Hmm. Is that not normal?”
“Not this kind, no.” He squeezes my thigh, and when I look over at him, his eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses, but his smile is soft. “He said you two chatted the other day.”
“You were on the field, and he asked me if I thought you’d be ready to play by the club’s date. That’s all.” I hate that I lie, but think it’s important for him to think whatever Cal may or may not have said was because of his own recognition, not because his son’s lover said something to spur it on.
“I’m sure that’s not the half of it,” he murmurs.
“What do you mean?”
“He told me that if I were smart, I’d figure out how to keep you around . . . after your rehab assignment is over.”
“Oh.”
“Pretty much.” He laughs. “And then he told me how proud he was of me. How it must have been hard growing up in his shadow, and that I need to handle the transition back into the game, with Santiago being on the team, with the exact same amount of grace as I did growing up as his son.”
He clears his throat, and there is nothing I can say to express how thankful I am that Cal heard me and actually said something. I can tell that it touched Easton, even though he’s trying to play it off in his gruff way. The fact that he’s not speaking right now is saying it all.
“Here we are,” he murmurs as he turns down a tree-lined drive set back from the road. Dust plumes up behind us as we drive, and my neck feels like it’s on a swivel as I try to take in my surroundings.
When the trees part, we pull up to a two-story brick house that spreads in all directions over the plot of land. Dogs are barking, I can hear a lawnmower somewhere in the distance, and cottonwood seeds dance all around us in the breeze.
I narrow my eyes at Easton as he hops out of the truck and rounds the front to open my door. He takes my hand in his, and the minute he shuts the door of the truck, he pulls me against him, into a kiss to rival all kisses. It’s soft and sweet and tender and has the heat, desire, and need that’s never too far from reach.
“We’re not in the city,” he murmurs against my lips. “There’s no one to see me kiss you, so I’m taking advantage of it.”
I laugh, loving that he’s so protective of our little bubble, and put my free hand to the back of his head to pull him back down. “Me, too.” I brush one more kiss against his skillful lips before letting him tug me along by my hand toward the house.
He has the cutest grin as he pushes the doorbell and just stares at me, shoulders against the wall behind him, one foot angled and resting against it. His eyes dare me to figure out what we are doing, and I honestly have no clue.
The door opens, and a slight woman with long, gray hair stands inside. Her smile widens to epic proportions when she sees Easton. “Mr. Wylder. Thank you so much for making your way out here to come and visit us.”
“The pleasure is mine, Melinda. Thank you for letting us come out on such short notice.”
“It’s such a long way from the city.”
“It’s a beautiful drive,” he says as he steps in, kissing her on the cheek in greeting.
“And you must be Scout.” Her voice is full of warmth as she wraps her arms around me in a brief hug. “So nice to meet you.”
I’m a little startled by her overly friendly welcome but follow Easton’s lead and hug her back, still so in the dark about what we are doing at this woman’s house. “You, too.”
“Let me show you to it,” she says as she leads us through the large but cozy family room of the house. “I had to kick Timmy out with the boys, or else they would have just gawked at you—the real live Easton Wylder in our backyard. Noses smashed to the windows. Eyes wide as saucers. They’d grab at any reason to head out back and interrupt you, and I couldn’t have that.”
“You shouldn’t have. They would have been fine,” he says with absolute sincerity. I get that this is Easton’s public persona, have seen it time and again at the field, but this is also the real him. “Maybe they’ll be back before we head out. Meeting them is the least I could do after you so graciously let us come here.”
“Are you kidding me?” She laughs, her fingers nervously fidgeting with her hair. I want to put her at ease and tell her we all get that way around Easton. “Your generosity is enough to keep the sanctuary fed for the next year. It’s us who should be bending over backward for you.”
“It’s well deserved,” Easton says as Melinda pushes open the door to the backyard. The sound of dogs barking hits us immediately, before I even clear the threshold, and when I do, my eyes widen and the smile is instant on my lips.
“You brought me to see dogs?” I ask, my voice escalating in pitch with each word. I look around the yard, where, organized in a hexagonal type fence, there are about fifteen dog kennels angled off one large play space. And the play space is currently occupied by about ten dogs of different colors, breeds, and sizes. Tongues loll, tails wag, and bodies wiggle in excitement.
“Not just any dogs,” he says with a laugh, “but mutts.”
My feet move on their own, down toward the fence where the fur babies are all vying for attention, hopping on top of one another, trying to lick my hands through the fence. “Can I go in?” I ask as I turn to look at Easton and Melinda, who are both smiling at me.
“That’s the whole point,” Melinda says as she walks the short distance toward me and directs me to go in the first set of gates that closes me off from the rest of the free yard, before opening the second set that leads me into the play pen. “These babies need some extra attention, and Easton said the two of you would love to come out and give it to them.”
“Seriously?” I look over to her and then glance at Easton as the gate is opened, but my attention is diverted as I’m assaulted in the best of ways by licking tongues on my hands and tails whacking against my legs. There are grunts and whines and a few growls.
Time passes in wiggles and pets. The pack slowly calms down; their interest and eagerness is still there, but not as desperate. And I’m so lost in giving and receiving attention that it’s a while before I notice Easton standing inside the play area, staring at me with a beagle snuggled in his arms.
There is a soft smile on his lips, a quiet awe in his eyes, and there’s something about his expression that makes those butterflies in my stomach take flight, tickling my insides as they flitter about. His face is typically all hard lines with his dark features, but right now, with the sunlight on his face, all I see are his soft edges—soft edges that call to me to push myself to my feet and let him know how much this means to me.
And he must sense that I want to be near him but am currently serving as a chair to Lola, the slobbery pit bull with a scarred face and the sweetest disposition of the lot. As I nuzzle Lola with my forehead against her back, Easton makes his way over to me.
I laugh when he’s overrun by the wags and licks like I was when I first sat down, but when our laughter subsides and I look his way, those butterflies hit me again.
“What is this magical place?” I ask as I reach over and squeeze his forearm as he pets the belly of a scruffy three-legged mutt.
“It’s a dog sanctuary for abused and abandoned dogs. Melinda used to work for the ASPCA . . . and she wanted to do more after she ended up adopting some of the dogs she’d nursed back to health herself. She couldn’t turn them away, so she started with one, and then another, and then . . .” He shrugs. “You get the picture.”
“That’s incredible. This place is incredible.” I laugh as I get nudged by a fluffy brown dog demanding attention. “Such a good girl,” I coo, but my next words trail off when I look up to see Easton’s head cocked to the side, eyes on me. “What?”
