Make Me Yours (Top Shelf Romance Book 4)

by Devney Perry

  “Why would I ever do that?” he asks, the words a hushed whisper as if it’s incomprehensible why I’d suggest something so ridiculous.

  “Because dyslexia isn’t something to be ashamed about. There are so many others out there like you, Easton. People who are embarrassed because they too have a learning disability and are afraid others will make fun of them. Like the kids in your program, for one. What if they knew the man they idolized was just like them and still successful?” He shakes his head. “There’s power in sharing your shortcomings with others. It may open you up, but it could allow others to overcome their own hurdles.”

  His hand goes up to pull on the back of his neck as he turns to watch the boys and their dad still at it. Pitch. Hit. Instruct. Repeat. Focusing on them is the only way he can escape from the riot of insecurities inside of him.

  The kid at the plate cranks a fly ball to left field. The pop off the bat is unmistakable as it soars high in the sky. The dad gives a huge whoop as the other son runs our way. When the ball stops a few feet before us, Easton steps forward and picks it up just as the kid slows to a stop before him.

  “I think this belongs to you,” he says as he holds out the ball. When the boy looks up from the ball to Easton and realizes who is standing in front of him, his expression is absolutely priceless.

  “Holy shit,” he says and then startles when he realizes he cussed and puts his hand up to his mouth. “You’re—he’s—oh my God—don’t tell my dad I said shit—Dad!”

  By this time the kid’s father is making his way to us, curious about the stranger talking to his son with his other boy not far behind. Their reaction is just as priceless when they recognize Easton. All three of them are slack-jawed with shock.

  Once the dad collects himself, he reaches his hand out. “Leo Tompkins. And this is Ollie and Archie. We’re all huge fans. How’s the shoulder healing? And a Wrangler? Really? How are you—sorry, I’m rambling. I’ll stop now.”

  Easton chuckles and the sound is so very welcome after the despondency I’ve heard in his voice today. “Easton Wylder. It’s a pleasure and the shoulder’s slow going, but it’s healing.” They shake hands. “And this is Scout Dalton.” Introductions are made and then Easton turns to Ollie and Archie. “You’ve both got great swings. Keep practicing with your dad, and you’ll be hitting it out of the park like it’s nothing.”

  Both boys look star-struck from his praise—eyes wide and full of disbelief—and I wish Easton could see that this is what people see. Not his shortcomings or what he deems as flaws. But this. The whole package. The personable hero that little boys and girls all over Austin and beyond wish to grow up and be like someday.

  “Thank you,” Ollie says. “I want to play just like you when I grow up.”

  “Can you autograph a baseball for us?” Archie asks.

  “Sure, but I don’t have a pen,” Easton says as both the kids and the dad look deflated when they realize that not one of us have one. “How about this? How about you head over to the stadium tomorrow before the game. You ask for Manny Winfield at the ticket booth. I’ll have him come and take you for a tour of the locker room and dugout during batting practice.”

  “Are you serious?” Ollie asks, his voice escalating in pitch with each word as Archie all but hops out of his shoes.

  “Dead serious.”

  “Thank you, so much. That’s very generous of you,” Leo says putting his arms on both boys’ shoulders. “Let’s leave Mr. Wylder alone now. We’ve taken enough of his time.”

  “Not a problem,” Easton says as Leo physically steers his boys to turn around and start walking the other way. “Ollie, try and keep your hands still before the pitch. It’ll help with your bat speed. And Archie, close your stance up a bit so you can reach the outside pitch.”

  They both look back to him again and give eager nods before walking toward the infield, their infectious chatter floating back to us.

  “What if one of those boys couldn’t read? Do you think they’d think any less of you if they knew you had trouble too, or do you think they’d still think you were their hero? I know which one I’d put my money on.”

  “I never asked to be anyone’s hero, Scout, let alone the poster child for illiteracy. There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with something like that when I already have enough shit to deal with.”

  “Okay,” I murmur. He’s irritated, and I’m pushing when I shouldn’t be, but I know this would help him. Not only would it give this selfless man a different kind of motivation to conquer his demons, it would also show him that the public still loves him regardless of what he deems to be his faults.

  “Thank you for coming . . . for talking to me . . . but I kind of want to be alone right now.”

  I stare at him—at those conflicted brown eyes—and as much as I want to stay, sit with him and help him not feel so alone, I know I need to give him the time he’s asking for.

  I press a kiss to the backside of his shoulder. “Okay.” Begrudgingly I start to walk away and then stop. “There are no conditions to my love for you, Easton. It’s not that you play baseball or your ability to read or your public persona that attract me to you. Those things will come and go and change over time. It’s your heart I love. It’s your ability to open up to me even when you don’t want to. The man you are makes me want to be a better woman, too. So, I’ll give you time to think and be alone when I really don’t want to as long as you understand I want you. All of you. Your flaws. Your mistakes. Your achievements. Your shortcomings. Your love.”

  He turns toward me and the look in his eyes tells me he understands.

  It tells me he’s coming home to me.

  It tells me he knows I love him for him.

  It tells me he loves me too.

  Easton

  “Hi, Momma.” I slide into the booth beside her.

  “Easton. Why are you here?” She looks around the dim bar like a scared rabbit. “Did Marty call you? I’ve been good. I promise I’ve only had a few drinks tonight.”

  I reach out and give her a hug. She still wears the same perfume I can remember from my childhood, and right now it’s comforting. Sure there’s cigarette smoke clinging to her clothes and alcohol on her breath, but that perfume makes me feel like I’m eight. When she patched up my skinned knees from crashing after trying to jump my BMX bike off my homemade ramp. Whenever anything happened, she pulled me in against her, kissed the top of my head, and told me it would be okay.

  Is that why I came here when I left the Little League field? Is that why I drove an hour with Scout’s parting words running through my mind and making me question how I deserve someone like her? Just to have my mom tell me it’s all going to work out in the end somehow.

  “Easton?”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” I say as I let her go and sit back to look at her. “I needed to take a drive to clear my head.”

  “Is something wrong? Did something happen?”

  I stare at her and smile, wishing I could live in this oblivious, alcohol-induced make-believe world she lives in sometimes. Things would be so much easier.

  “No. Everything is fine now.”

  “Oh. Good. I was worried maybe something happened to that nice young lady you brought here the other day.” She takes a sip of her drink as someone changes the music on the jukebox. Johnny Cash starts singing about falling into a ring of fire, and I glance around this sad state of a bar before looking back to her.

  “No, she’s fine.”

  “Well, that’s good. I like her.” Her smile widens. “And she sure is pretty.”

  “I like her too. And she is pretty.” I shake my head. “There’s no way in hell I deserve her.”

  “I disagree,” she says, tipping her glass to me and asking if I want any. I decline. “Everyone deserves somebody.”

  “Yeah?” I don’t know why that comment strikes a chord with me. The woman’s talking about deserving love, yet she’s been waiting for years for hers to come. “Does your true
love deserve you, Mom? Because he’s left you alone all this time so I really don’t think he does.”

  “Shush. Don’t say that. He’ll come back. He promised to fix things, and then it would all be better.”

  “Make what better? And if he hasn’t come back now, why do you still think he’s going to return?” I demand, taking my own frustration out on her maddening devotion to a lover who probably doesn’t even exist.

  “Because he’s the one.” She shrugs as if it’s a proven fact, and there is no disputing it.

  “Who is he?”

  “A lady never kisses and tells, Easton. You should know that.”

  “You’re frustrating as hell, you know that? You wait for a man who hasn’t returned and you still think he’s the one?”

  “You’ll understand in time.” She squeezes my hand, a soft smile turning up her lips as she gets a faraway look in her eyes as if she’s remembering something. “There will come a day, son, when someone will love the parts of you that no one else knows how to love. That’s when you know they’re the one for you.”

  After all the shit that happened today, I can’t do anything but stare at her and absorb the wisdom that hits way too close to home.

  “Are you going to stay with me tonight? A new sofa cover from the Home Shopping Network came today that I bought just for you.” Hope fills her voice but it’s got nothing on the hope she unknowingly just gave my heart.

  “I’m sorry. I need to get back.”

  There will come a day, son, when someone will love the parts of you that no one else knows how to love.

  “You’re still up.”

  “Mm-hmm. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” Her voice is sleep-drugged and it calls to every part of me. I need her.

  The condo is dark save for the under-cabinet kitchen lights and the glow from the skyline beyond. I leave it that way as I make my way to the silhouette of her sitting in my chair looking at the world beyond.

  “Are you okay?” she asks as I walk past her and step up to the windows. I stare at the city below, the darkened ghost of a stadium. Other people are facing much worse things than I am, and yet that fear is still there, holding me back as its hostage. After a while, I turn to face her. She has on one of my T-shirts, her bare legs are curled under her, and she has a glass of wine in her hand. I can’t see her eyes but the compassion in her voice rings in my ears—the sound of someone loving the parts of me that no one else has known how to—and I know how goddamn lucky I am that Doc didn’t show up to take the Aces’ PT contract five months ago.

  I may have thought she was a prank, but right now I’m pretty damn sure the prank was on me. How could I have ever known?

  “I had a lot to think about, so I took a drive to clear my head,” I say as I lean against the wall.

  “Go anywhere noteworthy?”

  I think of my mom. Of her hugs. Of her unexpected advice. “Not really.”

  “Were you successful in clearing your head?”

  “Yes and no.”

  She makes a noncommittal sound as she takes a sip from her glass. We stare at each other through the darkness for a few minutes as I work up the courage to say what I need to say.

  “What if my shoulder doesn’t heal?” I ask, her body startling from my unexpected question. “The surgery could have gone perfectly, and I have the best rehabber in baseball on my side, but what if my shoulder doesn’t cooperate? What if I can’t make it back again?”

  “Then we cross that bridge if and when we come to it,” she says cautiously.

  “There’s this moment right before a game starts. Sometimes it’s when I’m putting on my gear in the dugout, other times it’s that moment right before the first pitch when the stadium hushes for that split second . . . it’s part rush, part adrenaline . . . it’s indescribable . . .” Struggling with how to put something so real into words when it’s not anything concrete, I turn to look at the ballpark’s shadow to try and help.

  “It’s the magic,” she murmurs as she falls into step beside me, leaving me to do a double take because once again she gets it—gets me—when no one else does.

  “There you go putting words to my thoughts again.”

  “I guess that means we’re a good team.”

  “A damn good team.” I hook my pinky with hers needing something to ground me as we wade through a room full of unspoken words. I feel like I can breathe for the first time since I got off the plane this morning. “I felt it last night.”

  Her pinky stiffens in mine and I know she’s following my train of thought—because it’s her—but she lets my comment settle before speaking. “Felt what?”

  I clear my throat and second-guess myself, but I come up with the same answer I had driving back from my mom’s. “There was a moment before the cameras turned on when I was sitting in that booth looking at the field before me. The energy in the air . . . and that magic—the feeling I thought was isolated to being on the field as a player before a game started—I felt it, Scout.”

  “The magic,” she whispers as she steps into me and slides her arms around my waist.

  And after the day I’ve had, this, her, is what I need. The way she understands me. The way she doesn’t push me but does. The silent reassurance. We stand like this for a moment. Me breathing her in and coming to terms with the fact that she’s one helluva woman, and I do deserve her.

  “There’s more,” she murmurs and presses a kiss to my shoulder. “What are you not telling me?”

  And there she goes again. Stealing my thoughts when I believed it was only my heart she’d stolen.

  “What if I blew my one shot, Scout? I’ve never thought of life after baseball—it’s always been the focus of everything—but when it ends, do you know what I’d give to have a career where I can still feel that magic? To have the opportunity to remain a part of baseball? What if being a sportscaster is that chance and I just fucked it up because I can’t read?” Frustrated that I’m not explaining myself very well, I step away from Scout and pace to the far side of the room before turning and facing her. “God, that sounds pathetic, but—”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she says as she takes a step toward me. “It sounds mature and intelligent.”

  “You’re making me sound like an old man.” I chuckle, suddenly uncomfortable. It’s one thing to think about life after baseball, but it’s another thing to actively consider it. When there is no more showing up to the ballpark. No more locker room bullshit with the guys. No more jogging onto the field with the feeling of my gear clinking together at the knees. No more figuring out how to get my opponent at the plate to strike out.

  “I think it’s brilliant actually.”

  That comment stops the hand running through my hair. “What do you mean?”

  “Fox Sports is still looking for their postseason commentator. What if you asked for another shot?”

  This time my laugh is long and rich. “You actually think they’d give me another shot? You have seen the fallout on social media, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have. But what if Finn goes to them, explains the truth or if you’re uncomfortable with that makes some reasonable excuse, and gets you a second chance.”

  The thought of having to tell Finn the truth, let alone the powers that be at Fox Sports, makes me want to choke on the air I’m breathing. I can stand in a stadium full of sixty thousand fans and not flinch, but this—people knowing my truth—makes my stomach churn.

  “You’re missing the biggest point of all.”

  “And that is?”

  “I still can’t read. I still can’t decipher as quickly as the teleprompter scrolls, and it would just end up . . .” Jesus Christ. The thought alone drives me to walk into the kitchen and grab a beer from the refrigerator.

  “Then Helen and I can spend double time teaching you. Trying to train your brain into seeing the words straight.” She follows me into the kitchen, her voice insistent and tinged with optimism. “We practice, and we ask for the script ahead of
time, and we make it work, Easton. Because you were hiding this before, you were only getting minimal studying in, but now, with me knowing and with you having downtime with your recovery, you don’t have to hide anymore in your own home. And then once you nail it—because I have faith you will—you can choose whether to explain the truth to people about what happened the first go-round. Those kids, the ones who are scared to death they’re going to be made fun of, will realize it’s going to be okay. Their hero is just like them.”

  “Scout, I don’t know . . .”

  “I know you don’t. And you might not see it for a while . . . but I can’t imagine the pressure you’ve felt, having to hide this for so long. Can you imagine what it would feel like if you didn’t have to hide anymore? The pressure to be something you’re not would be gone.”

  I hate that the idea both excites me and scares the ever-loving shit out of me. I appreciate her unwavering faith in me. But more than anything I hate hearing the hope in her voice when I know I’ll most likely let her down. But . . . she loves the parts of me that no one else has known how to. Is that enough?

  Staring at her expectant eyes, the panic I’ve lived with my whole life resurfaces with a vengeance. I can tell the minute she sees it because she smiles softly and presses a soft kiss to my lips.

  “I’m sorry. I know how capable and incredible you are. I know your fears are real and valid, but so is possibility. That’s all I’ll say. I won’t bring it up again.”

  God, I love this woman and her rose-colored glasses.

  Even at my worst, she still sees the best in me.