Interference (Bases Series Book 1)

by Hazel Grace

  I swear if he wasn’t my best friend and the guy who rode with me through thick and thin, I’d beat his ass because he never matches with his own.

  “Yeah,” she replies. “It’s me.”

  My gaze latches back on her with furrowed brows. “Who?” I didn’t mean for it to come out loud but it does and she duplicates my brows.

  “Are you serious?”

  I shrug. “Am I supposed to know you?”

  I mean, I should. I would, those curves would have me on lockdown to lick every inch of her.

  But I’ve never landed eyes on them a day in my life.

  Gavin chuckles, his hand slapping my shoulder blade. “You only chewed her out last week at practice, man.”

  My brows deepen. “Practice?” I take another glance at her from the swerve of her hips, to her flat stomach, up to her plush lips.

  Damn, I wonder how they’d feel around my dick.

  I grab my blunt out of Gavin’s hand, the dumbass is going to drop it because he hasn’t stopped tilting back and forth from the last ten or something shots of vodka he’s done.

  “She’s on the softball team, plays second base,” Gavin fills in, sizing her up like I just did. God, we’re a bunch of drunken, high creeps. “Has one hell of an arm, but your hitting could use some help.”

  Second base.

  Second base.

  Who the fuck played second base on the softball team? Shit, we practically workout and practice together every day because we share the same field. Freemont High is too cheap to construct another one.

  I rifle through the girls on the team and nothing like the chick standing in front of me rings any sort of boner alarm in my head.

  I tug at my earlobe. “Doesn’t look familiar.” Her jaw slacks from either my frankness or the simple fact that she doesn’t show up on my radar as a flashing neon sign.

  Regardless, no matter how hot she looked in a bikini, she doesn’t look like my type. Maybe that’s why I’ve never noticed her before.

  With her innocent eyes and the cover-up that is doing a disgrace to her swimsuit, she looks like she goes to church every Sunday and listens to Matchbox 20 and 98 Degrees.

  Come to think of it, I bet she has to go home when the streetlights come on at night.

  “Hey, Sawyer,” Gavin’s groupie, whose damn name I can’t remember, says. “Thanks for letting me copy your Chemistry notes the other day. You’re a lifesaver.”

  I watch the pretty redhead in front of me grin and shrug. “Not a problem, that next test is going to be rough.”

  “I didn’t know you came to parties,” Gavin beams, ripping into their conversation next to me.

  “Taylor asked me to come,” she says, cupping the ball between her fingers. “There isn’t much else to do around here.”

  So, the library was closed?

  “Are you having a good time?” Gavin asks. She looks around the party, falling on a bunch of teens dancing around in skimpy swimsuits, grinding and rubbing up on each other. It’s then that I realize Sawyer over here is the only one wearing something over her bathing suit.

  Yep, she goes to church every Sunday.

  A splash comes from the indoor pool, ruining my examination of her body again. A group of guys are lined up to do cannonballs like a bunch of six-year-olds, their gazes wandering around every piece of ass and tits that lands in their vision.

  “Yeah,” Sawyer finally states. “It’s cool. Never been to an indoor pool party before.”

  “Liam Nelson’s dad owns a chain of hotels in the West,” Blondie informs her. “After his divorce, he built a pool for Liam and his four siblings. And lucky for us, he’s rarely home.”

  Gavin steps in front of her, like he’s begging for Sawyer’s attention back. “Did you grab a drink yet?” She smiles, her perfect cheekbones rising, displaying straight teeth.

  “You’re probably used to Kool-Aid though, right Sabrina?” I ask, crossing my arms. I don’t know why, but her being near us is kinda pissing me off. It’s like bringing a nun into the VIP of a strip club, you just don’t do it.

  Number one, because she’ll kill everyone’s vibe, and number two, it makes you feel like you’re going straight to hell because she’s casting final judgment.

  “Kool-aid?” she repeats with a raised brow. “And it’s Sawyer. Why would —”

  “He’s just being an asshole,” Gavin states, dismissing my comment with a wave of his hand. “Don’t let him bother you. He’s a dickhead on and off the field.”

  I slowly turn my head toward him, shooting a glare in his direction. What the hell is he doing?

  And why the fuck is he practically batting his eyelashes at her?

  I groan inwardly. I know that look. I’ve been warding it off for years.

  He’s set his sights on the unattainable.

  The girl who wants marriage before sex, the poster child of the virgin club, and the kind that would make a scrapbook of what your kids are going to look like.

  Hell no. She is not fucking up with our plans.

  Gavin and I have been grooming for a baseball career with me doing most of the heavy lifting. I’ve tutored him, driven him to our practices, snuck him into my room on the nights his uncle would beat the shit out of him in a meth-filled rage. I’ve spent years keeping Gavin on the straight and narrow so that we could ride out of this town and have it paid for.

  And Sabrina or Sawyer, whatever the fuck her name is, wasn’t going to start picking out wedding songs or what kind of dog they were going to pick out at the animal shelter.

  Shit’s not going to happen.

  A ping pong ball flies past my face, making me narrow back in on Sawyer, who’s just tossed the one she was holding back to Gavin.

  “I gotta go back,” she conveys. “See you guys Monday.”

  Gavin shoots her a salute with his fingers. “Save me a dance later. I’ll come look for you.” She gives him a weak grin, gives me the middle finger with her eyes, and walks off.

  Well, at least she knows when she’s clearly not wanted.

  Gavin chuckles and jabs his elbow into my ribs when she’s out of earshot. “I know, right? I didn’t recognize her either without her jersey on.” He peers at Blondie. “Baby, will you go get me a cold beer, I’m thirsty.”

  She devotedly skips to his side, places a long kiss on his cheek, and takes off. He doesn’t even need to train or argue with them anymore, they just do.

  It’s depressing.

  “Are you sure she goes to our school?” I bring my blunt to my lips and inhale, letting the smoke fill my lungs, and exhale all my irritation.

  “Yep, she bumped into you on the field the other day and you bitched about us having to share it with the girls or something sexist like that. Your normal assholeness.”

  I latch my eyes on her, filing her body to memory. It might be because I need to get laid, and there isn’t a piece of ass at this party that makes my dick jump for joy. Or the simple fact that I’m high as fuck and drunk as hell that I’m imagining her underneath me while I go full throttle on her.

  “Why?” Gavin inquires, holding his hand out for my blunt.

  “Grab your own shit that I brought you,” I bite out, hitting it again. “And because, like I said-“ I exhale. “-the chick doesn’t look familiar.”

  “All I know is that I’m calling dibs, dude,” Gavin chimes, like we’ve done a million times before.

  “Just keep her sinless shit off you,” I drone. “She looks like she’d draw hearts on her notebooks with your name in the middle then look for a wedding dress after you’ve screwed her.”

  Gavin rubs his chin and hums. “I’m going to rub all my sin on every inch of that body.”

  I slam my hand on his back a little harder than necessary. “Knock yourself and your dick out, dude. Just don’t call me when she starts calling you every day, wants you to go to knitting classes or do some other couples-type shit.”

  He cringes outwardly and looks at me with disgust. “You’re fuc
ked up, man.”

  Present day

  Me: Please tell me you’re not on your date with Jackson anymore.

  Taylor: Okay...I won’t tell you that I’m home and eating a gallon of Superman ice cream because the date sucked.

  I dial her number, my hands trembling as adrenaline and panic course through my body as though I’m about to stroke out in the middle of my bed.

  “Hellloooo,” Taylor greets, picking up on the first ring, God bless her soul.

  “We have an emergency,” I quake. “A big, big emergency, Tay.”

  “Oh shit, did Skylar not like her birthday present again?”

  I shake my head violently. “No, no, worse. So much fucking worse. I don’t know what I’m going to do. This seriously just can’t be —”

  “Alright, chill,” Taylor cuts in. “Breathe…and then tell me what’s up.”

  “Colson,” I mutter. “Colson Hayes just stormed out of my parents’ house.” I’m hailed with a long silence, hearing her TV in the background. “Taylor?”

  “Colson? Your Colson?”

  “He’s not mine,” I retort. “And yes, that, Colson.”

  “How? Why?” Taylor rattles off, her anxiety reaching me over the phone.

  I rub my forehead in utter disbelief, still not fathoming that my blast from the past strode into my parents’ house, looking all man and hella grown up.

  Colson Hayes.

  His shoulders broadened, his chest filled out his gray T-shirt, showing off his toned arms like he bench pressed houses for a living. And he was tall, geezus, so much taller than I remembered, towering over me with his broody, pissed-at-the-world attitude.

  But one thing remained the same, his whiskey-colored eyes that I easily got drunk off of on a daily basis.

  “Skylar waltzed into Mama’s house on his arm,”I begin. “And here I am, gaping at him like a complete idiot, while he’s laser beaming me with his eyes.” I let out a heavy sigh. “He looked at me like I was the biggest piece of shit walking the face of the Earth.”

  “So, I’m guessing the feelings aren’t there anymore?” she probes. I look heavenward.

  I want to strangle her through the phone.

  She knows everything right down to the very detail on how things turned out. When Colson left, her line of “everything happens for a reason” repeated off her lips for months. And her antidote was to do yoga and listen to Enya to capture an easy and peaceful aura around myself.

  No, thanks.

  But after the events of today, I might need that mat and to download Enya on my phone because my somewhat peace was obliterated within four minutes of Colson standing feet from me.

  He was not a peaceful feeling.

  Colson was an intense and plaguing storm. The category 5 hurricane kind, where they interrupt your TV show just to announce it.

  The big kahuna that makes you board up your windows and flee the city to save yourself because when he comes swooping in, your life is going to be flipped upside down and half-ass backward by the time he’s done.

  Unfortunately for me, no public service warning. No local siren went off to alert me that he was back. Skylar mentioned bringing a boy home to meet Mama and Dad, not a man.

  Not the man.

  The one who snapped my heart in half and left me behind without so much as a “fuck you” or “see you next lifetime.”

  Just the barrel through his eyes physically hurt. My heart accelerated at uncharted speeds, avalanching into my ribcage as the heat and hate from his eyes drilled into my skin. I feel like I just got my ass kicked by the way his glare beat me upside the head with all of his animosity.

  Colson was the furthest possibility in my mind of people or things that were going to happen tonight. A pissed-off ghost conveying grim memories back into the forefront of my brain.

  Ones I've desperately tried to erase.

  “Isn’t Jake coming to see you in a few days?”

  “Not soon enough,” I mutter, biting my lower lip.

  “Just avoid him at all costs, girl,” Taylor proposes. “Out of sight, out of mind, right?”

  “He’s seeing my sister,” I snap, the words rancid in my mouth.

  God, did he know she was my sister beforehand?

  The pit of my stomach begins to hollow out, like a pumpkin that’s getting carved for Halloween.

  Skylar and I haven’t talked much lately. She’s taken a new position at Dr. Winter’s office as a receptionist, and I figured she was just settling in, finally taking this whole “adult” thing seriously. It’s been kind of a nice break, Skylar’s always been a bit too much for me.

  High strung, materialistic, just the exact opposite of me.

  I’ve always been the one to work hard for what I wanted while she’s been the one who held out her hand, expecting it to be given without question. And while here I was hoping she’d change and become more responsible, now I know why she hasn’t been around to help me with Dad’s business.

  She’s been too busy on Colson’s dick.

  I bow my head into my chest, a headache emerging from the overwhelming feeling that my nightmare and dream is back. “I can’t do this.”

  “Call Jake,” Taylor coos softly. “Let him work his magic, he always makes you feel better afterward.”

  “Yeah,” I say mindlessly. “He does.”

  I wish I could say Jake is my therapist or that he’s some magical guru that can settle my problems when I feel anxious.

  But he’s not.

  He’s just my fuck buddy.

  One I used to forget the one man who worked for my heart, stole it and shattered it into pieces.

  Ten years ago

  “How did you ever make the team if you can’t hit the ball inside the plate?” Colson bites out, throwing the ball back to Gavin with annoyance knitted in his tone.

  I stiffen for the hundredth time at his chiding for the last hour. His presence and constant heavy sighs have been screwing up any sort of concentration I’m trying to conceive here.

  “I don’t like them,” I counter back, watching Gavin palm the ball in his mitt and dig his cleats into the pitcher’s mound.

  It’s well after softball practice, but Gavin has volunteered to help me with my swing. We have our rival game with Alpena High coming up, and the pitcher is a beast at the mound, leaving them undefeated with the highest amount of strikeouts in the state.

  And I wasn’t going to be the new girl on the team that got struck out every time I went up against her.

  It may cause a riot or something here.

  Freemont was passionate about two things: football and baseball. The Super Bowl was like Christmas, and the World Series had a parade with a town-wide BBQ. I’ve never seen so many parents show up to a high school game geared up like they were going tailgating at a professional game. They arrived with homemade poster boards, folded chairs, coolers, and some even brought shade tents.

  In Michigan, where I moved from, we had all sports, and nothing was adored more than the other. It was just a game, an extracurricular activity. But here, the parents are hardcore.

  Last week, Becky, our first baseman, her mom punched a dad from the opposing team because he wouldn’t stop running his mouth. Not too big of a deal, right?

  Wrong.

  It ended up with Becky’s mom cramming her hot dog down his throat while kicking him off the bleachers.

  He almost choked until someone had to give him the Heimlich. The cops didn’t come, people watched with subtle interest, and then we continued playing the game.

  I was the only one rattled by it.

  Regardless, I didn’t want to give Coach Gordon a reason to bench me. Normally, she’s encouraging and high spirited, but I’ve been noticing her own anxiety level rising the closer we get to the “Game of the Year.”

  “I don’t like bad blowjobs either,” Colson retorts. “But sometimes, when you need to —” I whip around and cut Colson off.

  “Why are you here?” No one invited him, but
I wasn’t going to point out that fact outloud.

  Since last weekend’s party, all he does is glare at me from across the field and deliver snarky little comments that are petty and rude.

  Now he makes it a point to remember me. Lucky me.

  Colson Hayes is a walking, talking reminder of how much I miss home. How I never wanted to come here in the first place.

  I left behind Mia, my best friend, and my boyfriend, Logan, just to start over in my senior year. My dad’s “awesome job opportunity” slicing right through the middle of my life.

  “You, apparently, need all the help you can get,” he chides through furrowed brows.

  I avert my gaze so that I don’t have to look at his annoyed facial expressions or study his honey-brown eyes.

  “Can you do it without the commentary?” I rebuke, focusing back on Gavin before positioning myself over home plate. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

  “Nope.” He pops his “p” for added effect and I roll my eyes.

  “I can find you something else to do,” I pledge, hitting the tip of my bat on my shoes.

  Like jumping off a cliff or taking a cross-country trip to the end of the Earth.

  “Now I’m intrigued,” Colson says. “What could the innocent Sawyer Boyd with no experience in anything find for me to do?”

  I squeeze the base of my bat tightly. He doesn’t know me, and I’m going to keep it that way.

  “I hear Melanie has been wanting to get down your pants for the last two weeks now. Just put her out of her misery already.”

  And mine.

  She’s our right fielder, constantly gushing about Colson’s “wildfire eyes” and how she wants to “watch them roll back when riding his junk.” She coos and sighs to the point of it being nauseating, and I’m so tired of hearing his name that I could just pop my eardrums with a pencil.

  “Melanie is fucking annoying,” he spouts in disgust. “And I don’t hand my dick around like it’s a church flyer.” I scoff under my breath before Gavin pitches the ball down home plate, curving toward the inside of the base again.

  I don’t swing.

  “Could have fooled me, Hayes,” I tell him, swinging my bat around to flex my wrist.