Perfect Catch

by Sierra Dean

  Silence fell over the hallway like a tangible thing, smothering them to the point where words were impossible. He shouldn’t have said it, should have known it was the entirely wrong thing to say, yet the words came out regardless.

  It was like she’d hit a button on him marked Verbal Diarrhea Release Valve.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.” Backpedaling was unlikely to do much good, but it was worth a shot.

  “What the fuck did you just say to me?” Her cheeks were flushed red, fists balled by her sides as if she wanted to punch him. She probably did. He’d never heard her swear this much the entire time he’d known her. She was far more the type to say fudge instead of fuck.

  He withdrew his hands from his pockets, holding them up in a surrendering gesture. “I didn’t mean it. But you show up here, you’re pissed at me for no good reason, and I just reacted, okay? Honestly, do you think I wanted this to happen any more than you did? That somehow I was hoping this would come out in public? Is that really what you think of me?”

  She went quiet again, but judging by the look on her face there were some choice thoughts running through her mind. Then the sadness returned. Her expression pleaded with him, making him want to go to her, hold her, to tell her everything would be okay. That sadness in her eyes told him she didn’t want to be angry with him, but she wasn’t letting herself be okay with him either.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” she said with a resigned sigh. Alex wasn’t sure if she was talking about fighting with him, or about their whole relationship in general. “Alex, did you…” She paused and stared at the wall. “Did you leak the story?”

  “What? Is that why you’re so mad? Because you think I’m the one who told the press? Jesus, Alice, that’s the craziest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard. I didn’t tell anyone anything. I didn’t betray your trust.”

  Alice let out a choked sob and shook her head. She balled her fists on the hem of her shirt and refused to look at him.

  “It’s not like we were especially stealthy about things,” he reminded her. “I picked you up at work. You came and went through the main hotel entrance. Your family has met me. Maybe Olivia said something at school.”

  “You’re going to blame this on my kid now?”

  “You’re blaming it on me without any kind of evidence to back it up. What’s the difference?”

  “I didn’t blame you. I was just asking. And Liv didn’t say anything.”

  “Neither did I.”

  They stared at each other, neither of them moving or looking away. Finally Alice unclenched her fists. “Goodbye, Alex.”

  Not so long, not we’ll talk about it later. Just goodbye. So flat, so final. It was like the spoken version of hanging up on someone. She wasn’t giving him any wiggle room to get around it.

  She turned and walked down the hall out of sight, her soft footfalls echoing even when he could no longer see her. Then those too were gone, and he was left alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  She knew better than to watch the games.

  Yet she sat on the couch with Kevin’s feet in her lap—one leg still in a cast—and the Felons game up on the TV. It had become a habit for her, Olivia and Kevin to sit in front of the big-screen once or twice a week and watch the Felons take on whichever team they were facing at the time. Liv would get excited whenever Alex got to bat, reminding Kevin she knew him.

  For some reason the games kept Kevin mellow. He’d never been much of a baseball fan before, but something about watching the sport now acted as a balm. It was nice to see him engaging and doing something other than spending all day in his room. He actually stayed awake the entire three hours, and getting to spend that time with him was worth it to Alice.

  Instead of telling Kevin about her final fight with Alex, she’d let him believe the relationship had come apart naturally as a result of distance. Alice knew how much Kevin loathed Matt—made worse now by the knowledge Matt had paid for his hospital bills—and she didn’t want to bring on that level of animosity towards Alex as well. She didn’t even know if Alex had spread the story, and the more she thought about it the less she believed it was possible. The last thing Kevin needed was to harbor a pointless vendetta. It wasn’t good for him, or for any of them, to have his focus shifted in such a toxic way.

  Healing was the number-one priority for her family now, and if that meant Alice had to overlook her own heart for the good of those she loved, she would watch Felons games and pretend it didn’t break her up inside.

  On screen the Yankees were up to bat, and the announcer reminded them for the seventh time how Tucker Lloyd had pitched a perfect game against the team the previous season. There was much speculation as to whether or not he could do it again.

  Alice huffed.

  Of course he couldn’t do it again. The odds of a pitcher throwing two perfect games in two years against the same team were about the same as her winning the lottery. Tucker was good, she wasn’t arguing that, but it drove her mental when sportscasters felt the need to create dramatic hope for something that was never going to happen.

  The third batter up put all the silly discussion to an end by hitting a left field double.

  Behind the plate, Alex made his call for a curveball and hopped up, so spry on his feet he seemed made for a low crouch, like an animal ready to spring into action.

  Alice tried to pay attention to the game, but she was so fixated on Alex she only noticed the ball when it found a home in his glove. The camera would pan close, giving her ample opportunity to make out his eyes through the mask. His lashes were so dark and thick it was impossible for her to not stare. She remembered the perfect satisfaction of staring at him as he slept, those beautiful, almost too-long eyelashes resting on his cheeks.

  The way his snug pants hugged his muscular thighs reminded her of other things she’d hoped to forget. Vivid memories of the feel of his body over hers triggered an erotic synapse flash, sending all her nerves into overdrive. She frowned at herself, wishing her body wasn’t hell-bent on holding on to those feelings.

  So what if he’d made her come? It didn’t let him off the hook for getting her fired.

  Try telling that to her nether regions though. One look at his legs and the tanned stretch of his bare forearms, and she was ready to have him throw her down and take her right on home plate, with the entire Felons stadium watching.

  “I’m going to grab a soda. Anybody want anything while I’m up?” She patted Kevin’s legs so he would lift them off her. Pushing them from her lap would have been a dead giveaway she was trying to flee, plus one of them was broken, so it would be cruel and unusual.

  “Chips,” Liv said, not moving her eyes from the screen.

  Alice was about to counter with a healthier offer when Kevin said, “Actually, yeah, chips sound great. And maybe a Coke.”

  She sighed, defeated before she could try to fight. Since Kevin had come home, and since his…incident, she found it hard to say no to him. She knew it wasn’t in his best interests to baby him, but at the same time she desperately wanted to make him happy. If chips and a Coke would make him happy, then she wasn’t going to turn him down. And she couldn’t very well park a bowl of chips in front of Kevin and deny them to Liv.

  “Okay.”

  In the kitchen she emptied a bag of BBQ chips into two bowls—a large one for her and Kevin, and a much smaller one for Liv—and brought out two canned drinks and a cardboard container of chocolate milk.

  She did her best to avoid looking at the television while she doled out the goodies, but naturally that was the moment the announcers decided to discuss Alex Ross’s recent surge.

  “I don’t know if it was the Florida air, Ken, but something certainly lit a fire under his tuccus. He’s been playing like a new man since he came back.”

  “More accurately he’s been playing like he did last season, and that’s something this Felons offense was desperately needing. It’s nice to see them playing like the Fel
ons of old again.”

  “It might be a bit early for sweeping statements, but I’d say if they keep this up, their playoff shot is a sure thing.”

  They continued to banter, rattling off a mind-bending list of Alex’s stats since he came back to the team and the team’s stats as a whole moving towards the mid-season break. Even for Alice, a baseball fan, the list was too much to take. But announcers needed to fill airtime with something, and there was nothing baseball loved more than numbers. Fans and experts alike could turn anything into a baseball statistic. She was often amazed they didn’t run things like “on-base percentage while wearing orange shoes” or “number of home runs with black batting gloves versus gray.” And the funny thing about baseball was those stats could be compiled. They just weren’t as popular as some of the others.

  Liv munched happily on her chips, slurping up chocolate milk through a straw while she peppered Alice and Kevin with questions about the game.

  “Why is it only a strike on some of the hits but not all of them?” she asked when a batter fouled off a ball.

  “You can’t get your third strike on a foul,” Alice answered.

  “Why not?”

  Since explaining it was outside her reach right then, Alice said, “It’s just the rule.” And Alice knew a thing or two about stupid, pointless rules.

  “Is Alex good?” Liv asked.

  “Yes.” Alice didn’t want to get into it more. She didn’t want Liv bringing up all sorts of questions about Alex because there were no easy answers there. Explaining where he’d gone had been the simplest—he went back to San Francisco to play baseball. But when it came to “When will he be back?” and “Do you think Alex misses us?” the answers were trickier to come up with.

  Did Alex miss them?

  Should Alice care whether or not he did?

  She tried repeatedly to convince herself she didn’t. She’d ended things, and she needed to put her time with Alex behind her. After he’d denied having any part of letting things slip to the press, she’d tried to figure out who might have done it. She’d even asked Liv about it after Alex was gone, trying to suss out whether the child had told anyone. Liv insisted she hadn’t.

  So Liv hadn’t done it, and Alice no longer believed Alex had either. Maybe it really was just bad luck and a piss-poor job of covering their tracks after all. She felt guilty for even asking Alex if he’d had a part in it.

  The repercussions of the blog post had screwed her. No matter how tame the picture had been, it had ruined her professional life. None of the guys from the league would talk to her, and she was a laughingstock among the community.

  Worse, she knew she’d managed to inadvertently make life difficult for every woman who would try to be an umpire after her. She’d fought hard to be taken seriously, to be seen as more than just a baseball groupie, and she’d ruined it all in one fell swoop by falling for a player.

  What an idiot she’d been.

  She hadn’t made up her no-players rule on a whim. Sure, a lot of it had been a result of how much Matt had hurt her. But once she became an umpire there were very real, very logical reasons she had refused to get involved with players. Yet those had faded into the ether when Alex looked at her. Now she’d been cruelly reminded why she had those rules to begin with.

  Why did the sex have to be as good as it was? Why did the man have to be so damned…loveable?

  In all other aspects of life she managed to keep a level head, but a man with skilled fingers and a sharp tongue was all it took to get her panties down around her ankles—or in the backseat of her car—and her entire future up in smoke.

  Her professional future anyway.

  Alice looked at the back of Liv’s head as she bobbed it up and down to a silent song only she could hear. Squeezing Kevin’s good leg and tickling the bottom of his foot, she had to remind herself all was not lost in the rest of her life. She still had the people who mattered most to her, and if she kept telling herself that, things didn’t seem so bad.

  Then she glanced at the TV where the cameraman captured a shot of Alex removing his face mask and offering a wide, warm grin to his pitcher.

  Her heart lurched, and she sipped her pop in the hope the fizz might knock out her uneasiness. Instead of feeling better though, now she felt nauseous and bubbly.

  She hoped forgetting him would be easy, but all it took was one look at his face, his stupid dark stubble and those round, friendly cheeks, and she wanted to hold him. One second on TV and she wanted him back.

  Less than the time it took for her to lose her breath, and she knew she was still in love.

  And that made her twice the fool she feared she was.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Alex was experiencing a very painful case of déjà vu.

  “You’re more tense than a hooker after a busy shore leave,” Jasper scolded, digging a thumb into the dense tissue between Alex’s shoulder blades. Alex winced, the finely focused pressure more painful than anything.

  “I don’t even know what that means,” he grumbled.

  “You need me to spell out what hookers do for sailors on shore leave?” Jasper seemed to sense Alex’s tension ramping up and eased off on the kneading. “I don’t think you can pretend to be that innocent, Alex.”

  He wasn’t sure if Jasper was talking about his fumble into the gossip columns or making a statement about his lack of innocence in general. To be fair, if it was the latter, he had a point. None of the guys on the team were angels, and Alex hadn’t been living a celibate life before he met Alice.

  Since Alice, though…things were different.

  He’d spoken to Violet earlier that morning, and in uncharacteristic advice from a hopeless romantic, she’d suggested he “get back on the horse”. It was better than Ricki telling him he was a poon hound, but still distressing to hear his younger sister advise him to “climb on the next available woman and bang out all your frustrations like she’s a vending machine who won’t give up the candy”.

  Under normal circumstances he would have been on board with the logic. Go out, get his dick wet, find a way to get the girl out of his mind. But Alice wasn’t any normal girl, she wasn’t a girl at all, and maybe that was the difference. She was a woman, and a mother, and she’d proven she had no patience for bullshit.

  He hadn’t been the one to screw her over, but it didn’t change the fact he was partly to blame. If he hadn’t insisted they get involved, if he hadn’t chased her relentlessly, she would still have her job. He’d thought he’d known what she needed, and like the foolish idiot he was, he’d assumed she needed him. But being with him hadn’t gone so great for her, and now he was left without an awesome lady, with no idea what he should do next.

  Holding his proverbial dick in his hand, as it were.

  Emmy had suggested he call Alice to apologize for his part in their last fight. She’d even offered to act as a proxy. But Alex had tried. He’d called, he’d texted and emailed, and done everything short of sending messenger pigeons or singing telegrams. If he thought a man in a gorilla suit could make things better, he’d have shipped a fleet of them to Alice’s house.

  The unfortunate fact was she didn’t want to talk to him. She’d made up her mind they shouldn’t be together, and even though she’d been wrong to accuse him of talking to the press, he couldn’t shake off a feeling of guilt for getting her axed and for him saying some truly stupid shit.

  Move on.

  That was what logic, his friends, his family and all the online advice columns were saying. If she didn’t want to talk to him, he couldn’t force her to. Yet in the three weeks since he’d come back from Florida, all he could think of was how to make Alice listen to him.

  The only thing he could hope was maybe she was watching him. Every ball he hit out of the park, every miraculous catch he made behind the plate, hell, all the foul tips he took to his mask, he hoped would be the thing to make her notice him. She used to send him texts whenever he did something noteworthy, to sig
nal to him she was out there keeping tabs. He’d liked that, knowing someone on the other side of the country cared enough about him to send a one-line note saying so.

  But no matter how much he stepped up his game, the messages didn’t come. He was closing in on a month of no contact from Alice, and the sad reality of the situation was beginning to sink in.

  She was never going to text.

  His emails were probably being sent directly to her trash bin, like his phone calls went straight to voicemail.

  The time had come for him to seriously consider how he was going to move on and leave Alice, Liv and everything he’d shared with the Darling family behind in Florida.

  Ramon Escalante wandered into the room, slapping Jasper hard on the back. When he got a look at Alex, he grimaced.

  “My friend, why do you look so serious?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “You mustn’t. You are already so ugly. This serious expression makes you much uglier.” He laughed heartily, his bright white teeth flashing, and punched Alex’s shoulder.

  When Alex didn’t immediately counter with his own one-liner, Ramon’s face went serious—or at least as serious as the Dominican first baseman was capable of being. “Have I offended you?”

  Alex had to laugh. “You once told me my dick was so flaccid I would never be able to please a woman unless I had stock in Viagra. You think I’m going to be offended now because you think I’m ugly?”

  “You can take drugs to work around your flaccid penis. Your face, though. So ugly. There is no hiding that from the world.” Ramon smiled. They shared the type of brotherly friendship that relied primarily on smacking each other, giving high-fives and trading insults so dehumanizing one of them should have been reduced to tears by the end of every game.

  It was the kind of bond that often made Alex want to punch the other man in the face.

  Out of love, naturally.

  Ramon scratched his goatee and sat down in Jasper’s chair, leaving the assistant athletic trainer on his feet, forced to stand while he continued his attentions on Alex as Ramon sat court.