“He’s in freakin’ Louisiana!”
“It could be worse,” she tried to appease me.
“I’m not sure how,” I snapped.
“It could’ve happened tomorrow night and he’d have been in Toronto.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
Seemed I was having a problem coming up with words.
“I guess that’s true,” I agreed reluctantly. “But he’s in the middle of a game right now, and I’m in labor!”
She rolled her eyes.
“Your water hasn’t even broken.”
And that was about the time that my water broke.
All over the floor, and right on top of Diamond’s brand-new pair of shoes.
“My shoes!” Diamond cried.
“My water!” I cried at the exact same moment.
I looked to the TV where George was still up to bat.
“How do you get a hold of him?” Diamond whispered.
I slowly started to pace as the pain slowly ebbed away.
“I don’t. I wait until he calls me.”
George had warned me that there was a strict no phone policy in the dugout and that if an emergency happened, I was to call the team manager, who would then call the phone that was in the dugout.
Which would then be relayed to him.
But I didn’t want to bother him.
I wanted him to play.
He was so close to his two hundredth home run that I didn’t want to take that away from him.
How cool would it be to have his baby and his two hundredth career home run all in the same day?
Personally, I thought it’d be awesome.
Which was why I made the stupid decision not to tell him until he called me two hours later.
With his two hundredth home run under his belt.
“Did you hear?”
I did, but I was screaming too loudly to reply.
***
Nine hours later
I didn’t think there was a single sight in the world that was more beautiful than watching my husband, the man that I loved with all of my heart, hold his son for the first time.
I’d gone into labor around four that afternoon and had gone to the hospital while George was at his baseball game out of town.
He’d missed the birth.
Almost.
He’d literally walked into the hospital room—or more accurately run in—right about the time that our son was sliding out of my vagina.
Something I didn’t think he could ever forget if the sight on his face at that particular moment in time was anything to go by.
Now he was holding our son while I was cleaned up and ‘stitched as good as new.’
“I can’t believe you didn’t call me the minute you knew,” he grumbled, his eyes coming up to meet mine.
I sighed. “I’ll never hear the end of that, will I?”
He shook his head.
“I just wanted you to get your two hundredth home run,” I explained.
He rolled his eyes. “That would’ve just as easily come the next game I played.”
Speaking of the next game he played…
“Are you playing tomorrow?”
He gave me another look that clearly thought I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
“I’ll return to the series once they get home. That’s two days from now,” he answered.
I sighed in relief. “Good, because I don’t know anything about kids.”
He snorted. “You and me both, baby. You and me both.”
Two hours later I was in my new room, showered, dressed and as comfortable as I would be getting while in the hospital.
“I hope you enjoy the one kid you have,” I croaked. “Because my vagina won’t be doing that again. Your kid almost broke me.”
And he had.
I had seventeen stitches.
I’d torn from vagina to ass (yes, not the best picture, but it was what it was), and I wasn’t sure anything would ever be the same down there again, even though the doctor assured me that it would.
I could tell that using the bathroom and doing all those things would be painful for the time being, and I was not looking forward to revisiting this stage of life.
It was George’s smile that made me immediately want to retract that statement.
“You’d deprive me of this again?” he teased as he repositioned Micah in his arms.
I blinked as he looked down at his son who’d just made an annoyed sound that clearly said he didn’t like being jostled.
There was nothing more beautiful in the world than a man holding his baby. This bearded, red-haired man of mine with his love for life. The tattooed beast of a man who could hit baseballs straight out of the park. The man that was quickly becoming my entire world.
“Do you think he’ll always have red hair?” I asked softly.
“I had red hair as a child,” he explained. “It’s been that way ever since.”
I found myself smiling at that. “Do you think he’ll have your green eyes?”
George stood up and sidled up to the bed.
Knowing what he was after, I slid over enough so that he could take a seat on the bed, which he did moments later.
Once he was settled in, me tucked up under one arm, and Micah in the other, I felt utter and complete contentedness sweep over me.
“I think he’ll have my green eyes,” he agreed. “Since he has my hair, and my skin tone, I really do think you will have to have another one. Maybe that one will look like you. At this point, people will question whether he’s even yours or not.”
I pinched his side.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah,” he snickered. “If I hadn’t actively seen him coming out of your vagina, I honestly think I might’ve questioned if he was yours, too.”
I sighed.
“All that work I did incubating him, throwing up for nine months, followed by all those mood swings, and he comes out looking exactly like you. Seriously, couldn’t he have just given me one thing?” I teased.
“He has your toes,” George offered up.
“Nuh-uh,” I sure hoped he didn’t.
Turns out, he did.
“Shit,” I laughed, wincing when the pain pulled my stitches.
“You okay?” He ran his hand up my arm to curl around my head.
I nodded against his chest.
“I’ll live.”
He growled something low in his throat. “I don’t like you in pain. The past day will forever be burned in my brain. Hearing you scream was one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. I don’t ever want to feel that helpless again.”
The warmth in his tone was soothing.
I was very tired.
“If you want more, you better get used to it.”
“Okay, we’ll have one.”
I snorted. “We’ll have more. I just gotta forget about this one’s birth first,” I disagreed, running one finger down the length of Micah’s cheek.
Micah turned and started to root, but I moved my hand back, causing him to settle.
“I feel like I’m drowning when I think about having to raise him,” I whispered. “It scares the crap out of me that I’ll break him.”
“We’ll be bungling through this parenthood thing together,” he teased. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We will.”
“Turn out those lights, baby. Let’s get some sleep while we can.”
I reached for the lights on the railing of the bed at my side.
“You gonna put him in his crib?” I asked.
“For tonight, I think I’ll just hold him.”
I turned out the lights, and the room was plunged into darkness except for the light that was still on in the bathroom.
“I don’t regret doing this so fast,” I whispered into the darkness.
I felt George’s lips on my fo
rehead.
The cool tingle of his lips against my overheated skin made me smile.
“Something this beautiful—this perfect—is not a mistake. Rough. Tough. Seemingly impossible and beautiful. This is how it was always meant to be.”
Nothing, not anything, would ever break us.
Part II
Chapter 8
Baseball is an acquired taste. Only those with good taste like it.
-Baseballism
George
“George, what do you want for Christmas?” the reporter asked me.
My wife back in my arms at night, my son in his bed under the same roof, and for this nightmare to disappear so I could live with my family again.
I wanted to answer the question almost about as much as I wanted to take another ninety-eight mile an hour fastball to the shoulder. However, our team manager had flat out told me that I had no choice but to be nice or our ratings would suffer.
Honestly, I didn’t care about ratings.
I didn’t care about much these days. However, I did care about the team.
The team was the only thing in this shitty little world that was keeping me sane right now with all the crap that was swirling around me.
And I wouldn’t let them down, no matter how much I wanted to yank the reporter’s microphone out of my face and shove it down his throat.
I hated this reporter.
He was a condescending jerk, and I’d like nothing more than to watch him beg as I pounded the shit out of him.
Especially since he was the one who’d started this all, the asshole.
“Well, Christmas is still about two and a half months away. Honestly, the only thing on my mind at this point is winning this playoff game, and hopefully getting into the World Series. That, I think, would be a great early Christmas present.” I smiled, baring my teeth a little too long at the reporter for it to be considered a ‘nice’ smile.
Dodger, yes, his actual name was fucking Dodger, winked at me.
Fucking winked.
“And how is your son doing now? I heard last week that he’s finally started walking.” Dodger smiled, acting for all the world as if he actually gave a fuck.
Which he didn’t.
Because if he had, he’d have fucking asked his goddamn sister himself how his nephew was doing, not me.
“Micah’s doing well.” I kept that short and sweet.
I didn’t want Micah’s face plastered all over everything, but like always, I knew that the goddamn news station had already split the screen and posted a few shots of my son on the ground, toddling like only a new walker could do. It was a picture that Wrigley had sent to her friend. Her friend who had then sold the same picture to the goddamn news stations and magazines seconds after she got it.
Why?
Because I was a hot fucking commodity, and the media and fans wanted to know everything there was to know about me, no matter how big or small.
Because it wasn’t every day that you had to file a restraining order against your wife’s sister because she tried to shoot you.
Wrigley, her sister Diamond, and Dodger were family. Their parents were dead, and Dodger, being the oldest, should’ve been taking care of his family. Only, Dodger did what he did best. Dodge.
Leaving Wrigley, who was seventeen at the time of their parents’ deaths, to take care of Diamond who was five years younger. Wrigley was more of a motherly figure to Diamond rather than a sister, so it was understandable that she’d be protective of her.
I could still picture the scene in my mind: the day that had ruined my life.
Diamond had been in a car accident a few weeks after our son, Micah, was born.
She’d hit her head pretty hard, and had suffered a pretty terrible concussion.
That concussion had abated, but the results of that concussion hadn’t.
Following the concussion, she’d experienced quite a few problems.
She’d forget where she was, or lose vision in her right eye. Then that turned into a few more alarming things, like spacing out while driving.
Which had then caused another accident, causing her to break her leg.
Once that had happened, we’d moved her into my place, and watched over her.
And that was when the other stuff had started happening.
She suffered mood swings so violent that I started to fear for my child’s safety.
And when I’d relayed that information to Wrigley as well as Dodger, they’d shrugged it off.
Then I’d walked in on Diamond standing over Micah’s bed one night while getting in late from a game.
When I startled her, she’d turned a gun on me and had aimed it straight at my face.
And then had pulled the trigger.
She’d missed, obviously, but it’d been enough for me to know two things.
One, Diamond needed to fucking go.
And two, my wife needed to pull her head out of her ass and admit that there was a problem.
I’d said some things that night after kicking Diamond out of my house that hadn’t been nice, and Wrigley had been gone the next morning with our son in tow.
Which led to now.
Now, we were divorced—something Wrigley hadn’t hesitated in getting done.
And, anger still in my system of having Diamond standing over my son’s crib, paired with the fact that my wife had left and sided with her sister—it had burned.
But I’d made her a deal.
One, she didn’t live with Diamond and never left Diamond alone with our son. In return, I wouldn’t pursue custody.
Wrigley had given that to me, but she hasn’t wavered in the support of her sister.
Which led me to Dodger.
Dodger who had done nothing to help Diamond and Wrigley. Dodger who had even gone as far as to kick Diamond out of his house, too. Which led to even more strife between my ex-wife and me.
Wrigley wanted to offer Diamond a place to stay, and I’d let her know in no uncertain terms what would happen if she did that.
Meaning Diamond was now in her own apartment—paid for by ‘her.’ I say ‘her’ loosely since I was the one paying for it—not that any of them knew that.
And Dodger? Well, he was just a little fucker in the middle of it all.
He was never there to help, only to hurt.
I realized rather quickly after Diamond’s accident that Dodger wasn’t a good person, and probably never would be.
“You weren’t your usual self during this game, Furious George. There were no outbursts, no arguments. You were…normal,” Dodger goaded me, eyes gleaming. “Can you tell me what changed?”
What changed?
My wife called me. My wife—ex-wife—had called to let me talk to my son before the game, and it’d made my heart settle. For a few hours anyway.
I hadn’t always been this crazy man who fought.
I used to be tame. I used to be able to control my temper…I used to be happy.
Now, I wasn’t.
Now, I was worse than before I’d met her.
I was lost.
I was broken.
I was alone.
And worst of all, I didn’t want to be found.
Not by anyone but her.
I was simply existing.
The only thing that kept me going was seeing my son on my designated days.
Nothing made me happy anymore.
Nothing made me smile.
Nothing made life worth living—except for every Tuesday and Thursday when I wasn’t at work. For four hours, on those days, I was happy. I was my old self. I was unbroken.
But every Tuesday and Thursday at eight thirty in the evening, my world stopped spinning once again.
Life became useless once more.
My temper started to spark, and I couldn’t find it in me to care.
“How does it feel to hit four home runs in one game?” Dodger continued,
unaware of the anger he was stirring in me the longer I had to speak with him.
I nearly didn’t answer him, but then I remembered my publicist’s words before the game. ‘Be nice. Stop being such a jerk. People want to hear about your life. It won’t kill you to say how your son is doing.’
She was right, and she was wrong.
It wouldn’t kill me, no. But it would fucking suck.
Because with this being an away game, I wasn’t going to get to see Micah tomorrow like usual. It wouldn’t be until the following Thursday, a full week and a day away, that I got to see his cute little face.
“Felt great,” I lied.
I didn’t feel great about anything.
But the fans didn’t need to know that.
And neither did Dodger the douche.
“How was…” Dodger started, but I’d had enough.
“I’m sorry, man, but I have another interview to go to. It was nice talking to you,” I lied, then I turned my back on the asshole.
I really hated him.
If there was one person in this entire world that I didn’t want to speak to tonight, it was him. And the problem was that he damn well knew it.
Dodger found it funny that his sister and I were no longer together.
He also found it funny that I was struggling.
“Yo,” Hancock said, catching up to my long strides. “You going back to the hotel?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You want to come out for…” He started, but I interrupted him.
“No.”
Hancock sighed. “You’re sure?”
I nodded once firmly. “Fucking positive.”
And I was. I’d rather do nothing than be reminded of what I was missing.
Watching him with his woman, Sway, who also happened to be the athletic trainer, was fucking exhausting.
It sucked having to act like seeing them together and happy wasn’t the hardest thing in the goddamn world to do.
It was gut-wrenching to see someone have what I’d lost.
And I didn’t want to see it.
Not tonight, anyway.
Not with my emotions so raw.
Not with this goddamn gaping wound in my chest that used to be filled when my wife was there.
Chapter 9
An entire relationship can be made or broken by having baseball in common.
-Baseballism
Quit Your Pitchin' Page 6
