by Tara Wyatt
Javi moved a bit closer. “Don’t look now, but a bunch of Mariners just walked in. I swear, if Blake so much as looks at them funny, he’s benched.”
She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Uh huh. Sure. Big talk from the man who just unbenched him.”
He blew out a breath and shrugged. “Landon convinced me. We need him right now. And I need him to keep his fists to himself.”
At the mention of Jake, Abby couldn’t help but glance in his direction. He leaned against the far wall, a beer in one hand as he chatted with Beau and Connor. Looking causal and relaxed. Happy, even. And that just made her feel lonely. So, she ordered another beer and took a long pull when the bartender sat it down in front of her.
“You okay?” asked Javi, his warm brown eyes trained on her. Early on in their working relationship, she and Javi had struck up an easy friendship. They were both coaches, both former players, and both were part of a minority when it came to MLB coaching. She was the only woman, and Javi was only one of a few Latino MLB managers, and the youngest one at that. They were outsiders who stuck together; two underdogs with something to prove. But she couldn’t tell him about her and Jake. The risk was too great.
She managed a small smile. “Yep. All good.”
“You know you can talk to me if something’s up, right?”
“What makes you think something’s up?”
He tipped his head. “You’ve been quiet the past few days. Just seems like there’s something on your mind.”
She shook her head, not allowing herself to glance in Jake’s direction again. It was so hard being around him so much—something she’d always wanted, because she’d missed the hell out of him whenever they’d been apart—but now he was here, and she had to pretty much ignore him, for the sake of both her reputation and her sanity. It was exhausting, pretending she wasn’t always hyperaware of him.
Beau ambled over to where she and Javi stood and exchanged his empty beer bottle for a fresh, cold one.
“Glad to have you back out there tonight. How’d the shoulder feel?” asked Javi, moving down to make room for him at the crowded bar.
Beau rubbed a hand over his short, light brown hair. “Felt great.” He winked at a sexy blonde on the other side of the bar. “Speaking of feeling great.” He bounced his eyebrows and headed in her direction.
Abby let out a little chuckle. “Some things never change, do they?” Beau was one of the best looking players in the MLB, and he damn well knew it—and so did all the ballgirls. He had a reputation about a mile long, and it seemed as though he was back in action tonight.
Javi laughed and shook his head. “Fathers, lock up your daughters, Beau Beckett’s back in town.”
“Speaking of daughters, did you talk to Cara?” she asked, mentioning Javi’s ex-wife.
He sighed and dropped his elbows onto the bar. “Yeah. I wanted to have Chloe and Olive with me during the off season, but she said no, that she didn’t want them to change schools, which I get. I offered to rent a place in San Diego, but she still said no. Lawyers are working on it. I hardly ever see them, and she doesn’t help.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Javi. That sucks.”
He paused before looking at her. “This game gives a lot, but it takes so much, you know?”
God, did she know.
“Okay, I’m just gonna come over here and shoot my shot,” came an unfamiliar male voice. Abby turned and came face to face with Jason Scarsden, a second string shortstop for the Mariners. She schooled her face into a neutral expression, allowing one eyebrow to inch up just slightly. It was a regular occurrence for players from the other team to either hit on her or make sexist comments. She wasn’t exactly used to it, but she was used to pretending it didn’t bother her. The last thing she was going to give some dumb troglodyte was a reaction. When she didn’t say anything, Scarsden shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“So, what’s your deal?” he asked, leaning a bit closer. She felt Javi shift behind her, standing up straighter.
“My deal?” she asked, her tone flat.
“Yeah, you like dudes, or what?”
She blinked slowly. “If this is you shooting your shot, I think you’ve already missed.” She turned back to the bar, but he didn’t leave and get the hint. Apparently she’d pissed him off, because his next words were laced with bile.
“You like working with her?” he jeered at Javi. Javi ignored him, sipping his beer. Jake calmly sidled up to the bar, Dylan McCormick right behind him. Hunter stood where he was, but she could see the battle he was waging with his temper and mouthed “stay” to him. The last thing she wanted was for this stupid yahoo to get her friend in more trouble. Hunter got himself in plenty of it without any outside help.
“Can’t imagine you all like taking lessons from some chick softball player,” Scarsden said, his voice getting louder. When no one answered, he returned his attention to Abby. “You take a peek when these big boys are in the shower? Bet you’d love that.”
“Bet if I peeked at you, I’d need a microscope to find your dick,” she muttered, her patience and control slipping.
“What did you say to me?”
“She said you have a tiny dick, Scarsden,” said Jake loudly, a smirk on his face. “I played in the minor leagues with you. She’s not wrong. I mean, tiny’s being generous here.” He held up his pinky finger in mock measurement.
Dylan and Javi both laughed into their drinks. Scarsden’s face flushed red.
Beau sauntered back over, a cocky smile on his face. “No one invited you to this party, Scarsden. Why don’t you take your ugly mug somewhere else?”
Finally, a few of Scarsden’s teammates came over and led him away, his face still red. Beau said nothing, just gave Abby a hard clap on the shoulder, and then disappeared back into the crowd. A little warm glow took root somewhere deep inside her at the way they’d all had her back. It meant a lot to her that they accepted her and saw her as a member of the team, just like anyone else.
She wondered if they’d treat her the same way if they knew she’d been sleeping with Jake for the past several months.
Jake leaned in close and his scent hit her like a punch in the stomach, almost knocking her off balance. Her entire body responded to being so close to him, and she took a long pull on her beer in an effort to shut it down. “You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. Not the first time something like that’s happened. Won’t be the last.” She glanced over at him, and she could tell he wanted to say more, to do more, but instead, he just studied her for another second or two, and then nodded, following Dylan to a table Hunter had snagged.
Watching Jake walk away sucked a lot more than anything Scarsden had said. A hell of a lot more.
“Ah, fuck,” Jake groaned as Damian, the team’s massage therapist, dug his fingers into the tight muscles of Jake’s lower back. He’d added massage as a regular part of his pre-game routine last year, hoping to prolong his career with a little extra TLC. But this wasn’t a day at the spa, oh-that’s-bliss kind of massage. There was no New Agey music, no slices of cucumber on his eyes—there was nothing but pain, and with Damian’s monstrous hands digging in to his muscles, it fucking hurt. But it loosened him up enough to keep playing, to keep doing what he loved, so he toughed it out, nearly every day.
“Oh, there you are,” he heard from the doorway, and he lifted his head from the table to see Abby standing in the entrance to the physiotherapy room, a clipboard in her hand. “Javi sent me to go over this afternoon’s hitters. He had press to deal with.”
“Yeah, sure,” he ground out, waving her into the room. She hesitated.
“We could use the trainer’s room.” He lifted his head again, catching the way her eyes were glued to his bare torso, making him very aware of the fact that he was only wearing a pair of boxer briefs. “When you’re finished up in here.”
He sat up, trying to suppress the groan that wanted to escape his lips, and swung h
is legs over the side of the massage table. “It’s fine, we can do it now.” They were only friends now; professional colleagues. He didn’t want her to treat him any differently than any other guy on the team. And yet the way her eyes were eating him up, hungry and gleaming as they roamed over his chest…fuck, yeah, he liked that. And he damn well didn’t want her to look at any of the other guys like that. Which probably made him a bigger asshole that he wanted to admit.
Her eyes dropped to his knees and the colorful kinesiology tape around them. Her eyes narrowed and she pointed at the stripes of black and blue.
“Every game?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Old knees, what can I say?”
Her eyes moved up to his shoulder, also outlined with curved, red tape. She pressed her lips into a thin line. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s—” She cut herself off with a shake of her head, her ponytail swishing behind her. His mouth quirked up in a half-smile because he already knew what she was going to say. It involved all kinds of shit about planning for the future, and retirement, and moving to an infield position to give his knees a break. All the crap he never wanted to talk about, and in the past, he’d always been able to brush it off. But now that their roles had shifted, so had what was on and off the table, topic-wise.
He held his hand out for the clipboard, wiggling his fingers a little, not wanting to talk about his damn knees. “Let’s see.” He sucked in a sharp breath as Damian started working on his neck. “You’re a beast, you know that?” he said over his shoulder. The man just grinned and continued his torture. He forced himself to focus on the chart in front of him. “We’ll stay outside with Menendez, let him work that foul zone because he likes to chase. Lots of lefties in this lineup, so we’ll be looking at fastballs and change-ups, mostly. Sound good?”
“Yeah, that was my take too, but defense isn’t my call. I’ll let Javi know so he can prep Nate.” She reached out and took the clipboard back, her fingers brushing his, sending a current of awareness and heat pulsing through him. “When you’re ready, I’ll see you in the cage.” She turned and left, giving him an enticing view of her pear-shaped ass in those tight athletic leggings. Something about the sight of that ass—an ass he’d smacked, caressed, hell, even bitten once or twice—moving away from him made him suddenly angry. Not a ready-to-burst kind of anger, but a low, simmering kind, the kind that just sat there, right under the skin, without an outlet. Without a real target.
When he was finished with his massage and his stretches, he grabbed his batting gear and headed out to the cage, where Abby was just finishing up with Dylan McCormick. Jake nodded at Dylan as they passed, letting the chain-link door fall closed with a metallic bang behind him. Abby said nothing as Jake pulled on his batting gloves, adjusted his helmet, and then picked up his bat, working through a few practice swings.
She moved around him in a slow semi-circle, scrutinizing his mechanics. He was used to her looking at him, but he wasn’t used to her judging his playing abilities. It left him a little unsettled, not because she was a woman or anything like that, but because he wanted to impress her. He wanted her to think he was good. Fuck, fifteen years in the majors and he was twisted up over trying to impress his ex-girlfriend and coach. He shifted his weight and changed the subject at the same time. “You sure you’re okay after last night?” he asked. “Scarsden was an ass.”
“He was, and I’m fine. Trust me, I’m used to it.”
He stopped and turned to face her. “I don’t know how you get used to something like that.”
She shrugged. “What other choice do I have? This is the career I chose, and this is the crap that comes with it.”
The weight of everything she was facing, everything she dealt with on a daily basis, rocked into him, and for some reason, it just made him angrier. Not at her, but at the situation. He squared himself up to the plate and readied himself for the first practice pitch, the hum of the pitching machine filling the silence between them. He swung and made easy contact with the ball.
“If you square up a little more, you won’t have to twist your lower back as much on the follow through,” she said.
“My back’s fine.” It wasn’t fine, but he didn’t want Abby to see him as weak or damaged. Not because she was his coach, but because he didn’t know how to be vulnerable with her when he was supposed to be getting over her.
He really didn’t want to get over her.
He clenched his jaw and swung at the next pitch, ignoring the twinge low in his back.
“No, it’s not. Neither are your knees. Neither is your shoulder.”
“I’m fine.” He swung again, missing this time.
“Your hands are too close to your body. When you stride, your hands aren’t coming up high enough. And no, you’re not fine.”
“You’re bossy.”
“And you’re being an ass. Why are you being pissy with me?” When he didn’t say anything, she let out a little grunt of frustration. “It’s not like I chose any of this, Jake. I didn’t make any of this happen. I didn’t trade you, I didn’t wear down your knees and your back and God knows what else. I didn’t make the rules.”
Instead of facing down the next pitch, he turned to face her, anger and frustration bubbling out of him. “I’m not your boyfriend anymore, Abby. You don’t need to worry about me.”
She stepped up to him, getting into his space, and he could see the same frustration, the same anger he felt echoed back to him in her eyes. “You’re right, you’re not. But I am your coach, so it is my job to worry about you. If you can’t do what you’re supposed to do because you’re hiding injuries, that’s one hundred percent my concern.”
He had the sudden urge to back her up against the cage and kiss her, but instead he took a deep breath and then closed his eyes. “You’re right. You’re right.” He tossed the bat down and paced away, his hands on his hips. “This isn’t how I wanted it to go.”
“Wanted what to go?” she asked softly.
“The end of my career.”
A silence fell between them, and after a moment, she asked, “How did you want it to end?”
He took off his batting helmet and pushed a hand through his hair, then held his hands out at his sides. “On my terms. In my city. When I was ready. Instead, I’m in a new city, which cost me the best damn relationship I’ve ever had, and I’m held together with kin tape and hope, trying to make it to the end of the year.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, her chest heaving under her Longhorns T-shirt. It made him want to rip it off of her, like some kind of barbarian. “I didn’t…I mean, I knew that I…” She turned to him. “Did you see a future for us?”
He tipped his head. “Yeah. I saw it going somewhere.” Hell, yeah, he’d seen a future with Abby. They hadn’t necessarily been headed down the aisle anytime soon, but they’d been headed in that general direction.
Her eyes were bright and she turned away for a moment. “I’m sorry, Jake. I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for me too.”
He put his helmet back on. “I know.” And he did, but knowing it didn’t make it suck any less. Didn’t make him feel any less stuck or powerless over his own life.
She nodded, somehow managing to erase all the emotion from her face. He’d have to get her to teach him how to do that, because right now he couldn’t just erase the ache of losing her radiating through his body.
“Good. Then let’s just both acknowledge that this sucks, okay?”
He swung at the incoming pitch, adjusting his stance as she’d suggested and noticing that it did take some of the heat off of his low back. “Still friends?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” He saw the pain and the worry flicker across her features, and it gratified something in him. As though if they had to be apart, at least she missed him as much as he missed her. She took a step closer and laid a hand on his forearm, her fingers curling into him, warm on his skin. “Maybe this doesn’t have to be the end of your playing days. Wha
t if you move to third, and—”
He shook her off and turned his attention to the incoming pitch. “Not moving to third. I’m a catcher.” He swung and missed.
“A stubborn one, too.”
“Not stubborn. Determined.” He grimaced inwardly at his gruff tone, but he wasn’t mad at her. Once again, he was mad at life.
“Tomato, tomahto.”
He turned and let his bat fall to his side. “Name me one person who says tomahto and I’ll play third. In my underwear.”
At that she smiled and actually even laughed a bit, and just that sound made him feel the loss of her all over again. “Eyes on the ball, Landon. And get your damn hands up.”
Three
“Bottom of the second and it’s one-nothing for the Dallas Longhorns. Batting now for the Mariners is Greg Laredo,” says Wayne Hopkins. “Nate Pederson, who’s had a stellar rookie season with the Longhorns, gives the nod to Landon’s signal. Here’s the windup and the pitch…and a great save by Landon on that wild pitch. Pederson’s been looking for his control this afternoon, as that’s the third wild pitch Landon’s had to field.”
“Pederson has speed and a full arsenal of pitches, but his accuracy has been lacking. Let’s see if he can settle down and get his head straight. When his stuff’s on, it’s on,” says Ron Whittaker.
“We have to remember that Nate Pederson’s only twenty-one years old, making him the youngest starting pitcher in a major league lineup this year. That’s a lot of pressure for a young kid whose peers are all still in double or triple A.”
“The next pitch is low and in the dirt. Looks like Landon’s going to head out to the mound to talk to him.”
“Let’s see if his experience helps out Pederson here.”
Jake pushed his catcher’s mask up on his head and jogged out toward the mound, where Nate paced and kicked at the dirt. Personally, he thought Nate was too young, too inexperienced and would probably benefit from another season or two in the minors. He needed more development, in Jake’s opinion, but the roster wasn’t his call, and Javi was determined to play him. So now, Nate’s inexperience was Jake’s problem, and he knew it was one of the reasons they’d traded for him. They wanted an experienced catcher who could guide young pitchers like Nate.
