A knock on my driver’s side window scares the shit out of me. I snap my head up and stare at the man standing there—crisp white shirt and tie, mouth set in a straight line, serious brown eyes that demand answers—bent over at the waist telling me with hand motions to roll the window down.
“Who are you?” I shout through the glass as I halfheartedly shove the tears off my cheeks.
“Open the damn window. You better start explaining what the hell happened in there,” he says through gritted teeth.
“Excuse me?” There’s no way I’m opening the window to this jerk.
He steps back from the window, hands up as if he’s just realized how threatening he appears, and he shoves them in his pockets. “Security guard is right there,” he says with a lift of his chin to where Arnie is watching us from the guard’s booth. I glance to make sure he’s there and then back to the man demanding answers and slowly open my car door, because I know it has to do with Easton.
It seems that everything does these days.
The hairs on my neck stand on end—my guard up, a steel gate of unknown—as I exit my car to meet him glare for glare. My synapses misfire as I try to connect thoughts and place him.
“You’re no Dalton.” He shakes his head. “You told Easton he was good, and then I get a call that he’s been traded? Are you fucking kidding me? Doc always protected his players at any cost. You sure as hell don’t. What kind of game are you playing?”
The fuck you on the tip of my tongue dies with the punch of his insult to my solar plexus. “Finn?” Easton’s agent glares as he nods. “Why weren’t you there?”
It’s a simple question but the man I wished for an hour ago to help me make sense of the papers I’d seen is now in front of me. I don’t trust him. He should have been there. He should have never allowed Easton to sign what I saw. A good agent protects their client by any means necessary.
“That’s a good question.”
I take a step back. “And what does that mean?”
He didn’t answer me.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened in there, Scout?”
Was he a part of this?
“There were papers . . .” I begin but stop. My pulse pounds in my ears.
Did he know?
“What papers?” he urges.
Paranoia takes over. Tears burn the back of my eyes as I question my own sanity. Why don’t I trust the one person I should be able to when it comes to Easton?
But he wasn’t there.
“I need to talk to Easton.” It’s the only thing I have left to say. I stare at him for a beat—more time wasted that needs to be spent finding Easton.
“There’s no time. I need answers now. I’m his agent, Scout. You can trust me.”
I think of the papers. The scrawled signature that agreed to such ludicrous terms. Any agent who tells their client to sign something like that shouldn’t be trusted.
“Trust you?” I laugh with a shake of my head.
He glares, fists clenched, and muscle pulsing in his jaw. “What happened in that room, Dalton?” he demands and takes a step closer, frustration evident and posture threatening.
“If you had been here, you’d already know and then maybe we wouldn’t be in this position, would we?” I grit out before turning and getting into my car. My hands are trembling so violently I’m glad I have the steering wheel to hold on to.
He’s still staring at me as I pull out of the gated lot on my way to Easton’s. I weave through the stadium parking lot filled with tailgaters finishing up their cocktails before heading in to watch the game already several innings over.
The tears stain my cheeks as I drive. I’ve nothing more than a pocketful of hope that I can make this right with Easton, but the doubt I feel is as devastating as the look that was on Easton’s face. It owns my soul.
Scout told them you weren’t one hundred percent.
Finn’s words ring in my ears. So does the laugh I gave him that faded off when I realized he was serious.
I swing the bat. Wood meets leather and red seams. My grunt echoes off the concrete walls and the vibration from hitting the ball travels up my arms.
That’s why she had that look on her face when I barged into the conference room. Shocked. Fucking. Guilt.
My cell rings. It hasn’t stopped. The reporters are relentless. But I don’t have it in me to walk the twenty feet to turn it off.
Or smash it to pieces.
Easton. The way her voice said my name echoes in my head. It drowns out the way she moaned it yesterday morning. Talk about adding insult to injury.
I swing again. Connect again. But I feel nothing but anger. I know nothing but rage. I’m nothing but hurt.
It’s all such bullshit.
Useless fucking bullshit.
None of it makes sense except for her expression when I went in to confront Tillman. Now that? The shocked guilt and wide eyes. They make perfect sense now.
Swing and miss.
The TV drones on. The announcers discuss Drew’s bat speed. I tune it out but can’t turn it off. It’s like I need to watch Santiago behind my plate to know it’s really happening.
It’s all too goddamn much.
I step outta the box and reach for the bottle of Jameson I set on the ledge behind me. The sting of the whiskey has nothing on the hole burning its way through my gut.
I look at the bottle. The downside—it’s half empty. The upside—at least there’s more liquid Novocain to numb me, and God, how I need the pain to be dulled.
How could she?
The machine pitches the ball and it hits the backstop with a thud the same time my cell phone starts ringing again. Or maybe it never stopped. I can’t fucking remember because all I keep thinking is she spooked.
I told her I was falling for her—asked her to move in with me for fuck’s sake when I’ve never offered that to anyone else before—and she fucking spooked. Instead of having the guts to tell me she couldn’t do it, she went the easy route.
She got rid of me a different way.
My chest hurts like a motherfucker. Another swig of the bottle. A twist of the bat in my hands that irritates the broken and raw blisters on my bare palms. I welcome the pain so I do it again as I step back into the box.
The pitch comes. This time I’m so angry, so unfocused, I miss the ball completely. The sound of hitting only air—whiff—is deafening, and I welcome the temporary reprieve from the noise in my head.
She sold me out to push me away.
Away from my home.
Away from my team.
Away from my family.
Away from her.
I’m sitting here with my ass in the wind, waiting to see where the fuck my new home is going to be when this is my home. With my batting cage here and my glass-wall view of the stadium upstairs I thought I’d play in forever. This is my home. I can’t be upstairs where I’ll see what I don’t want to see. Where Scout’s perfume clings to the T-shirt on my bed and her lipstick stains the pillowcase she kissed the night before last as a joke. Now it’s like a damn beacon making me wonder if that was actually her goodbye.
Like she knew.
“Fuck!” I shout the word out with the next swing and then walk away from the plate with the bat braced over my shoulders, the whiff of the machine still pitching balls every twenty seconds.
How am I going to take care of my mom now?
I take another swig of Jameson. My hands ache and the ringing phone is a constant reminder that Scout’s somewhere on the other end of it. It takes everything I have not to take my bat and obliterate it into a million pieces. Not just so I don’t have to listen to it, but so I’m not tempted to pick it up and hear her voice like I desperately want to.
Whiff. Thump.
Right now I need someone who gets me and fuck all, she gets me.
How screwed up does that make me? My laugh bounces off the concrete walls and my own hysteria echoes back to me.
Whiff. Thump.
The r
inging starts again, and I do the only thing I know to drown it out. Ignoring the sting of my open blisters, I step in the box and swing with everything I have.
Grunt. Thwack. Ring.
Over and over until my arms feel like rubber and exhausted beyond reason—but I still feel—and so I swing again.
“It’s not the ball’s fault you know.”
Whiff.
Fucking Finn. “Leave me alone.”
“You ever pick up your phone?”
“If I wanted to talk to you, I would have. But I didn’t.” I take a piss-poor swing at a pitch and barely connect. “Go away.”
“It was either me or your old man getting the building manager to let us in here and so I figured, you’d prefer me.”
Whiff. Thump. Ring.
“I told you I didn’t want to speak to you until you have answers, so you better start talking or you can get the fuck out.” I grunt with my swing this time and am so tired I could collapse right here, but the whiskey is way more fucking tempting than sleep right now.
“I’ve been in communication with the team.”
I drop the bat from my shoulder and turn to grab the bottle. “I’ve been in communication with the team,” I mimic in his formal tone before I take another drink. “This is my life we’re talking about, Finn, not some goddamn negotiation. So tell me, do you know where the hell I’ve been traded to?”
Whiff. Thump. Ring.
“New York? Florida? Minnesota?” My pitch escalates with each city. So does my temper. “Huh, Finn? Have you got answers for me yet?” I turn to face him.
Whiff. Thump. Ring.
“Will you turn all that shit off so I can concentrate?” he shouts.
We glare at each other through the batting cage nets. The memory of making love to Scout against them is like another fucking knife in my back.
So I shift my focus back to Finn. He looks exhausted—hair sticking up, shirt wrinkled and unbuttoned at the collar, eyes weary—when he’s typically always the picture of perfection. Good. At least I’m not the only one who looks like hell.
Whiff. Thump. Ring.
“Why weren’t you there today?” I ask him the same question I’ve asked him three times already, needing to see his face this time when he responds.
“You don’t trust me?” His voice is ice cold but to hell with him.
“I’m finding out trust and loyalty don’t have a whole lot to do about nothing these days,” I say with a fuck you shrug to my shoulders.
He takes a step closer, wraps his fingers in the net so his arms hang above his head as he stares at me through the barrier. “I was told the meeting started two hours later than it did. I double-checked all my notes. My voicemails. They said three p.m. You had a game starting at two, so why have the meeting after it started? I should have fucking known something was going on. Tillman’s such a shady fucker. I should have questioned why,” he says with a shake of his head and runs a hand through his hair. “And Wylder, if you ever insult me again by questioning my loyalty, you can find yourself a new goddamn agent.”
The bite to his tone surprises me and tells me exactly what I needed to know: he is in my corner
“Yeah, well, something was definitely going on,” I say, ignoring his threat, my laugh that follows loaded with sarcasm.
Whiff. Thump. Ring.
“Easton, please turn that shit off so we can talk.”
I hold his eyes for a second longer before turning to flip the switch off on the wall behind me. The soft whirl of the machine slowing down fills the space while I walk to silence the ringer on my cell.
The screen is filled with calls as I scroll. Reporters. Teammates. Finn. My dad. For each one of those, there seems to be about five from Scout. Voicemails. Texts. The sight of them makes my chest ache, because one thing still remains, she sold me out.
I grab the bottle to ease that ache but leave my cell as I emerge from the batting cage for the first time in over three hours. I head straight for the bathroom without saying a word to Finn. When I come out of the john, he seems to take a closer look at me.
“You look like shit.”
“Yeah, well, can you blame me?” I shrug, glancing over to the wall of my Little League jerseys. It’s so much easier to look there than at him. “Just trying to make sense of shit that makes no sense so . . . looking like it seems fitting.”
“Fucking Tillman.”
“That’s putting it nicely.”
“The prick won’t talk to me until tomorrow morning. I have a nine o’clock meeting. Fucking nine o’clock,” he shouts. “Like you were some castoff instead of their franchise player.”
“That’s what I don’t get,” I say and take a drink. “It’s like they don’t have anything set up. Like they didn’t even expect to trade me.”
“That’s what I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around. There has to be a catch here that we’re missing,” he says as he folds his arms and leans his hips against the wall. “In all my years, when a trade is made, you’re told right then and there to pack your bags and move on to the next team. All they told me was to have you clean out your locker by ten tomorrow.”
“Before the guys get in.” I snort. “Such a chicken-shit move. God forbid I’m there when the team comes in to see how disloyal their fucking club is to its players. What about Boseman? Where the hell was he in all of this?” I ask about the team’s owner. The man who has been like an uncle to me and is no-fucking-where when I need him most.
“Still on that trip to the Amazon, reinventing himself or some billionaire shit like that. I’ve left a dozen or so messages when I couldn’t get face time with that asshole Tillman until tomorrow.”
“Fucking bad juju, man,” I say as I yank the bottle out of his reach when he goes to grab it from me.
“In case you didn’t know, it’s only six o’clock, East,” he says, motioning to the windowless room. “You’re already a full bottle in tonight. I need you to pace yourself. Slow it down some.”
“Ah, so that’s why you’re here . . . to come and ruin all my fun?” I roll my eyes.
“I need you somewhat sober in the morning.”
I stare at his hand held out, and with my eyes on his, I slowly lift the bottle to my lips in rebellion and smirk. “It’s not like I’ve got a job to go to or anything.”
“You never know. They could have you hopping on a plane first thing in the morning and headed God knows where—”
“That’s the whole fucking point, Finn. God. Knows. Where. Do you know?” I shout at him, arms thrown out to my sides, patience—and what feels like my sanity—gone hours ago. “Because I don’t know shit. And neither do you for that matter. I mean this is so fucked up in so many ways and—”
“Look, I know you’re upset, but we’ve got to make the best—”
“Upset?” I yell at the top of my lungs. The temptation to throw the bottle is stronger than the will to drink it. “I gave my goddamn heart and soul to the Aces and for what? For what?” It’s as if a tornado of anger is ripping through me. “To be given away?”
“I know, man. I know. It makes no sense to me either. I’ve got your dad on my ass, I’ve got the press breathing down my neck, and Scout refusing to speak to anyone but you. All the while, the damn organization is taking their sweet time doling out the details of your trade. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
My feet stop when I hear her name. The betrayal is still fresh and confusing, and I don’t know what the hell to think about it, so I pace and then sit and then stand again, unable to remain still.
The smile and kiss she gave me as she left my place earlier is burned in my mind. Why would she lie?
I change gears, have to, because I can’t think about her anymore. “What about my mom? How am I going to take care of her when I’m in—”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“And find a place to live—”
“Most teams have a neighborhood where the transitional guys stay—”<
br />
“And then there’s . . .” And then there’s fucking Scout.
Or rather, was fucking Scout.
I have to move to abate how everything about me revolts knowing that whatever this was between us is over. Finn lets me be until I stop, hang my head, and attempt to come to grips with everything.
His hand is on my shoulder, squeezing in support. “Let’s go upstairs. I’ll get you some food while you take a shower. Then we can talk some more if you want. Or not.”
“Nah. I’m fine.” I can’t stomach going upstairs for the next few hours. The stadium lights will be on for the cleaning crew. The last thing I need to see is how they brighten up the sky to remind me of the game I missed. The game I was supposed to make my comeback in. Add to that, I’m nowhere near ready to face the many pieces of Scout scattered throughout my place. Shrugging off his hand, I begin to move again.
“Come on, let me order you food. I’ll get some sushi from your favorite—”
“No!” More damn memories come to mind. Scout on the couch trying sushi for the first time. Scout sitting between my legs watching a movie. Scout reading fortunes from cookies about as likely to come true as my trade being a bad dream. “I’m not hungry.”
“C’mon, let me do something here, East,” he pleads.
“Get me answers.”
“I’m try—”
“I know, I know. I just don’t get why she lied and said I wasn’t one hundred percent when last night—Jesus fucking Christ, just this morning,” I rant, more to myself, losing track of time in this concrete tomb, “she told me she couldn’t wait to see me on the field again.”
“You slept with her?” Finn’s asks as he starts piecing together the words I said. Guess I just let the cat out of the bag. I break in stride for a beat and then ignore his question.
“What if they changed the terms of her agreement?” I deflect as I reach the pitching mound and turn back around. “What if they told her Doc Dalton wasn’t going to get the team contract?”
“I thought you were tolerating her.” He digs in deeper, ignoring my questions. “I thought you were going to put those ear buds in your ears and listen to one of your damn audiobooks to pass the time so you didn’t have to deal with her. What the fuck happened to that, Easton?”