“One scoop of chocolate peanut butter in a cup, please,” I say to the girl behind the counter waiting for my selection with her ice cream scooper in hand.
“Make that three scoops.” I yelp at the sound of Easton’s voice and before I can turn around, his hands slide around my waist and pull me back against him. “Hi.” His breath is hot against my ear, and after a long day it takes everything I have not to sink against him and just close my eyes.
“Hi.” My smile is automatic when I turn to face him and take a step back, ever conscious of being noticed together in public. I take him in and wonder if there will ever be a time that I look at him and don’t feel that flutter in my belly. “Blue glitter, huh?”
His lopsided grin turns full-blown, eyes light up with mischief, and he gives a little boy shrug in his grown man’s body. “Peanut butter and chocolate, huh?”
I nod. “Yep.”
“Treating yourself for anything in particular?”
My day flashes through my mind. The update from Sally on my dad. My double training session with Easton. The frantic call from my dad’s long time client, the Red Sox, asking me to drop everything and fly there to evaluate their ace pitcher who hurt his arm last night. My refusal and then agreement to hop on a video conference call so I could help develop a regimen for them to follow. Then there was the report I had to put the finishing touches on for Cory—my proposal for how I would handle the players’ day to day routine if I were to get the Aces’ long-term contract.
“Yeah. I survived.” My smile is soft when I respond. “It’s been a day.”
“That bad, huh?” He asks as he steps forward to pay for the ice cream despite my protests.
“Not bad, just crazy.”
“I like that you treat yourself to ice cream,” he says with a smile as we sit across from each other in the small seating area.
“I like that you chose glitter to showcase Tino’s talents under the lights tonight.” I raise my eyebrows and take a bite of the heavenly ice cream.
“If you’re trying to get me to admit I did something today,” he says as his shoe taps mine beneath the table, “then you’re barking up the wrong tree. The first rule about pranks in the clubhouse is that there are no pranks in the clubhouse.”
“Oh, please.” I laugh and roll my eyes. “Well, it was pretty damn funny and the poor guy is going to be scrubbing that off himself for the next few days.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear because the Nutella he hid inside my back pockets at the start of the season really sucked ass.” My eyes widen as the gasp falls from my lips. “Yeah. It was that bad. I was late getting changed after an interview ran long. I threw on my clothes and hauled ass to the field. First inning, I go to put something in my back pocket and all I feel is this gooey stuff. So now I’m behind the plate with a crowd at my back and something that’s the color of crap on my fingers. Where exactly was I supposed to wipe it? On my pants? That would be a great story for the announcers to create as they try to explain why Easton Wylder is crouched behind the plate with these mysterious brown smears all over his pants that appeared out of nowhere from one pitch to the next.”
I laugh so hard my eyes tear up because between the disdain in his voice and the image he’s painted in my head, I can see it all perfectly. And he’s totally right. “So what did you do?” I ask when I can finally speak through the giggles.
“I rubbed my hands in the dirt to try and cover it up some,” he says, the devilish look returning to his eyes again. “So . . . glitter.”
“Did you just break the first rule of the clubhouse?” I tease, realizing this was the perfect way for me to end the day. His only response is to take a big spoonful of ice cream and shove it in his mouth so he can’t talk. “Whoa. Wait. How did you know I was going to be here?”
“I was taking a walk toward your place to see if you wanted to grab a bite to eat and saw you in here.”
“You could have just called, you know?”
“I know, but I figured if I came in person, you’d have a harder time saying no.” His smile turns shy and it takes everything I have to not lean across the table and brush a kiss against his lips.
Doesn’t he realize he’s the only one I say yes to?
“Will he be ready?”
I startle at Cal’s voice beside me, but try to keep my cool, forget the she’s a piece of ass comment, and turn my attention from where Easton’s currently crouched behind the plate in full gear.
“Mr. Wylder.” I nod and go to turn my attention back to his son but the look in his eyes—the genuine concern—stops me.
“He’s looking good, like his old self, but do you think he’s really back to where he was? The top of his game?”
“Are you asking me as his father, or as the club’s liaison?” I ask, trying not to sound disrespectful, but at the same time needing to protect Easton.
He narrows his eyes and angles his head as he looks at me, lips opening and then closing a moment before he nods as if he gets what I’m saying. “I deserve that.”
“I’m not trying to be disrespectful, sir, nor am I trying to overstep my boundaries. I’m just asking so I know which report to give, because with all the crap that’s happened over the past two weeks, I think he needs you to be his dad more than be on the side of his employer.”
He nods and then looks back out to where Easton makes a perfect throw down to second base that clearly beats the runner trying to steal. Yes, it’s just a practice. Yes, it’s his teammates helping him get back in the groove. But his talent is unmistakable. His natural ability is phenomenal.
“I know you must think I’m a pushy asshole. A guy who only thinks about the game, about his own image, and not his son who plays it.” He pauses, watches Easton throw to third base with laser perfection. “Easton’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I only want the best for him.”
The emotion in his voice stuns me and is such a contradiction to the hard-ass I’ve seen bits and pieces of.
“What’s best for him or what’s best for your legacy?”
He whips his head my way, and I know I’ve overstepped here, but it’s Easton, and he deserves to have a relationship with his dad. The kind I have, which I’m going to lose soon.
“For him.” He says the words, but I can see he’s questioning himself by the furrow in his brow and swallow in his throat. “This is a hard business, Scout. It’s not your right to judge me.” His tone is stern. The features on his face tell me he’s offended.
“You’re right. I don’t. I overstepped.” And I hate that a part of me feels the need to back down to make sure I don’t screw up my chance at getting the club’s contract, since he’s such an integral part of the front office. “But I’ve grown to care about your son, sir. You don’t spend all this time rehabbing someone, training them, celebrating their small victories to get them back where they can play the game they love without caring about their continued success. And I do care about it with Easton. He has more talent in his pinky than most guys would dream of having.”
“He’s definitely more talented than I ever was,” he murmurs, both of our attention pulled back to the field. To the man we both care about, whose swagger is back and unmistakable. We watch him for a few minutes, the silence settling between us.
“Maybe you should tell him that.”
In my periphery, I can tell Cal has turned his attention back to me. “He knows it.”
“Does he, though?” I meet his eyes. “He’s clawing his way back from an injury that was so severe it would be career-ending for most players. His team, which he’s been a part of for most of his life, traded for the man who caused the injury, currently in his position while he’s on the DL. Physically, he’s getting ready to take the field and kick ass . . . but it’s his mental game I’m worried about now. It takes a lot to come back from an injury and not be timid of reinjuring it and suffering through the pain again. Add to that the bullshit with Santiago, and a father who is the Iron Giant of baseball, per
fect in every way. That’s a lot to swallow all at one time.”
“I was and still am far from perfect,” he murmurs, in a faraway voice that tells me he’s speaking of way more things than I am.
“Not in your son’s eyes.”
There’s a crack in Cal’s armor as he blinks away tears that well in his eyes.
There’s a commotion on the field that pulls our attention. The guys are practicing bunt plays, so that Easton has to run out from behind the plate, barehand the bunted ball, dying in momentum right in front of the plate, and then throw it in an off-kilter stance down to first base.
It’s a hard play for sure. One that makes you throw with your arm at odd and often inconsistent angles. It’ll be a test to his arm’s range of motion. If there is any scar tissue that’s going to cause a problem, he’ll notice it now because the guys are watching him, the adrenaline is pumping, and he’s nowhere near thinking about how to properly throw the ball. He’s acting on instinct, falling back on the motion he’s done hundreds of times over his career.
I cringe as he scrambles out from behind the plate, calls the other players off so they know he has it, picks up the ball with his bare hand, and then throws down to first base on one foot and off balance. And the throw is perfect, beating the runner by a few feet.
But more important than the ball’s placement is Easton. I watch him as he walks back behind the plate, raising his hand to acknowledge something that was said to him by J.P. before pulling his mask back down on his face.
“He’s an iron giant in his own right, too, you know.” Cal speaks so quietly, but the emotion packed into every word is unmistakable. “I never pulled his kind of stats. I never had his strength or understood the game like he does. I just used my natural ability, but Easton . . . he has the ability and then some. He’ll surpass every record, every career high I ever had, way before he retires from this game.”
“And how does that make you feel?” If I’m going to overstep, I might as well clear the line with a flying leap. I turn to watch him as he watches his son play the game he no longer can, and wonder what that does to a man’s ego when their ego has been on one of the biggest stages of the sports world for so many years.
He doesn’t turn to look at me, and I’m more than surprised when he answers. “Every parent wants their child to have more than they did. More opportunities. More success. More happiness. More life. More love.”
“It’s hard constantly living in the shadows; maybe it’s time you helped him step out from under them. Telling him what you just said to me might just do that.”
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
I glance over at Easton in the driver’s seat and take him in. And I’m just as knocked back by how attractive he is now as I was when he unexpectedly knocked on my door forty minutes ago with a bouquet of handpicked daisies and a request that I get dressed because he was taking me on a proper date.
“I’m not going to tell you, but I will say I like the skirt,” he murmurs as he reaches out and rests his hand on my bare knee and slides it slowly up my thigh, the fabric bunching with it. “And the boots.”
Without thinking about it, I slide my hand on top of his and link our fingers. It’s a natural gesture, so indicative of how he makes me feel. Comfortable. At ease. Okay with whatever this is.
We drive for a bit longer, leaving the city behind us with each mile. The houses grow farther apart. The wispy grass grows longer. The trees grow bigger. It’s so different than the brick buildings and high rises of the revamped downtown district around the ballpark. And while I love the new, trendy feel of the buildings the developers tried to make look aged, this is real. The country around us. It’s peaceful and idyllic beneath the blue sky, sitting beside Easton with Sam Hunt playing softly on the stereo.
“Scout and Ford. Did your parents have a thing with cars?” he asks out of the blue, and I laugh at the random but very valid question.
“Says the man named Easton,” I tease.
“No mystery what I was named after.” He laughs.
My smile widens as the country whips by outside my window and the memories come back. “Ford was conceived in . . . well, in the back of a Ford truck, from what my dad has told us. I guess he and my mom were having a hard time with names, and on the way to the hospital, he racked his knee on the bumper in excitement. As he was leaning over in pain, hand braced on the tailgate, there was the Ford decal, and so Ford was named Ford.”
“Logical,” he muses. “And you?”
“My brother loved the neighbor’s car. It was a bright yellow Scout International, but being two, all he could say was Scout. So, when my parents told him he was going to have a little brother or sister, he said, ‘No, I want Scout,’ and would point to the car next door.” Easton laughs. “And I guess he continued to say that all the way through my mom’s pregnancy, so at some point it became a joke and they would refer to me as Scout. Needless to say, they thought I was going to be a boy and thought Scout would be cute with the name Ford.”
“But you are definitely not a boy,” Easton says playfully, that hand of his sliding a little farther up my leg.
“No, I’m not, but the name stuck.”
“I like it. It suits you.”
“Yeah, well . . . people think my parents had a thing with To Kill a Mockingbird and named me after Scout Finch. I always disappoint them when I explain that my name has much less significance than that.”
“It’s unique. Just like you.”
I glance over to him and smile. “Thank you. I used to hate it but now I love its originality. I’m glad my mom went along with my dad’s suggestions.”
“Do you miss her? Shit. Fuck. I’m sorry. Don’t answer that.”
It’s cute watching him stumble all over himself. “No, it’s okay. People always want to know, but then don’t know how to ask.”
“Yeah, but it’s kind of a shitty thing to ask. I’m sorry.”
I nod to accept the apology and wonder exactly how it is I feel when it’s not something I think about much these days. “Do I miss her? Hm. I guess in a sense I do, because she’s my mom, and I hear other women talk about how they do this and that with their moms and how lucky they are . . . and I don’t have that. In fact, I have the exact opposite. I’m close to my dad. I work in a business dominated by men . . . so maybe subconsciously I’ve surrounded myself with people who won’t remind me constantly and unknowingly that I don’t have a mom.”
“It has to be hard, though. I mean, I have a mom. She makes things hard for me, makes me have strings most grown kids no longer have . . . but she’s my mom,” he says, the love evident in his tone, just as sincere as the look in his eyes two nights ago when he received a phone call at one in the morning, crawled from my bed, and went to take care of her.
“I think. . .” I begin, and then pause before I start again. “I’ve spent a lot of time over the years wondering if I’m glad she left when she did or if I wish she’d waited and I’d gotten more time with her. And I think I’m glad. If she’d stayed, then I’d have gotten used to her. I’d have missed her more. The way she did my hair, or the way she made me lunch for school. I remember the songs she’d sing me good night, but I don’t remember much about the predetermined ways she did things, and that means I couldn’t miss them. I couldn’t compare them to my dad trying to fumble his way through them and learn . . . it was harder for Ford since he was older. And it may sound strange, but if she was going to leave, I’m glad she did it when she did. As much as I missed having a mom around, I think it would have been harder if I’d known what I was missing, if that makes any sense.”
He rubs his thumb back and forth on my thigh in reassurance. “Yeah, it makes sense. Thank you for talking about it. I know it hasn’t been easy . . . there’s no way it could have been, but it also tells me that your dad is as good of a man as I always pegged him for. Raising two kids on his own, giving them as stable of a life as possible, all the while being the best of t
he best in his job. I respected him before, but now . . .” He shakes his head, and his kind words about the best man I’ve ever known make me smile.
“Yeah, he’s pretty fantastic. I’m a lucky girl.”
We fall into our own thoughts again, our fingers linked as we hum mindlessly along to the music and just enjoy the comfortable silence between us.
“Speaking of dads, mine paid me an unexpected visit yesterday.”
His words ring out, and while I’m immediately curious, I’m also unsure whether I should tell him about my conversation with his dad, too. “Hmm. Is that not normal?”
“Not this kind, no.” He squeezes my thigh, and when I look over at him, his eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses, but his smile is soft. “He said you two chatted the other day.”
“You were on the field, and he asked me if I thought you’d be ready to play by the club’s date. That’s all.” I hate that I lie, but think it’s important for him to think whatever Cal may or may not have said was because of his own recognition, not because his son’s lover said something to spur it on.
“I’m sure that’s not the half of it,” he murmurs.
“What do you mean?”
“He told me that if I were smart, I’d figure out how to keep you around . . . after your rehab assignment is over.”
“Oh.”
“Pretty much.” He laughs. “And then he told me how proud he was of me. How it must have been hard growing up in his shadow, and that I need to handle the transition back into the game, with Santiago being on the team, with the exact same amount of grace as I did growing up as his son.”
He clears his throat, and there is nothing I can say to express how thankful I am that Cal heard me and actually said something. I can tell that it touched Easton, even though he’s trying to play it off in his gruff way. The fact that he’s not speaking right now is saying it all.