by K. Bromberg
Can it withstand the pressure?
I believe it did about six hours ago.
“Easton,” he groans, mistaking my silence for uncertainty, and causing my smile to widen. “Please tell me you thought to ask her.”
I laugh—can’t help it. Torturing him is part of my job as his client.
“I’m not feeling as confident about this as I was when I picked up the phone to call you. I thought you two were close. Why the hell would you not flat-out ask her?”
His torture has gone on long enough. I can hear his anxiety ratcheting up. “Relax. There’s no need to worry. It’s just fun listening to you carry on like a little old woman.”
“So your arm’s good, then?”
“I love how you just completely ignore me.” I laugh, needing the comic relief this phone call has brought with it.
“Easton,” he warns as I laugh again.
“We had one . . . uh . . . final workout last night. It felt great.”
If he only knew what I was talking about.
“No side effects or anything?”
Not the kind you can quantify. “Nope. I slept like a baby.”
“Good. Good.” I can hear his agent’s mind start to turn now that he knows I’m ready. “Just promise me from here on out you won’t do anything stupid like sign a document that says you’ll agree to be back on the field by a set date.”
“Are we back to this again? I was in pain. They pushed papers in front of me, and I signed. Does it matter? It all worked out, and I’m back with one week to spare on their deadline.”
“We dodged a bullet is what we did.”
“Quit being a worrywart. I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine.”
“You’re going to kill me one of these days, Wylder.”
“No, I’m not. I’m your most favorite client.”
His silence makes me smile.
“Just make sure you’re in the locker room getting ready to help catch bullpen like you’ve been doing. That way, when I get the call you’ve been taken off the DL and reinstated, you’re at the field.”
“Already planned on it.”
“Wow.”
Easton’s voice startles me. I’ve been so lost in my own mind, so busy rehearsing what I’m going to say, what my dad advised me to say, that I didn’t hear Easton come back.
“What?” I turn to face him, watch him pull his sweat-soaked Under Armour shirt over his head and toss it in the hamper.
“Work-out-clothes Scout is hot. Cowboy-boots-and-skirt Scout is sexy. But dress-up-for-a-business-meeting Scout is gorgeous.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in a room full of men. Work-out-clothes Scout makes them think I’m a college intern getting my hours in. Cowboy-boots-and-skirt Scout makes them think I’m there to giggle and flirt and maybe date a baseball player,” I say as he lifts his eyebrows. “And dress-up-for-a-business-meeting Scout tells them I take my job seriously, and I’m a professional who wants what’s best for the team and the player.”
“What if what’s best for the team, for you, and for the player are all different things?”
“In this case they are the same, so it doesn’t matter,” I say, knowing he needs the reassurance that I technically can’t verbalize due to my contract but have told him in a hundred different ways anyway.
“But what if they were, though?”
I don’t like the feelings the question evokes, because they very well could have been when he punched Santiago the other day. But that was a different day, a stupid fight, and we’ve moved on, so I try to shift from this topic.
“Well, since you said wow when you saw me, I’d use my wily feminine ways to woo them into what I thought was best.”
“Ahh, there comes that manipulative side of you.”
“Not manipulative.” I laugh as he takes a few steps toward me. “Just determined.”
“You’re sexy when you’re all business,” he says as he slides his arms around me and goes straight for my ass.
“Eww, you’re all sweaty.” I try to bat his hands away, but half-heartedly.
“You didn’t say that last night when I was all sweaty.” He leans in, and all my doubts disappear with the brush of his lips and the taste of his kiss.
“Well, that kind of sweaty is welcome,” I murmur and then physically remove his hands from my ass before they move to undo the zipper.
He laughs and swats me on the ass as I turn to put my makeup, curling iron, and dirty clothes into my overnight bag. When I turn around, Easton’s smile is still there, but he’s just staring at me with that look in his eyes like he had at Pet Haven.
My pulse speeds up.
“What?”
“You don’t have to do that, you know.”
“Do what?” I glance around like I don’t understand, but the sudden echo of panic within me tells me I do.
“Pack up your things.” He waits for a reaction, and when I don’t give one, other than not saying a word, he continues, “You can have a drawer here, Scout. You can have a whole side of the closet if you want. Better yet, why don’t you just stay with me. You’re in that temporary place with furniture that’s not even yours . . . when I have all this space.”
I just stare at him, eyelids blinking and panic slowly clawing its way in to squeeze my heart. “I . . . we . . . it’s not . . . how can . . .”
“Scout.” Easton says my name as he takes my hand in his and looks at me with those hazel eyes that are loaded with storm-cloud-gray today. “Don’t you get it?”
“Get what?”
“This is the next step for us. Some sort of permanence. We’re doing it anyway, so why not just admit to it?”
My chest constricts. It hurts to draw in air. The fear I thought I’d chased away is the weight making it hurt. “Easton.”
“No, uh-uh,” he says as he steps into me and frames my cheeks with his hands so that I’m forced to look up and into his eyes. “You don’t get to spook right now. You don’t get to hide from me.”
“But things are going to change.” I finally find my voice. “You’re going to start travelling. You’re going to leave.”
He shakes his head and smiles. “Just for a few nights at a time. And most nights you’ll be there, too, since you’ll have the team contract. It’s not that big of a deal, Scout. Me getting back on the roster doesn’t mean this has to stop between us.”
He leans forward and reinforces his words with his kiss. To try and combat the fear. To ease my anxiety.
When he ends the kiss, his eyes are back on mine. “We can make this work.”
And I see it before he says it.
Maybe I’ve been seeing it all along and have just been denying it.
But then he says it.
Out loud.
Concrete.
Can’t take it back.
“I’m falling in love with you, Scout.”
The elevator doors open, and I step to the side and stand there for a beat. I try to pretend I’m okay. I wave to the doorman. I smile at the college girl with the sorority sweatshirt on, doing her homework in the lobby chairs like she often is. And I concentrate on breathing.
On collecting myself.
On telling myself that Easton confessing he was falling in love with me was not a curse for us. I repeat his words in my head. “Just because I said the words doesn’t mean I’m going to leave you, Scout. You’re not saying it, but I can see it in your eyes. And I’m going to prove to you that you’re wrong. That you’re not cursed. That’s one dragon I’m going to slay for you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
Clear mind.
Believe him, Scout.
Hard heart.
He’s slayed them for you before.
Clear mind.
He believes in happily-ever-afters.
Hard heart.
Isn’t it time you deserve one, too?
Yes. It is.
“You ready?” My dad’s voice booms through my cell.
Did I jus
t royally fuck up?
“Yeah.” My response sounds flat even to my own ears, but I’m too preoccupied second-guessing myself as I stare at the elevator doors Scout disappeared behind minutes ago. Should I go after her and make sure I didn’t just spook her?
“Yeah?” he asks sounding just as confused as I feel.
Because sure as shit, I just spooked the hell out of myself.
“Yeah,” I snipe, irritated that he’s questioning me.
I told her I was falling in love with her. How fucking stupid could I be?
“Easton?”
It’s not stupid when it’s the truth.
“Are you okay, son?”
The genuine concern in his voice breaks through my thoughts. It brings me back to the present. “Yes. No. Sorry.” I chuckle as I take a deep breath, rattled when I’m never rattled. “I’m good. Just preoccupied with something and anxious to get the call later saying that I’ve been reinstated.”
“Well, I’m glad you have something to keep your mind off things,” he says. “Since you’re coming off the DL, it’s probably best if you have a strong presence tonight. You need to go three for three and—”
“Thanks, dad, but I’ve gotta go.” I don’t wait for his goodbye to end the call because I’ve got more important things to do than listen to what my dad expects from me in my first game back.
Like processing how Scout was standing in my room like she does more mornings than not lately, and my only thought was how perfectly she fit there. How seamlessly she’s become a part of my day to day. Then of course, how the words rolled off my tongue.
The offer for her to move in with me.
Telling her I was falling for her.
Damn straight I saw the fear in her eyes, but I was too busy trying to manage my own panic to do anything to help quiet hers. Because thinking you’re falling for someone is one thing, but saying it out loud is another. You can’t take that shit back.
But now that she’s gone, I know I don’t want to take the words back. Who needs grass that’s greener on the other side when you’re a huge fan of how green the grass is beneath your feet?
Let’s just hope I’ve proven that to her.
“Gentlemen.”
Nerves rattle and shake through me, and I realize this is fear. This is panic. This is not wanting to screw up.
So very different than how I feel with Easton. So very different than how Easton makes me feel.
And I know I’m ready to slay dragons for him, too.
Starting now.
I meet the eyes of the six men surrounding me at the table, and begin, “I was brought on board to facilitate the rehabilitation of the player, Easton Wylder, and assess his ability to return without limitation to the starting line-up. I’m here to report my findings. Shall we wait for Mr. Wylder’s agent?”
“He won’t be joining us,” Cory Tillman says with a resolute nod of his head.
“Oh, I assumed—”
“Let’s begin.”
I see it the minute I walk into the locker room.
My pinstriped jersey.
Wylder 44
Pressed and hanging in my locker where it hasn’t been in what feels like forever.
A hand slaps me on the shoulder. “Welcome almost back, Easy E.”
I turn to see Manny and the twinkle in his eyes. “You better not be jinxing me, Manny-Man.” I laugh and shake his hand. “I don’t need any bad juju today.”
“No jinxing. No bad juju. Maybe I wanted to give ol’ Santiago a subtle reminder when he walks in here today who was first. And who will be last.”
I shake my head and laugh. Good ol’ Manny. He had my back way back when, and he still has it now.
“God, I love you, old man.”
“I’ve missed watching you play. I can’t wait to sit in the stands tonight.”
I stare at him, eyes wide, mouth open. Did I hear that right? “The stands?”
“Yep.” He nods. “That’s the only place I like to watch the greats play.”
I clear my throat. Such a simple comment means so much to me.
Because it’s Manny.
And it’s what today means to me.
All the hard work.
All the pain.
All the doubt.
I’m so close I can taste it.
“And so it is my professional opinion that Mr. Wylder—”
“Shit!”
Cory says the word but it takes me a minute to process the dark brown pool of liquid sloshing across the conference table in all directions. The room erupts into momentary chaos as we shove our chairs back and try to save the pile of documents littering the table from being ruined by the spilled coffee.
Cory curses again as he furiously blots the liquid off the keyboard of his laptop with a wad of Kleenex while his assistant rushes from the room for paper towels. The gentleman who was seated to Cory’s right adds to the litany of curses as his hip hits a stack of file folders right on the edge of the desk and knocks them to the floor.
“Get the stuff on the table,” I direct as I drop to the floor to help out. “I’ll get these.” There’s so much bedlam, no one argues or notices that in a room full of men, I’m the one in the skirt and heels kneeling on the floor.
Papers are everywhere. Manila folders are lying open and their contents scattered on the carpet beneath the table. I note the labels on the folders as I collect them—Easton Wylder, Dalton Rehab, Long-Term PT Contract, Options—but am too preoccupied grabbing everything to process exactly what they mean. Or rather, what their contents might be.
And it’s only when I have all the documents haphazardly stacked in a pile and am about to crawl out from beneath the table that I notice what the topmost paper has on it. The words. The figures. The implications.
There’s no way.
Can’t be.
Trying to make sense of it all, I flip to the next page but with the papers being out of order, I find nothing.
I look at the next one. Nothing.
Cory’s loafers come into my view a few feet from where I’m kneeling and pull me back to reality—to what I’m doing snooping through his files and to the ramifications if I were to be caught.
It’s when I look back down one more time to bury the first page in the stack so no one knows I saw it, that I’m blindsided for a second time.
My mind scrambles to process what I’m reading and why Easton’s signature is scrawled across the bottom of it in acceptance.
My hands tremble.
I scan the words again.
My pulse thunders in my ears.
Holy. Shit.
“Do you need any help under there Ms. Dalton?”
“You’re just wasting your time suiting up, Wylder.” Santiago’s voice rings above the chatter of guys shooting the shit and silences them instantly.
Every bone in my body vibrates with the need to smash my fist into his face to shut him up, but I ignore it. I grit my teeth and just stare at my jersey hanging in my locker in front of me. He’s just not worth it anymore.
“Why’s that?” I ask, more than aware that the entire team is on edge waiting to see how this plays out.
“Because it seems the team has one too many Wylders on the roster these days.”
“Hmpf. Thanks for the heads up.” I don’t take the bait. I don’t let him know I haven’t got the call yet informing me I’ve been reinstated so technically, there’s no Wylder currently on the roster at all.
“Sure thing. Did you hear that joke that’s been going around? What’s ten-times worse than a shitty catcher?” he asks and then answers without skipping a beat. “A Wylder one.”
Every muscle in my body is tense when I turn around to face him.
“Cool it, Santiago,” J.P. warns, sick of hearing his mouth like we all are.
“What?” he shrugs and smiles. “I’m just having a little fun with my new teammate.”
I take my time crossing the distance, stopping when I’m about a foot from
the bastard. I stare at him for a few seconds before I speak. “You know what, Santiago? I don’t know what your deal is and I sure as hell don’t know what I’ve done to make you hate me, but honestly, I’m beyond giving any fucks. I’m a part of this team, have been for years—we’re one big, happy family—so every time you fuck with me, remember you’re fucking with them too.” I jerk my thumb over my shoulder toward the guys and take another step closer to him. “And I guarantee you that life will get awfully hard for you as an Ace if you keep this shit up. Capisce?” I stare at him for a beat longer, wait for him to nod his head, and then turn on my heel and walk away.
What if I’m wrong?
What if the information on that paper didn’t mean what I thought it did?
But what if it did?
I glance around to the pairs of eyes staring at me, waiting for my response, and wonder where the hell Easton’s agent is. None of this makes sense to me and I need him to help me make sense of it.
The image of Easton’s signature flashes in my mind.
I learned a long time ago that front offices rarely do things that seem reasonable to the public, but in the long run make perfect sense. My dad’s voice rings loud in my ears and I’d give anything to call him right now and ask him what to do but the gentlemen waiting impatiently across the table from me wouldn’t think too highly of that. In fact it would only serve to undermine my credibility.
My stomach churns. There’s too much at stake.
For Easton.
And for me.
The whole situation feels off somehow, and I can’t help but think it’s because I’m still rattled by Easton’s confession this morning.
You’re too close, Scout. My dad was right, I am too close.
“Ms. Dalton?” Cory prompts.
What if what’s best for the team, for you, and for the player are all different things?
It’s Easton’s voice I hear now. His question from this morning comes back to haunt me.
What. Would. You. Do. Scout?
“In your informed opinion, is Easton Wylder completely rehabbed and ready to return as a contributing player to the Aces’ line-up?”