Moonshot (21 page)

“I will.”

I ended the call and tossed the phone onto the bed. Five minutes later, jeans and a henley on, I laced up my boots, grabbed a leather jacket, and jogged down the staircase, smiling at Paula, who held out my coffee and a bag with breakfast. “Thanks.”

Our elevator was waiting, and I had, in the quiet of the ride down, a moment to collect myself.

Margreta Grant—Tobey’s sister. A bottle blonde in the hospital for a procedure I strongly suspected to be another breast augmentation, but she was insisting otherwise. I should be in Tampa with the team, one of her socialite friends holding her hand through this harrowing experience, but it turned out fake friends sucked at real obligations, and sisters-in-law were expected to step up in their stead. I stepped out of the elevator, into the garage lobby, and nodded at the driver, taking a long pull of my coffee.

“Good morning, Mrs. Grant.”

“Morning, Frank. We’re picking up Caleb from school, then swinging by the hospital.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He opened my door, and I stepped into the warm car, tossing my bag onto the floorboard, my phone out and against my ear by the time we pulled onto the street.

Dad answered on the third ring, “Hey Ty.”

“Hey Dad. How’s Florida?”

“Terrible. Nothing but sunshine and bikinis.”

I laughed. “Stay there. New York hasn’t gotten the memo that summer is coming.”

“Surprised you guys haven’t flown south.”

“We’ll be in Aruba this weekend. I can defrost then.”

I opened the bag from Paula, pulling out a muffin, my phone put on speaker and set aside, conversation between us easy as I ate breakfast and tuned out the outside world. It wasn’t until Frank coughed that I realized we were at the school.

“Got to run, Dad. Drink something with an umbrella in it, and give Carla a hug for me.”

“Done and done.”

I ended the call, stuffing the rest of the muffin in the bag, and stepped out of the car and into the brisk wind, my walk into the school quick. Dad had retired two years ago, three weeks after summoning the courage to ask Carla to dinner. They’d married last year and bought a place in Key West, dividing their time between that home, and our old place in Alpine. It was strange, after so many years, the two of us against the world, that we were now separate, each with a spouse, each with our own lives. Part of me had been happy when he’d retired, the man deserving of a vacation, of a life outside of the strike zone. Another part of me had hated it. His job had been the last tie I’d had to the field. After he left, my relationship with the team as an old ball girl, as a teammate’s daughter… all that had died and I had moved fully into the role of Mrs. Grant. Mrs. Grant, who sat in the skybox. Mrs. Grant, who did “stuff” in the main office and wore suits and heels and was a stranger to everyone but the oldest uniforms on the team. The new guys were stiff, smiling politely and shaking my hand after games. They didn’t know me, and they didn’t care to. In the game of baseball, owners were the high maintenance afterthoughts, something I knew well, even if Tobey didn’t.

I stepped into the sophisticated interior of the prep school and saw Caleb, sitting miserably in a seat, his feet swinging dully, his eyes on the ground. I cleared my throat, and he looked up, his eyes lighting, sick legs working just fine in their sprint across the room, his small body colliding into my arms. “Aunt Ty!” he cheered.

“Hey buddy.” I squeezed him tightly and enjoyed, for one heart-breaking moment, the smell of little boy.

61

I lost the baby at five months. After four years, I still couldn’t talk about it without crying. Funny how something I hadn’t wanted, became the only thing I’d lived for.

I wouldn’t depress you with the details. One day I was pregnant, our nursery ready, plans and possibilities in place, the next I wasn’t.

I’d given up so much for that baby. And he never came.

“Ty practically bled Yankee blood already. She should have been ecstatic, marrying into the Grant family. But that first year of marriage, she wasn’t. She seemed shell-shocked. Almost like a trauma victim. She smiled, she said all of the right things, but there just wasn’t any light behind her eyes.”

Dan Velacruz,
New York Times

62

“Tell me what I can do to make you happy.”

I rolled over onto his chest, and looked up at him. “Trade Perkins,” I said, without hesitation.

Tobey laughed. “That’s it? Your key to lifelong happiness?”

Lifelong happiness? A concept given up years ago. “He’s dead weight. His knee is shot,” I pointed out. “And he smokes. If he doesn’t care enough to quit, he doesn’t care enough about his job.”

“Some things can’t be quit, Ty.” His eyes darkened, and his hand, the one wrapped around my waist, slid lower.

“Like chocolate?” I teased, laughing when he moved on top of me, kissing my neck, his hand tightening on my butt and pulling me into place.

“Sure,” he mumbled, pushing my legs apart, wrapping them around his waist. “Go with chocolate.”

Then he yanked at my panties, pulling them aside, and I stopped thinking about Perkins and chocolate. I wrapped my arms around his neck, I opened my mouth to his greedy kiss, and I gasped out a sigh when he thrust inside of me.

He loved me. Fiercely. Unselfishly. For most women, it was all they needed in life.

But me, I needed the curse to stop.

I needed a year to pass without blood marring our pinstripes.

I needed a World Series win.

63

“We’re looking at nineteen million, paid out within the first eighteen months. A three-year term with the rights to the sneaker for perpetuity. You’ll get a five-percent royalty on the shoe, and you’re giving Nike an exclusive on footwear, but nothing that will affect your Under Armour sponsorship.” His agent tapped the table with each point, an incredibly annoying habit.

Chase flipped over the page, reading the words carefully, the contract boilerplate, the fifth signed in the last three years. When he was finished, he initialed each page and scrawled his name across the bottom, sliding the papers across the polished wood table toward Floyd. “Here. Anything else?”

“You could hold back your mountain of gratitude.”

Chase shrugged, tossing down the pen. “It’s money. At some point, I’m going to run out of time to spend it.”

“That’s what kids are for.” The man cracked a smile that went unreturned. “Sorry.” He stood up, leaving the contract on the table and buttoned his suit jacket. “Want to hit Scores while you are in town? We can—”

“No,” Chase said shortly. “There’s a jet waiting at JFK.”

The man studied him for a minute, then nodded, holding out his hand. “Thanks for making the trip. It was important for Nike to have the face-to-face.”

Chase stood, and they shook hands, his exit through the agency done quickly, a car waiting for him up front. He ducked into the backseat without a word.

“JFK, sir?” the driver asked.

“Yes. Hurry.” He put on headphones and unwrapped a piece of gum, his jaw working overtime as he closed his eyes and tried to, during the drive, ignore the city around him. The city she lived in, towered over, the air filled with her scent, her presence. She lived on Fifth Avenue, just blocks away. Probably ran on these streets, ate at the restaurants they were driving past. Four years, and he hadn’t seen her once. Not at Yankee Stadium, not on the Orioles’ field. After his trade, he’d searched. Every seat, every inch of the dugouts, he’d expected to see her slim body encased in pinstripes, a hat pulled low on her head. But she’d been gone.

He should have answered her early calls. The ones right after the night he’d been charged with assault, and then promptly traded to the Orioles. In New York one moment, and gone the next, arriving in Baltimore just in time to suit up and play. His phone had rang several times that night, during the game, the phone buzzing in his locker, the missed calls not seen until later. He’d been too pissed to return her calls, or to even listen to her voicemails. He hadn’t wanted to hear her excuses, or her apologies. She had ruined everything, including his trust, his spot on the team, his spot in her life. He’d ignored the calls, wanting a chance to cool off, wanting her to truly realize her mistake.

Only she had stopped calling. Just a week after his trade, his phone had gone silent. And when he’d finally broken down and tried her cell, it had been disconnected.

Then, the rumors had started, whispers about an engagement. He’d refused to believe it, had cut off Floyd’s casual question when it’d came. It was
impossible
. They were in love. For Ty to run to Tobey … it just didn’t make sense.

The final nail in his coffin was a damn
People Magazine
. Her smile had shone from the glossy cover, her eyes warm, a baseball glove covering her mouth. He’d stopped in the middle of the hotel lobby, and stepped into the gift shop, his hands trembling as he’d pulled the magazine off the rack, flipping through pages upon pages of junk until he’d found the article. They’d called her the Blue & White Baby and had played the Cinderella aspect of the story—a ball girl marrying the billionaire’s son. It didn’t contain any helpful details, just that they had known each other for seven years and had dated for “some” time. Whatever the
fuck
that meant. There had been a picture of her ring, an enormous diamond that she’d never be able to pull a glove over. And a photo of Tobey, the prick’s grin big enough to piss off Chase.

He still hadn’t believed it, expected her to pull out of the engagement, to show up, follow him to Baltimore, but she hadn’t. She’d walked, three weeks after the article, down an aisle dripping with flowers. He’d drank enough whiskey to black out. She’d changed her name, moved into her new husband’s house, and started a different life. One he’d known nothing about. He’d vowed to never speak her name again and turned all of his focus to the game.

It had hurt.
More
than just hurt. It had
destroyed
him. Almost as bad as Emily’s death had. This destruction hit a different part of his heart. It’d stabbed him there and stayed, a constant ache that never left, her scent imprinted on his soul, her voice in his ear. He ran until his chest ached and thought of her. He threw balls until midnight and wondered where she was, what she was doing. He had sex with a blonde, then a brunette, then swore off women all together, each experience only bringing her to mind.

It’d been almost four years since he’d touched alcohol, drugs, or women. Four years since he’d last seen her smile, heard her voice. Four years of being a saint and focusing only on baseball. His reputation had soared, as had his stats, and his finances. But his sanity was still in question. Four years later, and he couldn’t even bear to stay a night in the same city as her.

First loves were supposed to be flimsy and temperamental. They were supposed to burn bright and fade fast. They weren’t supposed to stick. They weren’t supposed to eat away at a man’s heart, his capacity for life. The car slowed, the jet beside them, and he reached for his sunglasses, pushing them on and stepping out.

It wasn’t until he was in the air, ten thousand feet above the city, that he could take his first clear breath. He had, at least physically, survived.