Moonshot (7 page)

I said
spikes first
in that bullpen to remind him of that. To remind him of the girl he’d raised. She wasn’t the type to go home when there was a game to be played. Chase Stern be damned. Naked bodies be forgotten. I was here for one reason, and it wasn’t lust.

22

Pregame, batting practice. I didn’t know what idiot created the standard baseball uniform, but they were terrible. Almost canvas in their thickness. Stiff with starch. Scratchy. Hot, even in our mild summers. I leaned forward, resting one hand on a knee, and wished, for the thousandth time in my life, for a pair of loose cotton shorts. The batter swung, and I jerked left, sprinting for his ball, my glove reaching out and falling a few inches short. I bent, scooping up the ball as I ran, and threw it in.

“Distracted?” Lucas, one of our outfielders, asked with a wink.

“You think you could have got that?” I shot back with a smile.

He scoffed, clapping a fist into his glove. “All day long, baby.”

I stabbed the grass with my cleat and let out a controlled breath, my fingers flexing in the sweaty confines of my glove, a new form walking slowly up our dugout steps, the sun glowing off his white uniform, his arms flexing as he worked a hand into a batting glove.

I had decided, that morning, that I would hate him. Based it on the cockiness in his tone when he’d spoken to me. The way he didn’t bother to cover himself when standing before me. The laughter that had been in his eyes.

Hating him would make everything easier. Cleaner.

But I couldn’t. I stood there, lost in far left field, and watched him reach for a bat. Watched him run his hands along its length. I watched him step up to the bag and push the batting helmet hard onto his perfect head.

And before he even tightened his grip, before that first swing that cracked open our future and sent the ball high over my head…

I was already done for.

23

The girl in left field had an arm on her. Chase watched her launch a ball from the fence, barely an arc on the delivery to second base, her jog back into place casual, as if the throw had been nothing. He turned to the hitter next to him, nodding a head to the girl. “Not a bad cannon for a girl.”

“Who, Ty?” The guy let out a hard laugh. “That’s Rollins’s kid. She should. He’s had a ball in her hand since she was old enough to pull on her own uniform.”

Rollins’s kid.

“He’s my dad.”

The girl from the locker room.

He stared at her figure in the field, and tried to connect her to the girl he had met yesterday. In the locker room, she’d looked meek and skittish. Out on the field, she was confident, a grin stretched over her face, her shout at another player done with ease, as if she was an equal.

“Rollins only have one daughter?” He tried to mold the two images.

“Yep.” The guy reached for a bat and looked over, his eyes hardening. “She’s seventeen. Just in case you had any stupid ideas.”

Chase held up his hands in innocence. “Just complimenting her arm.”

“Right.” The man held his eyes for a long moment before strolling toward home plate, his bat gripped with both hands, one last glare given before he stepped up to bat.

Chase took off his hat and wiped at his forehead. Letting out a controlled breath, he turned his back to the field, no need to see anything more.

So she was a ball girl. For the team. A seventeen-year-old ball girl. Heaven help him if she traveled with them, too.

24

4:48 AM. I counted out eight pairs of underwear. Two bras. Two pairs of jeans. Ten shirts. I stacked everything in the suitcase, grabbing an extra pair of Nikes and my toiletries bag. We spent nine months a year on the road. Packing had lost all creativity.

I could have grabbed my cute tops. Some footwear that was sexier than Nikes. My makeup. I thought about it, my hand drifting across the hangers, hesitating, but I didn’t. There was no point in courting trouble. And with makeup, when I made an effort—I could be called pretty. I didn’t want to be pretty to Chase Stern. I wanted to be invisible. He was God’s gift to our team, not to me.

I zipped up the suitcase and yanked it off the bed. Pulled it down the hall and into the dark great room. I rolled through the kitchen, past the commercial appliances, white granite countertops, the photos of Dad and me stuck to the fridge. I opened the door to the garage, and heard the hum of Dad’s truck, the early morning breeze crisp.

“About time,” he griped, holding out a juice.

“Bite me,” I countered, shaking the container before taking a sip. “We’re five minutes ahead of schedule.”

“Your schedule. We should be leaving by four-thirty.”

I rolled my eyes and buckled my belt, his truck making the turn onto the main Alpine street, everything empty and still. “We’ll be the first ones there. Like always.”

He flipped on the radio, and I shifted lower in my seat, resting my sneakers on the dash. And, as always, I was asleep before we even hit the highway.

Our games were played in series—three in a city, then we’d move to the next, our play coordinated to reduce travel time and expenses. This trip would last eight days and hit Detroit and Dallas.

I adjusted the shade on the window and smiled at the flight attendant, taking the blanket she offered. The jet was full, with the exception of one notable member. Chase Stern. A man who could bat .340 but couldn’t seem to get to an airport on time. I heard the travel secretary on her phone, trying to get ahold of his driver. When he jogged toward the plane, a leather bag in one hand, Dad leaned over. “We should have left him. Let him fly commercial to Detroit. That would have taught him.”

He was right. We’d left players before. Hell, it was a regular occurrence, happening two or three times a season. When you tried to get thirty guys to show up at a certain time, shit happened. So they got left. Except him, apparently.

When he walked down the aisle, stepping over outstretched feet, murmuring apologies to anyone who’d meet his eyes, I looked away, out the window. I had managed, for his first two games, to avoid him completely, a difficult feat. Now, in the tight confines of the airplane, his presence felt huge and unavoidable. Especially when he paused just past our row, and I felt the push of my seat, his tall frame moving into the spot just behind me, his voice low and right there as he leaned forward, his hand gripping my headrest, brushing the top of my head. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I managed, not looking up, busying myself with my headphones, pulling the big Bose headset over my head. I relaxed slightly when the pressure against my seat relaxed, his body in place, and started my playlist, trying to drown out the sound of his voice, the low apology, the way the vowels had hooked into me and held on.

“Like what you see?”

I could feel Dad’s glance and curled away, toward the window, tucking my knees to my chest and pulling the blanket up to my chin. There, I tried to not smell the fresh scent of his soap. I tried not to notice the occasional bump of my seat. I tried to pretend like Chase Stern didn’t exist.

She smelled like pears. When he bent down, gripping the top of her seat, he smelled her hair. It wasn’t intentional; he wasn’t burying his face in her blonde strands, he just got a whiff. A whiff strong enough to stick, to give him another puzzle piece to add to the Tyler Rollins enigma. When she leaned over to say something to her father, he watched her profile through the crack in their chairs. When her seat reclined, he imagined those long legs stretching out. Too bad she was in jeans; he’d noticed that on his walk down the aisle, his glance just brief enough to avoid suspicion, but long enough to see that she was in a Yankee jersey and jeans. A bag on her lap, open, headphones half out, her face turned away, looking out the window. Her hair down, tucked behind her ear. Young. She looked so young. So innocent.