Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

Benched

Levi

Adam’s off work and he’s not answering his phone, so when I get off, I venture and find him at the last place I’d expect him to be, which happens to be the first place I thought of.

Almost every cage is filled, some with lone batters and some with groups, the pitching machines firing ball after ball.

That crack will always take me back, but those memories for me stop after high school. They were never a dream that became a nightmare. I can imagine that’s how these memories are for Adam now, but in my venturing, I was reminded by our more recent memories reeling off in my head, with a surge of adrenaline as I changed my route like there was a sudden emergency, that Adam now fishes for ways to torture himself.

He’s on a bench at one of the last rows of nets, watching— glaring down a lone batter, oblivious to everything but what he sees inside his head as that kid swings his bat, the kid oblivious to the apparent targeted attention on his back.

I keep a weather eye on Adam’s movements as I slide in next to him, attempting not to spook him, and in turn, spook the kid.

He locks up with a lurch, eyeing me with the same stare when I caught him cheating off my math quiz in middle school. Both of us aced the quiz and celebrated, two cages over from this one.

But there’s a murkiness to his features, like he might swing at me.

He exhales, unrolling his tension muscle by muscle as he focuses back on the kid doing the swinging.

“Don’t do this to yourself,” I implore him, leaning back as he’s leaned forward, that way wherever my eyes drift, I can keep my sights on him.

“I didn’t,” he carps, his voice scraping like he’s been swallowing rocks.

I sigh out toward the kid as this next ball arches backward into the net and pat my fist twice against Adam’s leg, almost wanting to do the same to myself, but harder and on the nose, for not knowing how to help him fix this part of his life.

“He’s the best one here.” Adam gestures to the kid, who crack s another ball that would’ve been a homerun. “And no sign of stopping. He’s gonna make it big.”

I check that the kid’s holding the formal batting stance, from his feet, his bends, his hands, and his eyes on the pitching machine. But he also carries a light weight and a sort of goofy grin.

“Or he could be doing it for fun,” I offer, borrowing some of his light weight to pass on to Adam, for him to remember and bring some past life back to him, when baseball was like entertainment before he discovered his talent and the sport became a destination instead of a journey. When it wasn’t a dead end with no place to turn around.

“He’s not like you,” Adam responds with a huffed laugh, the sound, real or not, a homerun in itself. “He’s committed.”

“I was committed,” I toss back, feigning offense as a tease.

But my hit is captured mid-air and my run skids to a halt, as Adam’s face sobers in the next moment. “You played for me. Because I asked you to.”

The history—too layered to peel back with what’s been stacked on him—in those words hangs like bait, a hook that’ll prick us both at even the lightest touch. A colorful question I have myself that I can’t ask.

One request that’s pierced to my marrow.

Let me have my girl.

My claim on her, the half of her heart I know is still mine, says, take her , and as I line up with Adam, instead, to prod his arm, it feels like I’m dragging myself. “How about you get up, for me? We get out of here…”

He lets out a huff absent of mirth as he breaks our line, leans back. “I’m not gonna burn the place down.”

I shake my head toward the floor with a muttered, “I’m not thinking you are.”

When I lean back with him, he circles a finger around the area as he asks, “How thankful do you think they are?”

My eyes dart between the batters as I consider the right response to the question. Adam’s starting a different, more dangerous game, and I’m making myself a player to keep him away from everyone else he’s now targeting a glare toward.

“I’d wager some are,” I answer low, knowing I have to reach him with honesty. He’d see through my shit otherwise. “Some probably don’t think about it.”

“I didn’t think about it,” he says low back, then laughs, a split in the air so sharp, my hands shift over my lap, ready to pull him back from—

“Now which one do you think will lose it?”

From that. That destruction.

“Come on.” He backhands my leg like this is still a game, but I’m taking both of us out. “Make a guess.”

“You,” I say as I shift toward him, a snap of fear for the road he’s going down and what else he might say, or even do, before I can get him out of here. “You’re the one who’s gonna lose everything you still have.”

“Am I gonna lose you?”

“No,” I answer as fast as he asked, which he wanted, and which he already knows.

“And I’m not gonna lose Summer,” he says, shrugging off the conversation. “That’s everything I still have. We talked about this,” he adds, and I hear, we’re not talking about it again .

“You can see the doctor who’s really been helping my mom,” I push anyway, because I’m going to hound him as often as he shows me he needs it. “I can call for you—”

“Summer gave me the shrink crap too,” he cuts in, with a frustrated tone, and my jaw tenses at hearing it linked with Summer. “Doctors can’t help me. The first one couldn’t even get me back on the field. But I told you,” he pushes back. “Don’t worry.”

That doesn’t relieve me. I’m deaf to those two words as long as we’re still in these cages.

Adam circles his finger around again. “I don’t recognize one person here,” he says, like this is some relief for himself. “Except him.” He points at the kid, and my eyes point on him. “He looks like him. The guy who did this to me.” His gesture to himself—benched—is a flop of his arms on his lap, as he watches the kid like a cornered animal that would swipe at him if he got close.

Which now I’m sliding even closer as the corners of his eyes cast those dark clouds, glazed onto the kid, now like he himself is the target, and if he keeps still, the snake won’t bite him. Again.

The sight grinds at me and my hand finds his back. I feel a shudder through his shirt, his body stiffening for a strike—

He lunges off the bench and I’m right there at him, bounding in front with both hands on his chest, stopping him halfway to the net.

He tries to shove me off, but I’m physically stronger than him now.

“What are you doing?” he throws at me with a heaving breath, finally just swiping my hands away until I drop them, but I remain his shield against this negatively life-altering choice.

“Walk away,” I implore him with more hustle to get the hell out of here. “That’s not him. He’s just a kid.”

Adam stares at me like I’m the one losing it, but it’s me who had the grip on him. “Seriously? I’m not gonna hurt him. I just wanna talk to him.” The hike in his voice and the stressed defense in his explanation tells me that’s not just what he was going to do, even if— fuck —he doesn’t realize it.

“And tell him what? Say he looks like the asshole who made sure you can’t play ball? Confuse him? Or live through him and compare stats to keep reminding yourself how good you had it, too, and then maybe convince him he’ll be you in six years?”

He realizes now, a slow progression that relaxes him to back down, and I’m soothed by my first wave of relief as he glances to the kid, no more like he’s a target.

“Hey, everything all right?”

We look toward a man in a ball cap approaching us with caution, and I note other eyes on us, too, less crack s of bats.

“Yep, we’re good,” I assure the man, offering up a smile in his hesitancy to step back, then turning a sigh to Adam when he finally does.

I put a stabilizing hand on his shoulder as he rocks in place, focusing his attention back on me. “Let’s get some sea. Or just some air. Or something else, whatever you want—”

“I got you,” he cuts into my renewed hustle to exit this place with a laugh that’s another wave of relief.

We’re almost at the door when he stops me with the back of his hand against my chest. “Don’t tell Summer I was here.”

I can’t help my laugh at the loyalty lines that have already been blurred. “Like you told her I was taking care of Floyd?” He drops his hand as I risk to say, “You owed me.”

“No,” he says back, shaking his head. “You owed me.”

I follow him out, up his ass to keep him walking, while slowing down the question that risks more falling apart.

Did I?