23. HOPE
CHAPTER 23
HOPE
“ O h, yeah. That’s the spot.” Miller moans as I apply the right kind of pressure with the massage gun on the stiff spot of his trapezius. It made him throw weaker than a pee wee during a base steal an inning ago.
“Sit still, dude,” I demand and he braces himself against the railing.
Behind us, the dugout is a mess of activity. The New York Eagles is one of the best teams in the league, and one of the oldest in the entire North American league. Playing for it was probably the childhood dream of half of the guys in our team, and the fact that we’ve kept them to zero runs in this game, when their lineup includes superstars like Lewis Kim, frankly has all of us losing our collective minds. It explains things like how my massage gun has never been more active during any other Spring Training game, because the players are just so tense.
I guess it doesn’t help that we also haven’t scored a single run. Even one such celebration would put us in a different mood.
But then Beau clears his throat, and that stops all the voices at once. I watch from the corner of my eye how he motions at someone behind me, and then speaks.
“Starr. Come here, son.”
I confess that I pay a smidge less attention to Miller. I’m not too concerned about it though because he also sets his attention on whatever is about to unfold.
The air behind me stirs, leaving behind a scent I’m now very familiar with. It’s warm skin, sweat, and the remnants of a spicy aftershave that I never noticed until one day he spilled too much of it on his clothes. Now I can catch it even when he’s far from me.
Other players make way for Starr to reach Beau, who stands with one foot atop the stairs out of the dugout. Pitcher stops before manager and we all lean in. I turn off the massage gun so I can snoop.
“Are you ready?” Beau asks.
“Yes.” After a second, Starr adds, “What for?”
Miller chuckles next to me. Meanwhile, I have to resist the urge to facepalm. The cowboy is a big fan of deflecting serious moments like this, even at the expense of appearing ditzy. But it’s always on purpose, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s to hide his nerves.
It’s funny because two months ago I wouldn’t have imagined him as capable of feeling nervous. He always seemed so confident, bordering on cocky.
As if reading his mind, Beau puts a hand on Starr’s shoulder. “It’s time to throw it.”
“Oh shit,” Lucky Rivera whispers from nearby.
Instead of pumping his fist in the air, Starr tilts his head and asks, “Why now?”
“Because we need a statement and this is the right team to make it with.”
Our starter pitcher turns around, sweeping his eyes all across the dugout as if trying to gauge where everyone else is at. He gets nods, cheers, fist pumps, claps. It might be just me but he seems to pause for longer when his eyes find mine. A single sunbeam bathes half of his face, making that eye shine like someone’s applying CGI effects on the man, while his other eye is darker. Goosebumps break all over my skin and I jerk my head in a furious little nod for lack of anything better to do. My lungs recover the ability to work when his attention moves on.
He points at someone at the end of the dugout. “What do you think?”
The noise quiets down as we collectively turn to who Starr is referring, and it’s none other than our catcher. Logan is getting fit with his gear right after his at bat ended in an out.
“I would’ve liked to wait,” Kim says with a little shrug. “But if our manager says you’re ready, then I’m also ready to catch whatever you throw.”
“Aww yeah!” someone shouts, and the commotion resumes.
“I’m good now, Garcia.” Miller rotates his shoulder and stretches his neck. “I’m so ready to party.”
“‘Kay, but don’t get hurt.”
That’s when the inning ends and it’s time to go on the defensive. “Let’s go,” says Logan while picking up his helmet and mitt. He high fives the rest of the team on the way out and it distracts me enough that I don’t notice when Starr leaves the dugout.
I glue myself to the railing, stepping on a stool that is here precisely for the shorties of the team and staff. Logan jogs over to the mound where Starr is fixing the dirt with his foot, and all the while the rest of the players take their positions on the infield and outfield. The Eagles’s next batter is the first in their three-hole, and he gets ready as the Wild battery confers behind gloves. I’ve never been able to read lips but I know these baseball boys have eyes like, well, eagles, and can even steal signs if someone’s not careful.
But how I wish I could hear this conversation.
It ends in both of them bumping their gloves on each other’s chests before Logan heads over to the home plate and settles down. We’re so quiet that the umpire’s voice calling play ball reaches my ears.
The counter starts ticking and the first pitch ends up being a two-seamer close to the batter’s chest. The Eagle player has to jump back to avoid it, even though Starr’s control is so uncanny he’s yet to beanball anyone in his entire pro career so far. The easy strike makes us all tenser, somehow.
Is the cutter next?
No. Another fastball. This time the batter doesn’t swing and it ends up being a ball. I try to grab tighter onto the railing and my plastic gloves make an uncomfortable squelching sound. Sweat is pooling inside of them, yuck.
“Strike!”
Crap, I missed it.
No one’s making a big deal out of it, so it couldn’t have been the cutter, right?
Everyone’s eyes are laser trained on Starr as he catches the ball from Logan. As the counter starts again, Starr shakes his head at Logan’s signs not once, but twice. I swallow hard but that doesn’t push my heart back down from my throat to its rightful cavity.
Good gravy, this man’s gonna kill me. And since when do I speak like a southern lady?
“C’mon,” I mutter to myself.
Starr’s pitching form is a thing of beauty. A lot of pitchers focus on keeping their windups economical so they can last longer, but that’s because they don’t have the tree trunk thighs that Starr has. Not that I’ve worked for other teams, but we do have eight pitchers in the roster at any given time and literally none of them works out their legs anywhere as hard as Cade Starr. It’s like the cowboy is training for a life or death race against a mustang. He’s lucky also that his genes have given him calves that are also thick with muscle apt to keep up with the power in his thighs, and he has the most flexible joints in the entire team.
I don’t exaggerate. Part of my job is to keep track of ridiculous things like that, and Starr is the most hypermobile in the team. The athletic trainers keep a special eye on him for this reason, to make sure he doesn’t hurt his joints by hyper extending them during training or play.
Now, I watch him lift his right leg in a way that would make other pitchers exhaust themselves. His left foot rises to tippy toes that tip him forward. Meanwhile, his left shoulder and arm turn into a supple whip behind him and the ball shoots off his fingertips like a bullet. But it’s dropping way too much to be the cutter I’ve seen in practice.
“Strike! One out!”
Mumbles travel up and down the dugout. Of course we’re happy for a first out at the bottom of the sixth inning against Lewis Kim’s team. Of course.
But where’s the damn cutter?
The audience grows rowdier as the cleanup batter of the Eagles steps to the plate, doing some practice swings that are meant to intimidate our pitcher. This guy is a 6 foot 7 giant with all the power of batting the ball way out of the park and into the parking lot. He’s already done it once during Spring Training.
“This is it,” I say, because there’s literally no one better to stump in this lineup than this guy.
The first pitch is the same curve that struck out the previous Eagle. My heart stops as the batter connects. I follow the course and relax. The line umpire calls a foul.
The batter settles for the second pitch and Logan crouches again to signal. Starr gives no response other than starting his windup with the exact same movements as every pitch before.
Except this ball doesn’t drop.
And then a millisecond before the bat can connect, it drops like freaking lead.
Logan catches it square in his mitt, hovering a millimeter above the dirt.
“Strike!”
“Holy—” someone screams in the dugout.
“Dude, did you see that?”
“That was brutal!”
“Is there a replay?”
“Dude. Dude! ”
If I was a cartoon, my jaw would hit the floor.
While the dugout is a flurry of euphoria, the stands are eerily quiet as Logan returns the ball to our pitcher. I squint, trying to make out Starr’s expression. There is literally nothing in it, no sign of glee at throwing such a wild pitch that it has completely stupefied everyone in attendance.
Pitchers usually have several balls under their arsenal—often different types of fastballs and curves. Until now, Cade Starr had good enough weapons to keep him a regular in the majors. But I think I just witnessed the moment he really becomes a monster.
And because his battery partner is another monster, their third pitch is another cutter that makes the Eagles’ cleanup swing and miss by a mile.
Literally every Wild player and staff member screams their throats raw—including me. I don’t even know what I keep shouting, but I can’t stop myself. If anything, seeing Starr lift his hand, index and pinky up to signal two outs to the outfield, makes me louder. My pulse races as the next batter steps up to the plate. Wedging one foot between the padded planks of the railing, I hoist myself up so I can scream through the clearing above.
“Go wild, Cowboy!” I yell.
He throws another two-seamer by the batter’s chest that gets another strike. It feels like time or space are warping, because everyone else moves fast, the voices blend into a single scream, and yet Cade Starr is calm as he receives the ball and nestles it in his glove. He runs the palm of his left hand against his pants to wipe the sweat, and winds up again.
“Strike!”
“One more!” I shriek, my voice breaking embarrassingly.
Starr catches the ball again and he turns to the dugout. I know it’s to watch for any signs from Beau, so does the rest of the team, but we’re all feral in this moment.
“Kill ‘em, Cowboy!”
“For the pizza!”
I have no idea what that’s about but I also parrot, “For the pizza!”
Starr tosses a nod before turning back to Kim, who crouches down. They’re an aggressive battery that doesn’t tend to wait out the clock. And so Starr throws again and?—
“Strike! Batter out!”
All I can do is scream the letter a . In Spanish. In English. Only aaaaaa .
This freaking asshole just struck out the Eagles’ three-hole. Their best batters. Without conceding even one hit. In a game where he’s completely shut them out for six whole ass innings.
I need to breathe or I’m going to faint from the excitement.
Our boys return to the dugout at an easy jog, as if they hadn’t just basically declared war on the entire league. Logan says something that makes the pitcher smirk, and then they’re greeted in the dugout by an avalanche of paws jostling them around.
“Starr,” Beau barks. “Good job. Go get iced.”
Starr’s shoulders droop but he knows better than to challenge our manager. However, one by one, starting by Logan, the nearby players clap Starr in the back on his way to the clubhouse.
I lower myself carefully back to the stool and then to firm ground, and the motion catches Rob Beau’s attention because he pins me with a look. “Garcia, go ice him.”
“Yes, sir.” I check around me but the trunks are too deep into the dugout, where Steve and Otto are busy taking care of a couple of other players. So I guess it wasn’t so much that moving drew attention to me, or even my screaming earlier, but the fact that I’m closest to the clubhouse tunnel. I head into it, sure that I have what I need in the clubhouse and don’t have to fight through an unruly dugout for ice packs.
Most of the stadiums where Spring Training games happen are much smaller than regular season stadiums, sometimes a little more rundown too—like this one. The clubhouse is smaller than our home one, the furniture less comfortable. I walk into the room right as Starr is pulling his jersey over his head. The fabric messes his sweaty hair, because he’s already tossed his hat in his locker.
“Any issues?” I ask as I keep crossing the open space toward the small training room where the rest of our junk is. The walls encasing it are made of glass, and as I rummage around a couple other trunks, I can still see him peeling off the yellow undershirt.
“Nah, I’m good.”
I stop. I can definitely say Starr está bueno, which literally translates to what he just said. Except in Venezuelan slang it means he’s hot.
And uh, yeah. He really freaking is.
Sweat trickles down his back, sorting the ridges and valleys of cut muscle to disappear under the waistband of his pants. When he shifts to turn, I make sure to stick my eyes to what I’m doing. I find the cooling spray he likes to be doused with before I fit him with the ice pack, but I don’t find the shoulder pack itself so this will have to be a two-part job.
As I step out to the open, Starr is lowering himself to the chair by his locker, facing me. He throws his head back as he slumps and I have to tighten my jaws to not scream like I did a few minutes ago.
I don’t care , I tell myself in my mind. I’m a professional. This isn’t the first time you’ve seen him shirtless. Nor will it be the last. And other guys in the team are just as attractive or more.
Except I can’t fathom that right now. Not while the thick column of his throat is exposed, corded muscles standing out as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down. He props his forearms on the armrests, one leg bent and the other one stretched out—but both spread out confidently. His chest rises and falls with breathing that’s still more labored than baseline, and a drop of sweat trickles down the hollow under his jaw to the deep ridge between his pecs that are dusted with almost blond fuzz.
Scratch that. I feel completely unprofessional right now. The things I want to do to that drop of sweat shock even me.
I clear my throat so loud that we both startle. Starr lifts his head, eyes widening in surprise like he forgot I was here too. Then he looks at the can in my hands and that reminds me of what I’m actually here for.
“Right, sit up straight.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His mouth twitches as he complies. Since he knows the drill, he turns away as I begin spraying all the way from his neck to his elbow.
I grab his heavy forearm with one gloved hand as I spray toward his back. His skin feels really hot even through my gloves. “You pitched a lot in the first innings. Any discomfort?”
“Nope.” He squirms a little, as if finding a better angle on the ratty chair.
And then he winces a little.
I stop moving altogether. That could be because of literally any reason, but I wasn’t hired by a professional baseball team for being pretty. In my mind, I retrace every single thing I’ve done. Lifting his forearm didn’t cause that reaction, so there’s no issue in his shoulder. But I just adjusted my grip for a second so I do it again.
There’s the little wince again.
I do my best not to show any big emotions. This isn’t the moment for that. Starr just threw the best pitches of his career so far and I’m not going to let them be the last.
Calmly, I twist to offer the spray can to him. “Can you hold this for me?”
“Sure,” he mutters, taking it with his right hand.
Using the pads of my thumbs, I start kneading the thick muscles of his forearm. The same part of his anatomy that yesterday made a clothing store clerk and I suffer brain meltdowns. Starr rests his right arm again and turns to watch what I’m doing, which adds an extra layer of I-better-not-embarrass-myself-right-now.
To keep my own damn mind centered, I ask, “Since when did you start feeling discomfort?”
He lifts those freaky eyes of his to mine. “I’m fine, really. Maybe just tense.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Cowboy.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” His lips curve in a little smirk.
I focus back on his slick skin—or rather, on massaging his muscles. I trap his forearm between my elbow and my ribs so I can use both hands to work the flexors at elbow level. Starr grunts, no longer able to hide that this muscle group demands attention. They don’t feel tighter than usual, so there’s a solid chance it’s a one-off. Maybe even the adrenaline of today. But even then, I’m not going to risk it.
I speak low because it feels weird to use a normal volume when we’re this close. “The good news is that it doesn’t feel terrible?—”
“Wow, that really makes a man feel special.” There he goes again, deflecting.
I ignore that. “—But I’m still going to recommend putting you on light duty for the next few games.”
He groans. “What? Right as things were finally getting good for me?”
“The team needs you in tip top shape to throw that cutter again.”
This lights up his entire face and even though I cast a shadow over him, his eyes are as bright as a clear noon sky. “Did you see that?” His smile is contagious and before I can latch onto my professionalism, I’m grinning down at him.
“It was pretty wild.”
“Yeah, that felt even better than at practice, actually.”
“Speaking of, how does this feel?” I press into the knot of tendons in the crook of his inner elbow.
Reflex kicks in and he tries to jerk his arm away, so I tighten my hold.
“Whoa, at least buy me dinner first if you’re gonna touch me like that.”
I’m rolling my eyes at his attempt to camouflage the real discomfort he must be feeling, now that my fingers found the problem spot, when a third voice comes from behind me.
“Garcia, are you flirting with a player?”
Starr and I freeze. Wide blue eyes find mine.
“No,” I respond through gritted teeth and continue massaging Starr’s arm.
Stretching forward, Starr glances around me and greets my prick of a coworker. “Berger—” I momentarily enjoy that Starr refuses to call Otto by his first name. “—No need to feel jealous, man. I’m the flirt here, and if you need some attention just let me—whoa.” He turns back to look at the spot where I dig my thumbs. “Do that again.”
“Please,” I remind him.
“Do that again, ple—yeahhh.” Starr slumps back against the chair.
“Well, be glad it’s me who walked in,” Otto says as he appears in my field of vision. “Anyone else who heard you two would think something inappropriate is going on.”
I gnash my teeth and refuse to meet his stare, even though I feel the laser beams on my face.
Starr speaks in a deadpan, “So glad.”
“Why are you here, Otto?” I ask.
“Steve sent me to bring a shoulder pack, they’re all in the dugout.”
The pitcher traps the spray can between his thighs and extends his now free hand. “Thanks.” After a moment of inaction, Otto hands it over to him.
“Anyway.” Otto clears his throat in a phlegmy way. “You two behave while I’m gone, I’d hate to write you up.”
As if he had the power to do that.
I turn a fulminating glare on him. “Screw the hell off.”
“Just saying. You should be more careful than anyone else, Hope. You’re a single woman among men.” He shrugs in a petulant way and walks off to the dugout.
I huff. “Hijo de su madre.”
To my surprise Starr glares after him and says, “Wow, I didn’t know he was such a little shit. Does he treat you like that often?”
I switch my attention on his arm, starting by his rock solid bicep that makes me work extra harder. “You heard him, it’s what I get for being the only woman in the player support staff. Go me, breaking the glass ceiling by face planting on it, I guess.”
He mutters a big curse and looks up at me. “I’m proud of you for standing up for yourself, though. And I just want you to know we’ll have your back. Me and everyone in the team, especially Kim.”
I pause. “Why Logan especially?”
He mouths the catcher’s first name without producing a sound, and shakes his head hard. “Well, because you’re dating now.”
“What?”
“What?” he repeats, frowning.
“Who’s dating who?”
“You and ‘Logan.’” He uses his free hand to air quote, the frozen shoulder pack strewn over his lap.
“Uh… where did you get that from?”
If anything, he looks even more confused. “Didn’t you kiss last night? Because that’s a pretty solid indication that the fit is right and all that. At least enough to get a second date.”
I lean back. Unable to hold his gaze, I do my best to focus on his arm. Slowly, I say, “Logan and I didn’t kiss last night.”
“But I saw you—I mean, Lucky and I. You were in the parking lot. He grabbed your head like this.” He mimics it with his hand in the air. I don’t know why it makes my pulse spike like I’m watching him strike out an Eagle with a cutter.
“Oh. He was just getting an eyelash out of my eye,” I whisper. Starr whips his face back to me. “But anyway, no. We’re not dating. There’s no second date happening.”
“Why not?” He almost whines.
“I appreciate the effort, Coach.” Finally done with the massage, I gently lower his arm to the armrest and reach for the ice pack. As I work, I say, “But there’s no way I can date someone in the team. Not without getting written up or worse, fired. You heard Otto just now, didn’t you?”
Starr draws air sharply and when I meet his eyes he whispers, “Shit.”
We don’t speak the rest of the time it takes me to wrap the ice pack around his shoulder and elbow, but all throughout he glares at a random spot on the floor. I almost apologize for ruining his plan of setting me up with Logan—not that it would’ve worked anyway. The catcher isn’t the one catching my eye these days.
Starr throws his head back on the chair, right arm over his face to cover him from the light. I leave him there, returning to the dugout where no one else makes my heart race.