Wild Pitch (Dominating the Diamond Book 1)

CHAPTER 1

Louder than the crack of a whip, the crash of wood and cowhide echoes off aluminum seats and vibrates in my bones. The stadium is an uproar of too many sounds. This isn’t my home ballpark, but the sounds are the same anywhere we go. Announcers, music, screaming fans. I can’t hear any of it over the sound of my own breathing as I keep my heartbeat steadier than the pitches soaring toward me. Soreness twinges deep in my back, but I don’t allow myself to acknowledge it. Sixty seconds left in this round; I can do anything for sixty seconds. Just one minute to remind every ass in this stadium and on the other side of so many cameras that Mateo Reyes may be getting old, but I am not done yet.

Younger athletes sit on both benches. Fifty feet in either direction are pits of snakes waiting to devour me alive if given the chance. Men whose bodies don’t leave them floundering out of bed in the morning, despite hours of extra work—physical therapists, ice baths, stretching, saunas—and early nights in.

Sixty seconds fly by almost as quickly as the balls I’m knocking out of the park. I wave to the fans, and my heart swells with pride at the sight of so many red jerseys waving back at me. A perk of playing a stadium so close to home. I take my time walking back to the dugout, and by the time I sling my bat and helmet into the cubby, my back feels halfway normal.

I tune out my teammates while we wait for the final round. I may be captain one hundred and sixty-two games a year—more if we’re lucky—but the Home Run Derby is my time to show off without worrying about anyone else on the field. With a million-dollar prize on the line, and the curtain on the first act of my career looming no matter how I try to undo the wear and tear of aging, I can afford my teammates” distractions about as much as I can afford to let my back and knees get cold.

“You’re killing it out there,” says the one person who is either brave or foolish enough to sit next to me right now.

Not that I can ignore how this voice stands apart from the rest. A little bit husky, with a bite beneath the sweetness, her voice hits me like a double-shot of expensive whiskey. She sounds like late nights and bad decisions, neither of which belong in the dugout beside me.

I don’t drop the fingers pinching the bridge of my nose. I glare sidelong at her and say nothing.

The rookie pitcher clears her throat and adjusts her royal blue jersey, but she doesn’t look away. Eyes, so dark I can’t tell where her pupils end, stare up at me from beneath the brim of her cap. I drop my hand and hold her gaze, waiting for her to break—needing her to break and not wanting to examine why. Defiance stares back at me with the hard set of an athlete who knows far better than to let an opponent see weakness. But I have been training that same unwavering defiance years longer than she has. When the minutes drag on, she submits first—straight, white teeth worrying her full lip, a split-second before she looks away.

“I should tell you, yours was the first rookie card I ever owned—” she starts.

Snickers sound all around us, but she doesn’t bat an eye. After all, she’s the only woman in the league facing her very first season in the majors. This isn’t the first time she’s had to ignore the immaturity of teammates who question if she belongs in the league at all, or if she got here by the same publicity that got her voted onto this year’s All-Star team.

“Stop right there, Texas.” I hold up one hand and ignore the ache in my elbow. “I’ve got one round left to make count in front of thousands of fans. Don’t make me feel old.”

I force myself to my feet before she can respond.

Eyes sear into my back. Hot. Heavy. Sharp. The weight of their gaze weighs me down as I walk up to the plate, warming up my torso and shoulders with easy swings.

The eyes boring into me don’t belong to the spectators or the glossy cameras chasing us around the diamond. At thirty-five, with fourteen years in this jersey under my belt, I’m used to the crowd. I will never admit it out loud, but the flush in my cheeks comes only from brown eyes, the color of night just before dawn begins to break, glued to me like lanolin oil on a new glove.

Tapping my bat to the plate settles me. I grind my cleats into the dirt—right, left, right again—and forget the way Sierra Ramirez stared at me.

I groan into the cushion as hands slide up my inner thigh. Fingers that know my body all too well find the sensitive spot high in my groin. They’re relentless and brutal, until I’m hissing through gritted teeth.

“Breathe, Mateo.” Alejandro’s command is as quiet and measured as ever.

I take a deep breath that rushes out my nose when I swallow a groan in a hurry.

“I’m trying—” I grit out.

“Stop trying so hard, and relax. That’s your problem. Breathe. Again.” Alex’s forearm digs into my adductor, and I tighten my death grip on the massage table. “It’s also why you spend more time on my table in a week than most of your teammates spend in two months.”

“Right, Alex. Me not relaxing enough is what puts me here. Not the fact that I’ve been on this team since before most of these kids could drive.”

“And not as long as some of the veterans who will be sharing the field with you tomorrow, so don’t bullshit me using your age as your only excuse. We both know you wouldn’t be in here half as much if you’d listen to Skip when he suggests you play a few games on first.”

I ignore the advice that feels more like a dig. I will do whatever it takes to stay on this team long enough to lead it to a World Series ring. The extra hours of training. The stretching regimens that bore me to tears. PT sessions where listening to Alejandro’s lectures is almost as painful as the torture his hands and elbows inflict on my soft tissue. But I’ll be damned, if I’m going to let Adam Williams take my place behind the plate.

Closing my eyes, I ease into the cello melodies pumping through the speakers. There would be no end to the crap my teammates would give me for listening to this, but the concertos take me back to my childhood. They take me back to hours spent in the sunlight streaming through the patio door of our little duplex in Oakland, listening to my mother practice for an orchestra she’d left behind in the Philippines. They soothe a part of me that might have been, if baseball hadn’t consumed my life instead.

“Shit, Alex—” The elbow in my lower back breaks me out of any semblance of relaxation. “Would a little warning kill you?”

“You’d think winning a million dollars in front of thousands of adoring fans would set a guy at ease,” Alex laughs. “This is what you come to me for, asshole. Now either shut up and relax, or tell me what’s going on with Oliver.”

“If you wanted me to relax, my ex is the last thing you should have asked me about. I don’t know why you still ask about him when we’ve been broken up for three years longer than we dated.”

“You know exactly why I’m asking, but whatever. Talk to me about Williams then.”

“Are you here to work out my kinks or to psychoanalyze me? Because I am not in the mood tonight.”

“Trust me, Mateo, I don’t want to know anything about your kinks.”

I snort and shake my head.

“Shut up, man. You’re ridiculous.”

“It’s what you love about me.” He taps my shoulder, and I roll over so he can work on my quads and re-tape my knees. “Now focus on that big-ass check, or whatever pretty little thing you’re running around with these days, and let me get you in order for tomorrow. You aren’t the only one getting too old for these late nights.”

Breathing in time with the music, I drape my forearm over my face and force my muscles to relax.

Eyes the color of night sky just before the break of dawn stare back at me. I shake my head, but without the pressure of a bat in my hands, I can’t shake her. With every bruised muscle in my body, I fight the phantom that should absolutely not be in my head.

For the first time today, I lose.