Wild Pitch (Dominating the Diamond Book 1)

CHAPTER 9

Ramirez’s first week on the team has been almost surprisingly quiet. Unlike her. She only pitched a single inning in our game against the team pulling up the rear in league standings. From the way my niece and her partner talked about the new pitcher, though, she may as well have pitched a no-hitter against the best team this season. I half-expected them to invite Ramirez to dinner along with Dante and his family. Maybe I should have let them, but I’d already seen how well inviting her to dinner with the team had gone the week before.

I am running out of seasons to get my Series ring, and the last thing I need is a pretty distraction making her impression on my well-meaning mother. I can hear her already, “Mateo, baby, you and Oliver didn’t work out because of baseball. But a woman like this—she would understand everything the rest of us can’t. I just want to see you as happy off the field as you are on it.”

Climbing onto the bus while the rest of the team straggles behind, I brush my mother’s imaginary encouragement off. The words cling like dirt after a bad slide, so I throw my bag onto the aisle seat and sink down into my usual spot a few seats behind the driver. I pull on my headphones and let the music drown out the rest.

The rest of the team crowds on for the short bus ride down to San Diego, and I try not to think about the last time I was there. I sense Ramirez before I see her walking past me looking for an empty seat. The team hasn’t been awful to her, but I’m not surprised when a whiff of strawberry, bubblegum, and leather tells me she’s working her way back up to the front. I peek one eye open and watch her sigh and settle for sitting next to Skip, like the bullied kid on a class field-trip.

“Rookie.” I don’t say anything else. Just kick my bag under the seat and point to the empty space next to me.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Don’t thank me yet.” I pull down the table from the seat in front of her and set out my notes and the other team’s roster. “Skip would have let you nap. Not me though, so I hope you’re ready for a ninety-minute cram session.”

I tell myself I’m imagining the pink tinge in her cheeks when my big mouth says the words ‘cram session.’ It’s more convincing than the lie I tell myself, that the flutter in my belly is only pre-game nerves.

She’s a better student than the other pitchers on my team. Her hair falls over one shoulder when she leans forward, and I catch a glimpse of tanned skin at her lower back before the chill of sharing a bus with a team of perpetually hot men forces her to shrug into her jacket. I tell myself that brief look doesn’t do anything to me either. It sure as hell better not, considering her third impression of me was completely, bare ass naked.

Ramirez doesn’t let me lecture her about a single hitter without interrupting me with a question of her own. I pretend to be annoyed. Give her my best hard-to-impress tone each time. The truth is, I am as impressed by her enthusiasm and the specificity of her questions as I was when I went to the Minor League game with Dante and his kids’ swim team and saw her play.

Not for the first time, I wonder if she’s getting over the nerves of the majors or if her last team was simply setting her up for failure. Probably not intentionally. It’s already clear how much magic her presence on the team works in the box office. But her questions make it clear that her last catcher hardly gave her the time of day, much less the batter prep and trust he should have.

“Alright,” I say as we near the hour-mark on our trip and hit an extra snag in the usual SoCal traffic.

I gather my notes from the tray table. She grabs my hand before I can shove them back into my bag. Her hand is warm—soft and glowing with that sweet lotion, but callused through her palm and fingertips.

“One more time?” she asks.

The way she looks at me should be illegal. If she were any other person and we were anywhere else, those big, earnest eyes would be impossible to say no to. But she is my teammate. Whatever I do, I shouldn’t admit even to myself how that innocent intensity makes my skin feel too damned tight.

“We’ve been going at it for an hour,” I say, once more ignoring the heat that phrase brings to my cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Tired already, viejito?”

“Of your bullshit,” I grumble and tug my hand out of her loose grip. “You’ll be fine today, okay? Just remember your signs and trust me.”

“Big ask for a guy I hardly know,” she mutters and slumps back into her seat. She speaks without attitude, and I’m honestly not sure if I was meant to hear it at all.

“I’m not asking you as a man, and I’m not asking you to trust me with your life.” I try to pull back some of my usual gruffness and sarcasm. Try to let her hear that I’m not teasing or dismissing her. “I’m telling you as your captain and your catcher to trust me behind the plate. That’s it, rookie. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.”

She snaps the tray table shut with enough force to earn a sleepy grumble from Dante in the seat in front of her, but not with enough attitude for him to take off his headphones or turn around. When she leans forward to snag her bag, I catch another glimpse of smooth, brown skin, and I force myself to look out the window instead.

I consider—very briefly—apologizing, or at least saying something to lighten the mood between us back to the easy conversation we’d managed for the last sixty minutes. Instead, I swipe open the text lighting up my phone before checking to see who sent it.

Oliver.

I tell myself to leave it for after the game, but my eyes betray me. As anyone could have told me, reading it doesn’t help my mood in the slightest. The man means well, but he always was bad at leaving well enough alone, and he hasn’t gotten any better at it since we broke things off three years ago. It doesn’t matter that it was amicable. I don’t want to be friends, and he still can’t seem to believe that I can be incapable of friendship without it meaning I’m mad at him. I’m all out of energy to keep telling him that I’m happy for him. It just sucks that he’s moved so far on while I’m in the exact same place.

No partner. No long-term plans. No Series ring.

Nothing but a few wrinkles around my eyes and a lot more tweaks and pains.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your nap time.” Ramirez’s taunt is somewhere between irritated and playful.

I know I should say something playful back. Should keep building the camaraderie between us. But Oliver’s text has done what it does best. My skin is clammy, my chest is tight, and I’m going to need the extra-strength antacids before the night is through. No matter how I wrack my brain, I don’t have a single playful thing to say. Especially not to a woman sitting too close and smelling too good.

“It’s fine,” is all I manage, and the words sound brittle even to my ears.

I put in my ear buds and lean my head against the cool glass. A few angry swipes, and Oliver’s message is replaced by my playlist. I close myself off and get lost in the music. Walling off the part of me that worries about Oliver and all our baggage, I exhale the stress of my sister’s upcoming wedding, the pressure of Williams breathing down my back, and the fear that my life is passing me by while I’m still working for a title that just might not be in the cards for me.

Humming from the seat next to me pulls my attention from the concerto streaming through my headphones. I crack one eye open and shift just far enough in my seat to see her head resting on a ridiculous airport pillow, her eyes closed, and her lips moving ever so slightly to form the lyrics she is so badly humming. Using small movements so I don’t catch her attention, I tug one earbud to hang around my neck and strain my ears. Broken and off-key, it takes me three songs before I can finally name what she’s humming.

It takes me another two songs before I realize the ache in my jaw is because I’m smiling.