2. Matty
Matty
If there was one thing I’d learned growing up on a farm, it was that being on time meant you were already late. My dad had drilled that into me and my siblings long before any of us could reach the barn door handles without jumping.
Chores started before the sun came up, nobody ate before the chickens were fed, and if you weren’t out front by a quarter to four with your boots on and hair pulled back, you’d spend the rest of the day hearing about it.
“Late is lazy,” he’d say solemnly, like it was the eleventh commandment.
Thou shalt not sit on your ass.
“And lazy don’t pay the bills.”
The rule had stuck with me for over two decades. Sadly, my miniature dachshund, Mo, still hadn’t gotten the memo.
“Come on, baby girl,” I crooned, scratching beneath her chin the way she liked. “The photoshoot starts in twenty, and I still gotta check in with hair and makeup.”
She stared up at me with those big, dark eyes, refusing to budge from her spot in the passenger seat.
Little shit.
Correction: adorable, little shit.
I’d been trying to coax her out of my truck for nearly ten minutes. None of my usual bribes were working. Not the bougie freeze-dried treats I special-ordered for her each week, nor the squeaky squirrel toy she’d disemboweled within hours of receiving on Christmas morning.
Mo wasn’t having any of it.
I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Honey, I know that you’re a diva. You crave the spotlight, and normally I’m more than willing to give it to you. But if you make me late, you’ll be sleeping on the couch for a week.”
Mo tilted her head, ears flopping, clearly weighing whether my threat held any real weight. We both knew it didn’t. If anybody was getting kicked out of our bed, it was going to be me.
“You’re right.” I sighed, leaning my forehead against hers. “I didn’t mean that. Tell you what, you let me get through this ridiculous photoshoot and then we can go to the park so you can frolic through the fountain. Happy?”
She licked my nose, then hopped down from the truck step like she’d been waiting for me to say the magic words all along. Those being “park” and “fountain.”
I should’ve known. Whereas most dogs were food motivated, my girl was water motivated. Mo spent more time in my pool than I did. That was probably my fault, though, for buying her doggy water wings . . . and her own pizza-shaped, inflatable raft.
Damn, if I was this bad with a ten-pound dachshund, what the hell would I be like with actual children?
Mo led me across the stadium parking lot, her head held high like she was leading a parade. Which, given the way the sun was beating down on us, felt a little excessive.
It was stupid hot, too hot for late June, but that was summer in Oregon for you. A week ago, it had been raining sideways. Today, it felt like we’d skipped spring entirely and gone straight to the surface of the sun.
And that was saying a lot, coming from a guy from Alabama.
Mo yipped again, this time at a discarded banana peel.
“Yeah, yeah, bananas are evil,” I muttered, scooping her up before we crossed the threshold into the building. “Don’t get your harness in a twist.”
She settled against my chest immediately, eyes half-closed in smug satisfaction.
The team entrance spit us out into the cool, echoing bowels of the stadium. Concrete floors, fluorescent lights, the faint aroma of popcorn and corndogs that never quite left the place.
Mm, smells like home.
Dani and Clarke had knocked it out of the fucking park—pun intended—when they’d suggested a line of Roasters-themed candles.
What might’ve started as a half-baked idea during a rain delay had turned into an actual merch drop, and somehow, they were still selling like hotcakes.
The team store couldn’t keep them in stock, and the online shop had a waitlist for half the options.
Especially the ones inspired by the players.
That’s right. There’s a me-scented candle out there.
Thousands of them, in fact, and they all smelled like a mixture of sweet tea, sunscreen, and something warm and woodsy meant to evoke a “front-porch swing,” whatever the hell that meant.
On the one hand, it was flattering. On the other, it was weird as hell to think about somebody gifting their granny a Matty Miller-scented candle.
“Merry Christmas, Nana. Get a whiff of that sweaty porch swing.”
Then again, who was I to judge? I was the proud owner of a Peter Diaz candle. The jumbo-sized, three-wick edition that had sold out in under three minutes during the preorder campaign.
That hadn’t stopped me.
It took nearly two weeks of scouring blogs, fan sites, and subreddits before I finally found one listed on eBay . . . with a starting bid nearly six times the retail price.
The cost didn’t matter. Not really. I was a professional baseball player who’d spent the first twenty years of his life scrimping and saving, another takeaway from growing up on the farm.
“Money doesn’t come easy, Matthias,” my dad would say. “And waste isn’t an option.”
He still balked anytime I mentioned spending money on anything that wasn’t strictly “necessary,” like the tile warmers I’d had installed in my en suite or the custom-built, tufted throne Mo had picked out during our last trip to her favorite pet store.
I knew for a fact he’d lose his shit if he ever found out I’d dropped six-hundred bucks on a goddamn candle.
When it had finally arrived, I’d shoved it straight into the back of my closet like contraband, burying it behind my winter clothes and beneath the box of vintage tools I had been collecting for years. Every now and then, I’d catch the faintest whiff of coconut and sea salt, and just like that—
Hard-on.
That was all it took to turn me on these days—a fucking candle.
One I had never even lit. I did, however, crack open the lid every now and then to breathe him in. Mm, Peter. And every single time, the scent alone was enough to make me remember his lips on mine the night of Clarke and Soren’s wedding.
It didn’t matter how many layers of coats stood between that candle and me. There was no escaping him.
Not in the closet—the irony of which hadn’t escaped me—and definitely not in my head.
Or heart.
I pushed the media room doors open and came to an immediate stop.
The usual drab space had been transformed into a full-fledged studio overnight.
White seamless backdrops curved across one end, and softboxes on stands flooded the area with warm, even light.
A large playpen took up one corner, filled with a wriggling sea of puppies.
Mutts of every size and color tumbled over each other while a couple volunteers tossed toys and treats to keep them occupied.
Talk about a dream job—herding puppies. You know, if the whole pro-baseball player thing didn’t work out.
“Matty!” Clarke waved me over with one hand while the other rested protectively on her growing baby bump. “Bring that queen over here for some kisses.”
The second I set her royal highness—more like her royal harness—down, she made a beeline straight for Clarke.
Mo didn’t usually take to women. Not because she was mean or evil or “possessed by demonic forces,” as some of my teammates half-joked, but because she was territorial as hell about her daddy.
Most women just got a side-eye or low, rumbling growl.
But not Clarke.
No, Clarke spoiled my girl worse than I did.
A few months back, she had offered to watch Mo while I attended my oldest sister’s wedding.
Three days later, I’d come home to a dog dressed in designer labels who, somehow, had lost her taste for regular kibble.
According to Soren, Clarke had spent the entire weekend slipping Mo table scraps while dressing her up like a canine fashion influencer.
Mo wouldn’t accept plain kibble for weeks afterward.
“There’s my favorite, little monster,” Clarke cooed.
Mo practically launched herself at Clarke’s legs, tail whipping like a propeller. She just laughed and crouched down carefully, one hand steadying herself on the edge of the playpen while the other reached into her dress pocket for the inevitable treat.
A flash of orange caught me by surprise.
“Is that a pregnancy craving kind of thing?” I nodded toward the cube of cheese in her hand.
Clarke grinned. “More like a cheese-is-a-freaking-delicious kind of thing.”
Her blonde waves had been pulled back with a pink headband that matched the soft flush in her cheeks.
How this pastel pixie had ended up with Soren Sinclair, our gruff and grumpy team captain, was beyond me.
Talk about an unlikely pair. The two of them were like a walking, talking advertisement for the opposites attract trope.
Fuck, I need to cut back on the romance novels.
Pink had suckered a few of us into joining his girlfriend’s romance book club last year, and much like Alice, I had fallen down the rabbit hole and landed in Wonderland.
Alien-fucking, only one bed left at the inn, “take that dick like a good girl” Wonderland.
Hell, just last night, I had finished an audiobook about a gay minotaur railing his mailman at the local aquatic center. That had made for some weird fucking dreams, emphasis on the fucking.
“Mo insisted on being fashionably late. Wouldn’t get out of the truck until I promised her a trip to the fountain later.”
Clarke giggled. “I can’t blame her. It’s hotter than blue blazes out there.”
I arched a brow. “Careful, Clarke Bar. Your Southern belle is showing.”
“Says the farm boy from ‘Bama,” she fired back without missing a beat.
Laughter shook my chest.
When I’d first been drafted by the Roasters two-and-a-half years ago, I’d figured I’d be the odd guy out.
The rookie with a twang that rivaled Dolly Parton’s, who still said yes, ma’am without thinking.
I sure as hell hadn’t expected to stumble across another Southern transplant, let alone a debutante who looked like a curvy Princess Peach.