Chapter 2
RYAN
The stadium lights were so bright they made the grass look neon, cutting through the dusk of Rock Hills. Usually, this was my sanctuary. When I stepped onto that grass, the rest of the world—mortgages, stats, aging joints—faded into the background.
But tonight, the background was screaming.
I stood at the top of the dugout steps, leaning against the railing as the San Francisco Jaybirds took their warm-up swings. My eyes were supposed to be scouting their lead-off hitter’s rhythm. Instead, they were glued to the short, broad-shouldered figure on the grass. Looking to catch that ball.
Ozzie fucking Ford.
Ozzie was catching ground balls, his movements quick and explosive with his glove.
He played the game like he had something to prove to the sun itself.
I watched the way his pants caught on his thighs when he crouched, the way his tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. Eye on that ball.
I wonder what his ass taste like…
Shit. Now I’m thinking about my teammate’s ass.
Get it together, Lindson, I told myself, gripping the cold metal railing until my knuckles turned white.
What happened in the shower was a mistake.
A lapse in veteran judgment. I was twenty-nine, a leader on this team, and he was a twenty-four-year-old kid with his whole career ahead of him.
Cracking the tension in the locker room was one thing, but the way he’d looked at me—defiant and breathless—had stirred something up that I couldn’t just “walk off.”
I want him. I wanted him ever since he joined this team. Since my eyes held his.
“Lindy, you’re up third,” the hitting coach barked, clapping me on the shoulder.
“Got it,” I grunted.
I grabbed my bat and headed for the on-deck circle. As I passed Ozzie heading back to the dugout, our paths crossed. It was a tight fit. For a split second, the world narrowed down to the scent of his sunscreen and the dirt on his jersey.
He didn’t look at me. He kept his head down, but I saw the way his jaw tightened. He was feeling it, too. That magnetic pull that made the air feel thin whenever we were within five feet of each other.
I stepped into the batter’s box, the crowd’s roar becoming a dull hum. The Jaybirds’ pitcher was a lefty with a nasty curve, but I wasn’t worried about the pitch. I was worried about the fact that I could see Ozzie in my peripheral vision, sitting on the bench, watching me.
The first pitch came in high and tight—a brush-back. I stepped out of the box, shaking my head. Strike one.
Focus on the ball, Ryan. Not the kid. Then the pitcher threw the ball, and my eyes were like lasers on the rounded form.
I felt the vibration rattle up my arms before I even heard the crack—that perfect, wooden thwack that tells you you’ve found the sweet spot. It wasn’t a home run, but it was a sharp line drive right into the gap in right-center field.
I dropped the bat and took off.
At twenty-nine, I wasn’t the fastest guy on the team anymore, but I had the strides. My cleats tore into the dirt, my lungs burning with the sudden burst of adrenaline. As I rounded the corner and sprinted toward first base, my eyes instinctively flickered toward the dugout.
I wanted to see him. Just a peek.
Ozzie was right there at the railing. He was leaning so far over it he looked like he might fall out, his hands gripped tight on the foam padding. For a split second, our eyes locked. He wasn’t just cheering; he looked transfixed.
I hit the bag hard, the coach waving me down as the right-fielder cut the ball off. I stayed at first, chest heaving, taking a lead-off as the pitcher tried to compose himself.
“Nice piece of hitting, Lindson,” the first baseman for the Jaybirds grumbled, but I barely heard him. Whatever, loser.
I was looking across the diamond. Ozzie was still watching. He wiped a hand across his forehead, and even from forty feet away, I could see the flush on his neck. I knew it wasn’t just from the heat of the game.
The next batter stepped up, and I focused on the pitcher’s delivery, but my mind was racing faster than my pulse. Being on the field usually kept me disciplined, but having Ozzie in my line of sight was like trying to play through a fever. Every time I moved, I felt his eyes on me.
By the time the inning ended and I had to jog back to the dugout to grab my glove, the tension was vibrating in my teeth. I stepped down into the shade of the dugout, and Ozzie was standing by the water cooler, holding a paper cup.
He didn’t move out of my way. Not that I wanted him too.
“Nice hit,” he said, his voice low enough that it didn’t carry over the chatter of the other guys. He took a slow sip of the water, his eyes never leaving mine over the rim of the cup.
Fuck. His pretty face.
“Just doing my job, Ford,” I replied, reaching past him for my glove. My arm brushed against his ribs—intentional, and we both knew it. I felt him catch his breath.
“Is that all this is?” he whispered. “Your job?”
I stopped. I didn’t grab the glove. Instead, I let my hand linger against the side of his jersey, right over the curve of his ribs. The dugout was a disaster of noise—spit, sunflower seeds, and guys shouting—but in the two inches of space between us, it was a graveyard quiet.
I stepped deeper into his personal space, using my bulk to shield him from the view of the hitting coach or anybody else.
I leaned down, my mouth hovering just an inch from the shell of his ear.
I could smell the salt on his skin and the sweet, artificial scent of the blue Gatorade he’d been drinking.
“If I were just doing my job,” I hissed, my voice a jagged, low vibration, “I wouldn’t be thinking about the way you looked in that shower light for every single pitch of that at-bat.”
I felt a shiver run through him—a physical tremor that started at his neck and disappeared under his jersey. I let my hand slide down from his ribs, my thumb hooking firmly into the waistband of his baseball pants for just a fraction of a second, pulling him a hair closer.
“And I definitely wouldn’t be wondering,” I added, my breath hitting the sensitive skin behind his ear, “if you taste like that water you’re sipping, or if you taste like the trouble you’re trying so hard to stir up. I like that kind of stuff, Ozzie Ford. Try me.”
I pulled back just enough to look at him.
Ozzie’s eyes were blown wide, his pupils swallowing the hazel of his irises. His chest was rising and falling in shallow, jagged hitches. He looked wrecked, because of me.
I finally grabbed my glove from the bench, my fingers grazing his one last time.
“Get your head in the game, Ford,” I said, my voice returning to its usual captain’s bark as I stepped past him. “We’ve got six innings left.”
I jogged out to my position on the grass, my blood humming. I could feel his gaze burning a hole in the back of my jersey all the way to the field. I knew I’d just lit a fuse, and I had no intention of putting it out.
But I did. And I wanted him to know.
Just remember who dealing with you, Ozzie Ford.
* * *
The locker room was a riot. Music was blasting—some bass-heavy track that shook the floorboards—and Miller was currently dousing the bench coach in a stray bottle of sparkling cider.
We’d taken the Jaybirds down 4-2, a solid win to set the tone for the season, and normally, I’d be right in the middle of the noise.
But I wasn’t.
I was distracted. I was scanning the room, my eyes skipping over the celebrating bodies, looking for that boy with a pair of stubborn hazel eyes.
Ozzie. Where was he?
His locker was empty and his gear was thrown inside in a messy heap. He was gone.
A knot tightened in my gut. I’d pushed him hard in that dugout. Maybe too hard. I’d basically told the kid I was obsessed with him and then told him to go play ball like I hadn’t just set his world on fire.
Why was I obsessed about him? It wasn’t just the way he played. I’d seen thousands of guys with “potential” burn out before the All-Star break. No, with Ozzie, it was the way he existed in the spaces between the plays.
I’m a man of routines. I lace my left cleat before my right; I tap the resin bag three times; I never look at the scoreboard when I’m trailing.
My life is a series of controlled, rigid boxes designed to keep the “Captain” persona from cracking.
But Ozzie? Ozzie is chaos wrapped in a home white jersey.
I became obsessed with the details no one else noticed. The way he bites his lower lip when he’s studying a pitcher’s throw. The way he wipes his palms on his thighs before stepping into the box, a nervous habit that makes my own hands itch to reach out and steady him.
But it’s the light in him that haunts me.
This game is a meat grinder—it takes young, hopeful kids and turns them into cynical, tired men.
I’ve been a tired man for a long time. But when I look at Ozzie after he makes a sliding stop, seeing that dirt smeared across his nose and that “can you believe we get to do this?” look in his eyes… it wakes me up.
He’s the only fucking thing in this stadium that feels real. The roar of the fans is white noise. He’s the anchor I didn’t know I was searching for, and now that I’ve felt it, I’m terrified of what happens if the line snaps. He just turns me on.
Fuck. I should just go find him and apologize. Maybe I creep him out.
Go find him, Lindson. Now.
I grabbed a towel and headed toward the back hallway, the one that led away from the noise and toward the training rooms and the secondary exit. The air got cooler as I moved away from the party.
Within minutes, I find him. He was near the equipment tunnel, looking fucking handsome as ever.
The stadium was mostly dark now, the big lights hummed as they cooled down, and the only light came from the dim overheads of the tunnel.
Ozzie was leaning against a stack of gear trunks, his jersey unbuttoned over a grey undershirt, his head tilted back against the cold metal.
He looked exhausted, but when he heard my cleats on the concrete, his head snapped around.
“Looking for someone?” he asked. His voice was raspy, stripped of the sass he usually used as a shield.
Yeah. You.
I didn’t stop until I was standing right in front of him, blocking the exit. The celebration muffled behind the heavy doors made it feel like we were the only two people left in the world.
“You disappeared,” I said, my voice dropping into that low register that only seemed to come out when I was around him. “We just won, Oz. You should be in there.”
“I couldn’t,” he muttered, finally looking up at me. The bravado was gone. He looked raw. “I couldn’t sit in there and pretend like my skin isn’t crawling because of what you said. You can’t just… say things like that and expect me to go grab a beer and act like one of the boys.”
This boy….
I stepped closer, my shadow swallowing him whole. I reached out, my hand landing on the equipment trunk on either side of his waist, trapping him. “What do you want me to do, Ozzie? Take it back?”
He let out a short, shaky breath, his eyes dropping to my mouth. “No,” he whispered, reaching out to grab the front of my unbuttoned jersey, his knuckles brushing my chest. “I want you to prove you weren’t just talking. And that you weren’t just saying bullshit at me.”
The restraint I’d been white-knuckling all day snapped the second he moved. Ozzie didn’t just lean in—he surged upward, his hands fist-filling the fabric of my jersey to pull me down to his level.
When his lips slammed into mine, it was a collision of pure, unadulterated heat. He tasted like sharp peppermint and the lingering adrenaline of the game. It wasn’t a soft kiss; it was a demand, a desperate release of everything we’d been dancing around since the first pitch.
A low growl ripped from my throat—a sound I didn’t even recognize as my own.
I surged forward, my weight pressing him back against the cold metal equipment trunks.
The metal groaned under the impact, but I didn’t care.
I moved my hands from the trunks to his waist, my fingers digging into the broad, sturdy muscle of his back, hauling him flush against me.
Oz…
I kissed him back with a hunger that had been building for years, my tongue sweeping against his as I tasted that mint and fire. I wanted to consume him. I wanted to leave a mark.
You’re mine.
Ozzie let out a choked, breathless moan into my mouth, his fingers tangling deep into the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling me closer as if he were trying to crawl inside my skin. He was smaller than me, but he fought for every inch of space, his body molding perfectly against mine.
I broke the kiss for a split second, trailing my lips down the heated line of his jaw to the sensitive skin of his throat. “You have no idea,” I rasped against his pulse, “how long I’ve wanted to shut you up like this.”
He arched his neck, his breath hitching in a high, broken sound. “Then don’t stop,” he whispered, his voice shaking. “Ryan, don’t you dare stop.”
“I fucking won’t, Oz.”
The muffled sounds of the celebration in the distance felt like they were miles away. Here, in the shadows of the tunnel, the only thing that existed was the taste of him and the way he was trembling in my arms.
Finally, I had him where I wanted him.