Chasing Headlines (Chasing Victory)

Prologue

Olivia POV

I fell in love for the first time when I was seven years old. Not with a boy. Boys had cooties and talked about . . . gross things. No, my first love wasn't like that.

It happened the day Mom left. The first time. She came back a few times over the years, but the version of family life that was rainbows and apple pie had come to an abrupt end—at least as far as her children were concerned. Whether it was as “abrupt” to our father, who can say?

So on that particular day, my older brother found himself stuck. Babysitting. When he needed to be at baseball practice.

Before Curt Milline became a major league pitcher with the multi-million dollar arm, he was just my big brother. Part tyrant, part protector. And after mom, well, part life raft. He could be the biggest bully, and the sweetest teddy bear. I don’t know how the two sides of him lived in harmony inside his skin.

He was, still is, ten years older than me, and this particular day—set during the early part of his senior year, the pinnacle of his high school career—baseball practice was no joke. Our father was at work, Mom was MIA. He had no choice but to bring me with him.

Not a solid decision, most things considered. But being his age, now, and knowing baseball players the way I do, I get why he did it. Just was poorly executed on his part: no iPad, no snacks. What was a seven-year-old girl to do besides fall in love?

This was, naturally, before NBfO, the “No Baseball for Olivia” regulation was proposed, written and ratified—without my consent. I have words for this patently pedantic policy and what the mildly misogynistic men who tried to run my life could do with it. And if it rhymed with “dove it up their mass,” I’d never tell a soul.

So, there was seven-year-old me, alone and bored, sitting on a blanket outside the dugout—watching baseball practice. I found myself mesmerized. The crack of the bat, the surprise of the ball flying through the air. It seemed so tiny, sometimes I’d lose it. Only to hear the triumphant shout—and see a boy holding up his glove. Everything about it was exciting. My worry over my mom slipped away. I didn't want to play brick breaker on my brother's flip-phone.

I was smitten. With baseball.

Running, throwing, batting, every play was amazing. Since then, I've written dozens of articles as a school reporter, and it's impossible to capture how truly remarkable the sport has always been.

Two hours, I sat there . . . Several of Curt’s teammates spoke to me, explaining parts of the game. I remember being patted on the head, something only my brother did. One guy even gave me his hat.

“There you go, little Livvie. Can't be part of the team without a hat.”

When practice was over, Curt held my hand all the way back to the car and took me for ice cream and hamburgers. I asked if I could play baseball, too.

“Girls play a different game,” was his reply.

He meant softball, I'm sure, but the words stuck with me.

The day my brother entered the International Major League draft was the day baseball became the official Milline family business.

And, as I told my mother once: I would always be a Milline.

So then why the NBfO rule? The answer to that began and ended with my stubborn, completely unfair, mostly-overprotective, pain-in-his-daughter's-behind father.

Unfortunately for me, he's a former team co-owner turned IML operations exec. So, if someone could keep me away from professional baseball, it would be my dad.

Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t really keep a school reporter away from her college baseball “beat”.

And guess who signed up her freshman year to be the school's news and social media correspondent for all things baseball?

The number one candidate for disobedient daughter of the year.

Me.

As one might have guessed, my second love was a baseball player. I fell hard for a dark-haired, green-eyed shortstop on my high school team with a measly .220 batting average. He liked his hair long, and so did all the other girls who hung around and batted their eyelashes at him.

I'm sure it was my witty sense of humor and stunning good looks that caught his attention. For about the ten minutes I held it. During that time, his idea of flirting consisted mostly of asking questions about Curt and whether he'd come to see our team play.

And when I was honest about his chances with that kind of a batting average and his overall ranking? Yeah, the next day his arm and his lips were all over Madison Castlehoffer—whose dad owned a bunch of luxury car dealerships in the county.

I'm sure he's hocking cars for Mr. Castlehoffer, now. But, really, with so many ballplayers to ogle, who has time to settle for a guy with a .220 batting average? He did have pretty eyelashes. And the view when he shimmied into his batting stance wasn't, ahem, bad, either.

My dad gave me the lecture when I was fifteen about dating baseball players. I’ve heard it so many times over the years, it’s occasionally hard to remember the first one. But subsequent ones have become so identical, it might have been comical. Except for it being so maddeningly unfair and asininely absolute!

“I mean it, Olivia Aster Milline.” Dad's face turned an unhealthy, reddish-purple color. “They’re the perfect spectacle on that game field, but they’re rarely even good employees. They’re like animals who can only fathom their own needs. Overgrown toddlers who still believe the world and everyone in it revolves around them and what they want.”

I huffed out a breath. “Generalize and stereotype much?”

“They use people. Especially women. They get what they want when they want. So even the ones with the best of intentions can’t help themselves. So they cheat ? —”

“And they lie and ruin families and ruin their families’ lives.”

Turns out, that wasn’t a particularly good day to test my dad. If a man’s eyes could blaze fire, his did right then.

“It doesn’t matter if you believe me, Olivia.” His lips curled in cold, calculated fury. “All you have to know is the day you bring home a professional athlete of any sort. The day you mistakenly think: but not him, he’s special and he loves me, Dad will understand. That day? That’ll be the last time you walk through the door of my house. The last check with my name on it that you cash. The last time you drive any car that I own, or say the words, ‘Furston Milline is my father.’ Do you hear me?”

Apparently, Mom left him for a pro tennis player—who then cheated on her. And there’s some story about Aunt Christiane that no one in the family has ever dared to spill, at least not within my earshot. The TLDR of it all amounts to: I'm not allowed to date any professional athlete. Ever.

I guess Dad forgot that his son was one? I'm sure Curt was a celibate monk the entire time he played. Yeah, I won’t think about . . . Bleh!

My third love began and may as well have ended the time I snuck into baseball camp — the summer before my senior year. I just wanted to see the best of the best in person. The top high school players in the nation were invited every year. And Curt was going. He had nothing better to do than help out the scouting crew while he was recuperating from surgery.

If anyone ever bothered to ask me, I shouldn't have had to sneak in. A good brother would have invited his sister and hugely fanatical lover of all things baseball to tag along. After all, he’d invited me to stay with him for most of the summer. I may have promised to play quasi- nursemaid since he was down the use of his dominant hand.

Surely that should have come with a front row ticket to any baseball-related activities he was going to, right?

Wrong. The jerk. And that stupid rule!

Instead, he was a complete jack wagon who forced me to leave, and barred me from attending any baseball-related activities during the entire two week camp!

It was too late, though. I'd already fallen in love a third time.

He was beautiful. The way he moved. The confidence, the focus. I could have watched him play third base forever. At one point, he dove at a line drive toward left field, knocking it down to the dirt. From one knee, he drilled it across the infield to first base.

I could have kissed him. I wanted to. I cheered too loudly and was found out. In a desperate attempt to not have the rather sour-faced security guard call my dad, I told them I was interning for Curt.

Big brother vouched for me and then physically removed me himself. I was sent home in a rideshare. And then there were the brotherly versions of Dad’s lectures . . . which were a special level of horrible — filled with gross boy stories that no woman should have to endure.

Much less from her brother.

“Dad may be overboard in some regards, but, Liv, most of these guys are swine.” Curt leaned back on his couch and pulled a pillow over his lap. He laid his red-and-black mechanical brace on top with a grunt.

“That word. Right there: most.” I pointed at him and then snagged another pillow to help elevate his arm. “I'll grab an ice pack, and I'm timing you. No cheating.” I moved around the sofa into the kitchen. “ Most is not all . That means there are some ? —”

“There’s not a single one of my teammates that I’d leave in a room alone with you, Livvie,” he said over the schtuck of Velcro pulling apart. “Even in broad daylight. Unsupervised.”

I gently placed the icepack on his bare elbow. “Oh, so even at seventeen I need, what, constant supervision?” I huffed and crossed my arms.

“No. They do. They’re fine teammates and even friends. But they turn into morons around pretty girls.” He leaned his head back, on top of the couch cushions. His eyes slid shut. Post-surgery Curt needed a nap every day.

“In case you missed it, my little sister had the nerve to turn into a beautiful young woman.”

Damn him and his flattery. “The nerve, huh?”

He yawned. “Makes my job as overprotective big brother that much harder.”

So, yeah, forget asking the guy's name. And how was it that baseball caps could be so frustratingly magical at obscuring faces? Of all the rotten luck.

After my forceful removal, if I even hinted I was thinking about baseball camp. Yeah, no. Another round of snarling erupted from my grumpy-faced brother. Usually included a few swear words sprinkled in amongst the grousing about “Irresponsible, boy-crazy stupidity.” Jerk.

I finally had enough and told him I'd only gone because I wanted to be a scout — like him. Ha. Take that. I put my game face on. I knew the stats — and the game I was playing. But I could change this “no baseball” rule, at least in my brother’s eyes. He wasn’t a dinosaur like my dad. He’d even taught me to pitch.

Curt stared at me. “There's not a lot of women scouts.”

“Why not?” I didn’t dare move a muscle. Game face.

He straightened in his chair. “I can't guess. But the travel sucks. Not exactly the best for a family lifestyle.” He gestured at himself. “As you can see.”

“You’re really not going back? To pitching?”

“Early prognosis is that the arm’s not where it needs to be. I’m just trying to be realistic. It’s rare that a pitcher comes back better than he was. I’d have to change who I was on the mound, relearning command and control.” He rubbed at his forehead. “The power I threw with, doctors said I’d just wear down the new ligament and be back in a few years,” he said with a sigh.

My heart thudded out of turn. I sat on the edge of the couch, fussing with the hem of my skirt. “But you could still . . . play?”

“The way things stand, no team'll offer anything close to what my contracts were before.”

“That sucks.” My heart sunk. How could his career be over before twenty-eight?

“These are the breaks. I had a good run. And I can afford to retire and just do something I love.”

“But you love baseball. And pitching. And ? —”

“I also knew it couldn’t be forever.” He gave me a half-hearted smile. “The smart guys realize that, at best, they’re done at forty—and still have more years ahead of them than behind. Besides, I think I’d be good at being a pitching coach. After all, I managed to teach my can’t-field-a-softball-without-getting-a-blackeye sister how to throw a few.” He tossed his Carolina Sabers cap at me.

I don't know that I'd ever really considered what I wanted to be when I grew up. But the more I thought about it, the more being a baseball scout sounded like it would suit me.

I'm sure it had nothing to do with finding out who Third Base was.

Nope, nothing to do with him at all.

For the rest of that summer and my senior year, I buckled down and got serious about baseball scouting. I spent my free time researching, asking Curt and the Sabers’ staff questions. I followed the stats of the top fifty national players. I joined the high school newspaper to make sure I had a built-in excuse to be around anything and everything baseball.

When it came time to choose a college, I went to the one that happened to be the top pick for no less than five of the top twenty high school ballplayers. It was also Curt's alma mater, so it wasn't hard to explain.

My brother was flattered and pleased with my school choice. Which was a point in my favor, of course (and one I intended to use against him as often as possible). I enrolled in a double-major program for business and journalism. And had already started finagling my way into the university news and social media machine. Once on campus, I could trade on my last name and brother's affiliation to get in the baseball coaches' good graces.

With a front row seat to Strikers baseball, I’d be an extra set of eyes and ears, feeding my brother an inside scoop — and learning “on the job.” And, of course, being my super fantastic older brother that I'd always looked up to (as I've said many times), he'd be so incredibly grateful, he'd immediately hire me into the Sabers’ organization. Once I graduated, of course.

And then it would be bye-bye to the stupidly misogynistic NBfO rule.

As for its “Olivia can't date pro athletes of any kind” corollary, that one could only last as long as I was financially dependent on dear old Dad. Once I was on my own, neither of them could have anything to say about my love life. Right? Right.

I had it all figured out, one hundred percent.

It was a solid four-year plan. I just had to execute on it.