Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Olivia POV
I f Dublin was idly rich and mostly spoiled, Hilda was a force of nature in a pint-sized package. Clocking in at just under five foot tall, she was curvy, naturally brunette, probably a genius, and one hundred percent gorgeous.
Also a tempest that could run ashore at any point—with the least provocation.
As Antonio found out. The hard way.
“Oh, don't you baby me. I don't know what you're thinking. Scratch that, I know exactly what you're thinking pinche cochino.” Hilda pointed practically straight up.
Antonio's lips twitched into a smile. He held up his hands like she was pointing a gun at him, instead of her finger with extra long nails. “I'm not thinking anything, chica. I swear.”
“You are a God damned liar.” She gritted out between clenched teeth. “Get outta my face.”
I glanced around the hallway outside the locker room, looking for a box or something she could stand on.
Antonio tilted his head and gave her a heavy-lidded stare. “Ok, you caught me. I think you're one, fine woman that sets my heart on fire. And I am willing to offer myself at your feet to do with as you will.” He pressed his palms together.
“Estupido. Tarado.” She turned away with a huff. “You-you shut up and get the fuck out-of here! My last warning!”
“I'll just . . . grab his cleat.” I bent and retrieved a lone, upside-down shoe from behind Hilda. Antonio's bag had fallen, nearly tripping my friend. I'm not entirely sure what happened in the aftermath of their meetcute. But, wow, he managed to step in something.
I tried to hand the shoe back to Antonio. Hilda grabbed it and shook the thing in his face. “You need this, right?”
He grinned that Antonio grin and leaned down closer to her ear. “Not as much as I need you.”
She pushed at his chest. He took a step back with a good-natured chuckle.
“I hate the sight of-of everything about you.” She scowled with her whole body—crossed arms, pinched features.
And he was staring at her like he'd just been shot by Cupid himself.
“You're a little overboard on this one, Hilda. Come on, Antonio didn't mean any?—”
“Whose side are you on, chica?” She hissed and turned her glare on me. My heart leapt into my throat.
I glanced from Antonio to Hilda as I inched back a step. “Yours? Definitely yours.”
“This-this miscreant.” She gestured at him. “He thinks that because he's some kinda giant with abs of steel in an athletic uniform, he can just hit people with his gym bag. Instead of saying sorry, like a normal human. He just stands there like an estupido imbecil—staring down my dress!”
“I'll buy you a new dress. Your favorite dinner. Anything you want. You name it.” He ducked his head and tried to meet her gaze. She turned away. “Please, pretty please, just go out with me.”
She spiked his cleat and stormed off in the other direction, muttering a string of Spanish obscenities. Some of my favorites, actually. Hilda's the one who taught me how to swear in Spanish. For various reasons . . . that make complete sense. Truly.
Antonio turned that 'hey baby' grin at me. My heart slid back into place. I shook my head. Retreated several more steps. Oh, I did not need to get involved in this. Whatever 'this' was.
“Liv? My second favorite chica in the whole world . . .”
I cleared my throat. “I see you've been spending too much time around your less desirable teammates.”
“I swear, she's the one. I don't know which part of heaven she came from, but I will die if I can't get her to love me back.” He let out an exaggerated sigh.
I dropped my head into my palm.
“Pretty sure you said that about the last girl, too, Casanova.” Tanner's voice sounded from behind me. I looked up in time to see him toss Antonio's cleat at him.
“No way, pito. I said that chica would be the death of me. As in, I think she tried to kill me once.” He stuffed both his shoes into his bag and lifted it from the ground.
“Just once?” Coop's deep voice caught me around the chest and squeezed. “Most of us consider it once a day. Every day.”
“Oh ha ha ha. Look who dug up a sense of humor. Where'd you find it, mamón, cadaver lab?”
Coop held up his middle finger before disappearing into the locker room. Tanner, however, continued to hover nearby.
“Liv, you'll help me, won't you?” Antonio grasped my shoulder and shook me gently.
I pulled away. “Are you trying to get me killed?”
“She's your friend?” Tanner pushed wheat-colored hair from his eyes and met my gaze.
“My best friend in the whole world. Known her since middle school. She's uh, a bit high strung lately. Pre-med, on partial scholarship, but her parents just want her to take over their restaurants. It's a whole thing.”
“In other words, don't fuck with the lady, asshole.” Tanner unfolded his arms, shook his head and ducked into the locker room.
“I'm gonna marry that girl. You mark my words.” Antonio called out over his shoulder. Then fixed his eyes back on me. “Liv?”
My stomach twisted and rung itself out. Oh, no. “Please don't ask me . . .”
“Put in a good word for me? Pretty please?” He pouted and gave me a pathetic look. The kind that should be illegal for a man like him—with long, dark eyelashes. And deep brown eyes.
I steeled myself and looked away.
The unbelievable pendejo knelt on the floor in front of me. And literally begged. “Pretty please? I'll do anything. Your laundry? Your homework. I'll put in a good word for you with Coop.”
“Please don't. Do . . . any of that. Maybe the laundry. But. Ugh, if I get in the middle of this, you owe me a favor. Big time.”
“Anything for my second favorite chica.” He gained his feet and wrapped me up in a one-armed hug. “Our first baby will be named Olivia. Or Oliver if it’s a boy. Gotta go!” He released me and swung around. I ducked as his ginormous duffle rushed through the air. He threw open the locker room door and disappeared inside.
Yeah, Hilda wasn't going to like this either. On the other hand, if favors from fellow students had any monetary value, I was on the path to being a millionaire.
Breslin POV
Campus Mental Health Division
“Your stress and anxiety scores have increased. But your depression score has improved a bit.” The therapist folded her hands on her desk and met my gaze through small, rectangular lenses. “Is there any place you’d like to start?”
I looked down at my hands. While I understood the reasoning behind this exercise in wasting my time, it didn’t make the minutes—or questions—any less irritating. “Like what?”
Dr. Hamer picked up her glasses and settled them over the bridge of her nose. “Well, classes have started.” She flipped a page in her folder.
I nodded.
“Anything interesting so far?” She glanced at me over the top of her frames.
I shrugged. “Not really.”
“Ok.” She placed the folder down and folded her hands together again. “When we last met, baseball camp was about to start. Was it what you expected?”
“I guess.”
She tilted her head like she was trying to look at me from a different angle. “You met your teammates, I presume.”
“I met the other freshmen competing for a spot on the roster.”
Her mouth tightened and she frowned. Ugh, I needed to give her something positive-sounding.
“And Fendleman, they call him Fens. He’s the captain from last season’s team.”
Her tight expression remained in place. “Have you made any friends?”
One of my callouses on my left palm started to peel. I pulled at the dried skin.
“Mr. Cooper?”
I shrugged but didn't look at her. I knew what she wanted me to say. I'm sure someone like Rally Girl called home and told her parents all about how great everyone was here. How she'd already made so many amazing new friends. But I still didn't want anything to do with this place. It was just somewhere I could play baseball—in the interim.
“You know how this works. If you don’t cooperate?—”
“You’ll put it in the report to the Deputy and my coaches.” I scowled at her. “Sounds . . . voluntary.”
She sighed. “The coaches send me notes, too. But I was hoping we could just.” She laid her hands out on her desk. “Talk.”
“Sure. Talk away.” I crossed my arms and sat back. “You’re the one with an agenda.”
“How’s your father?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”
She flipped some pages. “Before, you mentioned he was calling you practically daily, and?—”
“It’s every other day, now. But has started including an update on how poorly the farm is doing. I don’t know what he wants from me.”
“Have you asked him?” She stood from her seat.
“In the midst of him crying over my mother?” My tone was as dry as the West Texas desert we were in. “No.”
She moved her chair around to the front of her desk and sat down, again. “What about you? Have you . . . allowed yourself to cry?”
And there it was, what she really wanted to know. Fuck, this was tedious. I took in a deep breath and held it for a few, long heartbeats. “Sure. Then, I got over it.” The lie punched me in the gut—twisting my stomach like it was about to pull the damned thing out of my body. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth against the pain.
“You’re not expected to just get over your mother's death. Not on some kind of timeline or in a particular way.” She held her folded hands out, toward me. “But the last time we spoke you hadn’t?—”
“Hadn’t what?”
She drew herself up and adjusted her glasses. “Cried.”
“What do you want from me? How about we start there? What is it you need to see so we can do less of this?” I waved at the walls, the door. “These fun-filled visits.”
“I have the option to change the frequency of our sessions based on my assessment of your support needs. I'm concerned about your stress score especially in light of your coach’s report. So maybe we should consider a bump to weekly sessions.” One eyebrow lifted.
I stifled the remark I wanted to snarl at her.
“I was hoping you’d bring up any issues you’ve been having on your own.” She pulled the folder from her desk into her lap.
“What issues?”
She looked at me over the top of her lenses. “How about you tell me about the first day of baseball camp?”
My brain went straight to the water fountain. And Rally Girl’s see-through shirt. The swell of her breasts and the tight buds poking through the fabric begging to be . . . handled.
Her eyelids lifted. Blue-green eyes sparked, and all I could think of was sucking water from the valley of her breasts.
“Thought we were supposed to shower in the dorms.”
She pressed her lips into a lopsided smirk.
“Mr. Cooper?”
How many times had I reimagined that scene, taking off her shirt for her? Pressing her up against the wall and?—
“Mr. Cooper.” Dr. Hamer's clipped tone brought me back to the present.
I huffed. “Yeah. What?”
“We need to talk about your outburst with that reporter.”
I leaned my head back against the couch cushions and groaned at the ceiling. “I didn’t say anything to her.”
“Maybe not, but the trainer had to bandage bruised knuckles on your right hand. And you sat out part of a practice?—”
“The bruises weren’t just from that. I’d injured them a couple of times,” I said with my eyes closed. I wanted to go back to thinking about Rally Girl—before she turned into that damned reporter.
“Really. Doing what?”
Beating the shit out of my dashboard in a fit of rage. Oh wait, where am I again? Anger management therapy. “There shouldn’t have been a reporter there. It’s?—”
“While I think anyone can understand you possessing a certain reticence. She’s a school reporter. One of your classmates. It could have been an excellent chance to repair?—”
“She shouldn’t. Have been there.” I gritted out.
“Did she ask you something inappropriate?”
I lifted my head so I could look at her. “The reporter? Yeah, she mentioned my trouble with the press, I believe is how she phrased it.” I grumbled. “I said no comment and she went away. There's no issue or whatever.”
She took in a breath. “Do you think she was trying to embarrass you? For a school news story?”
“I . . .”
Those blue green eyes glimmered in the light. “We’re on the same team.”
“I’d say it seems unlikely, doesn’t it?” The doctor cleared her throat. “Coach Eberhardt certainly didn’t think she was anything less than professional.”
I laced and unlaced my hands together. Flipped my wrist to check my watch. We were only twenty minutes in. Dammit.
“Do you trust the coaches?”
“What does any of this have to do with baseball?” I stood up and paced the small space behind the couch. “I don’t need to do interviews. I just need to play ball. Let her go flirt and shake her tits at Meyers. It’s not like I give a God damn. He seemed to like it.”
A small smile played on her lips. “I'm glad you were here.”
“Well, I guess that answers the other question I had for you.”
“What’s that?” I cringed as I ran a hand through my hair.
“Your sexual interest score on your inventory. The first time we met, you said you hadn’t been interested in anyone sexually in more than a year. You mentioned it rather bothered you.”
I leaned against the wall next to the door and silently wished for it to open and suck me through it like a magic portal to the land of Not-Here-ia.
“I wanted to ask you who the young lady was that caught your interest. So, it’s this reporter.”
I closed my eyes. “No.”
“It’s someone else?”
“No, it’s,” I mumbled. “Complicated.”
“Is it? Already? So, you want more than sex with her?”
I gaped at this woman. How the hell did she jump to that conclusion? “I just meant, I saw her before I found out she was a reporter. Now, I know. So, there was an initial reaction. Which is good, right? It's healthy. Normal.”
“It seems like progress.”
“Right. But, I’m not interested in that blond menace.”
She gave me some tight-lipped smile that looked like she’d just had a bite of my dad’s burnt lasagna. “And yet it bothers you she’d flirt with your teammate?”
Fuck! She was twisting everything around. Ugh . “I want to talk about something else.”
“You know that sex between two consenting adults can improve your outlook—having a positive impact on your mental health. It decreases your stress response and can lessen depression symptoms.”
I stared at this woman. Was she serious? “I don’t know her. I don’t even like her.”
“If you don’t know her, not sure how you can not like her—except you don’t approve of her decision to take journalism this semester.”
Was that all it was? A class? And wait, why did it sound like this therapist lady was practically prescribing sex with Rally Girl as like a cure for?—
“Think about it. She knew your story. Maybe she’s already interested.”
I already think about it. Way too much. This wasn't helping. “Why are we still talking about her? This?” I buried my face in my hands. “She doesn’t matter. At all. I just need to play baseball.”
“I shouldn't have to remind you that part of your financial aid is NIL money. Supporters won’t contribute if you can’t give interviews and make public appearances.”
“So, I'll have to take out loans.”
“You can do that.”
“Once I'm in the majors I can pay it all back. It's fine. Are we done?”
“We have twenty minutes left. Is there a reason you . . .”
I sat back down and folded my hands together. My left leg bounced. “Reason I what?”
She frowned. Deep ridges formed along her brow. “You seem very resistant to talk about your teammates, classmates. Your father.”
I was on my feet and pacing again.
“And yet your former teammates, according to statements you’ve made in the past—you intimated they were a great source of strength and support.”
“They’re not here now,” I said.
“I'm coming for you, Cooper.”
Tommy the Knox-his-blox off said it, but they were all thinking it. I could feel it in the locker room that day. Meyers, Jimenez, Hester. Their sights were too low. We were all gunning for spots on the roster, which had more to do with Schorr's perception of each of us as players.
“No. They’re not, but you are. And do you think this school, the coaches and administration, the reporter, me, Deputy Reegan . . . Do you think any of us are here because we want front row seats to watch a talented young man fail at his dreams?”
I looked up. My stomach un-knotted itself and I don’t know why . . . I wanted to believe her.
“I think. It’s actually the opposite.”
I shook my head. “That girl knew all our stats. I wasn’t special to her.” Except she called me number one. And she was wearing my shirt. Maybe wore it more than once. With nothing else on underneath . . .
In her bed at night. Her mouth open in a silent cry as she moaned my name.
“Uh. Ah. Breslin, yes.” Rally Girl gasped and panted.
“So? Aren’t you more than some numbers on a page?”
The words grated against my eardrum, dispelling the sexually-charged image in my head. Again.
“How would your mother describe you, if she were here? Would she say: my son is a great baseball player.”
“Don’t.” I shook my head and turned away. “Just don't.” My blood turned cold. I shivered. Gripped the edge of the couch. “Don't go there,” I rasped. Please.
“Breslin, honey. Promise me.”
I raked a hand through my hair. “What? What are you asking me? To stop playing baseball? Are you serious?” Not this. I'd do anything . . . anything.
“It consumes too much of you.”
“It’s not what she’d say is it?”
“No, it's not.” I closed my eyes as the pain rolled through my spine, my abdomen, my neck. Then there was nothing. Just a vague, hazy emptiness. It hummed in the air around me.
Because she didn’t believe in me.
“Let's talk about your life outside of baseball next time. Hobbies, interests. Anything.”
No.
“Try making a friend. Or giving someone a hug. A handshake. Touch deprivation is real and you've become . . . solitary. It's not unusual when someone is grieving, but you're the one that has to take steps to change it. If you promise to do those things, I'll leave our frequency at biweekly for now.”
“Make a friend or hug someone?” Was she an alien from another planet?
“Even just a friendly touch, skin to skin. But, your choice.”
Who the hell—? Didn't matter. “Fine, whatever. I'll figure it out.”
“Great. See you in two weeks.”