Chapter 4
FOUR
JAYDEN
The list of things I need to say to Colby grows longer by the day.
She wants to keep things professional, and I understand that the hitting facility is not the right place for a deep, meaningful dissection of our past. But hell, where else will I get a chance to spend time with her alone?
One on one. Without the Chets and the Jakes and the dozens of teammates all wanting their time with her.
I got here before the sun came up, hoping to practice my words before I had to utter them.
But Colby is already in the hitting tunnel, setting up for our session.
So rather than baring my soul and layering her with apologies right out of the gate, I drag one of the tees to the end of the tunnel and start taking hacks while she finishes programming the virtual scouting machine.
She drags one of the screens to the middle of the tunnel and plops a batting practice bag on a stool.
“All right. Let’s do some warm-up swings, half-speed, soft toss.”
I step into the batter’s box and touch the end of my bat to the far side of the plate.
My bat rests on my left shoulder as I lower into my stance.
My quads are still sore from overdoing it in the gym late last night, and my lower half vibrates from fatigue.
Shit, maybe it’s nerves. I don’t know. I focus on the ball in Colby’s hand, and she tosses it to herself a few times before lobbing it toward me.
I swing through it, hard, and it ricochets off the metal part of the screen protecting her.
She doesn’t flinch.
“All right.” She drops the second ball back into the bag and marches toward me. I relax my legs and sigh.
“I said half-speed. I know your swing like the back of my hand, Jay. You don’t need to show off for me. I know what you’re capable of.” She wraps her hand around the barrel of my bat, pulling it away from my shoulder. I let go.
“I’m not showing off,” I say, my tone coming out more defensive than I’d like. It’s the truth, though. I’m not trying to show off. I’m fucking nervous.
“Fine. You’re not listening, though. I want half swings. We need to work on your warm-up routine, and maybe . . .” She trails off, and my brow pinches as I wait for her to finish. Instead of words, though, she nudges my back foot with the toe of her shoe.
“My stance? That’s what you want to work on?”
She sighs and backs up a few steps before raising her gaze to meet mine.
“No, Jayden. And I don’t want to work on your swing, either. I want to work on your head game. But I know you, and you get touchy when anyone questions your mental game, so I was biting my tongue.” She draws in a deep breath, holding it as her eyes remain wide open and focused on mine.
My mouth pops open, but for once in my damn life, I think a fraction of a second before speaking, and rather than protesting that my head is fine, I simply utter, “Okay.”
We both blink, and after a moment, Colby exhales and drops her gaze to the ground as she pinches the bridge of her nose.
“This isn’t going to work,” she mutters.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be better. I’ll listen.” I lower my body and touch the plate like I did before, ready to swing. “Go on. Toss again. Half swing. No machismo bullshit. Isn’t that what you always called it?”
A reluctant chuckle slips from her lips, and she shakes her head.
“My dad called it that. I believe he learned that phrase from your mom. She said it was something you and Adriel got from your—”
She stops before uttering the word dad. I remain locked in my position, though my body wants to deflate.
He’s the ghost in the room, always. Hell, we’re not even in a room, yet here he is, floating about and choking off all hope that I might be able to repair things with the one person who always got me.
“You can talk about him. I can handle it,” I say.
Colby blinks as she stares at me for a beat, sucking in her lower lip before turning to head back behind the L-screen. I’m an idiot. She didn’t halt her words for my benefit. She did it for hers.
I manage to swing at half-speed through a full bag, and other than the occasional step out of it, and the perennial good, Colby doesn’t utter a word. I drop my bat and help gather the balls, but the acute suffocation of silence becomes too much to bear.
“Have you been home to Katy lately?” I ask. I already know she has. I thought about paying a visit myself while she was back home, but then I’d also have to see her dad, and he and I didn’t exactly part on great terms.
“Uhhh, yeah. Before I started with the club, I got to spend a month back home. It was . . . strange.”
I nod, not really sure which strangeness she’s referring to. There are a lot of reasons for our hometown to feel off.
“How about you? When was the last time you went back?” She takes the full bag from me and drops it in a corner before pushing the screen out of the way.
“I try to hit the big holidays. It’s hard to split time here and put in the work during the off-season with training. I thought about training at home last winter, but since your dad sold the hitting facility, I didn’t want to assume he’d still be down to take on a side gig.”
“Side gig? You?” Colby snickers. “You were always his favorite. You know that.”
Colby’s dad, Rick, had a warehouse on the outskirts of town that he turned into an indoor hitting facility for the local youth teams to use when Texas weather did its thing.
I had my own key so I could use it whenever I wanted.
I often found myself there in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep.
Going there was easier than running away when my dad came home drunk.
“My dad would buy a whole new facility if that’s what it took to get a chance to coach you again,” Colby says over her shoulder before nodding for me to line my feet up at the plate. “You should visit him at the high school field next time you’re in town. His players would die, I’m sure.”
She waves her hand at me, then turns her attention to the tee, adjusting its position on the plate as she sits a foot or two away on an upside-down bucket.
I’m glad her focus isn’t on my face, because I can feel how tight my mouth is, and I know my eyes are squinting from doubt.
I was her dad’s favorite. But that was before.
A lot of things were different before. And it started way before Colby and I kissed.
“Let’s do a few with the one-hand drill.
I want to see how your top and bottom hands are isolated.
” She narrows her gaze and rests her chin on her fist while her elbow balances on the kneecap of her propped-up leg.
How she can contort her body so much yet still sit on a stool baffles me.
Women are nimble, I guess. I’d be on my ass by now.
I nod and follow her instructions, working through the drill while she studies the path my arm takes, and how the bat meets the ball.
She makes notes on her iPad, then has me switch hands so she can do the same with my left hand.
It’s a nuanced exercise. Tedious, in fact, and if any other coach had me doing this, I’d be bitching up a storm.
I suppose there’s a lesson in that for me, as well, one I’ll unpack later . . . or never.
Since it’s Colby, I play along, trusting her process.
Respecting her because I know she’s good at her job.
But my mind is still swirling around the conversation I want to have, my focus on constant lookout for the perfect opportunity.
When I relent that there simply isn’t going to be one, however, I blow up the easy working routine Colby’s built to carve my own.
“I caught your semi series,” I blurt out.
Colby pauses her hand over the tee as she grasps the next ball.
“Oh, yeah?” She doesn’t meet my eyes. I know what she’s wondering, though. Did I watch some stream, or—
“It was game one. I made Adriel come with me. Of course, we had to bail after the fifth inning because he’s such an attention whore. He was making a scene.” I chuckle, but mostly because I’m nervous; not because my brother’s narcissism is funny. It’s not. It’s a flaw. One he got from Adriel Senior.
Colby swallows and glances up at me through her lashes. I try not to fall back a step when her deep brown eyes lock on mine. She’s like a walking truth serum. Every time she looks at me, I want to confess everything—my sins, my passions, my feelings.
My regrets.
“You were there.”
She blinks once.
I suck in air, holding it in my lungs for a beat before speaking. It’s a trick my mom taught me to keep my mouth from saying stupid shit. It only works about half the time.
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I admit.
Colby’s semis two years ago were in Missouri, not incredibly far from Sweetwater, Oklahoma, but definitely a plane trip away.
One that required strategic coordination to make sure my brother and I didn’t miss any of our obligations for Texas or Sweetwater.
Luckily, Adriel was on suspension, his first, and I was between series.
It cost me twelve hundred bucks for our flights, and six hours of turnaround time.
But I got to see my best friend hit a homer in the fourth inning to take the lead.
They ended up losing that game, but I saw her at her best. Worth every penny, and the risk of pissing off Coach if I ended up returning late.
Maybe I’ll get the chance to tell her all of that one day.
For now, though, it’s enough to tell her I was there.
For her.
“Can we please talk about it, Colby?”
She blinks again, this time her gaze dropping away from mine.
“There’s nothing to talk about, Jay. We have work to do.”
I rest my hand over hers, which is still hovering above the tee, clutching a ball.
Her fingers tighten around the ball under my touch, but she doesn’t immediately pull away.
At least two full seconds pass before she drops the ball and jerks her hand into her body.
She scans the facility around us, but we’re still the only ones here. Her eyes zoom back to mine.
“This is my job, Jay. This is my dream job; the one I got.” Her hand flattens against her chest with a thud. “My dad couldn’t get this job, but I did. Do you know how fucking impossible that is? That I’m the one here, and he’s not?”
“Yeah, I do,” I say, a light chuckle escaping my lips.
“Jesus, Jayden. This isn’t a joke.” She stands and kicks the tee before dropping the ball and walking away with her hands threaded together atop her head.
She makes a wide circle while I stand still, dumbfounded.
How could I have screwed this up already?
I can’t even talk to her without making a mess out of things.
Maybe her dad was right. I’m no good for her.
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” I mutter.
She waves a hand at me, pacing another wide circle before beelining toward the tee. She resets it and positions her stool a few inches farther back before taking a seat.
“Let’s get to work.”
She plops a ball on the tee, then folds her arms over her chest.
“Colby,” I utter her name with a tone soaked in regret. My volume bleeds with apology. Her gaze remains fixed on the pearl placed atop the black rubber tee, though, and it doesn’t veer anywhere else.
“Fine,” I say, setting my feet in place and lining my bat up to take another one-handed swing. She’s no longer taking notes. The iPad is on the ground behind her. We’re going through motions now. All of this . . . pointless.
I strike the ball. She places a second one on the tee. I slice through it, too. We repeat. Ball after ball, swing after swing. I’m so consistent that the final ball chips paint off the post I keep hitting.
“Well? What’s next, Coach?” My cynical tone hides very little, and Colby sighs in response.
I snag the handle of the ball bag and kick the few stray balls near her toward the back of the tunnel so I can pick them all up.
“And by the way . . . you were the one who kissed me, Jayden. You initiated things. You, not me. And then—”
I glance over my shoulder in time to catch her hand gesturing an explosion at her side while she mouths, “Poof.”
My fingers tighten around the handle of the half-filled bag and let it dangle against my thigh.
I flit my gaze to the ground, but the green turf is clear of balls, so I lift my attention back to the girl I let slip through my fingers.
Her mouth is a hard line, and though there’s a slight glassiness to her eyes, she’s holding it together pretty well.
That’s good. I don’t want to make her cry.
That wasn’t the point of this. I’m not quite sure what the point was anymore.
At the very least, though, some truth should come out.
“Of course I kissed you, Colby. It was literally the only thing that got me through that time in my life. I never once stopped thinking about it. I still haven’t. And I never will.”
Our eyes tangle in a silent war of emotions, and I lift my right shoulder, not sure what else to say beyond that.
At least for now. Colby’s chest puffs with a deep breath, then her shoulders drop with a sharp exhale, a pattern she repeats a few times while I look at her like some foolish boy with a crush on his teacher.
“We’re done for today.” She stands quickly, bending to snatch up her iPad. She slaps the cover shut as she turns her back to me and strides out of the hitting area, pausing at the simulation computer.
“You should move to the side. And get your bat ready. This is what you’ll be facing on Friday.
” She drops her index finger on the enter key, and the pitching machine fires up behind me.
I do as she says, moving to the side just in time to avoid what looks to be an eighty-plus cutter.
By the time I look back at the computer, Colby’s gone.
It’s just me, my bat, and a robot giving me exactly what I deserve—strikeout after strikeout.