Chapter Twenty #3
I think about it honestly, the way she deserves me to think about things when she asks.
I search for the anxiety that should be sitting in my chest alongside everything else, the career-specific dread, the contract calculations, the image management instinct that’s kept me making careful, strategic decisions since my first season.
It’s not there.
“No,” I say. “Because the thing I was most afraid of wasn’t management or the media or your father… it was losing you because I didn’t handle things fast enough.” I press my lips to the top of her head. “That’s already resolved. Everything else is paperwork.”
She’s quiet again. But her hand, resting on my chest, spreads flat, which is grounding.
“You don’t have to threaten to walk…” she says finally, “… if it comes to that. You don’t have to burn anything down.”
“I know what I owe this organization and what I don’t.” I keep my voice easy. “I show up. I perform. I win. My personal life has produced career-best numbers for most of this season. If someone can’t follow that logic, then we’re having a different conversation than I thought we were.”
She tilts her head up to look at me. Her eyes are dark, serious, and warm all at once. “You’ve thought this through.”
“I’ve had weeks of pacing apartments at two in the morning. I’ve had time.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment. Then she kisses my collarbone, deliberately, and settles back down.
“Okay,” she says.
No qualification. No condition. No bracing.
One word that means she trusts me to do this right.
I’m not going to waste it.
We eventually move off the kitchen floor around two a.m. when my back starts registering its position, and Ava notices the hardwood is not, in fact, as forgiving as exhaustion made it feel.
She makes us both tea with the particular purposeful efficiency she brings to everything, and we take it to bed and drink it in the warm dark with the city humming somewhere far below her window.
She falls asleep first.
I lie there for a while, her breathing slow and even against my shoulder, and stare at the string lights she never quite turns off all the way, always one setting down from off, casting everything in a low amber glow.
Her art covers the walls. Her sketchbook sits on the nightstand.
The room smells like her, citrus, ink, and something warmer underneath.
I close my eyes and sleep for the first time in weeks without calculating anything.
The morning comes with the particular mercy of a dreamless night.
Ava is already up when I wake. I hear her in the kitchen, the particular low noises of someone making coffee with full attention, the way she does everything.
I find her at the counter in an oversized robe, hair pulled up in a knot she clearly didn’t think about, studying something on her phone with the focused expression of a woman reading something she’s decided has her full engagement.
She doesn’t look up. “You’ve already trended twice.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Somebody got footage of the family section during the seventh stretch. There are seventeen articles with screenshots.” She sets her phone down and meets my eyes.
Her expression is not panicked. It’s the same expression she used on the SportsCenter producer, the calm, considered look of someone deciding how much weight to give something. “Zoe has texted me fourteen times.”
“Is she supportive?”
“She’s using all capital letters, so either furious or thrilled. With Zoe, the syntax is the same.” She hands me a coffee without being asked. She remembered. She always remembers. “Are you ready for today?”
I take the mug. “Yes.”
“Completely?”
“Entirely.”
She studies me for a moment in that thorough, unhurried way. Reading me the way I’ve watched her read clients before a session, patiently, without jumping to conclusions, trusting the information she finds.
Then she nods.
She gets dressed while I shower. When I come out, she’s back at the kitchen counter with her sketchbook open, pencil moving, already working.
Ava is in her studio clothes—black jeans, tank top, leather jacket hooked over the back of her chair.
She’s not coming with me to the press conference.
Neither of us has discussed it because neither of us needed to.
Ava has clients today. She has work. Her presence at the stadium last night was the statement.
She doesn’t need to sit beside me while I make mine.
I pick up my jacket from the chair and stop beside her on the way out. “For the record…” I say, “… you have ink on your left forearm.”
She looks down. Looks back up. The corner of her mouth moves. “I was sketching last night while I waited for you.”
“What were you sketching?”
She closes the book before I can see. “Nothing you get to look at yet.”
“Yet?”
“Yet.” She picks up her pencil again. “Go. Don’t be late.”
I kiss her once, properly, and she lets me, one hand coming up to grip my jacket lapel briefly before releasing.
“Reece.”
“Yeah.”
“Be honest. Not careful. There’s a difference.”
I hold her gaze. “I know.”
The press conference room in the Wildcat Stadium media wing smells like burned coffee, camera equipment, and the particular recycled air of a space used too often by too many people.
Folding chairs fill three-quarters of the capacity.
Cameras line the back wall in a row, broadcast units with logos, phone cameras, and a couple of independents I don’t recognize.
I sit at the long table at the front of the room. Coach Bishop is already there when I arrive, two seats down, a glass of water in front of him, and an expression I’ve learned to read as deliberately neutral. Our PR coordinator, James, gives me a brief nod from his position off to the side.
Mack is standing against the wall near the back. He has absolutely no reason to be at a post-game press conference for pitchers. He catches my eye and shrugs with the completely unashamed expression of a man who came specifically to watch this and will not pretend otherwise.
I set my water down and wait.
The first questions are exactly what they always are—mechanics and strategy, pitch selection, the curveball in the third inning that generated the most replays, my strikeout rate through the seventh, the bullpen’s performance earlier in the game. I answer all of it thoroughly and specifically.
Then the shift.
It comes from the second row, a reporter I recognize from a major sports network, someone who covers the league with the particular thoroughness of a journalist who does actual work and not merely reaction content. He’s been taking notes through the whole thing.
“Reece,” he says, and something in his tone shifts the room’s attention, the way a change in wind direction shifts a sail.
“There’s been significant speculation following last night’s game about the woman photographed in the club section family seating.
Given she’s been identified in connection with the organization, can you comment? ”
The room goes still.
Not fully quiet, there’s always ambient noise in these spaces, shuffling and low murmur, but the particular stillness of a room that has collectively decided to pay closer attention.
I lean forward and put both hands flat on the table.
“Yes.”
The word lands cleanly. No preamble. No pivot.
Pens hit notebooks. Somebody in the back row sits up straighter.
“She’s not speculation,” I continue. “Her name is Ava Bishop. She’s a tattoo artist. She owns Ink District Studio. Ava’s been in my life since the beginning of the season, and she was in the family section last night because she chose to be there. We’re together.”
The room moves.
Not chaos, these are professionals, but the collective adjustment of a group of people recalibrating their questions at speed.
Three hands go up at once.
“Are you confirming a formal relationship?”
“I’m confirming what I just said. We’re together. That’s formal enough.”
“Given that she’s the daughter of your head coach, do you see any conflict of interest affecting your relationship with the organization?”
“No.” I hold the reporter’s gaze steadily. “My performance this season speaks to whether personal circumstances affect my work. Anyone who wants to make the case for conflict of interest is welcome to look at my ERA over the past few months and explain how.”
A murmur moves through the room.
From two seats down, Coach Bishop’s jaw is working. He hasn’t looked at me. He’s looking at the table in front of him with the expression of a man doing extremely patient math.
“Why keep it private until now?” somebody asks.
“Because we wanted space to figure out what it was before it became a news item.” I keep my voice even. “That’s not a strategy. It’s two adults handling something real without handing it to a headline first.”
“Does management have a position on this?”
“You’d have to ask management.”
“Coach Bishop…” the reporter redirects, “… any comment?”
The room turns. Coach Bishop lifts his gaze from the table and looks at the reporter with the measured patience of a man who has run post-game press conferences for thirty years and is not going to be destabilized by one of them today.
“Reece Steele pitched a championship game last night,” he says. His voice is perfectly level. “He’s my starting pitcher. His personal life is his.”
Nine words that contain approximately forty different things. I catch them all.
The room processes.
More hands.
“Reece, your contract extension is reportedly under discussion. Does this complicate those negotiations?”