Chapter Twenty #4
“I’m contracted for baseball. Not for my personal choices.
” I sit back slightly. “If someone in this organization believes my relationship creates a problem for them professionally, I’d invite them to start that conversation with me directly.
I show up every day I’m scheduled. I perform at the level they’re paying for.
I win…” I pause. “If that’s not enough, we can revisit the arrangement. ”
The room goes a different kind of quiet.
Not the polite attention from before. The specific silence of people who’ve heard something they didn’t expect.
“Are you suggesting you’d walk?”
“I’m suggesting…” I say carefully, “… that my value to this organization is measurable. Nine strikeouts in a divisional championship game. Seven innings of one-run ball. A season ERA that puts me in the top three in the league.” I meet the reporter’s eyes.
“Anyone who wants to make the case that Ava Bishop is a professional liability is going to have a difficult time with those numbers. I trust the people in this building are too smart to try.”
Flashbulbs.
Mack, at the back of the room, is staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man trying very hard not to audibly react.
The questions continue for another ten minutes, more about the game, about the playoff push, about the bullpen’s workload. I answer all of it. By the time it wraps, the tone in the room has shifted from sharp curiosity to something more settled.
The story is out.
It’s on record.
The circus will start online within the hour and will continue for however long it continues.
I have no interest in managing it.
I shake the necessary hands, say the necessary things to James, who looks slightly pale but professional, and walk toward the exit.
Coach Bishop falls into step beside me in the corridor, and we walk in silence for twenty feet.
“She told you to be honest,” he says.
It’s not a question. I glance at him.
“Not careful,” I say. “There’s a difference. Her words.”
Something in his expression shifts. It’s barely visible, the particular micro-adjustment of a man who has been given a piece of information he already suspected and didn’t enjoy having confirmed.
“She’s not wrong,” he says finally.
He peels off toward his office without further comment.
I stand in the corridor for a moment and take stock of that.
Not a blessing, not even close to an endorsement, but a man who has spent the entire season watching me from a careful, deliberate distance has just told me, in nine words, in an empty hallway where no one else was listening, that the woman I’m in love with is not wrong.
I’ll take it.
I’m in the parking lot, keys in hand, notifications flooding in with a frequency my phone hasn’t seen since the Sports Illustrated cover two seasons ago, when I stop walking and call Ava.
She picks up on the first ring. “Hi.” Her voice is warm. There’s background noise, the low hum of the studio, the faint chime of what might be the front doorbell. She’s working.
“Hi.”
A pause. Then, “You blew up the internet.”
“Good.”
She laughs, and the sound hits me the same way it always does, with warmth and a little rough around the edges, nothing performed about it. “Zoe is currently standing at my station, reading me quotes from three different sports blogs in real time. I’ve asked her to stop twice.”
“Is she stopping?”
“She is not stopping.” There’s a muffled exchange in the background, Ava’s voice briefly covering the phone. “I said give me a minute, Zoe.” Then, back to me, “Are you okay?”
The question is simple and specific. Not how ‘did it go’ or ‘what happened,’ both of which she can find out in thirty seconds of scrolling. She wants to know how I am. Ava always asks the actual question.
“Better than okay.” I unlock the car and stand beside it, not getting in yet. The day is clear, the kind of dry and bright that makes the city look sharper than usual. “Your dad walked out with me.”
Silence.
“And?”
“He said you’re not wrong.”
A longer silence.
When she speaks again, her voice has changed slightly, something softer underneath the composure. “About what?”
“About honesty versus careful.” I lean against the car door. “I told him those were your words. He said you weren’t wrong.”
She doesn’t respond immediately. I wait because I know her thinking is silenced by now, and this one needs room.
“That’s…” She stops, then starts again. “That’s more than I expected.”
“It’s a start.”
“It is.” Another pause. “Did you threaten to walk?”
“I strongly implied the organization should think carefully about its priorities.”
“So yes.”
“In the most technically accurate sense.”
She makes a sound I’ve learned to categorize as the one that means she’s trying not to smile and failing at it. “You’re impossible.”
“You knew this going in.”
“I did.” Her voice settles into something quieter. “Reece.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you. For this morning. For last night. For…” She pauses, and I can hear her choosing words with the same care she chooses everything. “For not making me feel like the thing that complicated your life. You made me feel like the reason it got better.”
The parking lot around me is completely irrelevant.
“You are the reason it got better.”
“Don’t get sentimental. You’ll ruin your image.”
“Too late. It’s all over the internet, apparently.”
She laughs again, the sound fuller this time, and I close my eyes for a second and let it be exactly what it is.
No more hiding.
No more careful distance.
No more treating the best thing in my life like a liability to be managed.
“Come over tonight?” she asks.
“I never left.”
A beat. Then, warmly, “I know. I’ll see you at six. Don’t bring food, I’m cooking.”
“You cook?”
“You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“That’s the most terrifying and attractive thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She hangs up, which I’m choosing to interpret as fondness.
I get in the car, and the phone keeps buzzing with messages, notifications, alerts, and the documented evidence of a story breaking, spreading, and becoming whatever it becomes.
I silence it without looking because there’s nothing on that screen more important than what’s waiting on the other side of six o’clock.
The season isn’t over.
Neither is anything else.
And this time, the whole world knows it.