Chapter 15
Hunter
“Fucking pitchers, man. I got this all wrong.”
Roddy chuckles as he shakes his head at me during my massage. He’s getting his wrists, left elbow, right ankle, and both shoulders taped by Becca, one of our trainers. The guy is basically a mummy at this point.
I twist my head to the side to look him in the eyes.
“You know you love the attention, throwing your mask off all dramatic before spinning around with your head back to catch the foul ball behind the plate,” I say.
“Pfft, yeah, until I drop it, and the crowd is basically right fucking there!” He holds both palms out, messing up the tape job on his right shoulder.
“If you don’t hold still, I’m going to boo you,” Becca scolds.
“Sorry, ma’am.” Roddy’s shoulders sink as he locks his body back into place so Becca can finish her work. His eyes shift to me just as the masseuse digs into my scapula, and my lids flutter shut as I groan much like I did in my hotel room last night. This massage is that good.
Roddy flips me off. “Like I said. Fucking pitchers, man.”.
My massage wraps up before Roddy’s tape job is done, and I hang around the training room in my towel for a bit before heading into the locker room to take the longest hot shower of my life.
Roddy’s right about some of it—I do love off days.
I love on days more, though, and there’s a part of me that’s jealous as hell that he gets to suit up and take the field every other day.
He played eighty percent of the games when he was up in the show, and while his body took a beating for it, I bet if I asked, he’d say it was worth every single bruise, cut, and tear.
“How about you actually come see me for the ice after the game today?” Becca pats down the edge of her final strip of KT, tape then lowers her head to look Roddy in the eyes.
“Yeah, I hear ya. It’s just so damn cold.” He slips his shirt back over his head and arms as Becca laughs and tells him, “That’s the point.”
She moves on to the next player, one of the rookie outfielders we picked up from San Diego last week, and Roddy hops down from the table, stretching out his arms to adjust to the compression from the tape.
“That Renleigh I see you walk in with today?” He gives me a sideways look, and my stomach rolls the way it did when I was a sixteen-year-old jumping out of my high school girlfriend’s window when her father came in.
“Yeah, she’s here.” I don’t offer details, but judging by the narrowing of his gaze, I sense I don’t need to.
“It was her idea, for what it’s worth.” I shrug, and he shakes his head, breathing out a slightly judgmental laugh.
“I bet it was. You forget I’m from this town and know the Blackwoods. I saw Sarah Blackwood’s Mercedes in town and at the house. I bet Renleigh couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
Roddy’s word hit less like a joke and more like a warning, the kind that, as he said, comes from history. My chest squeezes, and I’m not sure whether it’s unwarranted jealousy that he has a shared history with Renleigh, or concern that her situation is even heavier than I thought it was.
“I’m thinking about inviting her on the next road trip. You know . . . in two weeks. To Iowa? I don’t know if she can get off work though.”
I’m just thinking this idea through now, and my motivations are rather selfish.
Other than the obvious perks of having Renleigh in my room with me, having her come on the next trip gives me a chance to really show her what I’ve got.
Iowa promises to be a tough series for us, and I know a lot of the guys who were drafted into that organization.
I’m looking forward to throwing against them. I know their weaknesses.
I realize several seconds have gone by without a response from Roddy, so I snap out of my fantasy of getting to be a big hero in front of Renleigh and instead focus on the tightness of his mouth and the wince pulling his cheeks up to his eyes. I call him out on it.
“What’s that face for?”
He sighs and leans back a step, dropping his hands into the pockets of his workout shorts before popping his gaze back to mine.
“I don’t know why I like you, kid.”
I huff out a sharp laugh and blink away the shock from his backhanded compliment.
“Thanks?” I hike my shoulders.
“What I mean is, I feel responsible for you for some reason. I don’t know why, because I’m over this shit .
. . being the wise old man hanging around to mentor the up-and-comers.
At least, that’s how my agent pitched these last few years on my contract.
The money’s good, and I get to be here, which .
. . let’s just say, it’s important to me. ”
He’s talking about his son, I’m sure.
“I guess, thanks for looking out for me despite your best instincts to not give a shit?” I laugh out my version of what he’s saying, and he chuckles as he pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah, it sounds bad. I know. But I’m on my way out, and to be real with you, kid?
I’m tired. Not of the game. I’ll never be tired of that.
But all the other shit? Travel, and women, and all the bullshit that’s about to come at you that you don’t even know.
I’m sick of it all. But I like you, and I like Renleigh—a whole lot more than I like you. ”
“Noted,” I laugh out.
“And I can’t just let it be without making sure you know how fucking hard all of this is going to be. How hard it is.” Roddy’s mouth closes into a straight line as his gaze narrows on me. I think he wants me to nod and say I understand, but I don’t.
“I appreciate it, man, but you’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”
He snickers dismissively at my response and follows up with, “You don’t know shit.”
I purse my lips and brace myself for him to explain.
“Let me break it down for you. You were probably, what . . . twelve the first time you won what felt like a pretty important game?”
I nod and utter, “Yeah, Little League District Championship. We went to the World Series.” I can close my eyes and still hear mine and my friends’ parents screaming their heads off in the bleachers. And the pizza party that night was off the charts.
“Right. Me too. Probably the same for half the guys out here. We all get it. There’s something about playing this game at a high level that’s this massive rush of dopamine.
It gets under your skin, and it’s what makes you keep stepping up on that mound or getting up to the plate.
In a game of mostly failures, we come out here for the wins.
Not just the day-to-day ones, but the minuscule ones.
Throwing a one-hitter. Then a no-hitter.
Or mastering the curve. Or getting the guy who’s hitting four hundred out swinging. ”
My smile stretches with every new goal he states. He’s basically reading my diary.
“Exactly,” he says, gesturing toward me.
“That smile right there. That’s the one.
And damn, when you get that kind of win, you want to celebrate, you know?
And you might be on the other side of the country, and it’s late at night, and you’re hitting the hotel bar, and there she is .
. . the blonde who’s been staring at you from the second row for the entire game, or the sexy woman with an accent that sounds a hell of a lot better on her than it does on your shortstop.
And that woman smells so good, and even though you’ve got one at home who was watching your game on TV, you just want to indulge this once—to treat yourself.
Because you were great today. And what’s one slip? ”
I shake my head because I hear what he’s saying, but that’s simply not me. I know I’m not that guy.
“I get what you’re saying, man, and I know the temptations are real. But I’m a big boy. I get what consequences mean, and I wouldn’t do that to someone. I wouldn’t do that to Renleigh,” I say, my tone resolute.
Roddy’s eyes hold on to mine for a long breath before he shakes his head slowly and pulls his mouth in tight.
“It’s not just the women. In fact, the cheating bullshit that goes on in this environment is mostly a symptom, in my opinion. It’s an excuse.”
“Did you cheat, Roddy?” My bold question takes me by surprise, and I regret being impulsive when the two-hundred-ten-pound unshaven beast of a man steps closer to me. The only thing that keeps me still is that his hands haven’t left his pockets.
His gaze drops to his feet, but I keep my focus on the fine lines etched into his face, the years of wear and tear and exhaustion and sun that have marked his jawline and eyes for good. He sniffs and bunches his lips before nodding.
“Yeah, I cheated.”
I feel kind of sick for asking, and I’m not sure if I feel bad for him or disappointed in him. When his gaze lifts and hardens on mine, all those emotions morph into apprehension.
“Not with a woman, though. Like I said . . . cheating physically is a cop-out in my opinion. The real problem is that feeling—that first big win. The little wins. The chase to get the biggest win of all. The feel of that perfect leather ball and the threads against my fingertips. The dirt. Ha, even the fucking dirt. Yeah, I cheated all right. I cheated with the game, when I probably should have picked a person.”
Well, damn. I can’t belittle him over that.
I know there’s a certain level of acceptable selfishness to being the best at this sport.
It’s like that in most sports, I suppose, but there’s something about the grind of this game.
The schedule. All those innings. When baseball is in your blood, you want to be in the game all the time.
You never want to be taken out. It’s who you are. It’s who I am.
It’s who Roddy is. A thirty-eight-year-old guy isn’t catching in the minors if the game isn’t both his mistress and his wife.
“All I’m saying, kid, is I like you. And I like Renleigh. And if this game weren’t involved, I could maybe even get behind the two of you getting together. But the game is part of you. Damn, you might just be the brightest bit of raw talent I’ve ever caught.”
I grin, but it falters quickly when I come to terms that his compliment is big, but his warning is bigger.
“You’re going to live two lives in this game. One out there"—he jerks his chin in the general direction of the ball field—"and one somewhere else. With someone special . . . or with lots of someones. You’ll never be able to give another person all of you. It’s just part of the game.”
Roddy’s heavy hand lands on my shoulder as he leaves me with my thoughts and a mountain of guilt over the woman sitting in the baseline family section, waiting for me to smile at her from the end of the dugout.