Chapter 5
FIVE
brOOKS
I get out of my apartment with record speed, but a part of me really wants to stay. My impulsive side. The same damn side of my personality that somehow lands in life-altering scenarios over and over again. And that’s why I raced out of there before I gave in to any more urges or whims.
Holly is my priority, even more than baseball at this point. That’s the way it’s supposed to be when you bring a child into this world—they become number one, and everything else falls to last place.
Baseball is the means to care for her. But it doesn’t mean I don’t still love it. This game has been my refuge for longer than I can remember.
The neighborhood kids took me in every time we bounced from apartment to apartment in Inglewood, and I was lucky to settle in with a group who liked to throw a ball around.
If it weren’t for Little League and a sponsorship from the corner market that paid for our team, I’m not sure what trouble I could have fallen into.
As much as I hate the lifestyle my mom lived, high most of the time, I’m not na?ve enough to believe that the older I got, I always would have been strong enough to say no.
Sometimes dulling the disappointments life throws your way feels way too easy.
Bad decisions don’t show how hard they are until you’re in too deep.
The locker room is busy with the infielders working out today. I’m running late, so I rush through my prep and wrap my own wrists before grabbing my batting gear and heading out to the cages. Jake’s already set up at one of the tees, so I drop my bag outside the net and nod when he sees me.
“Work in with you?” I ask.
“Sure.” He locks his sights back on the ball and rips through it with the kind of swing I’m trying to build.
I like Jake. He’s a bit grumpy, but so am I sometimes.
We fit well together. Like misfits. Maybe I’m assuming a lot, but I get the feeling Jake’s relationship with his dad isn’t all golden gloves and silver sluggers.
His old man is out here with him every day, too, and when the PR team pitched him on doing a story about the family legacy of the McKinney father-son duo, Jake looked them in the eyes and laughed.
Jake props another ball on the tee and adjusts the data device on the knob of his bat.
He records everything—launch angle, bat speed, exit velocity.
I don’t buy into that stuff like perhaps I should.
I tend to believe it’s my performance in the game that matters most. What I do back here is more about the feel.
Numbers can lie sometimes. I don’t want to make big changes to my swing only to find out none of the tweaks do shit for me when I’m staring down a starting pitcher on the mound.
“You should bring Holly around here more. She’s cute. We don’t have enough cute things in this place,” Jake says through a gravelly laugh as he nods toward Jayden in the cage next to us.
“Fuck you, cowboy. I’m plenty cute,” Jayden says, taking a hack at the ball tossed by our new hitting coach, Colby Kessler.
She’s one of the first female coaches to break into Triple-A ball, and she’s a beast with the bat.
She’s also dangerously hot. Those two facts live separately, but it’s damn near impossible to be in the presence of one and not acknowledge the other.
“Mmm, jury’s out on that. What do you think, Coach? Is Jayden cute?” Jake’s teasing our teammate. He can play it off all he wants, but it’s pretty fucking obvious Jayden has a thing for Coach Kessler.
“He’s more of a pretty boy,” Coach answers. Jake and I spit out a hard laugh as Jayden flashes us his middle finger.
“Fuck y’all. You wish you could be pretty like me.
” He rolls the bat over his wrist, then taps it to the plate before nodding for Coach to toss him another ball.
She does, and he takes out his bruised ego on the ball, drilling it to the back of the tunnel where it ricochets off one of the iron posts.
“Okay, okay. You got me. I wanna be pretty like you,” I say, holding my hands up to my sides with my bat tucked between my thighs.
“Take some warm-up hacks, Brooks, and I’ll get with you next,” Coach Kessler says, making it clear the jokes are over.
“You got it,” I say, clearing my throat as I make eyes at Jake. We mirror each other’s smirks, like schoolboys caught talking about cute girls in the back of the class.
After a while, my hands buzz from the hundreds of swings I’ve taken with Coach, so I pull my gloves off and tear away the tape on my wrists to let the blood flow.
Jake pulls his gloves off and tosses them on his gear bag, then flops down on the bench next to me before spraying water in his mouth from a plastic bottle.
He hands it to me, and I take it and spray my whole damn face.
“Okay, we’re showering now?” Jake teases.
I spray a shot into my mouth, swish the water around, then spit it out to the side. I hand the bottle back to him, then lean back, squeeze my eyes shut, and pinch the bridge of my nose.
“I’m so damn tired. I should start taking dips in the ice bath before practices and games.” It’s not my worst idea.
Jake slaps my thigh, and I pop my eyes open.
“You need to get a nanny is what you need to do. I’m not sure how you’re pulling this shit off, dude. This life out here takes everything, and being a parent takes everything. That’s two hundred percent if my math is right.”
Jake gets to his feet and starts to count on his fingers. I chuckle.
“I actually do have a nanny. Just not twenty-four-seven.”
“Welp, time to up that contract, buddy. You can’t play middle infield if you’re yawning when some guy hits a screamer at your face.
” He scoops up his hitting gear. He’s got a bullpen to catch today.
All I have left is some cardio. I’m starting in tomorrow’s game, so it’s a light day for me, other than taking hacks.
“You know the Blackwoods, right?” Jake grew up out here, and I’m pretty sure he played high school ball for Lindsey’s dad. I remember Hunter saying something about that. And the way Jake chuckles at my question signals he might know the Blackwoods well.
“You talking about Lindsey Blackwood?” He quirks a brow at me and smirks.
I haven’t shared my nanny arrangement with many people.
Hunter knows, since it was his idea to connect me with Lindsey.
But other than Jake’s dad, Roddy, I haven’t shared the who and what of my situation.
It was hard enough to let the team know why I was running my ass all over Sweetwater to patch together childcare and set up an appointment with a family lawyer.
Just because someone leaves a baby with you and says it’s yours doesn’t make it so, according to the government.
“What about Lindsey?” I decide to feel his direction out before giving away mine.
Jake stands tall and adjusts his bat bag over his shoulder as he pulls his lips in tight.
“Man, what’s not to say about Lindsey. I mean, I heard she finally up and left that asshole she married in college. Bradley, or—”
“Brandon,” I finish for him.
He pauses and flashes his gaze to me as his lips spread into this annoying grin.
“Oh, so you know Lindsey. I see.” He chuckles and waggles a finger at me, like I’m guilty of something. I’m sure I am, I’m just not sure what yet. Other than kissing her, of course. That was definitely off script.
“Hunter introduced us,” I add with a shrug. “She needed a gig, and I needed a nanny, so—”
“Ha! Well, shit! You should definitely turn that into a twenty-four-seven job for that woman. And then start walking around in your best cologne all the time and do things like make dinner for the two of you.”
I tilt my head. Now I’m smirking.
“You got a little thing for Lindsey Blackwood, Jake?” I tease.
“Dude, there isn’t a guy from this town who wasn’t in love with that girl at one point.
She’s a couple years older than me, but damn, what I wouldn’t have done to have her give me the time of day back in high school.
Her sister scared the shit out of me, but Lindsey .
. .” He looks up, his eyes all dreamy-like.
“She was this light in a bottle. So sweet, and funny. Smart, too. She had this confidence about her. She was our student body president. Won homecoming queen and all that. When she came back home married and pregnant, every heart in a fifty-mile radius broke.”
I let the picture he paints sync with the girl I know. I can definitely see flashes of that woman in there, but the confidence he’s describing has definitely taken a beating. Bad people have a way of stripping away spirits, and I get the sense that her ex is one hell of a bad guy.
Jake holds out a fist, so I drop mine on top of his.
“All kidding aside, you should get as much help from Lindsey as you can. Sounds like she needs the steady pay, and you definitely need the support to get through the season.”
I meet his gaze and take in his serious expression before nodding.
“You’re probably right.”
“No probably about it, brother.” He gives a haphazard salute, then heads toward the pitching tunnels, leaving me with my renewed enthusiasm for moving in a woman I barely know but am dangerously attracted to.
I shuffle that thought to the back of my mind while I finish my workout, but one phone call on my way back to my apartment drags it right back to the front.
My agent, Brian, and I have been playing a lot of phone tag the past few days.
Truthfully, he’s been chasing me down more than I have him.
His reaction to my news about being an instant single dad wasn’t exactly warm.
I get it. I’m a commodity to him. And my stock value got fuzzy the minute Holly showed up.
But I’m still driven, and I need him to see that.
In fact, I’m more driven than ever now that my little girl’s home life depends on my performance on the diamond.
I answer the call and pull over about a block away from home.
“Hey, Brian. Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. It’s been busy.” I hold my breath for his response.
“Yeah, babies will do that,” he says through laughter. I roll my eyes at his attempt to be light. There’s a tinge of scorn in his comment.
“Anyway—” I may need him, but one day, I’m going to get called up, and he sure as hell isn’t negotiating my contract.
“Right. Well, it’s about that. I know we talked about you maybe joining the team on their away stretch in June, before the All-Star break.”
I sit up tall and lean forward, my heart racing as I rest my forearm on my steering wheel. Jake was right—I do need Lindsey’s help for more than a few hours each day.
“They put the brakes on that,” he adds. And just like that, I sink to the back of my seat and slouch as if I’m trying to hide. I am.
I fucking blew it.
“Don’t get discouraged, my man!” I hate when he calls me that.
“Right,” I sigh out. I’m not great at bluffing.
“Brooks, it was insane that they were even talking about pulling you up for a series or two. It’s your rookie season. Hell, most guys never make it out of Sweetwater. Sit tight. Your time is coming. Just not this year.”
Not this year.
I do the mental math, which puts me right back here a year from now, hoping for the same phone call, with a different result.
A year. In Sweetwater. It’s not like I have some great life in Cali to get back to during the offseason.
Or some fancy facility to keep up my training at.
I’d be better off staying here and using the tools in the Mavericks’ clubhouse.
Maybe giving lessons to some of the high school kids.
And giving Holly stability for the first year of her life.
“Okay,” I breathe out.
“Start stringing those hits together, slugger. I believe in you. Hey, I gotta run.” He ends the call so fast that hhe cuts off his last word.
Slugger. Beats My Man.