Chapter 14 Skyler #2
“How do you hide a chicken for three days? Don’t they, I don’t know, cluck and shit? I mean, literally shit? And cluck?”
“That, my friend, came down to the dedication of three players and a complete lack of regard for health codes.”
I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my horchata.
“What about you?” he asked. “Any good team stories?”
“Oh God, where do I start.” I wiped my eyes and tried to compose myself. “Murph alone could fill a book. Last road trip, he convinced the entire hotel staff in Vancouver that Erik only spoke Swedish and needed a translator for everything.”
“Let me guess. Murph was the translator.”
“Of course, Murph was the translator. Erik had no idea until he tried to order room service and the guy on the phone kept asking Murph to relay messages.” I shook my head at the memory.
“The best part was the stuff Murph was ‘translating.’ He told them Erik needed seventeen pillows because of a rare Swedish sleeping condition, that he required all his food to be served at precisely ninety-seven degrees, and that he was a minor member of the Swedish royal family traveling incognito and we all had to pretend not to know, though he expected all staff to bow or curtsy in his presence.”
“Did they believe it?”
“They upgraded him to a suite. With seventeen pillows. When we left for our next city, the entire staff lined up between the doors and the bus to send him off. Every last one bowed and muttered, ‘Your Majesty,’ as he passed.”
“No!”
“I have photos.” I took another bite of my taco.
Jacks laughed, and the sound made me want to keep being funny, keep earning that reaction. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worked this hard to make someone laugh.
We finished our food and ordered another round of horchata because Jacks insisted I needed to “fully appreciate the experience.” The seating area had filled up around us with families and couples and groups of friends all crammed onto mismatched picnic tables, but I barely noticed.
The world had narrowed to this table, this conversation, and this person sitting across from me.
“Can I ask you something?” Jacks said, his tone shifting.
“Sure.”
“What’s it like? Being captain of a major league team?”
I thought for a moment. I’d been asked that a hundred times in interviews, and I had the standard answers memorized, complete with themes of honor, responsibility, and leading by example, but I couldn’t give Jacks a canned answer, not when he stared at me with those deep brown eyes like my words might mean something.
“Honestly? It’s kind of lonely, sometimes,” I admitted. “Everyone looks to me for answers, but I can’t always show when I’m struggling. I mean, I’m not allowed to struggle. It’s part of wearing the C. I have to be steady even when I feel like I’m falling apart.”
Jacks cocked his head. “You? Feel like you’re falling apart sometimes?”
My chuckle was wry. “Yeah, more than you might think.”
Jacks was quiet a moment before saying, “I remember that feeling, being team captain at FSU. Everyone expected me to have it together, even when I really, really didn’t.”
“And you can’t complain about it because, like, what are you going to say? ‘Being the leader is hard. Feel bad for me’? That’s not how it works.”
“So you . . . carry it?”
“Pretty much.”
The noise of the seating area washed around us—conversations in English and Spanish, the sizzle from the kitchen bus, a kid at a nearby table trying to fit an entire churro in his mouth while his mother scolded him in rapid-fire Spanish.
But it all felt distant.
Muted.
“For what it’s worth,” Jacks said, “I think you carry it well. From everything I’ve seen, your team respects the hell out of you. That doesn’t happen by accident.”
The compliment landed somewhere soft and vulnerable. I looked down at my empty taco basket, unsure what to do with my hands.
“Thanks,” I managed. “That means a lot.”
I looked up and found him watching me with those warm brown eyes. The moment stretched, filled with something I . . . filled with something.
Then Jacks glanced at his phone and winced. “Shit, it’s almost three. I have to be at the bar by five, and I promised Finn I’d be on time for once.”
“Right, yeah. The game tonight.” I stood, reaching for my wallet. “I’ll get this. You brought me to a restaurant made of buses. It’s the least I can do.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to. Consider it payment for the therapy session. Your rates are very reasonable.”
I headed for the window and paid Rosa, leaving a tip that made her eyebrows rise.
The burrito kid ran up to me, napkin in hand and sauce still streaked across his chubby face. I signed it and mussed his hair with both Jacks and Rosa smiling on. The kid’s mom waved and mouthed “thank you” as we left.
We walked away, past the gravel lot with its mismatched picnic tables, toward a shaded side street where Jacks had parked.
His Honda sat under a sprawling oak tree, dappled sunlight filtering through the branches onto the worn paint.
It was quieter here, tucked away from the chatter of diners and the bustle of servers making their bus-to-bus journeys.
Jacks leaned against the driver’s side door, his arms crossed, looking completely at ease. I found myself mirroring his posture against the front fender, close enough that our shoulders were almost touching.
“So what’s the schedule looking like?” he asked. “After tonight, I mean.”
“Detroit tonight, then we’ve got a few days off before a quick two-game road trip. Columbus and Pittsburgh.”
“Short one.”
“Yeah, fly out Thursday, back Saturday. Then home games through the end of the month.” I tilted my head back, letting the filtered sunlight warm my face. “February’s gonna be brutal, though. Another West Coast swing. Seattle, Vancouver, LA, Anaheim, Vegas. We’ll be gone for almost two weeks.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is, but it’s also kind of fun. The team gets weird on long road trips. Murph’s pranks escalate with each day away from home. By day ten, no one’s luggage is safe.”
Jacks laughed. “I don’t miss that part of team travel, the constant vigilance.”
“You learn to sleep with one eye open.”
A gust of wind swept down the street, rustling the oak branches overhead and sending a shower of leaves skittering across the pavement.
It caught Jacks’s hair, whipping the reddish-brown waves across his face in a chaotic tangle.
When the wind settled, a few stubborn curls remained plastered to his forehead, bouncing with each breath.
I reached up without thinking.
My fingers brushed the curls back, grazing his skin as I swept them away from his eyes. The touch was gentle and automatic, the kind of thing I might do for a teammate with helmet hair or a friend with something stuck to their face.
Except it didn’t feel like that at all.
The moment my fingertips made contact, something shifted. The air between us went still and heavy, like the pause before a storm breaks. Jacks’s breath caught—I heard it, soft but unmistakable—and his whole body went rigid against the car.
I froze, my hand still raised, fingers still pressed to his skin.
Jacks was staring at me, his eyes wide, unreadable, fixed on my face with an intensity that made my whole body shiver.
Neither of us spoke.
The silence stretched, elastic and terrible, filled with something I couldn’t name and didn’t understand. My heart was hammering so hard I was sure he could hear it. Hell, I was sure Rosa heard it from around the block.
Every nerve in my body had lit up like a switchboard, screaming signals I didn’t know how to interpret.
I dropped my hand like it had been burned.
“Well,” I heard myself say, my voice too loud, too bright, completely disconnected from whatever was happening inside me. “This was great. Gotta go work out and stuff. You know. Game tonight. All that.”
I was already stepping back, already putting distance between us, already moving toward the main street where my car was parked in a public lot like a normal person who hadn’t just done something inexplicable.
“Yeah,” Jacks said. His voice sounded strange and rough. “Yeah, totally. Good luck tonight.”
“Thanks. I’ll, uh . . . I’ll text you.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
I turned and walked away, forcing myself not to run or look back, not to think about what had happened. My legs felt unsteady, like I’d just finished a triple-overtime game. My hand—the one that had touched his hair, his skin, his face—tingled like I’d stuck it in an electrical socket.
As I reached the corner where I’d turn and move from view, I glanced back over my shoulder. Jacks was still leaning against his car, his eyes still wide—still staring at me.