Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Nate
“If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.”
Yogi Berra
It had been four days since Cassidy walked out of that coffee shop and took whatever steady ground I had left. I still hadn’t slept. I’d drift for an hour, then jolt awake, chest tight, sheets tangled like I’d fought something off in the dark.
Every time I closed my eyes, she was there—sitting across from me, or curled in my bed, or walking away. I replayed the conversation until it blurred, searching for the version where I stopped her. Where I said the thing that made her stay.
But I didn’t. I sat there and let her go.
Because I thought if I loved her enough, she’d know to stay.
Instead, she loved me enough to leave first.
I hated her for that—briefly, stupidly—at two in the morning when I wanted to throw something across the kitchen. But I hated myself more for being so close to everything I wanted and too fucking frozen to claim it.
J.O. had given me seven days to decide. Three were left.
Toronto still wanted me. New York had sweetened the deal. Atlanta had called again. Every team ready to slot me into a playoff rotation—the ring I’d chased my whole life.
And I was being a goddamn coward about it.
I tried to picture it: new clubhouse, new jersey, new rhythm.
Every version blurred before I could step into it.
I couldn’t see myself walking a tunnel that didn’t echo with her laugh, couldn’t imagine pulling on a uniform without her post-it jokes on my locker.
I couldn’t see a dugout where she wasn’t waiting, barefoot in my truck after the game, smiling like I was the win that mattered.
Without her, the future didn’t feel like achievement. It felt like a sentence.
The ring—the thing I’d built my whole identity around—suddenly looked small. A souvenir from a trip I didn’t want to take alone. I’d spent decades thinking it was the prize, and now it felt like the thing I might get instead of her.
And that made me furious.
At the timing. At J.O. for pretending this decision didn’t cut through bone. At myself for letting her walk out without tearing the room apart. I’d finally let someone in, and now I was supposed to erase her? Rewrite the story clean?
It didn’t work like that.
She was everywhere now, built into every beat of my routine.
And I didn’t know how to want anything if she wasn’t in it. Didn’t matter that we hadn’t been together long. I’d been around. I knew what I wanted. It was her.
The guys noticed. My silences got longer, workouts more erratic. I’d stopped snapping back when Pavin poked at me—a major red flag.
I was unraveling, and they saw it.
Worse? I didn’t care.
Because none of it mattered if I couldn’t figure out what to do. Take the offer or not? Go after her or let her go?
I didn’t know what I wanted anymore, only that everything without her felt wrong.
The weight room wasn’t empty, but it felt quieter than usual—plates clanking, a Bluetooth speaker buzzing—but around me, a stillness settled, like the space was giving me room to break.
I didn’t want room.
I dropped the barbell with more force than necessary and grabbed water. My shirt was soaked, my thoughts a mess. Which meant it was only a matter of time before Pavin appeared, shirtless and smug.
“You’ve officially hit the ‘tragic ex-boyfriend who listens to movie scores alone’ phase,” he said. “I almost brought you a playlist.”
I didn’t look at him. “I’m not in the mood.”
“You haven’t been in the mood for days,” he said, trailing after me as I moved toward the cable machine. “That coffee shop breakup fucked you up, my dude.”
“Shut up, Pavin,” I muttered, adjusting the stack.
Garcia appeared at my other side, towel around his neck, eyebrow raised. “Still no word from Cassidy?”
I yanked the handle down and started pulling. Slow. Controlled. My arms shook slightly, but I needed the burn. I needed something to shut up the rest of my body.
“She meant it,” I said. “She didn’t just pull back. She ended it. Told me she wanted me to have space to decide about the trade. Without her in the picture.”
Pavin crossed his arms. “And you just let her walk out? Like that’s normal?”
I let the weight drop with a heavy thud and turned to him, jaw tight. “She didn’t ask for permission.”
“No, but you’re a grown-ass man,” he said. “You could’ve chased her. You could’ve stood up in that coffee shop and told the truth. You could’ve said, ‘Hey, I love you, I don’t need time to figure that out.’ But you didn’t.”
I glared at the wall behind him. “What truth, Pavin? That I’m in love with someone who doesn’t want to hold me back?”
“That’s the worst fucking reason to lose someone,” Garcia said, dragging over a bench. “You didn’t even ask her to stay.”
“I didn’t know what to say!” My voice cracked at the edges. “She made it sound so rational. So easy. Like she was doing me a favor.”
Wells, who’d been quietly stretching on the mat with his AirPods in and that Zen monk energy he liked to project, suddenly spoke without looking up.
“Amanda thinks this is bullshit, by the way.”
I blinked and lowered the barbell mid-rep. “What?”
He rolled his neck and casually held a quad stretch like we weren’t just dropped into a therapy session. “She called me yesterday.”
I stared at him. “Since when do you and my sister talk?”
Pavin snorted. “Yeah, what in the hell kind of crossover episode is this?”
Wells gave the world’s least helpful shrug. “We talk. Occasionally. She’s cool. Smart. Wickedly judgmental when she’s hormonal. Also, I gave her advice about stroller frames last week, so…”
Pavin threw his towel at him. “Are you secretly married to my teammate’s pregnant sister?”
“She says hi, by the way,” Wells added mildly.
I just blinked, still halfway stuck on Amanda calling him instead of me and halfway stuck on punching him in the face because it would feel good.
“She said you’ve been walking around like a ghost,” Wells went on. “And that if you don’t pull your head out of your ass, you’ll regret this more than Game 7 of ‘19.”
Garcia winced like it physically hurt. “Damn girl. She went there?”
Pavin let out a low whistle. “That’s not just serious. That’s nuclear. She’s invoking the worst collapse of your professional career.”
“She’s hormonal,” I muttered, rubbing a hand down my face.
“She’s right,” Wells said. “She said Cassidy’s miserable too. But she’s not going to reach out first because she thinks she’s doing the right thing. For you.”
I shook my head, pulse thudding harder now. “Then why the fuck didn’t she just say she still wanted me?”
“Because she thinks you deserve the chance to want yourself more than you want her,” Garcia said, leveling me with a look. “And so far, you haven’t shown her that you do.”
“That’s not fair,” I snapped, heat rising behind my ribs. “I didn’t ask her to walk away. She made the decision without even giving me time to—”
“To what?” Pavin cut in, voice sharper than usual. “To sit there and pretend like you weren’t already halfway out the door? Come on, man. You’ve been a mess since J.O. gave you those offers. We all saw it. So did she.”
“I don’t want to choose,” I said, more quietly this time. “I don’t want to give up the team. Or her.”
Wells dropped into a seated position, elbows resting on his knees, calm as ever. “Then don’t.”
I looked at him, searching for sarcasm. There wasn’t any.
“You act like it’s mutually exclusive,” he continued. “But who decided that? J.O.? A bunch of analysts with spreadsheets? Since when do they get to decide what this season is? What it means to be a fucking Gila Monster? To play on this field for our fans?”
Pavin nodded, stepping forward. “Yeah. That’s the other thing. We’re all a little pissed off. Management wrote us off a month ago. Started calling this year a transition. A rebuild. Like we’re already supposed to be packing it in.”
Garcia leaned back against the wall. “But we’re not done. Not even close. You stay? We fight. We claw our way into the wildcard. We make noise.”
“You’ve been the spine of this team for a decade,” Wells added. “You don’t have to give that up. And you sure as hell don’t have to lose your woman in the process.”
I swallowed hard. My throat felt like it had closed around something solid. Hope tasted dangerous. Staying here … keeping Cassidy and being here for Amanda and making a run for the world series? That was too good to be true.
“You guys think we can actually make a run?” I asked.
“We think,” Pavin said, “that if we get you—locked-in, fire-breathing, Cassidy-fueled you—back on the mound, we can scare the shit out of the rest of the league.”
“And,” Wells added, “we think if you don’t call her soon, Amanda might actually show up here and force you to.”
A slow, sharp laugh escaped me before I could stop it. God, I missed her. Every breath felt wrong without her in it.
Garcia tossed me my glove. “Make your choice, man. But make sure it’s one you can live with.”
And for the first time in days, I knew I couldn’t live with letting her be the one who walked away—and thinking I was okay with that.
By the time I left the weight room, the sun had already dipped below the parking lot wall, and the desert heat was finally starting to cool.
My shoulder ached in that familiar post-throw way, but the noise in my chest had quieted.
Not all the way. Not enough to call it peace.
But the guys had shaken something loose.
Not just with what they said—but the way they said it.
No judgment. No pressure. Just belief. In me.
In the team. In what was still possible if I stopped running from it.
It stuck with me as I drove home. As I stood in front of my closet, suit jacket in one hand, tie in the other, wondering if Cassidy would even look at me at the Gala tomorrow night.
I had no idea if she was doing okay, or if she was sad.
We hadn’t sent a single text since the coffee shop and I stared at my phone, willing her to call.