Chapter 11
Sage
Casey leads me across the crowded room as his fingers brush my lower back.
It’s the busiest I’ve ever seen the Mill; busier than any wedding I’ve been to or festival in this town.
Balloon arches frame the doorways, and a bright light from the photobooth draws my attention.
Mrs. Green is wearing a pink feather scarf and making pouty lips to the camera.
There’s a queue for the buffet and we walk to the back to stand in line. Mr. Robinson is in front of us and he scowls when he sees us. “Great,” he mutters under his breath. “Now the roosters will flock here.”
“Pardon?” I ask. “Did you say something, Mr. Robinson?”
But he doesn’t respond right away. Instead, his gaze travels beyond me and narrows on a pair of men walking toward us. It’s Matt and Don from the plumbing company. Matt slaps Casey on the shoulder. “How’s it going, man?”
Casey stiffens but doesn’t mention the arm squeezing his shoulder. “Great season last year. Do you think you guys are going to make it to the World Series again?”
“That’s the plan,” says Casey, taking a step forward and out of the man’s reach.
“Should I put money on it? I haven’t checked the Vegas odds, but I’m thinking it’s a sure bet.” Matt hooks his thumbs in his belt straps and puffs out his chest, reminding me of a rooster.
Mr. Robinson groans and shuffles his feet towards the buffet table.
“Have you ever placed a bet against your team? I hear some players have done this—”
“I don’t bet,” says Casey, cutting Matt off.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to help the lady with her plate.
” He turns his back to the guys and grabs two white plates from the buffet table.
His shoulders are nearly to his ears now and his face resembles the night Billy dropped the wine on his shirt.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Fine.”
His face says otherwise but I don’t press. Grabbing the plate he offers, I scan the food across the long and narrow table. There’s an ice sculpture of a baseball player preparing to bat and some sushi underneath it. I place some Red Dragon rolls on my plate and turn to Casey. “Would you like some?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, I don’t like sushi. Never even tried it.”
“How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it?”
“Don’t need to ram my head into that wall to know I won’t like it.”
I snicker. “That’s not the same thing and you know it.”
A brief grin crosses his face, but it quickly fades when he hears something Matt says to Don behind him. I didn’t catch it but the jabs they give one another tell me I probably wouldn’t find it funny.
While I add some quinoa and caprese salad to my plate, Casey squeezes some ketchup onto his burger. When both our plates are full, Casey nods towards a cruiser table all the way at the back. “Let’s go eat over there.”
I feel a hundred pairs of eyes on us, but no one follows us to the table. Most people seem content to just be in the same room as Casey, give him a wave or a nod. But I can tell that it’s starting to make him uncomfortable. He doesn’t wave back or acknowledge their greetings.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“Fine,” he says around a mouthful of hamburger. I spear a tomato with my fork, but it hangs on the silverware for a while as I contemplate my next words. “Are you happy, Casey?”
Casey narrows his eyes as though I just asked him if the sky is purple. “What?”
“Are you happy?”
“Yeah, I guess. Why?”
“I’m happy,” I say and smile as I gather my nerves. “I’m really happy when I’m with you.”
He swallows a particularly large bite and grins back. “I’m happy around you, too.” He puts his hand over mine and squeezes.
Encouraged, I press on. “You know I’ve fantasized about kissing you since my last year of college—your first year in the big leagues. You were a rookie and I swear the cutest guy I’d ever seen.”
“We met when you were in college?”
I shake my head. “No. I mean I saw you on TV. Jane pointed you out and I swear I fell in love with you the moment I laid eyes on you.”
Casey’s smile drops and he wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Sage…”
I close my eyes and ignore the hesitation in his voice. I need to get this out before anyone can convince me otherwise. “You had this cocky grin and chip on your shoulder, but there was something in your eyes that pulled me in. Just like they’re doing now.”
His stare gives me goosebumps. I imagine he’s searching, reassuring himself that what I said was true.
Embolden, I continue. “When I first met you at Charlotte’s apartment I couldn’t wait to finally talk to you…
but then, well, you said some things about the Falls and I couldn’t believe you would say something like that about a place I love.
But it was foolish of me to judge you without knowing your own experiences and expecting them to be like mine.
I think loving someone is accepting them and loving the parts of them that are different, too. ”
I grab his hand and it feels ice cold between my fingers. I rub his knuckles to give him warmth. “My heart is filled with happiness and love, Casey. I feel like the universe kept us apart for a reason, but I think that I wasn’t ready for you. I’m ready now. I want to be with you.”
I’ve said a lot, I know. But I would regret him leaving tomorrow and not knowing exactly how I feel.
Casey continues to stare but he inhales deeply, almost like a sigh, and my gut tells me something is wrong, but I can’t seem to stop myself.
I have this burning need to tell him everything my heart dreams about.
I can’t keep it in despite Charlotte’s warnings.
“I can travel with you and study while I’m there.
Maybe you can fly back to Cedar Brook Falls for the holidays.
I’m sure we can make it work. We can do anything if we love each other. ”
Casey’s gaze drops for only a second. His eyes are soft, but his face is tight. He pulls both his lips into his mouth and squeezes my hands. This is it. He’s going to tell me that he loves me.
But he doesn’t get the chance. I spot his mother running over to us, as though a pack of pitbulls are at her heels.
She’s staring at our clasped hands and grabs one of Casey’s arms and yanks him away.
“Casey, darling, you must speak with Jacob before he leaves. I promised him you’d sign his jersey for him. ”
I wait for Casey to yank his arm back, but he doesn’t. He lets his mom pull him away and while his face is sad as he leaves, he does nothing to stop her.
I watch them go, his mother’s hand on his back, guiding him toward the crowd of excited neighbors. I feel guilty for having this conversation on a night when he’s supposed to be spending time with his family and those who’ve been waiting for him to return for years.
A soft arm wraps around my waist and I smell Charlotte’s perfume, instantly recognizing her without needing to turn around. “You okay?” she asks.
I smile. “Yeah. I’m good.”
“I saw you talking to Casey. It looked intense.”
I take a deep breath and smile. “My feelings are pretty intense, and I want him to know this can work between us.”
“So, you told him how you feel?”
“All of it.”
She squeezes me tight. “That’s what I love about you, Sage. You don’t listen to anyone, just your heart. I hope he doesn’t break it.”
My eyes never leave him. Casey is faking a smile at some tall fellow. I can tell because it doesn’t reach his eyes. My heart swells, knowing that he smiles differently for me.
“That’s Jane. I think she’s waving us over.”
I turn toward Charlotte’s gaze and see Jane standing with Austin and his father. She’s pointing at me and Charlotte hooks her arm with mine and pulls me over. “Come on.”
There are less people on this side of the room. It’s as though the crowd shifts, depending on where Casey’s standing. I hadn’t noticed until I was away from him.
“Hey! What’s going on?” asks Charlotte when we reach the trio.
“Austin and his dad can’t settle an argument, and I said the best person who knows baseball better than these two is Sage.”
“Caleb was busy, wasn’t he?” I ask.
Jane smiles. “We couldn’t find him.”
I laugh. “Sure. How can I help?”
“We all know that Cal Raleigh won the home run derby in 2025, but my father insists it’s because he had one more homerun in the final than Rooker, but I say it’s because Rooker’s home run didn’t count because of fan interference. Which one of us is right, Sage?”
Austin puts his hands on his hips, and his father crosses his arms over his chest. There is pressure to pick one over the other and I don’t want to upset his father. I could easily agree with him, but…
“Actually, you’re both wrong.”
Austin drops his arms. “What? No, we can’t be.”
Jane playfully smacks Austin in the chest. “Let the woman finish.”
“Sorry,” he grumbles. “Go ahead.”
“Raleigh did beat Rooker in the ’25 homerun derby but it wasn’t for either of those reasons.
The fan interfered with Junior Caminero’s homerun, not Caleigh’s, and the ump ended up counting it anyway.
But Caleigh won the derby not because he had the most homeruns, he tied Rooker with 17.
To break the tie, the umps decided that Caleigh won because he hit the furthest homerun of the derby. ”
Austin’s father smiles widely and shakes his finger at me. “She’s right. I’d forgotten about that.”
Austin tuts sheepishly. “Shoot. You are right. I remember it now.”
“I never forget an All-Star series,” I say, having watched every game since Casey’s rookie year.
Speaking of the devil, I spot him from the corner of my eye walking toward us. His father notices my gaze and smiles. “You’re good for him, you know. He needs someone like you in his life.”
“Someone like me?”
But he doesn’t have a chance to elaborate because Casey arrives and grabs my hand. “Can I talk to you?”
He smiles and my stomach somersaults as though I’m on the tallest rollercoaster. “Sure,” I say, breathlessly.
He leads me onto the dance floor, although there’s only one other couple dancing and pulls me close. As we sway along to some country song I hardly recognize, his body presses against mine. More couples join us and soon the dance floor is nearly full.
“They flock to you like moths to a flame,” I whisper in his ear as I lay my head on his shoulder.
“Who?”
“The people of this town.”
A wave of his cologne hits me as he sharply turns his head to the right and then left. “Maybe it’s a popular song.”
I laugh. “Maybe. But I don’t think so.”
Casey’s back stiffens beneath my palm, and his hand tightens over the one he’s holding as we dance. “Sage, I…”
I close my eyes and smile. My heart anticipates his next words, and I can’t wait to hear them.
It feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life for him to say them.
It feels as though I’m that teenager in her room, dancing alone with him, no one around us but my posters of him, nothing between us but his jersey.
He mumbles something, but I miss it. “Mmm?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“I know,” I say, softly. Sadly.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“I won’t be staying in Cedar Brook Falls.”
“It’s okay. I’ll come to the hotel with you.”
He stops dancing and drops his arms. He pulls back, but I resist. Only when he doesn’t resume dancing do I look up. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“A relationship.”
“What?”
He closes his eyes briefly, and when they open, they’re harder.
They’re the eyes I recall from Charlotte’s penthouse when I first met him in New York.
“I’m not cut out that way, Sage. I’m not the relationship type.
I don’t do commitments. I’m selfish about my time and my training.
Baseball is everything to me. It’s my world, and I don’t have room for anything else.
It’s not personal. I like you, but I can’t be in a relationship with you. Do you understand?”
Do I understand? No, I don’t think that I do.
“I’m not following. I’m not asking for much.”
He sighs. “You want to see me when I’m in New York, right?
But what if I have an early practice? What if I need to see my trainers?
What if I want to put in extra hours? I don’t want to feel like I can’t because I’d be letting you down.
That kind of pressure suffocates me. I’ve tried it before and it never works.
I’d rather be upfront about it with you because we’ve gotten close and you’re different.
If I wasn’t a ball player, I could really fall for you.
But that’s exactly who I am. It’s all I ever wanted. ”
And I don’t want you. I know he didn’t say that. But it still echoes in my mind. At least he doesn’t want me enough to make room for me in his life. To change his habits, even just a little.
The rebuff hurts. It’s as though that rollercoaster just rammed right through my chest. I rub it but quickly move my hand up to my neck and turn away. “I understand,” I lie. “I get it.” I really don’t but I pretend that I do.
I have school, and work, but none of those things stopped me from wanting to be with him. As much as I love my job, I love being with Casey more.
But he doesn’t feel the same way about me.
I’m such an idiot.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
I inhale deeply. “Yeah. It’s all good.” I take a step back and push my hair out of my face. A strand must have gotten in my eye because it’s watering now. “Ah, I just remembered that I have an early class tomorrow. I’ll see you… soon… or later… or whenever. Bye.”
I rush off the dance floor and through the foyer and out the front doors. The cold air hits me and I shiver. Tears push through my eyes and I look up, willing them not to fall. “Damn it. I’m such a fool.”
“Sage?”
Frankie opens the doors wider and rushes over to me, pulling me into her arms. “Are you okay?”
“I just want to go home,” I say, struggling to keep my voice steady. “Do you mind driving me?”
“Of course not. Let’s go.”
We walk back to her car, and she doesn’t ask any questions. I’m glad because I don’t have any answers to give.