Bonus Epilogue
Jake
Iknow that girl.
I saved that girl.
In, what, December? January? Whenever it was that Scottie and I were fake dating. We were out at some restaurant in Charleston and a random guy spiked this girl’s drink and was about to take her home.
I almost ripped that guy’s head off, but she needed me more than I needed to hurt him.
As much work as I’ve done with Dr. Chang this year, I’d still rip the guy’s head off if I ever met him on the street.
Olivia. That’s what she said her name was. I sat with her for twenty minutes, maybe, until her roommate came to pick her up. She was … different then. Too open, too friendly, too eager to please.
This version—Liv—looks like someone closed the door on that girl, and I’m relieved to see it. She was a walking target.
This girl looks like she can handle herself.
She’s not as closed off as she thinks she is, though.
She’s sticking close to Georgie and Alma, paying so much attention to her surroundings, watching everyone and everything.
And I think I spotted some big shoulder bag or backpack underneath her chair.
She looks like she’s one scare away from bolting.
I walk around the farmhouse to the front porch, where there’s a set of outdoor lounge chairs and zero other people.
Dropping to one of the chairs, I exhale roughly.
It’s not that it’s bad being here. Everyone’s cool. The hosts are nice. No one’s trying to get my autograph or hit on me or yell at me for choking in the bottom of the ninth—
Striking out is part of the game. If you choked, then so did every other player on your team time and time again.
Yeah, but they aren’t me.
Those guys all love baseball, sure, but they don’t need baseball. Not like I do. They all have families and friends they go home to. They have traditions and holidays, people they like being around so much they call them “loved ones.”
I have Scottie’s family. But they all have someone else. Dallas has Marisol and their baby, Mateo. Hudson met someone over the summer and is already engaged. Scottie has Lucas.
And I have a dad who’s in and out of prison for misdemeanors and possession and a mom who would have willingly gone home with the guy who spiked Olivia’s drink.
The other guys on the team travel and have hobbies. They play stupid crap like pickleball. Some of them are talking about starting podcasts or being broadcasters or coaches when their careers end.
When my career ends, I’ll have nothing.
I’ll be nothing.
Losing the World Series was like getting cut down at the knees.
But it was seeing Coop—my oldest friend in baseball—get injured that wrecked me.
It never occurred to me that there was any other way out of the sport other than simply getting old and starting to suck.
Injury? Leaving the sport early?
Unthinkable.
“Oh, hey, I didn’t realize anyone was out here,” a woman’s voice says, a voice that sounds like it was scraped across the gravel and kept some pebbles in it.
I pull my hands off of my face and look up.
It’s Olivia—Liv.
“Hey, no worries,” I say. “I got people-d out.”
She looks like she’s debating sitting or leaving.
“You can sit,” I say, pointing out the obvious.
“Yeah, but I don’t know if I want to. I don’t know you,” she says bluntly.
“Do you think I bite?” I ask stupidly, but it’s stupid of her to imply it, so …
“Do you?”
Her voice isn’t saucy or flirtatious. It’s sincere—weirdly, kind of rudely sincere.
“Are you asking me to answer for a sin I’d never commit?”
“Yes.”
I put my hands on the armrests but stop myself short of standing up. I tower over her. Wouldn’t exactly go along with my “sin I’d never commit” line.
So I lean forward, switch my cap around so the bill is out of my eyes, and put my elbows on the armrests. I look up at her.
“I’d rather die.”
“That’s easy to say.”
“Not remotely.”
I get up, making sure not to stand tall right next to her, and take two steps to the side. “It was good meeting you, Liv.”
“You don’t have to leave,” she says, suddenly sounding like the Olivia I met last winter. Open, eager to please, vulnerable.
Like the kind of girl I’d go to the ends of the earth to protect.
But I don’t do relationships.
I play baseball.
“Yeah, I do,” I say. “See you back there, Liv.”
I don’t go back, though. I go around the other side of the house to where the horse stalls are, the smell of hay and earth overpowering my senses.
I stare into one of their eyes and it stares back, big, stinky, and unimpressed.
The sun has sunk low on the horizon, and with all the orange and red and purple in the clouds, the sky looks … angry. Moody.
I get it.
I’m looking at another three months until Spring Training—another three months where I’ll feel irrelevant and aimless. There’ll be a lot more months of that if the players’ union can’t get it together and make an agreement with the owners.
I hate thinking about it. Hate even acknowledging the word in my own head.
Strike.
And for some reason, just considering the possibility of never-ending months without baseball makes me think of Liv’s too-round gray eyes.
Maybe I should think about a relationship so I have something to do if we don’t come to a collective bargaining agreement.
Not with Liv.
A girl like her is dangerous for a guy like me.
But with one of the countless Baseball Annies who slide into my DMs all day, every day.
Or maybe I need a hobby.
“What are you up to?” Scottie asks, finding me in front of one of the stalls, still in a staring contest with the huge black horse.
“Have you ever ridden a horse?”
“No. You want to?”
“No. My contract doesn’t let me ride horses, anyway.”
“Maybe one day. When you retire.”
I wince. “Don’t say the r-word. You know I hate it.”
She pats my back. “Sorry, bro. We don’t need to talk about that, but you should at least try to enjoy your offseason. Why don’t you travel somewhere cool? Rojas is down in the DR with his family. I bet he’d show you around. And that new guy—Matayoshi—is in Japan. He seemed to like you.”
“I’m not a world traveler. I travel for games. That’s it.”
“Then date. And I don’t mean hitting on other celebrities over social media or answering DMs. Someone real. Maybe someone who recently got bangs—”
“Don’t,” I say.
“She can’t stop looking at you.”
“That’s part of the problem.”
Scottie sighs and pulls me to face her, gripping my shoulders more like one of her brothers would. “Jake, I love you, bro, but you will never be happy until you choose to let yourself be more than what you are on the field.”
“Ugh. I hate when you say smart crap. You sound like an idiot.”
She laughs. “I hate you.”
“Love you, too, Scot. Thanks.”
“Stay out of trouble,” she says, walking backward a couple of steps as she waves.
“I’ll stay far away,” I tell her.
Liv’s gray eyes flash into my mind again.
Far, far away.
Jake has spent a lot of books causing trouble, but he’s finally met the woman who’s going to be trouble for him.
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