Chapter 50
Chapter Fifty
Asher
Two weeks after the road trip, the Coach texts me. Adler, you have a minute to talk?
Even though it’s an off-day, I’m at the clubhouse lifting, my music playing without my teammates around to complain, though they’ve largely moved on to giving LeBlanc shit about his new haircut.
I put down the weights, tell Coach I’ll be there in a few minutes.
He probably wants to check in about my head—it was a mild concussion, but the team is being extra vigilant right before the postseason.
When I get into his office, he looks at me gravely. “Have a seat, son.”
It’s never good when middle-aged baseball men call you that. I sit.
“A few things have come to the team’s attention in recent days.
We’ve been tolerant—encouraging even—of your eccentricities.
The yoga.” He eyes my cut-up T-shirt that’s cropped at the hem and sleeves.
“The, er, casual approach to our dress code. But we take the code of conduct in the clubhouse very seriously, including the ones governing players’ personal lives. ”
Fuck.
Fuck.
They must know. Someone must have told them, or they must have figured it out or…
Too many possibilities to consider, each one as plausible as the last. That we were obvious. That someone mentioned it to the team. No. Snitched.
Panic sets in—the kind that shatters my ability to regulate it. I breathe in deep, blow out a breath through my mouth. That does nothing to unclench my hands from my knees or stall my heart where it’s beating against my ribs. It’s none of the club’s business. Of course it is.
Whatever it is, Coach hasn’t come out and said it. Now I know why Brayden calls him sir all the time—it’s much easier than saying what I want to say, which is fuck you. “Sir?” I ask.
Coach aligns his hands on the surface of his desk.
Everything about him is neat, orderly without being fussy, from his hat to his creaseless polo to his ironed golf shorts.
“When we caught wind of you sleeping with a married woman, well, you’re not the first player to do that, son.
One could hardly blame you, really.” He gives a tight smile.
“But then there is the more serious allegation of there being a…rather unorthodox relationship happening in our midst.”
Right. So they know, maybe not everything. But enough. “I see.”
“After my conversation with Forsyth earlier this season, I had hoped to put some of this behind us.”
My shoulders tense. “What conversation is that?”
Coach gets a look of fatherly concern that makes my hands go even tenser. “There’s a certain point at which image issues go from being clubhouse concerns to being matters for the general public.” Because that’s what my being with two people is to him. To the team. An image issue.
“Fortunately, as my pastor would say”—Coach scrubs his palms together as if washing his hands of the whole situation—“the love of a good woman fixes a lot of ills. We communicated such to Forsyth.”
So Brayden and Savannah had gotten married because the team told them to? Several things click. Their sudden wedding. Their seeming newness to one another the first time we were all together. Did Brayden marry her only because of that? Was the whole thing just for show?
“So in that same spirit,” Coach continues, “we suggest you find yourself one such woman. Preferably someone who’s not already spoken for. We would hate to have to arrange for either you or Forsyth to continue your baseball careers…elsewhere.”
It takes a moment for his meaning to sink in. If I don’t stop this with Brayden and Savannah, either he gets traded or I do. Or possibly both. Would it be worse to be split up or have them close—in the same city, on the same team—and not be able to touch them?
No. I won’t accept either outcome, not from this man with his khaki shorts and his fucking desktop plaque with a Bible verse about iron sharpening iron.
My hands curl into fists. Red seeps into the edge of my vision.
Anger—the kind I know. The kind I’ve worked so hard to tamp down, hot and bright and ready to consume all my good judgment.
“With all due respect, sir,” I say, “go fuck yourself.”
“Adler.” He says my name like a curse, which it might as well be. “Consider yourself benched for tomorrow’s game. I’m sure Crawford will be excited to have his old job back.”
Any reasonable player would take that as the cost of doing business. I should slink out of here, tail metaphorically tucked. Instead I stand, every muscle in my body hard with tension. “Fuck that and fuck you.”
“Three games, then.” Coach looks at me with a weary sort of skepticism. “Care to make it the rest of the season?”
I could quit now. Quit and figure out what my life would be without this shit.
Back when I made that all-night drive—Pittsburgh to Chicago, on a dark highway at two a.m. with semis speeding around me—I told myself that nothing would stand in my way.
I worked for what I have. And yet that’s nothing, if I have to give them up to have it.
Coach is still looking at him as if he expects me to fold. My hands are still fisted at my sides. It’d be so easy to…
No. I’m not that. Whatever else I am, I’m not that. Still, I shoot him a look hard enough that he recoils in his chair.
“I’ll let you know,” I say and throw myself out of his office before he has a chance to do it for me.
The moment I get out of Coach’s office, I text Savannah.
Me: Can we talk?
Princess: I’ll be home soon
Me: without Brayden
Princess: …why?
Me: Do you trust me?
Princess: You know I do
Me: Then trust me
Princess: Where should I meet you?
Me: I’ll come to you
She drops a pin with her location—the library at Morningside—and I don’t think. I just storm out of the clubhouse, get in my car, and drive.
Savannah texts that she’s on the upper floor of the library in one of the study rooms they reserve for students.
I enter the building, wondering if I need a student ID to access the library.
No one stops me. Maybe they can see the metaphorical thunderclouds gathering above my head.
I take an elevator up, follow various signs to the room Savannah told me.
It has a small conference table, a circle of chairs around it, glass walls.
And two people other than Savannah. Both of whom are looking at me in absolute surprise.
One is a short guy with auburn hair who looks caught between asking for an autograph and jumping to Savannah’s defense.
The other is a Latina woman ten or so years older than I am who looks like she might faint.
“Uh, hey—” I cut myself off before I can say something foolish. Like Princess. “Hey, Sav. Didn’t realize I was interrupting study time.”
“That’s okay.” She nods to the two people sitting next to her. “Forrest and Katia were just leaving.”
“We were?” Katia doesn’t budge from her chair.
Normally, I don’t mind the fame part of being famous, but that’s more than I can deal with right now. I’m about to intercede—offer an autograph, tickets, possibly a trip to outer space—when Savannah nudges Forrest with her elbow. “You said you needed coffee, right?”
From the circles under Forrest’s eyes, it seems like he might need a lot of coffee.
Savannah digs in her purse like she’s looking for cash, eyeing me with a look of increasing desperation.
“Here.” I pull out my wallet and grab a couple of bills from my stash for tipping clubhouse attendants and hotel housekeepers.
Savannah gets up and takes the bills from me, mouthing sorry as she does, then hands the money to Forrest. “The usual.”
“Do you want anything?” Forrest asks me.
Savannah. “I’m good, thanks.”
Forrest tucks the money into his pocket. “You sure you’re good?” he asks her, as if he’s really asking something else.
I don’t know what I look like right now, but in my reflection in one of the glass walls, even my outline looks tense. I suck in a breath, exhale through my mouth, will myself calm or at least calm enough to convince Savannah’s friends I’m good to leave her alone with me.
“You all go ahead,” Savannah says. “I’ll meet you downstairs in a bit.”
The two of them leave, though not before Forrest gives me the eye, less like he’s jealous and more like a protective younger brother.
He’s a foot shorter than I am, at least, and looks like he might try to go toe-to-toe if I step out of line.
Good. Savannah should have people to stick up for her, even if those people can’t be me.
After they’re gone, I take a seat in one of the chairs then stand right back up. Energy thrums through me, along with a question. Was everything fake right from the start?
But I’ve seen the way Brayden looks at her. The way he touches her. That can’t be fake…right?
Months ago, I wanted nothing more than to break up their marriage.
But if I find out that Brayden lied to her or hurt her to get her to walk down the aisle, I don’t know what I’ll do.
And it’s that not knowing that scares me the most. “Coach wanted to talk to me today,” I say, “about something serious.”
The color drains from Savannah’s face. She pulls herself from her chair, comes to where I’m standing.
The walls of this room are glass. Any passerby might see me reach out and stroke her face.
I do it anyway, thumb against her cheek, fingers brushing her hair.
If this is the last time I’ll get to touch her, I want to commit it to memory.
As if I could forget anything about her.
“He said something during that conversation,” I say. “It sounded like the team told Brayden that he needed to…” I stop myself. She loves Brayden, that much is clear. If he married her and lied to her, what else could he be lying about? “It sounds like they told him he had to get married.”
Savannah goes pale again, this time differently. Slowly, she nods. “They did.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“And you married him anyway?”
“I did.” She takes a tiny step away from me. “I needed…I needed a lot of things. I wasn’t lying to you when I said Brayden was there for me when no one else was. He’s paying my tuition. He made sure I had migraine meds even when my insurance lapsed.”
“And all you had to do was marry him?”
“Not for real. It wasn’t supposed to be a real relationship. I thought we’d get married, I’d go to school, the team would get off his back. We’d get divorced in a few years and would go our separate ways. I didn’t expect to—” Her voice goes watery.
“Fall in love with him,” I finish for her.
She nods. A tear spills over onto her cheek. She flicks it away.
Right. So I know where I stand. The place I’ve always been standing: outside looking in. “He loves you too.”
She looks up at me in surprise. “He hasn’t said that.”
“Trust me,” I say. For a moment, everything inside me is made of sharp edges. That must just be what having your heart broken feels like. “I’d know.”
Savannah smiles at that. Steps toward me.
I want nothing more than to take her into my arms, to go back to her house, their house. A house I thought might one day be ours. Which will make the next thing I have to say to her even harder. “The team knows about us—about all of us.”
That makes her stop. “Oh.” So much in that single syllable. “What’d they say?”
“They don’t approve.” An understatement.
Savannah swallows. I follow the movement down the line of her throat, a tiny motion I’ll miss, along with the rest of her. Then she squares her shoulders. “So what if they don’t like it?”
“Things don’t work that way, princess.”
She flinches at the word. The first time I called her that—when she’d sat in the car as if it was her right, when she took my heart just as quickly—I meant it as a tease.
In the times since then as affection. Now I wield it as an insult.
She takes another step backward. Good. If she leaves of her own choosing, it’ll be easier for me to walk away.
“The team controls my contract for another three years,” I say. “They can trade me or demote me or simply cut me. Same with Brayden.”
“They wouldn’t do that. You’re both good players. They need you.”
Not more than I need them. “I didn’t go to college. I didn’t have a plan B. I drove all night hoping that a team would give me a chance. Now one has. I can’t throw that away, not after I’ve worked so hard for so long. This is what I was meant to do.”
“Why does it sound—” Savannah’s voice hitches. “Why does it sound like you’re breaking up with us?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. Because I am. Because my chest feels like it’s cracking open and everything inside me is pouring out. If the team cuts Brayden or trades him or does a hundred other things, those won’t just affect him—they’ll hurt Sav too. “I’ll see you around.”
She blinks back another tear. “What does that mean?”
“You know what it means, Savannah.” Her name feels strange in my mouth.
Savannah Forsyth. That’s who she is. Not princess.
Not anything else. Certainly not mine. “We need to stop this. We needed to have never started it at all. If this gets out, they’re going to—” I shake my head.
People will paint her a homewrecker, a cheater, any of a hundred other worse things. “They won’t be kind to you.”
Her chin begins to shake—fuck—more tears gathering in her eyes.
If anyone else ever made her feel this way, I’d do whatever I had to in order to get them to stop.
Now, I’m the one doing it and the only way this will stop is if I end things between us.
She rummages through her purse, clearly looking for a package of tissues, and shuts it with an exasperated sigh when she doesn’t find any.
I don’t have anything either—I’m standing before her, empty-handed.
“We could still be friends,” she says finally.
“No, we can’t.” But I can’t stop myself—I reach for her, my arms around her, the soft smell of her hair in my nose.
We can’t be friends, not when I’ve been inside her.
Not when I’ve known what she looks like, sounds like, tastes like.
Not when I know that she has a husband who loves her the way she deserves to be loved, even if he’s only sweet when he thinks someone isn’t looking.
That he’d crawl over broken glass to be with her.
I should know. I’d do the same too. “I knew this would be how things went.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
I lift my shoulders. If we pretend this was just sex, then it’s easy to shrug off. But it wasn’t just sex, and she knows it, and I know it too. I step back, put my hands on her shoulders. Hope that I can hold that distance, if nothing else. “Goodbye, Savannah.”
And so I leave before I do something I shouldn’t—like drop to my knees and beg her to let me stay.