Chapter 38
Liam
"Rook, can we focus? I have other things to do today."
"Oh, yeah. Sorry, man." Jace sets his phone on the table face down. "It's my little sister sending random emojis from her iPad."
I nod, staring at the paused image of Holloway mid-swing. "I didn't know you had a sister. How old?"
Jace smiles. "Yeah, Vienna. She's four goin' on fourteen."
I can't help but laugh. "Been there. I take it you guys are close?"
He looks down at his phone like he can see her through it and nods. "Yeah, we're pretty close now.”
That’s all he offers, and the abrupt ending to the conversation makes me realize something I never thought much about before.
“Ya know, I don’t know much about you outside of baseball.”
Jace smirks. “You warmin’ up to me, Two-Three?”
I purse my lips and shake my head. “Oh, not at all. I was just gonna say, that’s exactly how I like it.”
He bites at the inside of his cheek and arches a brow.
“I’m kidding. You just don’t talk about much else.”
Holloway shrugs. “Not much else that’s more important. Not here anyway.”
I nod toward the device buzzing again on the table. “Seems like that might be."
I watch as his jaw tightens, and the skin beneath his thin silver chain turns a shy shade of pink. “Well, yeah, she is. But I mean here, with you. There's not much else besides baseball that we really need to talk about."
I pull back, hit with an unexpected mixture of hurt and confusion.
"I don't mean that in a bad way." Jace sits forward in his plush wheelie chair and sets his forearms on the table of the hotel meeting room we're using for film. "I just—I don't really need anymore friends. When we're doin' this shit, I just want to learn as much as I can from you."
I laugh out loud, my brows high.
"What?"
"Rook, you've fought me on everything we've done so far."
"I haven't fought you."
I tilt my chin down and glare at him.
"Okay, maybe a little. But only because it feels like I should know these things already—or at least act like it." His knee bounces under the table. "It’s a me thing," he adds quieter. "I’m trying, I just—I don't wanna screw this up."
I sit back into the cushion behind me, any lingering annoyance with him settling. "Well, there's your first mistake."
His eyes shoot to mine, and I shrug, resting my elbows on the arms of my chair and clasping my hands in front of me. "You're gonna screw up, Jace."
He rolls one thumb over the other. "You know what I mean.”
I nod. "I do. But you can't go into this thinking every game now is just something to get through without messing up. You gotta enjoy it. You'll make mistakes—you all will—but not being able to move past them is gonna do a lot more damage than a tight pivot or a slow release."
That earns me a smirk before his face softens again. "Baseball's the only thing I’ve ever really been good at, ya know?”
I tilt my chin, contemplating his answer. "I highly doubt that."
He shakes his head. "I'm serious. School, family shit… relationships. I pretty much suck at all of it."
I point to the phone, my brow creased. "It doesn't seem like you suck at the family shit."
He blows out a heavy breath and looks at the screen.
"It's not so bad anymore. But I was away for the first three years of V's life—when she really started to bond with people beyond learning names and recognizing faces.
My mom got pregnant with her right after I left, and you know how it is.
College ball is the same as this, especially if you live away.
There's an off-season but not really… not if you want to impress the right people. "
I purse my lips in understanding, waiting for him to continue.
"I saw my family, but not enough for her to latch on.
FaceTiming and watching me from the stands here and there just aren't enough to build real connections with someone that young.
And my parents were busy starting over with a toddler at home.
I saw them, and we talked on the phone, but I lost touch with a lot of people when I left… "
His voice fades off as he stares into the distance, either deep in thought or mesmerized by the plain, almost clinically-white walls.
"Well, you're back now, right? Your family's close by?"
He blinks hard, returning to the conversation from wherever he drifted off to in his mind. "Yeah, Mage Hollow isn't far. It's definitely been easier."
"Good," I say matter-of-factly. "Hold onto that. Because trust me when I say, there's gonna come a time when the game starts fading away, and you'll need other legs in your life to keep you standing."
Jace narrows his eyes, nodding slowly as if he's digesting my words, then meets my gaze. "I think that's why I've been so interested in what you're planning to do after. I just can't picture it."
I huff out a breath and shake my head. That actually makes sense. "I can't either, honestly," I admit.
"Is that why you're finally dating now?"
I cock my head back. "Excuse me?"
He smirks knowingly, his hands lifting in surrender. "I'm sorry, I just… I saw you talking with your nanny earlier."
My chest tightens as heat creeps up my neck—not because I'm embarrassed by Tessa but because I'm defensive of her. Of us. I knew people saw us together outside the bus. I knew Jace was watching us talk—that's why I stopped myself from taking her hand. Why I didn't kiss her goodbye like I wanted to.
So how does he know?
"And?"
He nibbles on his bottom lip, eyes flicking away almost…
respectfully? Like he knows what he's saying might be just out of bounds, and he's trying to ease the weight of it.
"And it seemed like maybe it's more than…
" He opens and closes his lips a few times as if he's testing out different words on his tongue before committing. "Professional?"
My gaze darts around the room, confusion replacing the sensitivity I'd felt earlier. "How could you possibly think that just from watching two people talk? You were a hundred feet away."
"Yeah, I know." He shrugs nonchalantly. "But I'm good at reading lips."
I roll my eyes, playing along, but his simply bounce back and forth between mine. When his expression doesn't waver, my mouth drops open as my brain rapidly races through my and Tessa's conversation.
What did we say?
What could he know?
But then I stop myself.
Why does it matter?
"Yeah," I answer honestly.
Jace turns his lips down in casual surprise, and I inhale deeper than I have in weeks. Relief slips out in the form of a laugh, and he chuckles back in response.
"Yeah, actually it is," I say again, this time for myself.
"I mean, I think it's different for me as a dad.
Ruthie has never been a choice—she always comes first. And that's a huge reason why, besides her, I just focused on work.
But when you invest as much of yourself into something as we have into the game, it's really easy for that one thing to become… everything."
He nods, listening, his face serious like he's drinking in every word.
"But it's also really easy to lose yourself in it—or to start believing all of your worth boils down to a ball.
" I swallow the lump forming in my throat.
"Somewhere along the way, like a lot of us do, I forgot that I still exist outside of the uniform—outside of fatherhood, even.
And I don't know exactly what the world looks like without baseball or this team, but I do know that having other legs in my life that matter—"
"Like the girl?" he cuts in, a gentle humor threaded into his voice.
I huff out a laugh. "Like my kid," I say, pointedly.
Jace arches a brow, and I suck in a breath.
"But also the girl," I admit, then shake my head. "They're the things that'll keep me going when it ends."
"And that's why you want to step away from baseball after you retire? Because you want to make time for other things that matter?"
"Because I don't want to wake up one day and realize that it's the only thing I let myself have."
His gaze falls to the table as he rolls one thumb over top of the other as if he's considering everything I've said. Before he can respond, my phone buzzes on the table. Both of our eyes move toward the sound, and without even having to actually read it, my mind recognizes the name.
"How about we work on your swing when we get back?" I tell him, my hand darting toward my phone.
Jace looks at me, confusion etched into his brow, not yet connecting who the caller is—or what they mean to me."What? Why?" he asks. "Where ya goin'?"
I push away from the table, the wheels of the chair rolling on the linoleum floor, and stand. From here, Holloway appears so much smaller than he usually does, and looking down at him, I don't only see my rookie teammate—I see myself, fifteen years ago, with only one care in the world.
"Letting myself have something else for a change."
"Hey," I say into the phone, only having practiced its delivery a dozen times beforehand.
"Hi," Tess says, her voice bright and airy—two letters, one word, and yet they revive me somehow.
I bite back a smile even though I'm walking alone through the hotel lobby. "How was the game?"
"Dad, it was so good! You should have seen me and Tess. We totally dominated."
I laugh, surprised to hear my daughter's voice sing out on the other end. Blinking hard, I reset. "I take it you won?"
"Duh," the two of them say simultaneously. They erupt into giggles, and I watch my smile spread across my cheeks in the reflection of the elevator door.
"Congrats, ladies. I knew you could do it." I press the up arrow button, barely getting my words out before Ruthie jumps back in.
"Dad, Cooper texted me. He's watching Zombie Tsunami 2 tonight with Brooke, and Uncle Levi said I could come over. Can I? Please."
"What's with all the zombies recently?" I ask. "And isn't that rated R?"
The silence that follows tells me everything I need to know—she has no idea, and yes it is. "It was Brooke's idea," is all she says.
Tess chuckles in the background. "Of course it was."