Chapter 3
Beck pulled into the facility lot at five forty-five and sat in his truck for a minute.
The building was low and clean. Metal and glass, set back from the road with a practice field behind it and the marsh beyond that. The field was dark. The building was lit. One truck was already in the lot, parked in the first spot. Brady's.
Hudson was in the passenger seat with his head out the window, ears forward, nose working.
"You ready?" Beck said.
Hudson looked at him. The look said he'd been ready since the rental and would appreciate if Beck stopped asking questions and opened the door.
Beck got out. Came around. Opened the passenger side. Hudson jumped down and stood on the gravel and looked at the building and then at the field and then back at Beck with the expression of a dog who had arrived at a place he intended to own.
The air was warm and salt and something underneath it, something green and low, the marsh probably.
Ocala didn't smell like this. Ocala smelled like horse farms and orange groves and the inside of a batting cage at the Gators' facility.
This smelled like somewhere else. Somewhere he hadn't planned to be.
The front door was unlocked. He walked in with Hudson at his heel. The hallway ran the length of the building. Offices on the left, supply closet on the right, a window at the end that faced the practice field. The lights were on in the second office.
Brady was at a desk with a clipboard and a Diet Mountain Dew and the posture of a man who'd been here since five and hadn't needed company.
"Morning," Brady said.
"Morning."
Brady looked at Hudson. Hudson looked at Brady. Then Hudson walked into the office and lay down beside the desk like he'd been doing it for years.
"He does that," Beck said.
"He's charming. There's a difference."
Brady almost let himself enjoy that. "Luke's on his way. Let's get started."
They went out to the field. The morning had come up full while Beck was inside, the sky wide and pale over the marsh, the air heavier than it had been in the lot.
Beck stood on the outfield grass and felt something he hadn't felt in a year.
The dimensions. The geometry of a field underneath him, the grass under his cleats, the specific tension of standing in center and knowing the ball could go anywhere.
Brady threw him a ball. Easy. Chest high.
Beck caught it and threw it back. The shoulder fired. He felt the lag.
Brady threw another. Deeper. Beck turned and ran it down. The closing speed was there. The instinct was there. He knew where the ball was going before it got there, the same way he'd known since he was seventeen and the Gators' coach had moved him from right field to center.
He threw it back. The lag again. Not worse. But there.
Luke arrived at six fifteen. Cap backward, coffee in hand.
He stood behind the backstop with Brady and watched Beck run down fly balls for ten minutes without saying a word.
Then he picked up a fungo bat and hit him everything — line drives, balls in the gap, balls over his head.
Beck caught them all. His routes were clean.
His speed was real. His reads were elite.
Every throw back told the same story. Late. Half a second. The difference between a runner holding at third and a runner scoring.
Luke rested the fungo on his shoulder. "Your reads are the same. Your arm isn't."
"I know."
"You've still got the best jumps I've seen in five years."
"Luke."
"I'm being honest."
"Then be honest about the arm."
Luke looked at Brady. Brady looked at his clipboard.
"The arm needs work," Luke said. "That's why you're here."
They walked off the field together. Beck's shoulder ached in the specific way it ached after throwing, the deep soreness that lived in the joint and radiated into the muscles around it.
The ortho Luke had brought in was coming at seven.
Twelve weeks of imaging and rehab and reassessment.
Beck already knew that. He'd known it before he got on the plane.
Coming here wasn't about hearing something new.
It was about hearing it from people who wouldn't lie.
"How's the island treating you so far?" Luke asked.
Beck wiped his face with the bottom of his shirt. "I gotta say, Luke, it's nice here. Nobody's tracking your OPS+ and asking about the pitching staff. They just treat you like anyone else."
"That's the island."
Brady was a step ahead of them. "Kirstin treating you like anyone else too?"
Beck didn't answer fast enough.
"That's what I thought," Brady said.
They reached the parking lot. The morning was warm and getting warmer and the marsh was bright behind the facility. Hudson was at Beck's heel, tongue out, perfectly happy to be outside again.
Morgan's Jeep pulled into the lot. White Wrangler, no top. Addison was in the passenger seat. Morgan parked two spots from Beck's truck and both doors opened at once.
Morgan was already looking at Hudson.
"Oh my God," she said. "Luke. Whose dog?"
"Beck's."
"Does he bite?"
"He's a golden retriever, Morgan."
Morgan was already on her knees. Hudson went straight to her and put both paws on her shoulders and licked her face. Addison came around the Jeep and stopped and looked at the dog and then at Beck and then at the dog again.
"His name is Hudson," Beck said.
"He's coming with us," Morgan said. This was not a question.
Addison was already scratching behind Hudson's ears. Hudson had rolled onto his back on the gravel between them, all four legs in the air, tail sweeping the ground, giving himself over completely to two women he'd known for less than a minute.
"We're just stopping by on the way to the office," Addison said to Luke. She was looking at Hudson. "But we could take him. For the day. If that's okay."
"You're asking me?" Luke said.
"I'm asking him." She nodded at Beck.
Beck looked at his dog. His dog was not looking at him. His dog was looking at Morgan with the pure, uncomplicated devotion of a three-year-old golden retriever who had discovered that the world contained women who would kneel on gravel for him.
"Damn," Beck said.
Brady was leaning against his truck. "He is a guy and you have eyes. Would you pick us or them?"
Morgan stood up. Hudson followed her. She opened the back door of the Jeep and Hudson jumped in and sat down and looked out the window like he'd been riding in this car his whole life.
"We'll bring him back tonight," Addison said.
"Or tomorrow," Morgan said.
"Morgan."
"What? He likes me."
"He likes everyone."
"He likes me more."
Beck watched his dog leave in Morgan's Jeep. Hudson's face was in the back window, ears forward, mouth open, perfectly content to be stolen.
Luke put his hand on Beck's shoulder.
"Welcome to the island," he said.
Brady was already walking back inside. "Six AM tomorrow," he called over his shoulder. "Band work. Don't bring the dog."
Beck went back inside to start his twelve weeks.
The ortho arrived at seven. The imaging took an hour. The conversation after took ten minutes and told him what he already knew. Twelve weeks. Reassess at six. No guarantees.
He was icing his shoulder in the training room when his phone buzzed.
A group text. Luke and Brady's numbers at the top, then several he didn't recognize.
A photo loaded first. Hudson on his back on a wood floor, multiple female hands rubbing his stomach, an empty cardboard box labeled PUP CREAM beside him.
His tail was a blur. His face was the face of a dog who had found exactly where he was supposed to be.
Morgan's text came first: Hudson is holding court at Sailor Jon's if you're looking for him.
Oh my God look at that sweet thing.
Who took a dog to the bar.
They have ice cream for dogs…
Beck stared at the photo. His dog was at Kirstin Green's bar. His dog was on Kirstin Green's floor. Somewhere behind those hands and that empty ice cream box, Kirstin Green was either watching this happen or pretending she wasn't.
His phone buzzed again.
Welcome to the island kid.
Brady. From the other side of the building.
Beck put the ice pack back on his shoulder and looked at the photo one more time.
Hudson had been behind her bar for two hours when Beck walked in.
The dog had arrived with Morgan and Addison just after noon, all three of them coming through the front door like this was a normal thing, like bringing another woman's dog to her place of work was a reasonable midday activity.
Morgan had the leash. Addison had a bag of treats and the pup cream.
Hudson had the face from the photo on Beck's phone, except bigger and warmer and more impossible to say no to in person.
"He needs a place to hang out," Morgan said.
"He has an owner."
"His owner is busy."
"Then take him to Riley/Banks."
"He likes it here better."
Kirstin had looked at Hudson. Hudson had looked at Kirstin. Then he'd walked behind the bar without being invited, circled once, and lay down at her feet.
Morgan's expression could have powered the island for a week.
"I'm going to kill you," Kirstin said.
"Uh huh," Morgan said.
That had been two hours ago. Hudson hadn't moved.
He lay on the cool hardwood behind the bar with his chin on his paws and his tail tapping once every few minutes, a slow metronome that said I'm here and I'm staying and there's nothing you can do about it.
Kirstin had stepped over him eleven times.
She'd poured fourteen drinks. She'd served six lunch orders. She hadn't once asked him to move.
Her father had come out of the kitchen, seen the dog, looked at Kirstin, and gone back into the kitchen without a word.
The front door opened just after two.
Beck. Jeans, v-neck, the curls still damp from a shower. No hat. The five o'clock shadow that hadn't been there Wednesday night. He paused inside the door and his eyes found hers and she was already reaching for a glass.
She set a Dos Equis on the bar before he sat down.
"For me?"
"No, for the other person who just walked in." She shook her head.
"Thanks."
"Don't thank me. Thank the ladies at Riley/Banks."
He took a drink. Set the glass down. Looked around the bar. Thursday afternoon, almost empty. Two guys she didn't know eating fish tacos at a window table. Dale at the far end with a sweet tea. The game on the TV above the bar, muted, nobody watching.
"I'm here for my dog," he said.
"He's busy."
"Doing what?"
"Supervising."
Beck leaned to the side and looked behind the bar. Hudson was on the floor at Kirstin's feet, belly up, one paw twitching in a dream. He was not supervising anything.
"He looks busy," Beck said.
"He had a full morning."
"He had ice cream."
"He earned it."
"By doing what?"
"By being better company than most of the men on this island."
Beck took another drink. The Dos Equis was cold and she'd poured it right and he wasn't going to say that because she already knew.
"I see you learned your lesson," she said.
"Nope."
"Then where's the hat?"
"In the truck."
"So you learned your lesson."
"No," he said. "I learned you liked me better without it."
She picked up a glass and dried it because she needed something in her hands.
"I'm not going out with you, Beck."
"I didn't ask this time."
"Didn't figure a man who drives to an island on a hope and a prayer would give up that easy."
He whistled. One short note. Hudson's head came up. His feet padded across the hardwood and he was at Beck's side, sitting, looking up at him. Beck stood and took the last drink of his beer.
"You know the secret between hitting .300 and .225?"
"No," she said. "But I assume you're going to tell me."
"It's not chasing the first pitch. It's knowing which one to swing at."
He took his wallet out and laid two twenties on the bar.
"I said this one was on Riley/Banks."
"Put it towards my tab."
"So you'll be back."
"It's just the top of the first," he said. "I got a few at bats left in this game."
He turned and walked to the door. Hudson followed at his heel. Beck pushed the door open and the afternoon light came in and for a second he was just a silhouette in the frame, tall and broad, the curls catching the sun, the right shoulder held a little too still.
Then he was gone.
Kirstin stood behind the bar with two twenties and an empty Dos Equis and a golden hair on the floor where Hudson had been sleeping.
She picked up the twenties. She cleared the glass. She wiped the bar.
She did not sweep up the hair.