Chapter 26
Addison texted them both.
Come to the office ASAP.
Kirstin stared at the screen. She was on the couch with the Civil Procedure textbook open in her lap and a highlighter in her hand and Beck's t-shirt on because she hadn't changed yet and the morning had been quiet and good and now Addison was texting ASAP and quiet and good was over.
Her phone rang.
"Hey," she said.
"You see the text?"
"Yeah." She closed the book. "You going to the office?"
"You're not going with me?"
"I'm studying."
"Yeah, of course. Sorry, Kirstin, I didn't?—"
"I know, baby. Let me know what's going on."
"I will."
"Okay. Call me after."
"Will do. Love you."
"Talk soon," she said, and hit the end button.
Her face went hot. She sat on the couch with the phone in her hand and the heat spreading from her cheeks to her ears and the two words she'd just said playing back in her head on a loop.
Talk soon. She'd said talk soon. To the man who'd cried in her kitchen last night and fallen asleep in her lap.
The man who'd said love you like he said everything, easy and true, not checking to see if it landed.
And she'd said talk soon like she was confirming a dentist appointment.
She put the phone down. She picked it up. She put it down again.
She showered. She got dressed. She got in the 4Runner.
She saw the Range Rover in the parking lot. Engine still ticking. He hadn't been here long.
She got out, took a deep breath, and went inside.
The office was the same office she'd stood in three weeks ago when Morgan unrolled the sign proof and Addison set the business cards on the desk.
The same white clapboard walls. The same window facing Harbor Road.
The sign proof was still pinned to the corkboard behind Addison's desk.
Riley, Banks & Green. Her name on the wall of a building she was supposed to walk into every morning for the rest of her career.
Beck was in the chair by the window. His hat was on his knee.
Brady was leaning against the filing cabinet, arms crossed, Diet Mountain Dew untouched on the counter beside him.
Morgan was standing near the door to the back office, her arms folded, her face careful in a way that told Kirstin she already knew what the meeting was about.
Beck looked up as soon as she walked in. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
"Sorry," she said. "Running behind."
Morgan held her eyes a moment longer than she needed to.
"Okay," Addison said. She was at her desk, a notepad in front of her, her pen already moving.
The business cards were still in the box beside the notepad.
Kirstin Green, Esq. The top card was the one Kirstin had held in her hand and run her thumb across and propped against the Civil Procedure textbook.
Addison had put it back in the box. It was just a card in a box now.
"Adam Blake called an hour ago."
Beck shifted in his chair.
"Who's Adam Blake?" Kirstin said.
Beck spoke softer than normal. "GM of the Braves."
The relief came first. Not Boston. Not a thousand miles. The Braves. Atlanta. Three hours. The team she could drive to. The geography that Addison had been talking about since the deck at the workout. Three hours. She could do three hours.
Then the rest of it arrived.
Braves. The team that released him. The team that broke his heart and sent him to the island and put him in Jon's bar on a Wednesday night. The team that threw him away and was now calling back because eight scouts had told them they were wrong.
"What did he say?" Kirstin said.
"He didn't waste words," Addison said.
"He usually doesn't," Beck replied.
"He wants a private workout and a physical. If both check out, he's prepared to offer three years, seventy-five million, no-trade clause, all guaranteed." Addison set her pen down. "To make up for the mistake. His words. I just need the okay to schedule it."
Seventy-five million dollars. Pending a workout and a physical. A workout he'd already passed in front of eight teams and a physical his shoulder would clear. The offer was real. It just needed him to say yes to the next step.
Kirstin watched Beck take it in like someone had told him a score from a game he didn't care about.
Like it was just a number. His face didn't change.
His posture didn't shift. He sat in the chair in the Riley/Banks office and received seventy-five million dollars with patience, with stillness.
He'd been living in these numbers his entire adult life.
She pulled her phone out and angled it under the table. Google. Ethan Beck last contract. The results loaded. She read the numbers and held the gasp inside her chest.
Five years. One hundred million.
She knew he had money. She didn't care about it.
She'd never cared about it. The Range Rover was just a car.
The rental was just a house. The bread he baked at four in the morning cost flour and yeast and his time and she'd never thought about what his time was worth in a baseball sense because she'd never wanted to know.
Now she knew. And knowing it as a fact and knowing it in her body were not the same thing and she wasn't ready for the difference.
The room was still talking. Addison was asking about dates for the workout. Morgan was asking about the physical. Beck was listening, his hands in his lap, his face level.
Kirstin opened her text thread with Beck.
She typed with her thumbs under the table.
The words came out before she could stop them, before the bartender's read could intervene, before the woman who'd said "I do" on the couch could overrule the woman who'd spent six years pouring drinks on a barrier island and calling it a life.
I'm sorry Ethan. I'm so sorry but I'm just an island girl.
She hit send.
She stood up. The chair scraped on the floor. Addison stopped talking. Morgan turned.
"I'm sorry," Kirstin said. She didn't look at Beck. She couldn't look at Beck. "Dad just texted. Bar emergency."
She moved for the door. The tears were already falling and she couldn't hold them and she couldn't keep them out of her voice if she spoke again so she didn't speak.
She made it to the door before she heard his voice.
"Kirstin, wait."
She paused. Her hand was on the knob. He was behind her, standing from the chair, his phone in his hand, the text on his screen.
"I'm sorry, Beck."
Not Ethan. Beck. The distance back in his name.
She heard him take a step toward her. The tears were falling on the back of her hand on the doorknob.
"Please don't follow me," she said. "Please."
She turned the knob and left. The door closed behind her. The parking lot was bright and the air was cool and her 4Runner was next to his Range Rover and she got in and started the engine and pulled out of the lot and she didn't look at the office and she didn't look at his truck and she drove.
Beck stood at the door with his phone in his hand.
I'm sorry Ethan. I'm so sorry but I'm just an island girl.
He read it again. The words didn't change.
His hand was on the doorknob and his body was telling him to go, every muscle, every instinct, the same instinct that closed on a ball in the gap and turned on a fastball inside and reacted before his brain gave permission. Go. Follow her. Find her. Fix this.
"Ethan," Morgan said.
He turned the knob.
"Ethan."
He turned. Morgan was standing beside Addison's desk. Her face was calm and her eyes were not.
"Trust me," she said. "Let her go for today."
"I can't?—"
"Yes you can, sweetheart." Her voice was steady and soft. She'd watched this before. "Just for today."
He took his hand off the door. He stood there.
The chair she'd been sitting in was pushed back from the table at an angle.
The scrape marks were on the floor. Her coffee cup from this morning was on the counter beside Brady's Diet Mountain Dew, still half full, still warm probably.
The sign proof was on the corkboard behind Addison's desk.
Her name on the wall and her chair empty and the room still holding the space where she'd been.
Brady hadn't moved from the filing cabinet. His arms were still crossed. His face was giving nothing. That meant his face was working hard.
"I hate to even bring it up," Addison said. Her voice was quiet. Professional. The Addison who ran meetings when meetings needed running, even when the meeting had just fallen apart. "But Adam's waiting on a call back about scheduling. What do you want me to tell him?"
Beck didn't look at her. He didn't look at anything. He smiled for a moment, small, the kind that meant nothing good, and then something moved across his face and he turned to Morgan and then to Addison.
He kept his hand near the door.
"I've robbed home runs. Hit walk-off homers," he said. The smile came back. Small and sad and real. "None of that compares to the way I feel when she's happy."
He opened the door and walked to his truck.
The parking lot was empty. Her 4Runner was gone. The space beside his Range Rover where she'd parked was just gravel and a oil stain from Addison's Defender. He got in. He sat with his hands on the wheel and the text still open on his phone and the quiet of the cab pressing in from every direction.
He drove to the rental. The island roads were empty.
November. The tourists gone, the oaks bare, the light coming through the branches in a way it didn't when the leaves were up.
He drove past Jon's. Past Kirstin's turnoff.
Past the beach where she'd come to find him the night of the porch and said "you meant it, didn't you? " He kept driving.
Luke was on the steps of the rental when he pulled up.
Beck parked the Range Rover and sat for a moment.
Through the windshield, Luke picked up a rock from the step beside him and threw it at the oak tree across the drive.
The motion was clean. Effortless. The same beautiful arm angle Beck remembered from watching Luke on TV before he'd ever met him, and then seeing it from the same infield.
He got out of the truck.
"You still got a flawless motion," he said.
Luke smiled but it was small. Not the Luke smile. The other one.
"Addison call you?"
"You know she did." Luke picked up another rock. Tossed it up and caught it. "Back home, when I was a kid, I used to throw runners out with rocks on an imaginary field."
"Don't you miss those days?" Beck said. "Before it became a business?"
"That's why I called you, Beck. That's why Brady and I wanted to work with you. It's still a game to you."
"It always will be," he said. "Greatest game there'll ever be."
"I'm sorry, man," Luke said.
Beck laughed. Not the easy one. The tired one.
"It's funny. You ask a thousand fans what they think this conversation would be about and a thousand of them would say the game," Beck said. "Luke Banks and Ethan Beck standing together talking. It would have to be about the game, right."
Luke met his laugh. Quiet. Two men on steps.
"We're just people," Luke said. "Addison and I went through some tough shit, man. I didn't know if we would make it. And I remember thinking, I'd trade it all if I could figure out how to make her believe it was real."
"How did you?"
"I didn't." Luke turned the rock in his hand. "I tried like hell. But there wasn't anything I could do. She had to come to that on her own."
Luke tossed the rock. Hard. Like the memory still hurt.
"I found out it was kinda like the swing," he said. "The harder I swung, well." He glanced at Beck. "You know how that goes."