Chapter 30
He couldn't sleep.
The rental was dark. Hudson was on the floor beside the bed, breathing slow, his chin on his paws.
The ceiling fan turned above him and Beck watched the blades go around and around and the phone call played in his head on a loop.
Her voice. The laugh that wasn't a laugh.
You said you'd stay. The line going dead.
He picked up the phone.
Answer the phone please.
He watched the screen. The minutes passed. Hudson shifted on the floor. The ceiling fan turned.
The reply came an hour later.
Sorry. Busy.
His thumbs moved before his brain caught up.
After what we had you don't have time for me?
The reply was fast this time.
No Ethan I don't. I've got a bar exam coming up and all you're gonna do is tell me it's my fault.
What the hell. I never said anything was your fault.
Right. Sorry you just lied about staying.
He sat up. Hudson raised his head.
I never left! You left!
The screen was bright in the dark room. His hands were shaking. Hudson was watching him from the floor with his ears forward and his eyes wide and Beck registered it somewhere far away but couldn't stop.
What does it matter if I left. It was just a matter of time before you did.
He stared at her words. Read them twice. Read them a third time. The ceiling fan turned. Hudson put his chin back on his paws.
He typed the worst thing he could have typed.
What are you so scared of?
The response was immediate.
Go to hell asshole.
He put the phone face down on the nightstand. He lay back. The ceiling fan turned. The clock said 1:03. Hudson's breathing was slow and steady on the floor beside him, the only sound in the house.
He didn't sleep.
At 4:40 he got up. He pulled on shorts and a t-shirt and laced his shoes in the dark. Hudson lifted his head and watched him from the floor. Beck put his hand on the dog's neck.
"Go back to sleep, buddy."
He drove to the facility with the windows down and the air cold and the island dark around him.
He was at the facility by five.
The sun wasn't up. The marsh was black. The parking lot was empty and the building was locked and he used the key Brady had given him in September and turned on the lights in the cage and the weight room and left everything else dark.
He stretched. He ran. He hit off the tee for forty-five minutes, right-handed and left-handed, working the hands, keeping the barrel through the zone, the swing mechanics he'd been drilling since he was fifteen years old. The sound of the bat on the ball echoed through the empty building.
By seven he was in the weight room. Lower body. Core. Shoulder stability work on the right side, careful, controlled, the exercises the trainer in Atlanta had prescribed before the release and he'd kept doing because the body was the one thing he could control.
Brady arrived at eight. He came through the back door with his Diet Mountain Dew and his clipboard and stopped in the doorway of the weight room.
"How long you been here?"
"A while."
"Define a while."
"Five."
Brady leaned against the doorframe. He didn't say anything. He watched Beck finish a set of single-leg squats and move to the pull-up bar.
"You eat this morning?"
"I'll eat after."
"After what?"
"After you throw me BP."
Brady sipped his Diet Mountain Dew. He looked at the clipboard. He looked at Beck.
"Give me twenty minutes," he said.
They went to the cage. Brady threw for an hour.
Fastballs, changeups, sliders. Beck hit from both sides, switch-hitting, the bat moving through the zone with precision drilled since childhood.
The exit velocity was up. The contact was clean.
The ball jumped off the barrel and hit the back of the cage with a sound that Brady recognized because he'd spent a decade listening for it in minor league facilities across the country.
This was a hitter who was back.
Luke arrived at nine. He threw the next hour. Harder than Brady, faster, the arm still live at thirty-seven even though he'd never admit it. Beck hit everything. Line drives, ground balls pulled through the right side, opposite-field doubles that would have split the gap in any park in the majors.
By ten, Luke was done.
"I'm cooked," Luke said. He set the ball down and flexed his arm. "That's all I've got."
Beck wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. His shirt was soaked through. He'd been going for five hours. He turned to Brady.
"Let's go."
Brady and Luke looked at each other.
"Beck," Brady said. "I already threw you an hour."
"Let's go."
Brady threw him another thirty minutes. Luke sat on the bench behind the cage and watched. When Brady finally came off the mound, Beck put the bat down and went to the outfield and ran sprints until his legs were shaking and then he ran more.
This was day ten.
Ten straight days of five a.m. arrivals and five-hour workouts and a body responding to pressure it was built for. He'd dropped four pounds. His face was leaner. The definition in his arms and shoulders was sharper, carved, the body of someone running from something and calling it preparation.
He didn't go to Jon's anymore. He didn't sit on the deck at the rental and watch the marsh. He didn't cook. He ate for fuel. Protein, rice, vegetables, the same meal three times a day, the meal plan he'd followed in the minors when he was twenty-two and trying to make the show for the first time.
Her texts came. He read them.
I just wanted to say hi. Hope you're doing well.
He read it eleven times. He typed two words back. I miss you. Then he put the phone in the drawer.
After the sprints on day ten, Brady came to the bench behind the cage. Beck was sitting with a towel over his head and a bottle of water he hadn't opened.
Luke came out of the building and sat beside him.
"Beck," Brady said. "You can slow down."
"No, I can't, Brady." He pulled the towel off his head. His eyes were clear and hard and focused in a way that Brady hadn't seen before, not in four months on this island. "This is what forty bombs a year looks like."
"Beck," Luke said. "She'll be back."
Beck stood. He threw the towel on the bench.
"This ain't about a fucking girl," he said. "This is about playing at an elite level." His eyes locked on Luke's. "You of all people understand that."
Luke held the look. He didn't flinch. He didn't argue. He'd heard this before. Not from Beck. From himself, fifteen years ago, standing in a cage in Fort Myers at five in the morning trying to hit his way past a heartbreak he wouldn't name. He recognized it like his own handwriting.
Brady looked at Luke. Luke looked at Brady. Neither of them spoke.
Beck picked up his bat. He walked back to the cage.
"Throw me more," he said.
The rental was dark when he got home.
He'd stayed at the facility until six. After Brady and Luke left he'd run the field alone, sprints along the warning track, the outfield grass under his feet, the sun going down behind the marsh. He ran until his legs were done and then he stretched in the empty cage and drove home.
Hudson met him at the door. Tail going. The faithful greeting of a dog who didn't care how long the day had been or how many swings the man had taken.
Beck fed him. He ate his own meal standing at the counter. Chicken, rice, broccoli. The same plate he'd eaten for ten days. He washed the dish. He wiped the counter. He stood in the kitchen and the house was quiet and the quiet was the thing he couldn't outrun no matter how many sprints he put in.
His phone. He'd left it somewhere this morning. He'd been rushing out at four-forty-five, half-dressed, grabbing his keys and his bag, and he'd set the phone down and couldn't remember where.
He checked the table. The couch cushions. The bathroom. The nightstand. He came back to the kitchen and saw it on the counter, half-buried under a stack of mail he hadn't touched in a week. He pulled the phone out and a folded piece of paper slid from the stack and landed on the floor.
He picked it up. The handwriting hit him before the words did because he knew her handwriting and seeing it was different from seeing her name on a screen.
If you're good today I'll come see you tonight
She'd drawn the hearts by hand. Small. Crooked. The kind of hearts a woman draws when she's being silly and doesn't care if they're perfect.
He held the note. He read it again. The kitchen was quiet.
Hudson was eating in the corner, the tags jingling against the bowl.
The house smelled like chicken and rice and nothing else because he'd stopped cooking real food weeks ago and the kitchen that used to smell like bread and pasta and whatever he'd made for her smelled like fuel now.
He felt himself soften. The discipline. The schedule. The five a.m. starts and the five-hour sessions and the protein and the sprints. All of it loosened for a second and underneath it was just a man holding a note from a woman who used to draw hearts on paper and leave them where he'd find them.
Then the softness left. It left fast and what replaced it was something hot and sharp and he didn't think about what he did next. He just did it.
The phone hit the counter and the screen shattered. The sound was loud and wrong and it broke the silence of the house in a way that couldn't be taken back.
Hudson yelped. He scrambled backward from his bowl and his nails scraped the tile and he pressed himself against the far wall with his ears flat and his eyes wide.
Beck stared at the dog. The dog stared at him.
In four months he had never raised his voice at Hudson. Never slammed a door. Never made a sound that put fear in those eyes. Hudson had slept at his feet and ridden in his truck and run the beach beside him and never once flinched.
Hudson was flinching now.
Beck sat on the floor. He put his back against the cabinet and his head in his hands and he sat there. The shattered phone on the counter. The note on the floor where he'd dropped it. The kitchen dark except for the light over the stove.
Hudson didn't move for a long time. Then he did. Slow. One step, then another, crossing the tile with his belly low, not sure if it was safe but coming anyway because the person on the floor was his person and his person was hurting.
He put his head in Beck's lap.
Beck put his hand on Hudson's neck. He held him there. The dog's breathing was warm against his leg.
"I miss her, buddy," he said.