Chapter 36 #2
"Before we start," Addison said. Her eyes went to Kirstin. "The banner's down. The business cards are boxed. But nothing's been cancelled and nothing's been closed. We paused. We didn't stop."
Kirstin's jaw tightened. She nodded once.
"Okay," Morgan said. She opened her clipboard. "Beck. Adam Blake called Friday morning. Addison told him the workout needs to be pushed eight weeks minimum. He said fine. He also said the offer stands regardless of the delay."
"Three years, seventy-five million," Addison said. "Pending the physical and the workout. That hasn't changed."
Beck leaned back in his chair. The number sat in the room, taking up more space than it deserved.
He glanced at Kirstin. Her eyes were on Addison. Her face was still. Her hands were still. She wasn't panicking. She wasn't faking calm. She was just there, in the room, hearing the number and sitting with it.
"Jerry called too," Addison said. "Monday."
The room shifted. Beck felt it in Morgan's posture, in Addison's voice dropping half a register.
"Again?" Beck said.
"Again." Addison opened a folder on her desk. "He's making another run. Said he knows you turned him down through Brady but he wants to hear it from you directly before he lets it go."
"Jerry Smith doesn't let things go," Morgan said. "He built a dynasty around Luke. He wants another one."
Beck's eyes went to the folder. Then the window. He was about to speak when Kirstin's voice came in first.
"What's the Braves' timeline?" she said.
The room paused. Not because the question was wrong. Because it was right. Because it was the exact question that needed asking and she'd asked it before anyone else in the room had gotten there.
Addison turned to her. "Adam said he'd hold the offer through spring training. But he wants the workout done by mid-January if possible."
"And when does the hand clear?"
"Six weeks from the fracture puts us at late January," Beck said. "Imaging at four weeks. If it's clean, light throwing at five. Full activity at six."
"So the workout is early February at the earliest," Kirstin said. "Which means if Jerry wants a conversation, it needs to happen before Beck commits to the Braves timeline. Not after. You don't let Boston set the pace. You let Atlanta's timeline close the window."
Morgan turned to Addison. Addison met her eyes. The exchange lasted two seconds and held an entire conversation.
"She's right," Addison said.
"How do you know that?" Morgan said. To Kirstin. Not challenging. Genuinely asking.
Kirstin reached into the bag at her feet. She pulled out a binder. Thick. Tabbed. More than a weekend's worth of thinking. She set it on the table and opened it to a section near the middle.
"Beck's last contract with the Braves was a five-year deal signed when he was twenty-five," she said.
"It had a limited no-trade clause, a vesting option that triggered at five hundred plate appearances, and a club option for a sixth year that the Braves declined when they released him.
" She turned a page. "The release itself was procedurally clean but the timing was aggressive.
They moved before the option vested, which means they saved themselves fourteen million dollars by cutting him six weeks early. "
The room was very quiet.
"Adam Blake made that call," she continued.
"Same GM. Same front office. And now he's offering three years, seventy-five, above market for a player coming off a major injury with no guaranteed return timeline.
He said it himself. 'To make up for the mistake.
' A GM who's already admitted he was wrong has more invested in making this deal work than someone shopping. That's leverage."
She closed the binder. Her chin came up.
Beck was staring at her. Morgan was staring at her. Addison had stopped moving entirely.
"Where is this coming from?" Addison said. Quiet. Her actual voice, stripped of the professional register.
Kirstin's hands went flat on the binder. She held Addison's eyes.
"I studied his contract," she said. "And sports contract law. While I was in Jacksonville."
The sentence landed and kept landing. Beck watched it arrive in each of them separately. Morgan's eyebrows. Addison's mouth. The understanding spreading through the room like light through a window, reaching every corner at its own pace.
While she was in Jacksonville. While she was at April's. While she was supposedly letting go. While the texts went unanswered and a month of silence stretched between them, this woman had been reading his contract.
She hadn't been leaving. She'd been preparing to come back.
"Kirstin," Morgan said. She put her clipboard down. "That's the best thing anyone's said in this room in six months."
Kirstin's eyes filled. She blinked it back. She blinked it back hard and fast and the binder was under her hands and she kept her hands on it because the binder was the work and the work was the proof and if she let go of it she was going to lose the composure she'd walked in with.
"I'm not a quitter," she said. Her voice held. Barely. "I quit the first time and it cost me everything. I'm not doing it again."
Nobody spoke for a moment. Then Beck did.
"The strategy's right," he said. "But we don't need it." He turned to Kirstin, then Addison. "Atlanta or nothing."
Addison's pen stopped. "Beck, she just laid out a clean play to use Jerry as?—"
"I know what she laid out. It's smart. It's the right move if I wanted to play two teams against each other." He leaned forward. "I don't."
Morgan leaned forward. "Beck, you should at least hear?—"
"Atlanta or nothing," he said. "And I'll tell you why.
" He turned to the room but his eyes went to Kirstin.
"Atlanta's three hours from this island.
I play eighty-one games at home and I fly out for the road trips and I come back.
Off-seasons are here. Spring training is in Florida, which is closer than Boston.
We keep the life." He paused. "Boston is a thousand miles away.
I've done a thousand miles from the people I care about and I'm not doing it again. "
The room was quiet. Four people hearing a man say what he wanted and meaning it.
Kirstin's hand moved under the table. He felt her fingers find his knee. Light. Brief. Then gone.
"I'll call Jerry," Addison said. She closed the folder. "I'll make it clean."
"Tell him I said thank you," Beck said. "And tell him I said Luke was right about this island."
Addison stood up. She walked around the desk. She put her hand on Kirstin's shoulder.
"The banner goes back up," Addison said. "Today."
Beck reached under the table with his left hand. He found Kirstin's knee. He put his hand on it. She put her hand over his. Neither of them turned to the other. Neither of them needed to.
"Okay," Addison said. She sat back down. She opened her laptop. "Here's what we're going to do. Kirstin, walk me through the leverage on the Atlanta offer. Start with the vesting option."
Kirstin opened the binder. She turned to the first tab.
Her voice was steady now, the tears packed away, the composure rebuilt from the inside out.
She started talking and what came out was organized and precise and thorough.
A month in her mother's house. Contract law.
Sports arbitration. The man she loved deserved someone who showed up prepared.
Beck sat in his chair with his fractured right hand resting on the table and his left on her knee and he listened to three women build a plan for the rest of his life.