Chapter 39
The conversation happened in the kitchen the morning before they left.
Beck was at the counter making eggs. His right hand cracked the shell clean and she watched the fingers close around the next egg and crack that one too.
No hesitation. No adjustment. The hand was healed.
The imaging at four weeks had been clean.
The doctor at six weeks had cleared him. Full activity. No restrictions.
But she watched him favor it. Small things. Opening jars with his left hand when he used to use his right. Catching himself gripping the steering wheel too tight and loosening his fingers. The fracture was healed. The memory of the fracture was not.
"Are you ready?" she said.
He didn't turn from the stove. "Ready."
"Addison can get it pushed back a week if you need it."
"I don't need it."
"Tell me the truth, Ethan," she said. "I know you and I watch you favor the hand."
He turned. The spatula in his left hand. His right hand at his side, open, the knuckles smooth now, the purple long gone, the skin back to its normal color.
"The hand is fine," he said. "The hand's been fine for two weeks. I grip a bat every day at the facility and it holds."
"Then why do you favor it?"
He was quiet for a second. Then he set the spatula down.
"Because the last time I closed that fist I almost lost everything," he said. "The hand remembers. The hand will stop remembering when I give it something better to remember."
She crossed the kitchen. She took his right hand and held it. Turned it over. The knuckles were smooth. The grip was strong. She pressed her palm against his and laced her fingers through and squeezed.
"Give it something better," she said.
They drove to Atlanta on a Tuesday morning. Two cars. Beck and Kirstin in the Range Rover. Luke, Addison, Morgan, and Brady in Luke's Land Cruiser.
Truist Park was empty when they arrived. February. No season, no crowd, no noise. Just the field and the seats and the Georgia sky and a groundscrew running the infield dirt. An empty ballpark isn't quiet. It's waiting.
Adam Blake met them at the entrance. Mid-forties, graying at the temples. He shook Beck's hand first. Then Addison's.
"Ms. Banks," he said. "We've spoken a lot on the phone. Nice to finally meet you."
"Mr. Blake," Addison said. "Likewise."
He walked them through the concourse to the clubhouse level. Kirstin walked beside Beck. His hand was in hers. His pulse was steady against her wrist.
The physical was first.
They sat in a hallway while Beck went through the door. Kirstin sat beside Morgan. Addison was across the hall with her laptop open, typing. An email, a contract clause, a grocery list. It didn't matter. The typing was Addison's version of pacing.
Luke and Brady stood at the end of the hall.
Luke was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, still, conserving energy because the game was out of his hands.
Brady was beside him. His hands were empty.
No clipboard. No notebook. Brady always had something in his hands at the facility.
Something to write on, something to track, something to hold while he watched a player work.
Here, in this hallway, his hands had nothing to do.
He put them in his pockets. He took them out.
He crossed his arms. He uncrossed them. The man who wrote everything down had nothing to write and nowhere to put the energy that usually went into the writing.
The shoulder was the fear. The surgery, the rehab, the months at the facility. If the shoulder failed, the workout didn't matter. The contract didn't matter.
Morgan reached over and took Kirstin's hand. She didn't say anything. She just held it. Kirstin held back. Two women sitting in a hallway in a city they didn't live in, waiting for a door to open.
Forty minutes.
The door opened. Beck came out. He was rolling his right shoulder in a slow circle, the post-exam habit of an athlete whose body had just been tested.
He looked at Kirstin.
He nodded.
Morgan's grip tightened on her hand. Addison closed her laptop. Luke didn't move. Brady didn't move. They'd done the work. They knew.
"Shoulder's clean," Beck said. "Full range, full strength." He opened and closed his right hand twice. "Hand's clear."
"Both?" Addison said.
"Both."
He changed. The clubhouse was through a set of double doors and he went through them and came back in white pants and a navy v-neck with the Braves script across the chest. Number nine.
Kirstin had seen Beck in workout clothes at the facility.
She'd seen him in jeans and t-shirts and the Braves shirt she'd stolen and worn to bed.
She had never seen him in a uniform. The jersey changed his shoulders.
It changed how he stood. He came through the double doors and for a half second she didn't see her fiancé.
She saw a major league ballplayer, and the distance between those two things, which she had spent months trying to close, disappeared.
They stopped in front of the clubhouse door that led to the field.
Beck turned around and he was smiling. He went to Addison first.
"Best choice I ever made."
She hugged him. "Go do what you do, superstar."
Then Morgan. He didn't have words. He just embraced her. Morgan cried but pretended she didn't cry. She stepped back and said four words.
"Not a word, Brady."
Then Luke. A quick handshake. Eye contact. The recognition that passes between two athletes who understand what the other has given to get here.
Then Brady.
"You're the best in the business," Beck said.
Brady held the handshake. "It's been a privilege."
The men followed the women's lead and left him alone with Kirstin.
He took his hat off and ran his hand through his curls.
"You're gonna use that move til the day you die, aren't you?"
"I'm gonna use whatever keeps you close by."
She put her head on his chest. "You got this, baby."
"Thanks for being here for me." He pulled back and kissed her, quick. "Whatever happens, I just want to walk off the field and see you first."
"You will."
They watched from the first base dugout. Adam Blake and his staff were across the diamond in the third base dugout. Close enough to evaluate. Far enough to let the player work.
Beck walked out of the clubhouse tunnel and onto the field and the air changed beside her. Morgan's hand gripped her arm. Luke crossed his arms. Brady leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his empty hands clasped between them.
Beck started with throwing. Center field. Long tosses across the outfield grass, his arm loose, the ball carrying on a line. The right arm. The throwing arm.
The first throw was a lob. Easy, forty feet.
Nothing. The second was longer, sixty feet, and the ball came out clean.
The third was a real throw, ninety feet, and Kirstin watched his hand open on the release and for a half second his fingers stayed wide after the ball left, spread open, and she didn't know if it was follow-through or if the hand was checking itself.
Her breath stopped. Beside her, Brady sat up straighter.
The fourth throw was a hundred feet and the ball came out on a line and his fingers closed naturally after the release and the hand was fine.
It was fine. It had always been fine. The fracture was three months ago and the bone was healed and the hand was doing what hands do when they've been throwing baseballs since childhood.
Brady leaned back. Kirstin breathed.
Then batting practice.
A coach threw from behind an L-screen on the mound. Beck stepped in from the left side, switch-hitter's habit, and took two pitches to time the speed. The third pitch, he swung.
The sound.
She'd heard him hit at the facility. The crack of a bat in the cage, the hollow ring of a ball off aluminum in the indoor space.
This was different. This was a major league ballpark and a wooden bat and the sound was sharp and deep and it traveled through the empty stadium and came back off the upper deck and she understood why fifty thousand people paid to hear it.
Morgan's hand tightened on her arm.
The ball traveled on a line to the gap in left-center and kept going until it hit the warning track and rolled to the wall.
Beck reset. The coach threw again. Another swing, another crack, another ball splitting the outfield.
He hit fifteen from the left side, each one harder than the last, the swing getting looser, the bat speed building, the confidence coming back into his body one repetition at a time.
Then he crossed the plate and hit fifteen from the right. Clean swings, level path, the barrel meeting the ball in the same spot every time.
The last ball from the right side cleared the wall in center. Four hundred feet, easy. Across the diamond, Adam Blake turned to his assistant.
Beck put the bat on his shoulder and walked toward the dugout. He pulled his hat off. He pushed his curls back. He put the hat back on.
Then he looked up and his eyes came to the first base dugout and landed on her.
She was already standing.
The contract was signed in a conference room on the club level. Three years. Seventy-five million dollars.
Addison sat beside Beck. Kirstin sat beside Addison. The binder was on the table. Adam Blake slid the contract across. Beck picked up the pen. He looked at Addison, who nodded. He looked at Kirstin, who held his eyes.
He signed with his right hand.
They walked out of Truist Park into the February sun. Six people on a sidewalk in Atlanta.
Beck was beside her, his hand in hers. The uniform was gone, replaced by jeans and the jacket he'd driven to the island in. His hat. His curls. His shoulders loose for the first time in months.
Luke and Addison were ahead of them. Morgan and Brady behind.
Beck turned and looked at her. His face did what it always did.