Chapter 22 #2
The noise builds in layers—the high-pitched squeal of megaphones announcing players, the crackle of a mic from the radio tent, the hum of a hundred small conversations. Cameras click. Kids yell to their favorite players. Sponsor reps nervously bounce on the balls of their feet.
I finish signing the last ball in my stack and stand, stretching my shoulders like I need to loosen up when I’m really just looking for an opening.
She looks up at the same moment I do, and a spark of awareness jumps between us. I messed up. We both know it. I raise a brow in question, and she tilts her head toward the chaos near the sponsor tent.
I get up when Logan’s preoccupied, weaving through the crowd easily. The second the flap closes behind me, I turn to find her already facing me, arms crossed, nails rapping against her iPad.
“I’m sorry,” I say before she can speak. “The weight room. That was stupid.”
She studies me for a moment. The armor’s up, but there’s something behind it. “Logan saw.”
“I know.”
“Joe saw, Lucas. Your future manager.”
“I know.”
“What were you thinking?”
“Honestly?” I take a breath. “Doug told me you both think I’m holding back, and I walked in and saw you, and something short-circuited.” I stop. “It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
Something shifts in her expression—not quite surprise, but close. Her arms drop slightly.
“Was it good news, at least?” she asks. “The rest of what Doug said?”
“Yeah. It was good news. He thinks I have starter stuff.”
“You do.” She exhales, and the armor comes down another inch. “And for the record—telling Doug you were holding back was my job. That’s all it was.”
“I know,” I say. And then, because I can’t help it: “Were you talking about baseball?”
She goes very still.
“Quinn.”
“Don’t,” she says quietly. Not angry. Just careful.
“I brought you coffee every day for almost a year,” I say. “I’m not sure that qualifies as holding back.”
Something moves across her face. “You did,” she says. “And it was”—she pauses, choosing the word—“sweet. Safe, but sweet.”
“I asked you out. Constantly.”
“In groups,” she says. “Where flirting was easy.” She tilts her head, her voice staying even, not cruel, just honest. “Did you ever once sit down with me, just the two of us, and actually talk? Not banter. Not coffee in passing. A real conversation where rejection was a real possibility, not part of the game?”
My mouth opens. Closes.
“You kept doing the only thing you knew how to do,” she says. “And I let you, because I have a problem assuming people actually care. That’s on me.”
“It’s not—” I start.
“But I think you have a problem letting yourself go after something with your whole heart.” She holds my gaze. “On the mound or off it.”
The tent is small and warm, and the noise outside feels very far away.
She’s not wrong.
I know she’s not wrong because I can feel it—the same calculation I make on the mound, the same careful management of what I give and what I keep in reserve, running like a current underneath every coffee I ever handed her, every joke I made when I should have said something real.
“You’re right,” I say. It comes out rougher than I intend.
She blinks, like she wasn’t expecting that.
“You’re right,” I say again, steadier this time.
“I don’t know how to go all in without a guarantee it’s not going to blow up my whole life.
I’m terrified of caring that much about something that could get taken away.
” I look at her, how open her expression is, like she’s trying to understand.
“That’s not an excuse. But I know the price of caring. It’s hard for me.”
For a long moment she doesn’t say anything.
Then she steps closer.
“For what it’s worth,” she says quietly, “I didn’t hate the spin. I just wish we could do that openly.”
She says it to my collarbone, not my face. And she doesn’t follow it with anything—no joke, no flirty smirk to give herself an out.
It’s her dropping her armor now that mine’s down.
“Come here, Quinn,” I say in a low voice, pulling her into my space until the scent of her lavender-and-sunscreen hair is all I can breathe in.
Her forehead rests in the crook of my neck like she’s been holding herself up all day and finally found something to lean on.
My chin rests on the top of her head. We stay like that for a moment while the noise of the activation bleeds through the tent walls around us.
This is the part I wish I could explain to Logan: the way she fits against me like the space was carved for her, like I’m not whole when she’s not there.
She tilts her head up.
Her eyes find mine, and whatever was soft in them shifts into something else entirely.
“We’ve got about ninety seconds before someone comes looking,” she says.
“I know,” I say, and I move one hand from her back and reach up to fix the collar of her polo, where it’s pulled out of shape from a long day of work.
Her eyes darken as my knuckles graze the warm skin of her collarbone slowly, like I’m trying to leave my mark.
“Your collar is tucked. We can’t have Scottie Quinn looking messy for the cameras, can we? ”
Her breath hitches, and when her knees go loose for a second, I catch her and hold her up, pressing her closer.
“Very kind of you,” she says breathlessly.
“I like to think so,” I whisper.
The air between us is electric, a storm ready to break. I lean in, my nose grazing hers, our foreheads nearly touching, the need to kiss her swelling in me like a dam about to burst.
No one is watching.
And that’s when a roar explodes outside the tent.
“Jake!” someone screams.
The spell breaks like glass. Scottie’s eyes go wide with a flash of pure panic. She shoves back from me and gives me a look that’s half apology, half order. “Go! Now!”
I slip out of the tent, blood rushing in my ears, and weave through the crowd back to the signing table, dropping to my seat as my world tilts.
“Where were you?” Logan asks, looking up from signing.
“Sharpie emergency,” I say. A kid thrusts something in front of my face, and I sign it without registering what it is. When I pass it back, I peer over the kids’ heads.
And that’s when I spot Jake.
He steps over the rope without even looking at it, moving past fans like they’re ants at a picnic.
Scottie has emerged from the tent, and she’s looking at her clipboard, ready to be “surprised.”
And all I get to do is watch.