The Ninth Inning Read online

  THE NINTH INNING

  THE BOYS OF BASEBALL, #1

  by

  J. Sterling

  THE NINTH INNING

  Copyright © 2019 by J. Sterling

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by:

  Jovana Shirley

  Unforeseen Editing

  www.unforeseenediting.com

  Cover Photographer:

  Diana Woito, Anjuzi Fotorafie

  Cover Model:

  Danilo Muller

  Cover Design by:

  Michelle Preast

  www.Michelle-Preast.com

  www.facebook.com/IndieBookCovers

  E-Book Edition, License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and you did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Please do not participate or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-945042-25-6

  Please visit the author’s website

  www.j-sterling.com

  to find out where additional versions might be purchased.

  Other Books by J. Sterling

  Bitter Rivals—an Enemies-to-Lovers Romance

  Dear Heart, I Hate You

  10 Years Later—A Second Chance Romance

  In Dreams—a New Adult, College Romance

  Chance Encounters—a Coming-of-Age Story

  The Game Series:

  The Perfect Game—Book One

  The Game Changer—Book Two

  The Sweetest Game—Book Three

  The Other Game (Dean Carter)—Book Four

  The Playboy Serial:

  Avoiding the Playboy—Episode #1

  Resisting the Playboy—Episode #2

  Wanting the Playboy—Episode #3

  The Celebrity Series:

  Seeing Stars—Madison & Walker

  Breaking Stars—Paige & Tatum

  Losing Stars—Quinn & Ryson

  The Fisher Brothers Series:

  No Bad Days—a New Adult, Second Chance Romance

  Guy Hater—an Emotional Love Story

  Adios Pantalones—a Single Mom Romance

  Happy Ending

  The Boys of Baseball Series:

  The Ninth Inning—a New Adult, Sports Romance

  Behind the Plate—a New Adult, Sports Romance

  Safe at First—a New Adult, Sports Romance

  About the Author

  Jenn Sterling is a Southern California native who loves writing stories from the heart. Every story she tells has pieces of her truth as well as her life experience. She has her bachelor’s degree in radio/TV/film and has worked in the entertainment industry the majority of her life.

  Jenn loves hearing from her readers and can be found online at:

  Blog & Website:

  www.j-sterling.com

  Twitter:

  twitter.com/AuthorJSterling

  Facebook:

  facebook.com/AuthorJSterling

  Instagram:

  instagram.com/AuthorJSterling

  Dedication

  This story is for every girl struggling to figure out if he really likes her or not. For all those late nights spent overanalyzing his every move, word, and expression with your girlfriends. For those girlfriends who might get tired of hearing the same thing over and over again yet still remain steadfast by your side. Basically, this book is about the boys, but it’s for the girls.

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by J. Sterling

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Baseball Parties

  Of Course He’s Here

  Girls Versus Baseball

  I’m Not Yours

  Play Hard, Practice Harder

  Guys in Bands

  Social Media Guru

  Gave His Blessing

  Where Is She?

  Screw Cole

  Get My Head in the Game

  Am I in the Twilight Zone?

  She’s with Him

  Crossed the Line

  What the Hell?

  Going Out of My Mind

  Just One More Chance

  First Date Nerves

  Show Me Off

  Best First Date in the History of First Dates

  Girlfriend

  Getting Lucky

  Road Trips

  Accidents Happen

  A Problem of the Sake Variety

  Blacked Out

  Sleeping with the Enemy

  The Girl with the Red Hair

  The Truth

  The Past Is a Mothereffer

  Fight for Him

  The Draft

  Epilogue

  Thank Yous

  Other Books by J. Sterling

  About the Author

  Baseball Parties

  Cole

  The one rule I had about parties at the house during baseball season was that they happened after we finished a weekend series. So, no parties on Friday or Saturday nights when we had games the next day, but Sunday nights were up for grabs. Which was why the baseball house at Fullton State was currently at capacity.

  Why would anyone listen to me, you might be asking yourself? Because I was the damn captain of the team, and I lived in the house. What I said went. When the other guys lived here and I was gone, they could do whatever they wanted. They could burn down my rules and make new ones for all I cared. But as long as I was a senior and this was my last chance to get drafted and play professional baseball, they would do what I said. Or they could all get the hell out and find a new location to party at.

  No one gave me shit though, to be honest. I’d been on the team since I was a freshman. I’d paid my dues. Nothing had been handed to me, unlike some of the other guys here. Listen, just because we were teammates, it didn’t mean that we were friends. I wouldn’t associate with a handful of these guys off the field if I wasn’t forced to. And that wasn’t me being a dick. I was just being real.

  Baseball players were known for their egos. I understood that. I was one, and I wouldn’t pretend I didn’t have one, but there was a time and place to be cocky. Most of the guys tended to forget that, whipping their proverbial dicks out every chance they got to see who had the bigger one. We never lost sight of the fact that it was a competition out there. A competition to be seen, to get bites from scouts, to beat out your teammates if you had to for a place in the minor leagues. This might have been a team sport, but only one person at a time got selected in the draft.

  “Cole!” someone yelled my name, but I had no idea who.

  Looking around the crowded space, I noticed Chance Carter waving me over from the backyard. I wiggled my bedroom door handle, making sure that it was locked, before tucking the keys in my pocket and heading toward Chance and the keg he stood next to.

  If I thought it would take me only a second to reach him, I was wrong. Girls stopped me, pawing at my chest, congratulating me on our win, all of them practically foaming at the mouth in an
ticipation. It was bizarre, and I should be used to it by now, but a part of me still wasn’t. These girls acted like we had magic keys to a castle only we could see but they were dying to get into. They treated us like gods, something to be envied, vied for, and hopefully won over.

  I’d admit that my dick had loved it at first. The girls had made it so easy for me—an eighteen-year-old freshman who’d had sex one time in high school. Once they found out I was on the baseball team, they swarmed me every chance they got, flirting, pretending like they were interested in me when they were only interested in having a story to tell. I was too naive to put that together at the time—the fact that some girls simply wanted to be able to say they’d fucked me. I’d always thought that girls were all feelings, all the time, but that definitely wasn’t true. Welcome to college.

  My ego had initially loved the newfound attention, craved it even. Until I noticed how distracted pussy made the other players on the team. They stopped focusing solely on the game. My first year, I watched how females caused problems on the field, started fights between teammates, and incited unnecessary drama. I didn’t have the time or desire for any of that, so I’d started keeping most girls at arm’s length. That wasn’t to say that I stopped hooking up completely—because I didn’t. It just wasn’t that often, no matter what other people said.

  If you believed the things said about me on campus, then I wouldn’t even have time to be on the baseball field, what with my apparent nonstop hopping from one chick’s bed to another’s. It was a lie, an exaggeration at best, but what did I care? As long as my game was on fire and the scouts were seeing me play well, my fellow students could say whatever they wanted.

  The truth was that I rarely slept around. I definitely had a few one-night stands under my belt. I was a single guy in college on the hottest baseball team in the country. I used it to my advantage whenever I felt the need. I hadn’t meant to turn into such a stereotypical jock, but it’d happened anyway.

  “Cole, find me later?” a busty fake blonde whispered in my ear as I pushed through the crowd toward the sliding glass door.

  “Not likely,” I shot back without sparing her another glance.

  I knew she was pouting, her injected bottom lip sticking out way too far for her face.

  Why did girls keep doing that shit? Did they really think we liked the way it looked or even cared?

  Ladies, we guys loved that you had a mouth in general. We daydreamed about the things we’d like to do to it or put in it or having it wrapped around our dicks. But we never daydreamed about you making them bigger. If anything, we wished you’d stop. There was enough fake shit in this world; you didn’t need to fill your face with it.

  “What’s up, Carter?” I said, calling Chance by his last name once I finally reached him. I clapped him on the back as he handed me a beer in a red plastic cup.

  Chance was the son of a baseball legend here at Fullton State and our pitching coach, Jack Carter. He was only a sophomore, but he was one of the best catchers I’d ever seen behind the plate, and he was starting this year, after playing second string to a senior last season.

  The best part about Chance was that he never acted like he was owed a damn thing. He worked hard, even as a freshman, and I’d taken to him right away, respecting his work ethic and the way he carried himself. It was rare that someone so young could be so focused and driven, but then again, he’d grown up with a legend, so maybe it was to be expected.

  “Hanging out at the keg isn’t a great way to avoid the ladies, Chance,” I teased, knowing that he had a rule about not dating or hooking up with any girls. Ever. I used to make fun of him for it when he first joined the team, but once my senior year had started, I’d understood all too well what he’d been trying to do.

  Chance shrugged. “Coming to the baseball house isn’t a great way to avoid the ladies,” he said in response, and I laughed.

  You see, most guys had to chase girls in college, but if you were on the baseball team, they came to you. And if you were Chance Carter, you tripled that number.

  “You did it right, man,” I said, tipping back my beer and taking a small sip. I didn’t drink often during the season, and I never got drunk.

  His eyes narrowed. “What’d I do right exactly?”

  “The girls. You said no right from the start. I’m just saying no now. It feels like too little, too late,” I admitted, as if my sex life had led to the fact that I hadn’t gotten drafted at the end of last season. It had nothing to do with it and everything to do with my shitty batting average. I was great in the outfield, fast, with an arm like a rocket, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to have the stats at the plate to go along with it.

  You see, getting drafted was a bit easier if you were a pitcher or a catcher. Teams always clamored for as much pitching as they could get, convinced that the more pitching they had, the better off they’d be. And catchers were a close second. But being a position player, trying to get drafted, was a little tougher. They looked for a strong, powerful bat among your other attributes. But if you sucked at hitting, you weren’t getting picked up. And by the end of last year, I had fallen into a slump I couldn’t get out of.

  Basically, I sucked at hitting.

  But this season would be different. I’d been working on my form, my stance, my hips, and my body alignment and weight distribution at the plate. Chance and I were always at the cages, taking hacks and hitting more than anyone else on the team. I felt like I had the most to lose.

  This was my last year on the field. It was my last chance to impress the baseball scouts enough for them to want to take a chance on me. I had been eligible for the draft after last season ended, but there wasn’t even a single scout sniffing around or talking me up. No one reached out, told me they liked what they saw on the field but to get that batting average up over the summer. Not a damn scout had said a damn thing. And not a single agent had unofficially talked to me, letting me know they wanted to represent me when the time came.

  That was when the panic had officially started to set in. I was on a clock that would eventually stop ticking. My days to further my baseball career were numbered, and I was getting down to the wire. What the hell would I do with my life if I didn’t play baseball? I really didn’t want to follow in my old man’s footsteps. I wondered how long it would take to get over feeling like a failure if that happened.

  It was the one question every athlete asked themselves. Most of us had been playing for so long that the sport was tied up in our identity. It was a part of who we were. If I didn’t have the game and wasn’t a baseball player, who was I exactly? I’d been working toward this dream, this goal for so long that I’d abandoned any other dreams I might have had, not that I could think of any in the moment.

  Baseball was all I saw. And I was not unique in that perspective. Baseball was all most ballplayers saw. We all shared the same dream—to get to the minor leagues and hopefully get into the bigs one day.

  I knew that I could go work for my dad if this dream died, but the last thing that interested me was being an electrician for other people to snub their noses at. Not that it wasn’t a fine profession, and my dad made plenty of money; it just wasn’t for me. But then again, outside of baseball, I wasn’t sure what was.

  “You think your parents ever hung out here at the house?” I asked, knowing it was a fucked up question, but every player at Fullton knew the story of Jack and Cassie Carter. Or at least, part of the story.

  Jack had been the best pitcher the college had ever seen at the time. He had gotten drafted but not before falling for a sassy and mouthy girl he had to work to get. There was more to the story, but the part that had been most drilled into us was the part about the girls who would stop at nothing to hitch a ride to a player heading out of town. We had been warned to be careful, to think with the head on our shoulders and not the one in our pants.

  “Dude. Really?” Chance grimaced, and I laughed. “I don’t want to think about my parents right now.”


  He shuddered, like he was washing away a bad memory, and I laughed more, tossing the rest of my beer into the grass. I wasn’t in the mood to get drunk even though we had just won the series and should be celebrating. The season was in full swing, and I needed to be in my best shape.

  Beer made you round. I’d seen it happen. The last fucking thing I wanted to be was round.

  “Who on the team do you think is most like your dad was?” Another weird question, but I found myself lost a little in time, thinking back to when the great Jack Carter had gone to school here and how it must have felt to be him.

  Chance narrowed his eyes at me, knowing exactly what I was asking. Who was the biggest player? Within a second, he gave a nod of his head toward the door and said, “Mac. Hands down.”

  I followed his gaze and watched as Mac attacked some girl’s face with his own. He had a different girl as often as he wanted, even when we traveled to away games. How the hell he seemed to pull it off with little to no drama was beyond me, but that was Mac for you. A line out the door of girls always wanting more. None of us understood it.

  My smile dropped instantly when I spotted the familiar girl wiggling her way around Mac and his latest conquest. Her face twisted as she shot him a look of disgust before her eyes searched the yard for the keg. Or maybe they were searching for me. No. Of course, she would be looking for the keg and not me. I was probably the last person she wanted to see, but then again, she was at a party for my team, at my house.

  Still, had to be the keg. Christina only drank beer. I remembered her telling me once that hard alcohol made you do stupid things but beer made you lazy. She’d said she preferred being lazy to stupid. That it gave people less things to talk about. The last thing Christina wanted was to be the topic of gossip. I always knew there was more to that story, but she never told me, and I never pushed. I should have pushed.

  The soft blue eyes that I knew by heart locked on to my own, and I sat there like an idiot, watching her. I hadn’t seen her face in seven months, and every part of me realized it all at once. My breath caught in my throat, but I shoved it down, acting like I was unaffected by the way her long, tanned legs stepped carefully through our lopsided yard. Her bare stomach peeked out from underneath her tube top, showcasing her hourglass figure. One that my hands were all too familiar with touching.