The Ninth Inning Read online

  “I can’t think about that right now. I have to focus one hundred percent on the game. If she’s the one girl in the world I’m supposed to be with, then we’ll end up together, right?” It was some hokey, fate-like bullshit, but it was what I had to tell myself to move on and let go.

  You always thought you had more chances with the sport you loved, more time to get better or to have a great season to prove them all wrong, but you didn’t. Time ran out for each one of us, and my time was currently sprinting toward the finish line.

  “I want to argue with you, but look at me”—he waved an arm around us in a circle—“no girls in sight.”

  That was why I had chosen to talk to Chance about this topic—because he not only understood it, but he also lived it. By choice.

  “You plan on avoiding girls your whole life?”

  He gave me a one-armed shrug. “You try growing up with Jack and Cassie Carter and tell me how excited you would be to meet girls after hearing all their horror stories.”

  “Your mom’s hot as fuck,” I said before thinking twice, and his face twisted.

  “Don’t say that shit.” He bristled.

  “I wasn’t finished,” I teased, but he interrupted what I was about to say next and stopped me cold.

  “Speaking of moms,” he started, and I felt my entire body tighten, “you never talk about yours.”

  “ ’Cause she’s not around. Nothing to say.”

  Chance’s expression shifted. “Is she dead?” he asked point-blank, and a guttural laugh escaped from somewhere deep within me.

  “No, man. She’s not dead. My parents split up when I was ten. She met some rich guy online and moved across the country to be with him. She told me that a boy needs his father and took off. I used to see her a couple of times a year, but now, I don’t see her at all.”

  It had hurt so bad at first, when my mom bailed. I remembered crying myself to sleep at night for weeks, wanting her to come back home. After a while, I’d learned to live without her, but it was to my own detriment. I knew that I was dysfunctional when it came to relationships since I’d never had a healthy one to learn and grow from. I had no idea how to do it right.

  When I looked back, it wasn’t that my mom was even all that maternal in the first place, but she was still the only mom I’d ever known. A boy might need their dad, but we needed our moms too.

  “And your dad never remarried or anything?”

  I shook my head once. “Nah. I think she hurt him real bad when she left, but he never talked to me about it. I mean, I was a ten-year-old kid; of course, he wasn’t going to spill his guts to me. But soon after she was gone, he started burying himself in work. I couldn’t even be pissed because he started making a lot of money, and I never wanted for anything again.”

  The second I said those words, I realized how familiar the concept was. I tended to do the same thing when I wanted to avoid overthinking about shit—buried myself in baseball and girls I had no feelings for.

  “And the most ironic part was that my mom had apparently wanted more from my dad. Like, she wanted him to be more driven, more ambitious. Basically, she wanted him to have more money. And the second she left, that’s exactly what he did.”

  “Karma?” Chance asked.

  “Or something like it,” I said with a shrug.

  “Did you guys stay in the same house?”

  “Yeah. Can you believe that?” I asked, my tone a little incredulous. “Once I was older and realized what had happened between them, I tried to get my dad to sell. I told him we needed to move out of the memories and into someplace new, but he always said no and shut me down. End of discussion,” I said, swiping my hand through the air.

  Chance stayed silent, and I had no idea what he was thinking. My mind spun as I started thinking about why my dad would want to stay in a place that caused him pain. We never talked about it.

  “Your dad’s an electrician, right? I think I heard you say that once to Mac or someone.”

  “Yeah,” I answered before subconsciously bracing myself for what might come next even though I should have known better. Chance wasn’t the kind of guy who would make fun of someone’s occupation.

  Even though everyone else always seemed to talk shit or look down on blue-collar workers, I never truly understood why. Those were the jobs that were always needed, that people needed other people to handle for them. Not to mention the fact that my dad had brought in well over six figures every year since he started his own company, and we had a good life.

  “How does he feel about baseball as a career? I mean, does he want you to go pro, or does he want you to take over the business?”

  Chance and I were talking more about our family dynamics than we ever had before. Maybe it was the fact that Christina had come in and ripped open a part of my heart I’d thought was closed, or maybe it was a full moon or high tide or some shit. Who the hell knew?

  “My dad,” I started to say before pausing.

  My dad, as loyal and supportive as he was, always told me to make sure I had a backup plan. A plan B. The one thing he had done was pound me with stats about the number of baseball players in the country versus the percentage of them who actually got drafted into the minor leagues.

  He acted as if I hadn’t already known this information. Every ballplayer knew that the reality of going pro was slim, but that never stopped us. We didn’t care if there was a one in a million chance of getting to play professional baseball; we still would go for it. That was the thing about dreams—you refused to give up on them, even when other people told you they couldn’t come true.

  “Um, he loves watching me play, but he thinks it’s a pipe dream. He never says those actual words, but I can tell by the other things he says.”

  “That sucks.” Chance grimaced.

  “Yeah. Well, we all can’t have Jack Carter for a father,” I said, and Chance stood there, looking at me, clearly unsure of what to say.

  “Having him for a dad hasn’t sucked,” he said quietly.

  “Now, back to what I was saying about your mom before you interrupted me like a dickhead.” A cautious grin appeared on his face, and I continued, “Your parents met here. At this school.” I pointed down at the grass at our feet. “And here we are, on a girl strike.”

  “What the hell is your point?”

  I looked around the yard again before searching the house for her. Christina stood inside there with her friends.

  “I don’t know. We can’t all be Mac, I guess,” I said as we both saw him still attached to some random chick’s face.

  Chance exhaled a dramatic and loud breath. “Go talk to her already. You guys clearly have unfinished business. So, go figure out exactly what it is.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. It was like I had been waiting for his permission or some shit ... someone to tell me it was okay to want her.

  I tossed my cup to the ground and stormed inside, determination written all over my face even though my insides were a nervous wreck.

  I’m Not Yours

  Christina

  I walked into the house and toward my girlfriends, a cold beer in my hand as I stopped and glanced around.

  Lauren leaned close, whispering in my ear, “Pass or fail?” and I knew she was talking about her stupid Cole Anders test.

  “Hard fail,” I said before taking a large gulp of the cheap beer.

  She pressed her lips together in a straight line before declaring, “Dammit. I really thought you’d pass.”

  Pulling the crisp twenty from her pocket, she shoved it down my shirt and into my bra. I left it there.

  “You and me both,” I said but knew it was a lie. “Can we go now?”

  Lauren laughed like I had said the funniest thing in the world. “No. We’ll get you over Cole by hooking you up with one of his friends.”

  “I don’t think it works like that.” I took a stuttering step backward, suddenly uncomfortable. The last thing I wanted was to betray Cole by getting toge
ther with one of his friends.

  “Come on, Chris.” Lauren leaned toward me. “It will make him seethe with jealousy. He won’t be able to handle it.”

  She sounded like she knew what she was talking about, but that was impossible. Cole had said he didn’t want me, so he wouldn’t be jealous.

  “He doesn’t want me, remember? In order to make him jealous, he’d have to care in the first place.”

  I watched her look around before her expression changed into surprise. “Oh, he cares all right. And he’s about to show you just how much.”

  What? I grew nervous as the sound of heavy footsteps echoed behind me, and Lauren grinned wickedly before moving away.

  “Why are you here?” His voice was a masculine whisper in my ear. It wasn’t kind, and I hated the way my body reacted to his nearness.

  He wasn’t even being nice, and here I was, chilled to the bone with his presence and the smell of him.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I turned around to face him, his blue eyes mesmerizing me like always. “What?” I asked with as much confidence as I could muster.

  “Why are you here, Christina? Did you come to see me?”

  God, he is arrogant.

  “Get over yourself.” I tried to sound tough but wondered if the lie was written all over my face.

  “You did. You came to see me,” he said, confident and cocky.

  Taking a sip of my beer, I decided to tell him the truth. “Fine. I did. I came to see how it would feel to see you in person.”

  “And? How does it feel?”

  Like I want to hop in your arms and wrap my legs around your waist. Like I want to be yours forever and never let go.

  “It feels like nothing,” I lied before emphasizing, “I feel nothing.”

  “Liar,” he said before grabbing the back of my neck and crushing his lips against mine.

  I caved in that moment, all rational thoughts gone and out the window as his tongue found mine. The heat between our bodies pulsed, and all other sounds ceased as I completely lost myself in him, loving the way it felt to be his.

  Then, it all instantly clicked into place. I’m not his. He doesn’t want me.

  I shoved Cole away with all my strength before slapping him across the face, hard and loud. I knew whoever was near us was most likely watching, but I couldn’t have cared less in that moment.

  “You don’t get to do that. We are not a thing.”

  He rubbed at his cheek, his expression shocked but not angry, as his eyes never left mine. He almost looked amused. “We’ll always be a thing. Look at us. We can’t stay away from each other. We always come back.”

  “Not anymore. I’m done with this.” I turned to walk away, and he grabbed my arm, stopping me mid-step. Before he could say a word or try to kiss me senseless again, I threw his own words from the summer back in his face. “You don’t want me, remember? You. Don’t. Want. Me.”

  “You’re mine,” he ground out, and his grip on my arm tightened.

  I shook him off as anger radiated through me. “I’m not anyone’s. Least of all yours. Leave me alone, Cole. I don’t belong to you. I never did. You’ve made that perfectly clear.”

  If there were awards given out for resisting the one guy who held your heart in his hands, I would take home the gold. Every word that had come out of my mouth was a struggle, something I had to force out of me. My heart screamed at me, calling me a liar, but my head knew it was the right thing to do. I refused to let Cole dominate my senior year of college the way he had the last three before it. I was tired of being his doormat, the girl always there for him whenever he needed me. What about what I needed? What about my feelings? This one-sided whatever we were was over. I’d make sure of it.

  My eyes searched the room and found Lauren, who was watching us with rapt attention. I took two steps toward her before he stopped me. Again. I had no idea if he was drunk or not. Cole didn’t normally drink during the season, and his breath hadn’t tasted like alcohol when he kissed me, but then again, my taste buds were full of beer, so I couldn’t be positive.

  “What if I’ve changed my mind?” he asked, and my heart pressed against the cage that held it.

  “You wouldn’t. And I’ve never asked you to.”

  It was the truth. I had never asked Cole to change his mind when it came to us and being in a relationship. He had always told me that he didn’t want a girlfriend until he was drafted, and I understood his passion and drive, respected it even. Cole knew what he wanted, and he was going after it. I liked that about him.

  But the honest-to-God truth was that it hurt. Him choosing baseball over me year after year sucked. Especially when other guys on the team found a way to have both. I heard myself making excuses for him, to either make myself feel better or to justify the fact that I continued to let him come around. I knew that if he’d really wanted me, he would have broken his self-imposed rules for me. And if he’d really liked me, he would have figured out a way to have us both. But he never did.

  “I hate the idea of letting you go,” he said, his voice low as if he wanted no one else to hear.

  Even while we were in the crowded room, surrounded by people, he made me feel like some dirty little secret.

  The words hit me with the force of a blow. He hates the idea of letting me go. I rolled the sentence around in my head, repeating it three times, each time making me angrier than the last. It wasn’t that Cole wanted to be with me, but he didn’t want anyone else to.

  Cole loved that I’d always been there for him. Everything had always been on his terms. He called; I answered. He texted; I responded. I had been at his beck and call for years. The only one who could break this vicious cycle and get off the merry-go-round once and for all was me.

  “You can’t let go of something you never had in the first place.” I glared at him before stalking toward Lauren and telling her I wanted to go home.

  She pressed some buttons on her phone before reaching for the hem of my shirt and pulling me out the front door and into the darkness.

  During the ride back to our apartment, I oscillated between being so mad that it scared me and so hurt that I thought I might shatter to pieces in some stranger’s car. My bones were crushing me from the inside out, leaving nothing but a pile of dust and skin.

  “He’s such an asshole,” Lauren said from the passenger seat.

  She always insisted on sitting up front when we drove in a ride-share car. She claimed she got car sick if she sat in the back, but I knew that was a lie. It was some weird safety precaution she had made up in her mind or seen on TV one time and adopted it as her own belief. If Lauren was up front, she considered us safer, less likely to be taken advantage of or caught off guard.

  She hadn’t only been paranoid about her roommate getting kidnapped freshman year. No, I learned soon after that Lauren was paranoid about us being kidnapped.

  “Or sold into sex slavery or disappearing without a trace, never to be found again,” she’d confessed to me one night.

  She said it happened all the time. That college girls all over the United States went missing, but no one ever seemed to talk about it.

  She claimed it was an epidemic. I thought it stemmed from the fact that she was obsessed with the Investigation Discovery channel and watched every show there was to watch about missing persons, murders, and lies told online. Lauren said it made her more knowledgeable and aware. I thought it made her more paranoid.

  “I can’t believe he said those things to you,” she added.

  “I can.” I wanted to argue but couldn’t.

  This was what Cole mastered in—absolute confusion. His words and actions never seemed to add up or match. It was why I was always so damn confused whenever the topic of us came up. I could never truly figure him out.

  “I mean, I can’t believe he said them out loud. For everyone to hear,” she said.

  I winced with the realization that we had had an audience back at the party. I’d been so caught up in what was
happening between us that I had forgotten other people were around.

  “Yeah. That was a bit out of character. Even for him.”

  Cole never created a scene. At least, not when it came to women. It wasn’t his style.

  “I can’t believe you slapped him. That was some seriously awesome shit!” She laughed before telling our driver all about what had happened.

  He pretended to laugh in all the right places, but I could tell he was annoyed. Or bored. Probably both. I convinced myself that he hated driving drunk college kids around late at night. Even though we weren’t technically drunk.

  My mind raced back to the slap.

  I couldn’t believe I’d done it either. I’d never hit a person in my life, and there I had been, slapping Cole Anders, the baseball player, at his very own baseball party.

  “He deserved it,” I said, but the words came out far less angry than I’d wanted them to.

  The car rolled to a slow stop, and Lauren told the driver we’d get out here, in front of the security gates of our apartment complex. He nodded his head and unlocked the doors before pulling away. We typed in the code and walked through the gates. The night air was tolerable since there was no wind, and I was grateful. I knew I wouldn’t have been able to handle it being as cold outside as I currently felt inside. I needed the contrast to keep me grounded.

  Lauren looped an arm through mine as we walked to our building in silence, but I knew her wheels were spinning the same way that mine were. She pulled out her key fob and waited for the main door to unlatch. Once you stepped inside, our apartment complex looked very much like a hotel with long hallways and multiple doors with faux porch lights attached. It always reminded me of an Embassy Suites of sorts, but at least it was safe. And when Lauren and I had moved out of the dorms and into a place of our own, safety was her top concern. Obviously.

  Like I’d said, kidnapping and disappearing without a trace. The girl was obsessed.

  Once she unlocked our front door and we stepped inside, she locked the door again and made her way into the kitchen. “I didn’t even drink anything tonight,” she said, pulling out two cold beers from the fridge, and I remembered that I hadn’t even come close to finishing off the one beer I had gotten. It wasn’t like we had been at the party for very long.