Playing Dirty A Sports Romance - Mickey Miller

AADIRTY DIRTY SPORTS SPORTS ROMANCE ROMANCE

Copyright 2016 by Mickey Miller ISBN-13: 978-1537799117 ISBN-10: 1537799118 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and incidents are products of the authors imagination. Amy resemblance to actual person, things, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Playing Dirty Edited by: Katie Ekvall Cover designer: Sylvia Frost Cover Designs Interior Formatting by Elaine York, Allusion Graphics, LLC/Publishing & Book Formatting www.allusiongraphics.com

CHAPTER

ONE

My boss was a world-class dick. I could think of a million things I’d rather be doing other than attending a mandatory work event, but he’d made me come. Even if we were in the owner’s section at State Farm Field. Even if it was perfect weather for a game—hot but low humidity, barely any wind, and partly cloudy. I adjusted my sunglasses as I watched the packed crowds start to settle back down. At least the beer was cold and they had nachos—cheesy nachos. Our seats were just to the left of home plate, giving us a clear view of the Jaguars’ star pitcher, Jake Napleton, as he pitched a shutout. To my right was my boss, Steve Hanford, one of the top managers of Green PR. Because this was an important meeting, everyone was dressed business professional, but my sheath dress was sticking to me like plastic wrap. I wiped my brow then took a drink of cold beer, hoping it’d cool me off. “He’s the best ball player we’ve had in this organization in ten years. A shame he’s such an insufferable playboy.” Mr. Yerac was the owner of the Chicago Jaguars. For half the

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game he’d been droning on about Jake Napleton. I wanted to tell him, We get it. He’s a top talent with behavioral issues. Not like he’s a special case. Most big talents are head cases. It was only my third week on the job, and I was quickly learning that these old-school male types didn’t take the comments of a twenty-three-year-old woman very seriously, so I kept my mouth shut. Besides, Jake’s tight gray pants provided the perfect outlet for me to space out. “It is certainly a shame that he can’t behave better off the field,” said Steve, nodding his balding head. “The guy has thrown two perfect games this season, and he’s a shoo-in for Pitcher of the Year. But his off-field antics might turn the public against him if he’s not careful.” Jake’s face glistened in the sun as he stood on the mound, taking the signal from the catcher. He nodded, wound up, and threw. The ball came in high and inside, and the batter was forced to jump back to avoid being hit. The crowd roared as the batter lost his balance and hit the dirt. The noise made my ears ring. I turned in my seat and looked back for a second, noting that most of my co-workers seated behind me didn’t seem to feel the heat. Then again, several of them were on their third round of beers. “This,” Mr. Yerac continued, shaking his head and gesturing in the direction of the batter, “is exactly what I’m talking about. He’s a dirty player, and the Jaguars are a family organization. We need to put a stop to that. That isn’t such a tall order, is it?” My boss furrowed his brow and glanced over at me like I was supposed to do something. Steve was in his forties but had never settled down. He was the opposite of a family man, and came off to most women in our company as borderline 4

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sleazy, so I was pretty sure he couldn’t understand the family organization bit. I merely mustered a supportive smile then let my gaze wander. “Well, uh, yes, we can, uh, certainly relate to your family values,” Steve stuttered. A keen observer would have heard the shake in his voice and that he was lying just to go along with what could be his biggest client to date. Mr. Yerac looked over at Jake, eyeing the batter as he dusted off the dirt. “Oh really?” he went on. “Do you have a wife and kids, Steven?” I had never heard anyone call my boss Steven. Mr. Yerac was just one of those guys who called you by your full name. Like some grandpas always did. “Oh, um, well, no, er,” Steve stammered, sweat rolling down his face. Even though he had ten years more experience than I did at our sports PR firm, he was surprisingly bad at saying things off the cuff. In contrast, I was shy but always appeared calm. It was one of the benefits of having grown up a middle child with several bothers. I was skilled at mediating and appearing agreeable stressful situations. Steve’s gaze darted to me again, and I saw the lightbulb go off behind his sunglasses. “Andrea here is from Tennessee,” he said, deflecting. “Talk about family oriented. She’s a small-town girl with just those kinds of values. I mean, not that she’s a small girl, obviously.” I kept my calm smile but ground my teeth and ran my tongue along my gums inside my mouth. After being at Green PR for two weeks, I’d noticed how Steve always took an opportunity to push attention on to me, even when it meant making fun of me. 5

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“Is that right, Andrea? You look just fresh out of college. Where did you go to school?” Mr. Yerac asked, but in that distracted way used by rich and important people when talking to people like me. “Tennessee State. I played softball there.” I smiled, dropping in that golden conversation thread, the one that had gotten me the job at one of the best sports PR firms in Chicago. Meanwhile, in my mind’s eye, I pictured myself giving Steve a dirty look for calling me the opposite of a small girl. The way he had mentioned it was so nonchalant, which was even worse. “Yeah,” Steve continued, way too enthusiastically. Had the guy taken something before we arrived? “She really has the softball player body type. It’s hard to tell sitting down, but she’s quite tall. Six feet.” “Steve likes to exaggerate,” I said through a gritted smile. “I’m just a hair over five eleven.” I pictured slapping Steve in the face. Jackass. Mr. Yerac either didn’t notice our little passive aggressive fight, or chose not to acknowledge it. “Five eleven? Well, that’s tall. What position did you play?” “Third base,” I answered. “The hot corner,” Steve interjected. “She’s so tall she could stop anything.” Mr. Yerac and I made eye contact for a moment, his expression quizzical. I raised my eyebrows and shrugged, conveying that yeah, I didn’t know why Steve couldn’t get over my height, either. We both turned our attention back to the field. Distracted, Mr. Yerac tore his gaze away from Jake back to Steve. “Anyway, it’s already the sixth inning, this game’s 6

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almost over. Let’s get to the crux of why I’ve brought you here today—” There was a loud roar from the crowd as Jake struck out the batter at the plate and let out a primal, cavemanish yell, pumping his fist. They replayed the strikeout on the big screen and added music and lights, which set the crowd off again. Mr. Yerac shook his head. His icy blue eyes were sharp as he gave Steve a long look. He had that air of a man who came from money—someone who always got what he wanted. “I need someone from Green to work with Jake on his image. I like that your firm is small, that you make it personal and you treat your clients like a member of your family. More importantly, you get results.” We all looked over at the hooting man. Although his raw displays of emotion were somewhat over the top, if anyone had a right to carry on such types of celebrations, it was Jake. He was arguably the best player in the League, next to his archrival, the New Jersey Bulldogs star hitter, Grant Newman. A shudder went down my spine just thinking about him. The Jaguars played the Squirrels next week, and it was the showdown every paper couldn’t stop talking about. All the speculation was about how Jake would handle the pressure and the press of a huge game looming over him. It was the reason we were here. Mr. Yerac continued, “As talented as Jake is, we’re a clean-cut group here, and he refuses to fall in line. When we traded for him last year, his agent assured me he’d clean up his act. But no one—not his teammates, not the club manager, his agent, not even me—has been able to get through to him. He flat out refuses to listen to anyone.” 7

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Steve sneered. “What do you mean, precisely, when you say he won’t listen? You’re the owner. You sign his paychecks. What’s he making? Twenty million this year alone? He’s got to listen to you. I mean, that’s written into his contract, is it not?” Mr. Yerac shook his head again, clearly irritated by Steve’s tone. “Of course it’s in his contract. But every time I try to stop him after a game, he puts on his headphones and storms out, ignoring me.” “And then he shows up on game day and throws another shutout. What does TMZ have to say about that?” I added smugly. The two men looked over at me with arched brows, shocked that I would exercise my own opinion, no doubt. But it was true. Talent trumps a bad attitude in this game. Anyone who didn’t admit that was an idiot. I worried I was about to get mansplained, but our eyes turned back to the field and we watched as Jake wound up and threw another pitch. The batter swung and whiffed badly on a curveball. Another yell and Neanderthal pump. More importantly, the crowd ate it up. They roared every time, which only encouraged Jake “The Big Unit” Napleton. “I don’t know,” I resumed, trying to soften but prove my point. “I grew up with several brothers, which may have hardened me to screaming men. It’s just part of the game process.” “This whole constant fist pumping on the mound isn’t necessary,” Mr. Yerac mused, “but I can deal with it. What I find unacceptable is his public image. I’m sure you’ve seen his Instagram page. His Twitter feed. The things he posts there—inappropriate things. The boy needs to grow up. He’s twenty-six now, he’s not a rookie anymore. He needs to learn 8

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the difference between a private and public life. Or maybe just stop having a private life.” I knew where Mr. Yerac was going with this. Jake’s social media presence was abysmal. He had been photographed in every bar in Chicago after games, before games, and, in one case, even during a game. He had posted #baberuthstyle on his Instagram, along with a photo of himself drinking a Budweiser in O’Dool’s Pub across the street from Jaguars Field in Wrigleyville. That post of him shotgunning a beer had gone viral instantly. Jake had become an instant favorite of frat bros everywhere, much to the chagrin of League officials, who now had to deal with the outcry from mommy blogs that he was glorifying drinking. What a great role model. And now, I was being forced to listen to Harry Yerac drone on about how we needed to fix Jake’s image. The uncontrollable bad boy of baseball. Mr. Yerac’s mouth was still moving, but I was no longer hearing the words he was saying. I just smiled and nodded as my gaze drifted off to look at Jake. The green bill of his hat was low on his face, barely revealing his sharp brown eyes. Tussled strands of lightbrown hair escaped the sides of his cap, and his stubbled face indicated that he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. His right forearm hung free as he stared intently toward the catcher, and his left hand massaged the ball behind his back as he decided on the grip for his next pitch. The man’s shoulders were some of the broadest I’d ever seen, and his legs were equally large and muscular. And then there was, of course, the large bulge between his legs. I wondered if that was natural or if he was wearing a cup. Most players did, but some chose not to. 9

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Had to be a cup. No way that’s natural. I bit off a big cheesy nacho and licked my lips. The beauty was that thanks to our appointment with Mr. Yerac, we had the best seats in the house, and I was fully allowed to ogle Jake. But since I was in the stands, he’d have no idea that I was even there. I was just one in forty thousand. It was like I was peering at him through a two-way mirror. Jake brought his hands together to get ready for his wind-up, and his eyes, even from fifty or so feet away, stared in our direction in our front row seats behind the dugout. Maybe I was crazy, but I swore he was looking right. At. Me. I wriggled in my seat and felt a chill go down my spine. Jake wound up and threw a fastball right down the middle that the batter whiffed at badly, probably expecting something off-speed. He threw his arms apart and grunted. “Fuck yeah!” His words reverberated as he walked off the mound, victorious after having struck out the side. “Andrea. Earth to Andrea!” Steve was yelling at me, snapping his fingers in my face. I had been daydreaming, like I was a seven-year-old out in right field watching the dandelions grow. A surge of adrenaline went through me, and I zipped back into the conversation. “Uh. Sorry. Yeah, he’s definitely got some image issues out there. Sportsmanship, for example. I can tell you that kind of language wouldn’t have flown on the softball team in Tennessee. And his Instagram account seems like it’s run by a twelve-year-old. I’m pretty sure my teenaged cousin could run a more effective social media campaign for him.” Steve seemed dumbfounded by my response. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. 10

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What? I wanted to ask. Surprised that your twentythree-year-old summer intern actually has a brain? “That is an exceptionally concise analysis of Jake’s PR needs,” Mr. Yerac said, looking at me as though seeing me for the first time. “And you feel like you’re the person to help him run his account?” Steve was about to speak again, but this time I cut him off. The summer internship only went through the end of September, and I needed to show some unique value to give him a reason to keep me on. “Absolutely. My senior research thesis was on the effects of viral social media on public opinion. When it comes to PR, social is my specialty.” Mr. Yerac turned to Steve in his seat. “Dammit Steven, why didn’t you say you had such a fine young talent on your team? And with a background in softball? Just talking to her today, I can tell she is smart as a whip. Look, I’m giving this job to Green PR, and I know it’s a big one, and I know you won’t let me down.” A fake smile flashed across Steve’s face. Apparently I was showing up the boss. Mr. Yerac gave Steve a big hearty slap on the back. “Well, now that it’s settled, I have to be going.” “That, uh, sounds good, Harry. We’ll get started on the campaign on Monday.” Steve extended his hand for a shake. “Monday?” Mr. Yerac furrowed his brow in a confused manner. “Nonsense. This is a very important job, and there are only a couple months left in the season to turn him around. You’ll start today.” “Uh, well, today is kind of busy…” Steve muttered. Mr. Yerac stood up and ignored Steve’s outstretched hand. “That’s not the answer I want to hear. I need you to be 11

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proficient on this job. You got that?” Mr. Yerac’s eyes went from Steve’s to mine, and back to Steve’s. “That doesn’t sound like a problem at all, Mr. Yerac,” I chimed in. Steve was acting shady, and I couldn’t exactly tell why. Landing this account was why we were here, and me being part of that would look good on me. I wasn’t going to let it slip away because Steve was acting weird. “Perfect. I’m very happy you’ll be taking on this project for us,” Mr. Yerac said with a satisfied nod. “I’ll get you the credentials to enter the locker room today so you can introduce yourself to Jake. You can take it from there, I assume?” A surge of panic went through me as he said those words—to me. I swallowed. “Excuse me? The locker room?” I paused. “You mean…me?” “Yes, you, the locker room,” Mr. Yerac repeated, now frowning at both of us. “It’s already the seventh inning, so you might as well make your way down there now. I want you to meet with him this afternoon. Is that a problem?” I looked at Steve, but he was keeping his silence. “No problem,” I finally quipped, feigning confidence. “Wonderful.” He gave me and then Steve a firm look. “Don’t let me down. At this point, Jake’s image is the team’s image. Bad publicity for him is bad publicity for the Jaguars. And bad publicity means lost money in sponsorships. Millions of dollars. Millions. Understood?” Steve and I nodded in agreement. “I’ll have my team contact you to get a signed contract in place.” With that, Mr. Yerac took off walking up the rows, off to do whatever millionaire sports team owners did on Saturday afternoons. 12

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Steve turned toward me. “I cannot believe that just happened. Andrea, you have zero experience, and thanks to your big mouth, our biggest client just specifically hired you for the toughest, most personalized job we’ve ever done for him.” I shrugged, still trying to show calm when inside, I was freaking out. I expected to shadow Steve and get some handson experience, not to interact directly. But I was committed now. Steve didn’t seem like he had a very good handle on what Mr. Yerac needed, so I was confident I would do a better job. “Social media branding is my specialty, Steve,” I said, glad my voice was steady. But my palms were getting clammy, my heart was beating so fast it sounded like a funeral march in my ears, and I had to wrestle with the idea that I was about to meet Jake Napleton. In the locker room. “I got this, don’t worry. I’m going to knock this one out of the park.” “Pretty confident for a beginner.” Steve scowled. “You better not fuck this one up.”

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CHAPTER

TWO

Mr. Yerac’s personal assistant, Grace, escorted me through security below the field and walked me to the door to get into the locker room. We paused at the door, and she nodded to the security guard, who acknowledged her. Since I’d dropped off my purse at Grace’s desk, I fidgeted nervously with the generic Jaguars credentials dangling from a cord around my neck. It almost felt like a noose. I touched my fingers to my gold cross pendant to give me strength, hoping I wouldn’t make a complete fool out of myself. “I’ll have some information on Jake for you when you come back,” she said with a polite smile and a flip of her hair. “Good luck!” “Wait,” I said. I grabbed her elbow briefly before she walked away. “You’re just going to leave me here?” “Yeah, definitely,” she responded. She gave me a look like I had just asked her the dumbest question in the world. “I’m not going in there with the lions. They had a female reporter in there a few weeks ago. Let’s just say she’s not in the sports division anymore. Not everyone is as hard-headed as Erin Andrews.”

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I calmly raised an eyebrow. I had my nerves under control, but that was slowly starting to wane. “What did they do to her?” I asked. She brought her voice to a whisper so the security guard couldn’t hear her. “She said there are just some things you can’t unsee.” “What could be so bad?” I whispered back. She shrugged. “Maybe it will be fine.” What the hell did I just get myself into? Maybe Steve had a good reason to be cagey. If so, why hadn’t he enlightened me, since he’s my boss? “Wait, why am I going into the locker room? Can’t I just get ahold of Jake after he comes out?” If the knots in my stomach were any indication, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Her tone went back to normal from the previous whisper. “No, you can’t get ahold of him after. No one can, actually. He’s been doing this disappearing act after games since he arrived here, and that’s part of the reason you’ve been hired. To find out where he goes.” I scrunched my face together, a little confused. “You think he’s doing something bad,” I intoned. “He could be doing anything or going anywhere. It could be nothing, harmless…” From Grace’s expression, and I realized I couldn’t blame her, everyone was thinking the worst. “As I said, we’re not sure. Could be drugs. Or worse.” I nodded and adjusted my dress. Worse than drugs? I made sure my chignon was still in place, then eyed the door and pretended I wasn’t nervous. “Well, might as well send me in now then,” I reasoned. And get the horror show over with. 15

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“Send her in, Scotty.” Grace looked over at the security guard, dressed in a black polo and jeans. She gave me a sympathetic smile but didn’t waste any time abandoning me. “Nice name,” I said. I couldn’t help but let out an awkward laugh, being a self-professed Star Trek nerd. The security guard, however, didn’t find it funny and kept a straight face. “Sorry. Nerves.” “Most of the guys aren’t so bad,” he said, trying to give me words of comfort as I approached. It didn’t do much. As he opened the door, he added, “But, word to the wise, if you plan on coming down here often, I’d lay off any corny Star Trek jokes if I were you.” Blushing a little, I ducked inside. Immediately, I heard the buzz of low voices inside the locker room. A couple of newscasters from different networks stood inside with their microphones, talking to players on the team, but as I walked in, every single person turned and looked my way. I forgot that girls who were almost six feet tall didn’t blend in too well, least of all places in a locker room full of sweaty, mostly naked men. “What are you doing in here, miss?” one of the veteran players asked me. He had a few shades of gray hair and was one of the few men who had apparently already showered, because he was in jeans and had just slipped a white t-shirt over his head. I recognized him as Johnny Ward, the third basemen. He spoke with a slight twang, which brought out my own Tennessee drawl. “Uh, hi,” I said, nervously. “I need to talk to Jake Napleton. You seen him around anywhere?” His calm demeanor suddenly turned frat-boyish. “Wooooooweeee! Hey fellas, there is a lady here to talk to The Big Unit!” he hollered. 16

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If it were possible to shrink, I would have done it right then. The way he made fun of me was reminiscent of the way my brothers used to give each other a hard time when one of them brought a girl home for the first time. They thought I was one of Jake’s groupies. I wasn’t sure if I was more mortified or annoyed by his assumption. “Jakey doesn’t usually bring his girlfriends around here,” Johnny drawled. “Oh, I’m definitely not Jake’s girlfriend,” I said, as calmly and coolly as possible. “I don’t date players. I work for Mr. Yerac. I’ve been assigned to—” “Clean up my image,” boomed a voice behind me. I froze. As tall as I was, I still felt like the voice was speaking several feet above me. I turned around and saw a soaking wet Jake Napleton standing in the hallway that led from the showers to the locker room. His brown hair was pushed straight back, and his towel was slung over his shoulder, not around his waist like a normal human being. Speaking of image, this image was now permanently seared into my brain. And it definitely didn’t need any cleaning. My mouth tried to say a couple of things, but nothing came out. My eyes were too busy staring at the most muscular shoulders and abs I’d ever seen in the flesh. Every one of his eight abdominal muscles were visible, and his abdomen carved inward in a V that made an arrow straight to his— “Um, hello?” he prompted, raising both eyebrows at me. My gaze immediately shot up to Jake’s. His eyes searched my face as he scratched his scalp. I mentally shook off the fact that I had just been caught staring like a drunken frat bro checking out a woman across 17

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the bar. I made a note to myself to give the next guy that I caught staring at my cleavage a free pass, because keeping my eyes above Jake’s abs was a supreme challenge. Must. Stay. Professional. Do not look below the belly button. Keep eye contact. “Mr. Napleton, my name is Andrea Diggers,” I started, letting my business self take over. “While I realize our meeting in the locker room is slightly unorthodox, my PR consulting firm has been hired by Mr. Yerac to work specifically with you on your social media presence. He also wanted me to get on with introductions today.” “I know. Mr. Yerac already sent me a text about it.” The various conversations in the locker room had noticeably died down. I could feel the eyes of the other players on me as I kept a professional, polite smile on my face, just enough to make him comfortable, but not so much that he wouldn’t think I meant business. Jake smirked harder and ran his hand through his thick head of hair. I tried not to stare at the tattoos—which appeared to be mirror images—or his muscled arms. He then decided to stretch his arms right in front of me, contorting them out and flexing what seemed like every muscle in his tanned body. I swallowed hard. “You know, Mrs. Diggers, I—” “Miss.” A devilish grin slowly spread across his face. “Miss Diggers, you seem like a nice little lady. Yes, it’s true that I am sometimes a little hard to get a hold of after games. I have a long list of things I like to do, and I always make sure I take care of business after hours.” He paused, watching my face to see how I’d reacted to the not-so-subtle innuendos. “You know what I mean?” 18

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Yeah, I did, but I tried not to react and kept the tension out of my voice, face, and body. It had been a long time since I’d been in the presence of big league ball players, and I was just a little girl then, when my dad played for the Kansas City Robins. Now, I couldn’t tell if he was flirting with me or just plain screwing with me. Someone like Jake knew how to intimidate, and if I let him win this round, I would lose all credibility with him. “Actually, no. I don’t know what you mean. You just said a lot of big words that really don’t mean a lot,” I said, very nicely. Jake’s eyes narrowed at my polite tone. “I think we all know that you’ve really got a small job to do outside of throwing the ball, and that’s staying healthy and keeping out of trouble. The second of which appears to be an issue for you. You’re just lucky it hasn’t affected your performance yet.” A few cough-laughs erupted in the room, but Jake didn’t miss a beat. “Well, on that fun note, why don’t you just go ahead and call me Jake, since it sounds like I’m stuck with you,” he said, his expression unreadable. “Excuse me.” He proceeded to walk toward his locker, ignoring our verbal back and forth, and, essentially, dismissing me. I followed Jake to his locker. Still naked. Keep your eyes on the back of his head. Don’t look down at his muscular legs, tight ass, and other body parts. Don’t. Okay, you just did. Wow. Wow. Now, I was standing behind Jake, watching him dress as he stood in front of his locker. Mercifully, he put on some white boxer briefs so I wouldn’t be tempted to look down. Or at least less tempted. 19

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“Miss Diggers,” he said with a sigh and still facing away from me. “I—” “Call me Andrea. Maybe I should have—” He whirled around and stared at me, his jaw open. “Holy shit. Andrea Diggers. Diggs.” I resisted groaning at my old softball nickname, but my heart also began to pound in my chest, knowing that the most attractive man in the universe apparently knew who I was. “That’s me,” I said, then quickly moved on. “Anyway, as I was saying—” Jake cut me off. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice it when you walked in. Tennessee State, right? Yeah. Now I remember. My sister Eva played softball at San Diego State, and she said you were one of the toughest hitters she had to face.” I thought for a second. I knew all the top female softball athletes from the other top teams, but there was no one with the last name Napleton in the group. I only knew one “Eva” based on what he’d said. “Your sister is Eva Ramirez? But you don’t have the same last name,” I said, baiting him to fill in the blank. Jake’s body stiffened as he pulled out clothes from his locker. For a fleeting moment, I thought I saw some vulnerability beneath the veneer of his arrogant grin. “Long story. Anyway… She told me about you. I follow you on Twitter.” He grinned in my direction, his face animated as he continued talking. “That was a hell of a College World Series you played this summer. I really thought you would pull it out.” I wasn’t sure if there was a real joke in what Jake had just said, but nonetheless, I laughed awkwardly to cover up my nervousness. My heart palpitated like a jackhammer. Did Jake Napleton just say that he followed me on Twitter? 20

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Unfortunately, now was not the time to get caught up in a girlish daydream. Steve’s warning rang in my ear. “Thanks, I appreciate that,” I said, snapping myself out of the daydream as much as I could while still being forced to look at Jake’s chest muscles. I had to stay focused. “Mr. Yerac wants me to meet with you this afternoon. I was thinking we could just meet in one of the front office rooms upstairs. If you’ll answer a few questions for me, I can get to work on showing the media the real Jake Napleton. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” Jake didn’t answer. His expression was icy. He put jeans and a t-shirt on, which was equal parts disappointing and relieving. “Can’t meet in the offices upstairs today. I’m busy this afternoon. But I can meet up later tonight if you want. Want to do dinner?” Jake sat down to tie his shoes but kept looking up at me, waiting for a response. I almost rolled my eyes at his innuendo, even though this was essentially a schoolgirl fantasy come true. I decided I should probably keep it to myself that I used to have a Jake Napleton Rookie of the Year poster in my college dorm room. But this wasn’t fantasy. This was real life. “As tempting as that offer is, Jake, I really think we should keep things professional and meet in the office. Do you have even five or ten minutes to spare?” Jake finished tying his shoes and stood up. I was in flats—I was always trying to make sure I didn’t intimidate anyone with heels that would launch my height into Amazon woman territory—and Jake was a healthy six inches taller than me. Everything about the man was big. 21

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“Do you mean to say that if we had dinner together, I wouldn’t keep it strictly professional?” Crap. Did I jump to a conclusion I shouldn’t have? “Uh, no, I just mean it’s Saturday night, and, uh…” Jake leaned toward me, still adjusting his shirt. His mouth was inches from my ear as he whispered, “Because you’d be exactly right.” I froze, staring at him with what must have been a very dumb expression. He smiled back with that cocky grin of his, and I tingled all over. The most attractive man in baseball was hitting on me. I had no idea how to react, so I changed the subject. I kept my tone stern as I said, “So what are you doing right now that you can’t take a few minutes and do a quick professional meeting?” “No time right now, sorry,” he said, giving me a nonanswer. “But are you sure you don’t want to meet up and talk about this informally over a drink later?” “Like a date?” I blurted out, and as soon as I had said the words, I regretted it. “Do you want it to be a date?” Jake winked. “Like I said, we need to keep things professional.” But my voice shook a little, and he was getting under my skin. I cleared my throat. “Well?” “Professional. Right.” He glanced at his watch. “I gotta go, Diggs. I’m late.” “Late for what? Where are you going?” I asked again. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and my blood boiled. I hate that phrase. “I’m very worried about it,” I snapped back. “Everyone’s worried about it, Jake.” 22

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He grabbed his phone and wallet from his locker, turned toward me once more, and gave my body a complete head to toe. He took a step like he was about to leave, then looked over his shoulder at me. “Meeting you in person, I finally see how you got all those stolen bases in college,” he said, and turned toward me so he that was within a foot of my radius. He leaned into me again and whispered low so none of the other players could hear him. “Those nice, long Tennessee legs of yours.” I should have moved, should have said something back to him, should have done anything. But the fact of the matter was that I froze like a deer in headlights, and the hairs on my neck stood up on end while Jake walked past me. The other players glanced at me, knowing smiles on their faces, but I was too stunned to care. Had I just been told by my biggest crush, and the sexiest man alive, that I had nice legs? By the time I turned toward the exit, he was gone. And my first attempt at handling Jake Napleton…was a complete disaster.

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CHAPTER

THREE

I didn’t need an image consultant. Even if that consultant came in the attractive shape of Andrea Diggers. Her dress had been one of those shapeless conservative ones that don’t usually do a thing for me, but with her height and a hint of a tight body underneath, her dark brown hair and blue eyes that seemed to pop against her lightly tanned skin, I wasn’t going to lie—I was intrigued. She was also one of those women with looks and a brain, who didn’t rely on looks to get by. She didn’t wear much makeup, and she didn’t need it. My sister Eva had mentioned having to face off against Andrea in the College World Series.. She was tenacious on the field, which made her all the more attractive to me. On the way out of the locker room, I had pulled up an image of her playing on Twitter, and nearly turned to steel in my car just staring at her curves in her sexy softball pants. But then I remembered what she did for a living, and I was annoyed all over again. I didn’t need a goddamned image consultant. My image was fine. Was all that shit the media spun about me remotely true? Sure, some of it—although parts were total lies or

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exaggerations to create sensationalized clickbait. I did not have the time or energy to constantly fight it so I could look like a Boy Scout 24/7. Besides, it was all so harmless. I wasn’t breaking any laws or doing anything truly that bad. Yeah, I played the game hard, but who ever said I had to be polite about it? I drank. I partied. I hooked up with girls sometimes. Things every single guy did in America. I wasn’t going to apologize or over-explain something that was quite simple. If someone posted a picture of me, what the hell was I going to do, rip their phones from their hands? If someone cried foul over a few meaningless pictures, it was their problem, not mine. Mostly, I didn’t like being blindsided with this bullshit either. So I ignored the fact that Mr. Yerac, a few of my coaches, and even my agent had all been harping on me lately—and now Andrea. But I shoved all that noise aside. Right now, that world didn’t exist. Just some neighborhood baseball. “Home, Tate, throw home! Home!” The little guy launched the ball as hard as he could from right field. For being eight years old, his arm really wasn’t bad. No eight-year-old could throw it all the way home from the outfield. But he at least threw it in a straight line. “Jackson! You’re in the spot for the cut off! Come on, you gotta get there!” I shouted. I made a conscious effort to soften my yell. These aren’t big leaguers you are playing with, Jake. Take it easy. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a hothead. On the mound in the big leagues, it’s a great tool for intimidation. When I was coaching kids, though, I would just be a heartless, insensitive asshole if I kept up my inflammatory ways. 25

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Tate threw the ball to Jackson, who turned around and threw it ten feet off from his target at home base. The runner from the other team came around the bases and scored, ending the game. The little guys began to jog in from the field. At least, I thought that was the game winner. We hadn’t really been keeping perfect score, and I had arrived late to the game since I had played my own game today for the Jaguars. That was another thing I loved about watching these kids play. They were so damn good at playing for fun and with passion. It was never about winning. It was about sunshine, hanging with good friends, and pretending for a little while that they didn’t live in a shitty neighborhood. The lights from the field had turned on now that it was hitting evening, but it didn’t really help much since half the bulbs were out. I swiped at my face, grimy and sweaty again, but none of that mattered for the twenty grinning faces in the dugout or on the field. Their black-and-white pinstriped uniforms were dusty, but they wore them with pride. “Okay boys, that’s a wrap,” I shouted, clapping my hands then drawing the boys together. “Shake hands now.” They formed a line and slapped hands with the other team, then headed to the dugout to pick up their things. A few odd parents in the stands stood up from their place in the bleachers. This particular patch of the South Side of Chicago was, sadly, a place where a lot of kids grew up fatherless. Motherless. Parentless. Having come from a very broken home in Blue Island myself, I could relate to how bleak some of these kids’ lives were. Even if they had a shitty home life for the rest of the week, they were damn well going to enjoy those two hours they spent playing baseball with our team on Saturday. 26

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As a foster kid, I’d bounced around enough times that the idea of stability was a joke. It was scary and frustrating, never knowing what was going to happen, and most of these kids were experiencing the same thing, just different circumstances. The one thing that had always been a constant in my life was a simple baseball field like this one, or an open space and some kids who wanted to play. I’d even played on this very field growing up. Baseball took my mind off my troubles and burned some pent-up energy, though not all of it. Being good at the game, or even winning, had been the furthest thing from our minds. We had fun, took our anger and fears out on the ball, and that was all that mattered to us at that age. I was one of the lucky few who had possessed the kind of talent that had gotten me noticed by major colleges during high school. Getting traded to my hometown team had felt like fate, and sometimes, a curse. Because with every good, there was always a struggle to overcome—public or private, past and present—but I’d decided a long time ago that it’d all be on my terms. No matter what. Seeing these kids, seeing how happy they were right now, was one of the few moments I had to myself…that I did just for me. I felt grateful that the parents didn’t make me into a celebrity sideshow when I came here. They were just happy that someone—anyone who knew the game—treated their kids with respect and took the time to coach. I huddled the boys up in the dugout, and they looked out at me through the chain-link fence. “You played really well today, boys. Really well. I’m very proud of each and every one of you. Now, can you all point to what part of you got the biggest workout today?” They all pointed to the left side of their chests, just like I’d taught them. 27

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“That’s right, you played with your heart today, and that’s the most important part of the game.” I paused, chuckling at one of the boys. “Hey! Will somebody show Tate where his heart is?!” Tate was pointing to the right side of his chest instead of his left. I smiled as Jackson pointed out his error. “All right, perfect. Now, who wants pizza?” “Yeah! Pizza!” the kids roared. Right on schedule, I saw my old buddy-turned-pizzadelivery-man, Fred Wigginton, rolling in with a stack of ten boxes from the parking lot. I opened the dugout door, and the kids ran toward the outfield. It was our weekly tradition, win or lose. Fred placed the pizzas on the bleachers and got the hell out of there, because one of the most dangerous places you could be was in between hungry kids and their pizza. He was liable to lose a hand. A couple of the parents got the boxes—and the boys—in order before they were allowed to dig in. “Wigs!” I said as I slapped his hand, calling him by his old high school nickname our coach had given him. He walked over to where I stood by the dugout. “Unit.” He smiled back at me, coming in for a half hug. “Good to see your tall fucking ass again. How was the East Coast road trip?” “Long,” I said, putting my hands in my pockets. “Judging by your Instagram, you were having a hell of a time in New York. You hung out with Jeter and A-Rod?” “I did.” I smiled. “And…I got that autograph for your kiddo. Here.” I dug into my workout bag and tossed him a ball. Fred had a ten-year-old son, who, for some reason, had a strange obsession with the Yankees’ former shortstop. 28

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Fred caught the ball. “You kidding me? From the look of your social media pages, you were drunk as fuck with those guys.” Internally, I rolled my eyes. For all the buzz surrounding my Instagram account, few people knew that I took the season so seriously, there was no way I’d go out and get hammered on a game night. I had maybe three beers, tops, and just enjoyed hanging out with people. And besides, you know what’s more fun than drinking every night? Winning every day. I don’t know why I didn’t correct people like Fred. Admittedly, I didn’t mind that there was a legendary image around my name. Even if it wasn’t for saintly reasons. “Yeah, we got shitcanned, but goddamn if I wasn’t gonna remember a gift for my old buddy.” “Thanks.” He smiled. I handed him cash for the pizza and a healthy tip. “So, how are things with you?” I hadn’t meant it to be a deep question, but the wind seemed knocked out of him. “Been better.” He didn’t elaborate, but just by looking at his haggard face, it was an understatement. “Shit, well, let me know what I can do to help…” “You good, Unit. All good,” he said, looking away. The moment became awkward, but the kids stormed back over, interrupting us, and it was a relief. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know how to even broach the topic in a more forceful way, or if I even wanted to get that involved. I’d known him for a long time, but we weren’t super close, not like when we were kids. I didn’t dwell on the fact that I wasn’t close to anybody. Because of that, probably, he’d never ask, and I knew pride got in the way of admitting you needed help. I knew that better than most. 29

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I had gotten a text from my teammate, Clay, as I walked to the parking lot, and as I checked my phone, I saw one of my players still waiting for a ride. Out of all the kids, Tate Straub reminded me a lot of myself at his age, which was ironic since he was the most even-keeled kid on the team, and I had not been in the least. He was pretty much on his own most of the time, just like me growing up. And it sucked not having anyone have your back. Even though he had his aunt, she rarely showed up for games or practices. I used to see an older boy, sixteen or so, drop him off, but not since the start of the season. From what I’d learned from him since he’d joined Little League, his parents were long gone, abandoning him to his aunt when he was young. Just like Tate, my mom had been out of the picture for most of my life, more interested in her drugs and boyfriends than two growing kids. I hadn’t known who my father was up until a few years ago, and what a huge disappointment that had been. We had more in common than I cared to admit, but knowing these bits of info about him meant getting involved, and that just wasn’t me. It was best to keep things impersonal. I liked my life simple, no fuss, no complications. “Tate, you still waiting? Where’s your aunt?” He didn’t make eye contact with me, and he kicked the dirt with his spikes, which I noticed had to be at least two sizes too big for him. “She’s comin’.” He looked off towards the street then went back to kicking dirt around. “I think she’s comin’ soon…” I was about to ask him if he had a cell phone when I realized that was a stupid question. He had only one thing on his person, his baseball mitt. 30

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“Tate, are you sure she’s coming?” I asked, knowing he usually got rides from someone on the team, but as I glanced around, everyone was gone at this point. He kept his head down, making patterns in the patchy dried grass. He mumbled something, but I couldn’t hear what. “Tate, if you need a ride home, you just have to ask.” It took him a long time until he finally looked up at me with these big brown puppy dog eyes and asked, “Can I have a ride home, Coach?” “Of course,” I said, unable to hold back a soft smile. I hated how uncertain something simple like a ride home was for some of these kids. “Get in the car.” On the way to Tate’s house we saw three separate crime scenes, which wasn’t a big surprise for either of us. The neighborhood was extremely crime-ridden, and Saturday night was crime night, especially in the heat of the summer. “Coach, you think I could play in the big leagues some day?” Tate asked me, looking out the window at one of the scenes. He probably had the same thought I had when I was eight. I need to figure out what skills I have that would allow me to get the fuck out of here. You wised up pretty fast living around here when you kept seeing your friends or family getting hurt, or worse, killed. “If you’re going to play in the big leagues, you gotta have a hard head,” I said. “You have to practice a lot. But yeah, you could do it if you set your mind to it.” Fuck, I didn’t want to put ideas in his head, but who was I to say he couldn’t make it? Who knows their true potential at age eight? “Coach, why does my auntie say I shouldn’t be looking at your Instagram page?” 31

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I glanced over at him, a little shocked. “Uh, what did your auntie say about my Instagram page, exactly?” I asked, looking back at the quiet street. I turned my headlights on; the sun was setting quickly, and kids were out playing where they shouldn’t be playing. “She called you a glam-boy and said you like to drink alotta Guinness. What’s Guinness?” he asked, giving me this wide-eyed look. “Can I drink it?” Glam-boy. That was a new one. I had to tip my hat to the creativity of Tate’s aunt. “Uh, Guinness is an adult drink, it’s kind of…” Tate cut me off enthusiastically. “So if I wanna be an adult like you and play in the big leagues, I gotta drink it? I gotta drink Guinness.” He spoke the words more as a statement than as a question. My face was actually getting hot. What the fuck? Why were eight-year-olds on Instagram? Shouldn’t his aunt be making sure he wasn’t looking at, you know, inappropriate sites? “No,” I said. “Don’t drink Guinness, Tate. Just eat pizza, okay?” I gave his shaggy little head a rub. Not that pizza was the healthiest of foods. “Not every day though,” I added. “My auntie says pizza’s too expensive. She says we can’t afford none a that fancy bullshit.” Fancy bullshit? I mean, sure, I swear like a sailor, but not in front of little kids. Where was he getting these words? God help the Internet generation, I thought, and shook my head. “Here,” Tate said. We pulled in front of some government housing complexes. I wondered if he really had a ride coming in the first place, and I knew the answer to that immediately. 32

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Probably not. Or not for a long while. He opened his door, unbuckled, and got out of the car. “See ya, Coach.” “Tate, wait,” I said. “I have an extra pizza in the trunk. Take it with you.” He looked back at me uncertainly. “My auntie says not to take food from strangers.” Jesus, I’d been his coach for over a year, and I was still a “stranger” to him? That bothered me a little, even though it was, essentially, kind of true. “Tate. I’m not a stranger,” I said with a sigh. “Just…take the pizza. I’m just going to throw it away anyways.” That was a white lie. I’d never throw pizza away. He hesitated, but not for long. The kid was too scrawny, and I knew a lot kids around here didn’t eat enough. “Okay Coach,” he finally said. I got out, popped the trunk, and let him grab the pizza box. “Thanks, Coach!” “No problem, Tate. See you next week.” I slammed the trunk and got back in my car. I took a deep breath as soon as he waved, a big grin on his face, before he ran inside. Funny how little kids always speak the truth, and here Tate was talking about how goddamn inappropriate my Instagram page was. A realization hit me, like the thunder that occurs a couple of seconds after a lightning strike. Was my image actually affecting these kids? I sat there in my car for a moment with the engine on and started to recall a few other comments from the kids that I’d ignored since I’d moved back and became their coach last 33

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year. And while I might be an asshole sometimes, I do have a conscience. I had to laugh at the situation. For the first time, I was truly seeing it the way Mr. Yerac, and basically the entire Jaguars organization, saw it. How they saw me. And all it took was Tate. He’d pushed my buttons in a way I’d never even considered, even though everyone in the front office had been saying it for months. Hell, years. This time, for some reason, I couldn’t just ignore it and downplay it as nothing— like I usually did. I mean shit, we didn’t need eight-year-olds rolling around drinking Guinness now, did we? There was enough evil going down on the South Side as it was without my dumb ass influencing them to do even more dumb shit. I guess I’d actually have to give Andrea Diggers a shot at changing up my social media strategy. My phone buzzed, and I looked down at a text from one of my buddies: Valentino’s Pub tonight? Off-day tomorrow. I shrugged. Might as well. This was the last Sunday we’d have off for weeks. And with everyone on my case, a couple beers with my teammates felt like the perfect remedy.

34

CHAPTER

FOUR

The first thing Steve had asked me Monday morning, before I could even sit down at my desk, was how my meeting with Jake had gone. When I admitted it hadn’t happened, Steve blew his lid and then commenced to bring me into his office to scold me some more. I didn’t even bother sitting in one of the leather seats in front of his glass desk. I didn’t want to be in here for that long. But Steve kept gesturing for me to sit down. He preferred towering over me whenever he could, so I kept standing just to irritate him. Usually, my height made me self-conscious, but this time, I hoped he was the one squirming instead of me. Green PR was located on the upper floors of an expensive multi-purpose high-rise in Chicago’s Loop district. Behind Steve was the view of the Chicago River and a stunning skyline to bask in. Currently, I stared at the sunlight glinting off the tall skyscrapers while trying to remain as calm as possible, when all I really wanted to do was chuck the stapler at Steve’s face as he continued to rant and yell at me. I’m not

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a violent person at all, but my boss brought out the worst in me sometimes. “So you just let him walk right out of the locker room? You didn’t even try to stop him?” he asked, incredulous. “Where is your tenacity, Andrea? Where’s the drive? You’re supposed to be the young energetic one around here who doesn’t take no for an answer!” What could I say? I had frozen up. On Sunday, after church, I’d done my due diligence for a few hours and had reviewed the material that Grace had prepared for me. I’d even outlined everything wrong with Jake’s image and started strategizing. Not that Steve would care. “I tried to stop him, but he said he had somewhere to be,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “Somewhere to be. Sure,” he returned, slightly sarcastic and still very angry. “And then this fucking picture shows up on his Instagram feed later?” I pursed my lips at his colorful language but didn’t comment. Steve was angry enough. He pulled up a picture on his computer of Jake and three buddies having beers at a bar last night. Jake had those small, drunken eyes that made him look more like a college frat boy than a professional ball player. Well, aside from the fact that he had about twice the muscle of an average frat boy. “Who posted this?” I leaned in to look at his computer screen. “It doesn’t even look like this was from any of his official accounts.” Steve shut his laptop when I moved in closer to see what he was looking at. “It doesn’t matter who posted it, okay? The point is, you’re not doing your job. And you need to be. So get some shit done today, dammit.” 36

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I took a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. Yoga breaths. Why were all of the men who were currently in my life such dicks? I hadn’t had even one business day to work on this campaign, and Steve was already throwing a hissy fit. Afterwards, I went to my desk to further look into the campaign that I was now in charge of. Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms were relentless in this day and age. As a celebrity, you were obligated to be open and honest with the masses if you wanted their good graces. One inappropriate tweet that offended the wrong people, and you’d be experiencing a new public shaming en masse. Even though Jake was my number one priority, I still had to pitch in on other accounts and help generate ideas, because we were a small firm. Just to show him I could get some stuff done, I even emailed him a few thoughts I had on a couple campaigns in less than two hours before focusing on Jake. If I was going to fix Jake’s social media image, I needed to know what I was working with. I needed to collect as much info as possible until I could actually get the guy to sit down and talk to me. First, I reviewed the details around Jake’s contract. I already knew that his contract was one of the biggest in sports history, a hundred and twenty million over five years. Mr. Yerac had really gone out on a limb when he traded for Jake based purely on his talent. The owner had probably been just as arrogant to assume he could easily contain and control someone like Jake. The Jaguars gave Jake a signing bonus of almost three million when he was traded. The guaranteed money was based on Jake not causing trouble for the organization, and 37

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the rest he would get over the course of his contract with the Jaguars. He had his guaranteed money from his last team, so he wasn’t exactly hurting for money. Unsurprisingly, the endorsement deals had dwindled due to his bad behavior. It wasn’t just sports teams that wanted a good image out of their franchise player, but brand name companies selling to kids whose parents held the purse strings. And parents wanted a good role model, something Jake was not. At all. Not yet. However, it was clear that money was not a huge motivator for him. I had no idea how Jake spent his money, but based on his pictures, he didn’t wear over-the-top outfits from big name designers, didn’t display jewelry of any kind, and had an everyday, normal car—nothing extravagant. Not that he didn’t enjoy the finer things in life. He traveled on private jets, stayed at the best hotels, and ate at the finest restaurants. Usually with some pretty little thing on his arm. For the rest of the morning, I trolled through various media outlets about Jake, which had the usual byline—either commenting on his skills on the field, or off. His reactions to the mainstream media and interviews, especially if reporters were asking about his antics and behavior, often made it to the front page of the major Chicago newspapers. He either blew reporters off with some asshole remark, told them various ways to mind their own business, dismissed he’d done anything remotely wrong, or completely ignored the hoopla. Most of the media sites were thin on Jake’s past, but I wrote down interesting tidbits on my legal pad next to my laptop to research later. Including his sister, which still confused the heck out of me. His official team dossier was also pretty bare on his personal background, instead focusing on his career, which was extensive and glowing if you went 38

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purely by numbers. The numbers also showed the number of times Jake had been suspended, and the numerous fines over the course of his professional career. It almost outshined his rather remarkable accomplishments, and that was a darn shame. His productivity with his last team was poor because of all the fines and suspensions. Add in the fact that he was a pricey troublemaker, and well, trading him was the best and only option. However, with other teams desperate for a talented pitcher for a World Series run, it likely only proved to Jake that he’d done nothing wrong. I had a feeling that Mr. Yerac was probably one of the few people who had ever stood up to Jake and called him out on his behavior. And it was clear Jake did not like it one bit. For now, his productivity with the Jaguars wasn’t bad, but he’d been fined at least half a dozen times already, either for inciting a fight, mouthing off to an ump, or purposefully throwing close to or directly at the hitter as a way to intimidate him. To be fair, Jake wasn’t different in regard to other celebrities, and I didn’t fault him for falling into the trappings of what status and money brought, but he was traded to the Jaguars with only one specific caveat: to not embarrass the team or put a bad spotlight on them. I got that he was a young guy having fun and living it up. Yet he attracted all sorts of attention for the fights during games, which ESPN loved to replay and mainstream media loved to tear apart. The plethora of drinking and drunk pictures were what Mr. Yerac disliked the most, and Jake’s constant stream of flippant remarks to the media only made things messier and tougher to clean up. Funny how his numerous hookups were hardly remarked upon, and while Mr. Yerac didn’t like it, he could deal with it. 39

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The problem with Jake was that he didn’t care at all that his behavior, good or bad, reflected on the organization, or he flat out refused to recognize it, or both. It was my job to burst his little bubble and make him see reality, but convincing someone that they were in error wasn’t going to be easy. Jake had been getting away with this since college. Add the fact that a lot of his fans loved it only enabled him further. After another half hour, if I had to look at one more YouTube, TMZ, Yawper, or any other tabloid site with Jake acting badly or showcasing his womanizing skills, I was going to scream. I checked out his Facebook and Twitter accounts and wrote down notes on a legal pad next to my laptop. But Jake was most active on his Instagram account, so after lunch, I pulled his account up and dug into it. His handle was Big_Unit_Jake. His home picture was of him and a model he’d been seen with around town, known only as Kim B., for the early part of last year. Kim was wearing a black dress, and her bust was hanging out of it. She looked hot…in a slutty “I will do stuff with you after one night in the VIP section” kind of way. Hey, I’m not one to judge. And then there was the matter of Jake’s drinking posts. He continuously took pictures of himself imbibing at random bars around the Chicago area. Much to the delight of juvenile males everywhere, #drinkswithBigUnit had become a common hashtag. I scrolled down some more, looking at the different pics. Jake working out at the gym, shirtless with his buddies. Jake in a dark bar with a silly, smiling expression on his face while a crowd surrounded him. Jake shirtless on a beach with some girl. How did he find so many gorgeous, tiny girls in bikinis? 40

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I squinted closer to verify. Yep, he was definitely on a beach with this girl, and she was very attractive, but also very tiny. God, if that was my competition, I didn’t stand a chance. Competition. I stopped my train of thought right there. Why on earth was I thinking of her as competition? This was work, and I wasn’t about to induce a load of new complications into my first real job just so that I could have a shot at...a shot at what, exactly? Sure, Jake had hit on me in the locker room. I was willing to admit that. But I was also fairly sure he hit on any woman who came within a five-foot radius. It was more an ode to Jake’s nature; it didn’t mean I was anything special. His testosterone had to be so high, he probably didn’t even realize the pheromones he was releasing. Hell, with that wingspan of his, maybe it was even a seven-foot radius. That made me wonder about the radiuses of other things of his. And how nice would it be to have a man I could actually look up to. Not that I cared how tall a guy was. It was more about the guy feeling insecure because I towered over him when I wore my three-inch heels. Who was I kidding? Even in my flats, I had to slouch my shoulders and slink down in front of guys I wanted to like me. It was a sad fact of the dating world, even in the twentyfirst century, which still held true: guys liked girls who were shorter than them. And, let’s be honest, guys didn’t just prefer shorter women. I preferred guys who were taller, like lots of girls. It’s just that when you are almost six feet tall, the pickings were slim. I kept on scrolling around his Instagram, and after a while I saw a thumbnail icon for a picture that seemed 41

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different. I clicked on it.  It was from a year ago, of Jake, holding a little blond boy on his shoulders—had to be seven years old or so—on a baseball field. The picture stuck out to me because Jake didn’t have his Jaguars uniform on, but the little kid was wearing a black-and-white pinstriped Little League uniform. The field they were on was shabby and definitely in need of repair. Several other celebrating kids who were holding onto their baseball gloves jumped around him, seemingly in pure joy. There was no hashtag, no geotag, no information provided whatsoever for the picture. I noted that the date it was taken was after he had been traded to the Jaguars. There was something about the way Jake’s tattooed arm wrapped around the boy’s leg and held him up that sent a wave of emotion through me. It was totally different from all the pictures of him drinking with bikini models on the beach and living the glamorous life. I clicked out of the picture and saw another icon. Jake on a beach with a Sports Illustrated model. She was half cut out of the selfie, and I wasn’t complaining at all. His eyes were a beautiful light brown cognac color, lighter on the outside, and a slightly darker hue as one looked closer at his pupils. The girl next to him was different from the girl in the first picture, yet she was equally gorgeous, tiny, and with this deviant look in her eye. I sighed, staring at him. I both hated this girl who was next to him and wanted to be her.  Who wouldn’t want to be held safely under the grasp of his lean, very muscular, tattooed arm? His big hands could probably give one hell of a massage. I shuddered and involuntarily thought how they might slide from my shoulders to my lower back and— “Andrea.” 42

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I nearly jumped out of my seat upon hearing a voice behind me. I banged on the keyboard accidently. I had been so out there in my own world, as I tended to do. I turned, and luckily, it was only Amy, the other twenty-something who worked at Green PR with me. Like me, Amy was also wearing a pantsuit and jacket combo with a very non-sexy high-necked top. Her hair was in a simple up-do, and she wore subtle makeup. She was dark-haired and eyed, and even though she was petite, I didn’t feel huge next to her. That was likely due to the fact that she had a pretty big personality. She’d been here a few years and had been graciously mentoring me. We also looked out for each other since the other interns and employees were heartless sharks. “Can’t you get some heels or something?” I asked, heart still thumping in my chest. “I don’t like it when people creep up behind me.” “What are you looking at?” she asked, ignoring my comment and leaning toward my computer screen. “Just a project,” I responded, my cheeks burning.  I wasn’t lying. So why was I so embarrassed that I was looking up shirtless pics of a gorgeous man? “Is that...Jake Napleton?” she asked, eyes squinting. “Yes. It is. He’s my new client. Steve’s having me consult him on how to improve his social media branding.” “I just heard. Wish I could have been there for the game.” Amy batted her eyes playfully at me as she leaned over my desk, glancing briefly down at my pathetic two pages of “Jake notes” before ogling him on my computer screen. “I cannot believe you are getting paid right now to look at pictures of Jake Napleton’s abs. And you’re not just, you know, daydreaming about your favorite PILF like I would be.” 43

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“PILF?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. “Oh come on, Tennessee. Player I’d Like to Fuck.” She said the words with an intonation that indicated this was the most obvious acronym in the world. “I’ve never heard of that. And I’m not daydreaming. Like I said, I’m doing research.” Amy stared at me, and her mouth opened in an “O” of disbelief, her lip-gloss glistening in the florescent light of the office. “So you’re really telling me you wouldn’t want to go on a date with those abs?” she asked, pointing to my screen for emphasis. I shrugged and clicked out of the photo, trying to act nonchalant. “I had a bad experience dating a baseball player in college. I don’t plan on reliving that nightmare.” “Who’d you date in college?” I sighed. I really, really didn’t like talking about him. But I wasn’t about to lie to my only friend in the office, or in Chicago, for that matter. “Grant Newman.” In her typical over-dramatic fashion, Amy pretended to faint. “Oxygen. I need oxygen!” She sat on the side of my desk, fanning herself, and took several deep breaths. I had to chuckle a little. “You dated Grant Newman, the star hitter for the New Jersey Bulldogs? And how is it you haven’t mentioned this before?” I didn’t feel like getting into the long, horrible, year-long relationship catastrophe that had scarred me for life. “It wasn’t a great experience, and I’ve been trying to forget it ever since it happened,” I informed her, settling on a general explanation for a story so complex that a multi-season telenovela would have a hard time covering everything that had happened between us. I could tell that Amy was ready to launch into a full barrage of questions when, staring over my shoulder, she 44

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changed the subject abruptly. “Which is why he needs to focus more on the community service aspect of his profile and not on the glamorous—Oh hi, Steve,” Amy said casually, plastering on a fake smile. “I barely even saw you there! I was just discussing with Andrea on how to handle The Big Unit campaign.” Our boss had the ability to materialize out of nowhere, which was impressive since we worked in such a small office with only a couple of rooms and a few cubicles. You’d think we could hear him coming. “Oh, really? Such as…?” he asked, with a judgmental look that told me he was itching to shut down our ideas. “Andrea was just saying that along with a community outreach angle, Jake should give interviews to smaller networks and papers to show the public the softer side of Jake Napleton. You know, as a human interest piece.” If Steve could read the sarcasm dripping from Amy’s voice, he didn’t let on, but he gave us both a narrowed gaze. “We need to come up with a better name than ‘The Big Unit campaign.’ And while I really appreciate your teamwork, Amy, why don’t you get back to your own desk? We still have a few hours to go until the end of the day.” “Of course,” Amy answered sweetly. Behind Steve, she mouthed happy hour, pointed to her watch, and mimed slugging back a beer. I had to bite my lip to stop myself from laughing. Steve reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. I barely resisted the urge to shrug him off and glanced up at him from my chair. “Andrea, I’ve been thinking. The Jaguars are our number one client. I know Mr. Yerac wanted you on this job, and that’s all fine and good, but if you can’t figure out a way to get a one-on-one with Jake, how is he actually going to listen to your strategy?” 45

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It’s been one darn day. Cut me some slack. “I don’t know...can’t we call his agent or something, and make him? If he’s under contract with the Jaguars, he can’t just ignore what his owner wants him to do.” Steve pressed his hands together in front of his face. “You know, Andrea, I don’t really care what you do to get his attention and make him take our advice. You heard Mr. Yerac. And you pulled us into this, so we need him to clean up his act. Just get it done.” The last words he said stung hard. “I have complete faith that you’ll be able to get through to him. But if you don’t...” His voice trailed off and his phone buzzed. He unclipped it from his belt, glanced down at it, and then shot me one last piercing glare. “I’m going to have to take this. But I believe I’ve made myself clear?” I smiled and nodded, even though “clear” was not the right adjective for what just happened. Was he going to fire me if I didn’t come through for him? And how could you fire an intern? My own phone buzzed on my desk. I picked it up and saw that Amy had texted me a series of adult beverage emojis. After my “clear conversation” with my boss, a nice cold margarita after work was precisely what I needed. Maybe even two.

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Valentino’s Pub was right across the street from our work building on the Chicago River. We nabbed a patio seat a few minutes before five, when the masses would be getting off work. Steve had left early, so we did too. “So nice out,” Amy remarked as the waitress set down our glasses. A warm gentle breeze rolled off the river and onto us. I picked up my drink, enjoying the sun and relaxing after a long day at work. “Yeah, this weather is finally reminding me of Tennessee.” “Cheers,” Amy said, raising up her glass. “To being three weeks into your internship!” We made eye contact, touched glasses, and I took a big gulp. The cold liquid gave me a brain freeze as it went down my throat. Amy and I chatted for an hour, maybe two. We were so deep in conversation that I lost track of time. The patio got more packed by the minute, and we ended up ordering a few appetizers along with our drinks. I didn’t want to jinx it, but I thought I might be solidifying my first solid friendship bond

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since I moved here for the summer internship in June. I knew we had taken our connection to the next level when Amy signaled to the bartender for another round of margaritas. We had covered many different areas of our lives, and we couldn’t be more opposite. She was from the city of Chicago; I was from rural Tennessee. I had been a sporty tomboy most of my teens, while Amy had never picked up a ball to play a sport. Still, for some reason, we had a great vibe. “My parents used to walk around the house naked,” Amy said, stirring her drink with a straw. “I think they wished they grew up in the 1960s.” I raised an eyebrow, disbelieving. “They would just walk around naked? I don’t believe that.” “I don’t know what to say. They were super weird. I’m super weird.” I chuckled. “I mean, you’re not that weird. Your upbringing was just about the polar opposite of mine, though. I was raised very religious, and my mother used to make me feel like it was wrong if I even looked at a boy. Heck, even if a boy looked at me, she’d somehow think it was my fault for dressing too aggressively.” “You never rebelled against her?” The question struck a chord with me, and I sat pensively for a few moments. “I guess I appreciate everything that my mother did for me, raising me as a single parent for all those years after my daddy left. I’ve never had a reason to rebel.” The realization hit me that moving to Chicago for this internship was perhaps one of the only big life decisions I had ever made in spite of the counsel of my mother. Amy must have sensed my discomfort, because she changed the subject. “Okay, so this is going to test the waters 48

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of our friendship.” Her eyes flashed in a way that told me something was about to come out of the vault, that place where people only go after a couple of drinks. “I’ve been meaning to get something off my chest.” “By all means.” I shrugged as the waitress brought out two more margaritas after our appetizers were half gone. I was feeling a pretty good buzz already, so I had decided this would be my last. Amy continued. “I’ve been seeing this guy, David, who I knew from college, and this weekend we slept together for the first time.” She leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper. “The penis reveal always makes me a little nervous.” “Oh, yeah.” I nodded overenthusiastically. In my head, I cycled through the two real penises I had seen in my life. My college boyfriend, and, well, the one I had seen Saturday afternoon. “I definitely know what you’re talking about. How was it?” “It was surprisingly good! Oh, that sounds a little judgmental and weird. David seemed like more of a nice guy—I mean, he used to be my friend in college. I never thought he would be as skilled as he was…” She paused, making a face. “Is this a weird conversation? Oh God, you don’t think I’m weird do you? We’re two of the only girls in the office, and ever since you started, I’ve been dying for some girl talk.” “Not weird at all. You should listen to some of the conversations my softball friends and I have,” I continued, wanting to keep the conversation about her as much as possible. Anything to not talk about me. “So, you get nervous when you have the first hook-up…” “Yeah! Exactly.” Amy spoke loudly, earning us a couple curious looks from the table behind her. “You know, there 49

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is all this weird sexual tension, and you’re thinking, are you attracted to the guy, is he attracted to you, are you going to have good sexual chemistry? It’s all so stressful.” “Mmm-hmm. Oh yeah. Gets me every time,” I said, wondering if Amy would catch the irony in my voice. The two times it has happened to me. “Yeah, and then, like I said, the unit reveal. It’s always a little weird, but is it going to be big, small, just right? A ‘Goldilocks’ penis, maybe? And not to mention, is the guy going to be attentive, good at going down on me, and does he think two minutes of fingering constitutes foreplay? God, I’m sorry. I’m rambling. Shoot. I’ll stop.” Amy blushed, which made me smile. “It’s okay. I like your stream of consciousness rants. It gives me a window into your subconscious.” “Well, let’s talk about you. What about your sex life? You’re a gorgeous twenty-something from Tennessee. With that sweet hint of a drawl, I bet you get all the guys. You’re probably fighting them off with a ten-foot pole. Have you been on dates with any Chicago guys yet?” It was a little embarrassing, but dating just wasn’t something that had been on my mind. I hadn’t taken the time to put an online dating profile together, and most of the guys I met in real life were either too shy to talk to me or intimidated by me. “No,” I answered, and I didn’t elaborate. “Oh. So you haven’t had any recent…reveals?” I swallowed hard and thought about the reveal I had seen. “Well, if you are just talking pure sexy man.” I leaned toward her. “I saw Jake Napleton’s...you know…Saturday. Mr. Yerac was insistent that I go to the locker room and meet Jake right away. And there he was, just all hanging out.” 50

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Amy had just taken a big gulp of margarita, and she went into a choking fit. “You okay?” I asked, my fears coming to fruition. Now we were talking about me, my least favorite topic. She took a minute and cleared her throat, and finally, her coughing ceased. “So you’re telling me that you saw Jake Napleton’s unit?” “Uh huh,” I said, nodding and recalling the glimpse I had of him. Not that everything below the waist was the only highlight—his abs had been just as spectacular. Now, all I was doing was picturing him naked. A chill went over my entire body. How could a man make me feel this way when he wasn’t even in the same room? I felt blood rushing between my thighs. The more I tried to suppress the feeling, the more intense it became. Amy eventually recovered from choking on her margarita, and now, there was a devious look in her eyes that told me she was just warming up. “So… I have to ask...does the nickname hold true? Is he really The Big Unit?” I took a sip of my margarita and stared into the slowflowing water of the Chicago River. I turned my head back to Amy and nodded slowly. Not like I had a ton of units to reference, but there was no doubt about this one. “Whatever you’re picturing, it’s probably bigger.” She put her hand on her heart, shook her head in disbelief, and did an exaggerated swoon. “Dear Lord in heaven, help the woman who actually gets him to settle down.” I laughed out loud. “Fat chance of that happening. For any girl.” “Yeah, he’s got unlimited options,” she said, agreeing with me. 51

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“He wanted to take me out to dinner on Saturday.” I slanted her a look. “A business dinner.” Amy’s jaw dropped. “And…?!” “It sounded like he wanted more than a business dinner. I’m trying to be a professional, not have a one-night stand with some charming playboy athlete.” “Christ,” she said, fanning herself. “You’re stronger than me. If Jake asked me on a date… I mean, damn. You have one strong will, Diggers.” I sunk back in my chair. I had always been the one with a strong will. The one who tried to do the right thing and never compromise on my own set of rules and standards, but now I wondered if I was denying myself new experiences. “Maybe I should go to dinner with him…” I said, tentatively, and glanced over at Amy. “A professional dinner, of course. I’ll make that clear.” “Of course you will,” Amy returned, almost deadpan. Then she laughed. “And then you can tell me all about it! I’ve always wanted to live vicariously through a girl dating a professional baseball player.” “It’s not a date!” I exclaimed, but I smiled. “We’re keeping it professional. Remember?” Amy rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah. I forgot that already. I was lost picturing Jake’s…you know what? I’m going to stop talking. My advice is to just enjoy it—stop worrying so much about the destination, and enjoy the journey.” I smiled, nodded, and took a sip of my drink. She was right, but not in the way she thought. I needed to get this right, and not just to avoid getting fired. I wanted a career in sports PR, and Jake could open doors for me if I could turn his image around. Steve was right—I’m tenacious. That’s how I got the internship. I needed to remember that Jake was just a client. 52

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I pulled out my phone from my purse and went through my contact list. From his team dossier, I had his full contact information, and I’d put it all in my phone. Just in case. I fired off an email to Jake, which felt more businesslike than a text or actually talking to him on the phone before I knew what I wanted to say. I could definitely keep this professional, no problem. Besides, one horrible experience from dating a baseball player had been traumatic enough, and an excellent reminder to never go down that road again. No matter how tempted I might be.

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“Strike one,” the umpire huffed after I blew a fastball by Grant Newman. He was so frozen he didn’t swing, even though it was right down the middle. I couldn’t help but smirk. I loved striking out this son-of-a-bitch more than anyone in the world. There was a lot of hullaballoo surrounding us because we were both number one draft picks. Personally, I wouldn’t have even taken the guy in the tenth round. I didn’t understand how he was supposedly in the running for Rookie of the Year. He was a class-A phony. Today, I was only half focused on Grant, and I still had his number. Even during a Tuesday afternoon game in an anticipated match-up against the New Jersey Bulldogs, my mind kept wandering to a certain girl. She’d held her own in the locker room full of guys like she’d done it a hundred times, and I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Sometimes, you just know there is a spark with someone. And with Andrea Diggers, I’d felt this incredible chemistry. I couldn’t define it even as I fought it a little. I even found her businessfocused emails cute. Was it pheromones? Chemicals in the

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air? She was beautiful, yet delicate and strong. I truly didn’t understand how a girl so tough on the field could be so feminine and graceful off it. When I’d seen her from behind in the locker room, it was everything I could do to not to get an insta-boner. I mean, I didn’t care that she saw me naked, but it was a little early in our relationship for me to show her the full package. Then she’d turned me down. That was an anomaly that had stuck with me. Every night I went out in the city, I would literally have girls walking up to me, handing me their phone numbers. And yet, Andrea was all I could think about, even when I shouldn’t be, like during the middle of a game. I smirked, thinking that not one person in the crowd of forty thousand would consider the dirty thoughts swimming in my mind. Dwayne, my catcher, threw the ball back to me, and my focus immediately zeroed in on the asshole next to him eying me and attempting the most menacing snarl he could muster. Personally, I thought he looked like Pudge from The Sandlot. I wiped the sweat from my brow and stared him down. Newman was a rookie and a decent talent, that was sure, but he was also a punk-ass pretty boy who didn’t give a shit about his teammates. He was all about stat-padding, swinging for the fences even in situations where that was the last thing he should have been doing. Fuck, I might be a lot of things, but every single one of my teammates was like a brother to me. I had their backs, and they all knew it. I nodded at Dwayne’s signal and threw the next pitch. As I expected, Newman whiffed badly on a curveball that was low and outside. The crowd cheered. “You better wipe that smirk off your face,” Newman shouted at me. He kicked a little dirt toward my catcher in a gesture that got my adrenaline rocking. 55

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What a bitch. I sneered at him. He shouldn’t be talking shit after I had just put two strikes past him. “If you can actually hit a ball, Newman, I might consider it,” I shouted back, taking a few steps forward as Dwayne tossed the ball back to me. I caught it, walked back to the mound, and eyed him down again. Newman had a classic swollen body type; he had power, but not much skill. Me, I wasn’t the most jacked guy on the team by any stretch of the imagination. I wasn’t all ‘roided up like some of these guys and trying to overcompensate. My workout plan was about being long, lean, and flexible, not about bench pressing a million fucking pounds. Apparently, what I was doing was working, because the next pitch I threw was a cutter that made Newman look like a blind man trying to swing at a fastball. The pitch was up and in, and he missed it by at least a foot. He swung so hard he probably altered the flight patterns of the geese that were flying overhead. Once again, I took a few steps forward so he could hear me perfectly. “Christ, Newman, you ever hit a ball? I know you just graduated from tee-ball recently, but I think even my sister would have hit one by now. Maybe if I threw it in slo-mo, you’d have better luck?” I gave a wink as Dwayne started whooping and laughing his ass off. Even the umpire couldn’t resist a cough-laugh from behind his mask, but he made a warning gesture for me to stop delaying. Newman’s expression was priceless. “All right, that’s fucking it!” he screamed, definitely on the verge of a ‘roid rage. “Come and get me, you little bitch,” I taunted, unimpressed. 56

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He threw his bat down and rushed the mound. The crowd roared as he neared me, dukes up like he was about to throw down. Dwayne and the umpire were right behind Newman. In my peripheral vision, I could see the other umpires and the rest of the team on the field rushing toward us. “You’re going down, you smug prick,” he growled. He attempted to punch me, but I jumped out of the way at the last second and used his own momentum to push him into the dirt on the mound, belly first. The crowd exploded. I jumped on top of him for a second and pushed his face in the dirt. Seconds later, the benches cleared, and our teams were mixing it up. Dwayne pulled me off Newman. “Jesus, man, you didn’t have to kill him, just dodge him.” Dwayne shook his head at me. “That motherfucker had it coming.” If we weren’t on the field, I would have done a lot more than just shove his face in the ground. I wasn’t too surprised when the umpire kicked me out of the game. As I walked off the field, I looked over at the Jaguars’ dugout, at my teammates having a good laugh and still settling down to finish the game. I didn’t overthink the looks from the coaches, whose expressions were stark and glaring. I shrugged it off, the adrenaline still pumping through me. The crowd was still going wild, the replay running on the jumbotron in case anyone missed it. I headed back through the tunnel leading into the locker room. Fans reached down, trying to get me to sign stuff or shout whatever at me, but I kept my head down and forward. Whatever, fuck it, we already had a 7-0 lead. Granted, it was the bottom of the sixth and a lot of game left, but we had the 57

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best record in our division. Even if we lost, the Jaguars would still be on top. Because I felt like it, I protested in my pitching coach’s office just inside the locker room, but Don wasn’t buying it as I pleaded my case. He’d been waiting for me, sitting on one of the plastic chairs along the wall, all quiet-like and hands rolling up the bill of his ball cap when I’d walked passed. I should have seen it as the warning it was. “Oh come on, Don!” I said, rolling my eyes. Why was everyone freaking out? Fights in a game weren’t unusual. “Newman was being an asshat! He kept kicking dirt at Dwayne. And he’s the one that charged me! What was I supposed to do, just stand there and take it like his bitch?” Don did not see eye to eye with me, which was surprising, because he was more of an old-school guy, and usually those types were all about a good scrap once in a while. “Violence is never the answer,” he said, almost like he’d read it off a note card. “Who are you, Don? Buddha? I mean shit, the guy outweighs me by like forty pounds. If Newman had connected, he could have done damage. What I did out there was selfdefense.” Don massaged his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. God love him, he wanted to side with me, but something was holding him back. “Coach—” “Goddammit Jake!” he exploded, his tanned face getting red. “You don’t get it, do you! You’re on thin fucking ice! You could be up for a big suspension. Think about the bigger picture for once. Lost endorsements. Yerac could toss you on your ass, and no one wants a thug ballplayer anymore. You gotta clean up your act! You gotta stop with these antics, 58

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reacting before you think shit through. Be the better man. Newman is a rookie, he doesn’t know any better. You’re in your fourth year in the big leagues now.” I rolled my eyes again, because this was such bullshit. For a second I thought about Tate and what he’d said last Saturday. I thought about why Andrea was brought in— to clean up my act. Because I was perceived as a…thug? I shrugged that off, too. “You think I give a shit about lost endorsements? Fuck, I’d rather have my honor than a bucket of money any day. And Newman deserved a lot worse than some dirt in his face. Maybe he’ll see the ball better next time?” Just saying his name ratcheted up my anger. “He’s the dirty player, the real thug, and we all know it. Admit it.” “You just refuse to get it, Jake. And that’ll be your downfall.” Don shook his head and pointed at the door without even looking at me. “Get out of my office.” I sighed and left. He knew the game well, but Don didn’t always back his players, and I couldn’t understand it. Every single one of the other twenty-four players in the locker room knew I had their backs. The baseball season was a 162game war, and if I wasn’t loyal to them, then I was nothing. Disrespecting one of them was the same as disrespecting me. One of the things I always promised myself was being myself and not giving a shit about the opinions of others. I am who I am. Could I control my image a little better? Yeah, I could, but why did people have to take everything I did out of context? I did drink, but I didn’t get out-of-control drunk. I knew my limits, especially if I had practice or a game the next day. My job wasn’t a job—I loved baseball with all my heart but not much else outside of it. The press, the image, me being put into a box. Baseball was my life. It’s all I had. It 59

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was who I am. Anyone taking that away from me, threatening that, well, they were the real enemy. Since I’d been kicked out of the game in the sixth inning, I had another hour to kill before the game was over. I took off my baseball uniform and threw on some shorts and a tank to blow off some steam in the weight room. Often, on my pitching days, I worked legs after the game was over, so today, I’d just take care of that early. The weight room was completely empty, so I cranked my favorite AC/DC mix before I set the squat rack up. Every once in a while, I checked how we were doing on one of the TV flat-screens. Hugo, one of our best relief pitchers, was doing rather well, and that was reassuring. He wasn’t always the most consistent, but he was on fire tonight. Forty-five minutes later, I was about halfway through my leg routine. I was singing, “I’m on the highway to hell,” at the top of my lungs when I heard the door at the other end of the room bang shut. I looked over at the door but didn’t see anything. That’s when I heard a voice behind me that made the blood rush straight to one particular piece of my anatomy. “Hello Jake.” Her voice was smooth, sweet, and feminine. And there was that slight Southern drawl that she was trying to hide. I couldn’t help but smile, just hearing her voice. I had no idea why she brought it out of me. Then I turned around and I remembered. Just looking at her, you could tell that she wasn’t your average pushover. Her smile had a kind of wry stylishness to it. Her weight was shifted to one side. Today she had on a white blouse and tight gray dress pants that hugged her long legs all the way up to her hips. 60

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I immediately thought about all the dirty things I would do with her if I got her in bed. This is pretty cocky of me, but most girls basically succumbed to my will in my presence. If our first meeting was any indication, she was going to be a challenge. Lucky for me, I loved a good challenge. “Well hey there, Diggs.” I set the weight back on the squat rack and turned to look at her. “Looking to get a workout in? Those pants might be a little hard to maneuver in, but I think I have some extra clothes you might be able to wear to get a good workout.” I liked that Andrea was tall. I’m a big guy, and it was nice to be around a woman with height so I didn’t feel like I would crush her. I took in her work outfit and wished she were in my workout clothes. Sweating beside her would be interesting. “I’m good, thanks.”  She gave me a short smile and shifted her weight over to one of her hips so that her ass kind of stuck out to one side. She did it so innocently, I couldn’t tell if she was an old hat at positioning her body just so that men would drool over her, or if she had no idea at all what she was doing. “You sure? I’m really good at designing workouts. We could do our workout...together.” And I can think of an extremely fun workout you might like—good for the hips. I gave her my most charming smile, but like Don, she wasn’t buying it. I grabbed my towel and took a few steps toward her. The closer I got, the more her beautiful body came into focus. She had the top button of her blouse strategically unbuttoned, almost begging me to stare at her boobs. 61

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Luckily, checking out girls without being too blatant was one of my strong suits. She cocked her cute little head. “Jake, you know why I’m here. Not five minutes after I arrived to the ballpark and took my seat, you’re out in the middle of the field fighting.” I chuckled. “Fighting? That wasn’t a fight. If I were fighting, he’d be in the hospital. That was me being nice.” She rolled her eyes. “The commissioner just doled out a five-game suspension. Part of the League’s non-violent image they are trying to portray. And you shoving Newman’s head into the dirt and screaming is already a viral YouTube video with over two millions hits. Is this starting to get real for you, Napleton?” A five-game suspension? Our series with the Bulldogs was just starting. We had a couple more games before they finally went back to Jersey. And while not seeing Newman’s ugly face for a whole week was very appealing, I lived for the game. Winning wasn’t everything, but I didn’t mind it. More to the point, I played because there was nothing better than being on that mound and shutting out the other team. There was no bigger rush, and having that taken away from me for some bullshit reason was unacceptable. “There’s only a month and a half of the regular season left until the World Series. I need to keep the momentum going, stay in the dugout with the team. We have to appeal this.” “I would advise against that. Eight’s the standard these days, no matter how rough the fight, so you got lucky, and no fine. You take it, show the commissioner, your coaches, the public, that you knew you were wrong and that you don’t actually condone violence, and it’ll go a long way,” she said, then lowered her voice. “And while I also don’t encourage 62

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that kind of inappropriate behavior, that piece of…junk…I can admit, had it coming.” “Piece of junk,” I echoed, a smile returning to my face. “You really have one of the cleanest mouths of anyone who has ever stepped foot in this locker room, you know that?” “What can I say? I’m a small-town Tennessee girl.” She twirled some of her brown locks around two of her fingers, but kept her smile on the wrong side of businesslike. Did she know how frickin’ hot she was? The damn temptress. “Do small-town Tennessee girls go out to dinner with baseball players?” I asked, taking a step toward her, then another, like an involuntary reflex. “That depends, is this work or pleasure?” she asked, biting her lower lip and still doing that hair twirling thing that had me completely hypnotized. While Andrea had a nice body and stellar legs, I couldn’t stop looking at her blue eyes, which were almost the color of the sea. “For me, definitely pleasure…” “Jake.” She suddenly went serious, dropping her hand to her hip and glaring at me. I realized that she was totally playing me. Damn if I wasn’t a little impressed. “We’re talking business, not pleasure. I said it the other night, and I’ll say it again: I don’t date players. That question was a test, and you failed. Again.” “Well I’m suspended. So for a few days, I’m technically not a player.” I grinned at my own impeccable logic. At least I’d found a silver lining and a distraction for a few days, because watching the games without being in the dugout was going to be painful. She, on the other hand, rolled her eyes, but I knew she was about to give in. They always did. 63

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“If dinner is the only way I can consult you, fine.” “So I’ll pick you up tonight at eight?” I grinned, victorious. “Ha-ha. I’ll meet you there. Give me the place.” I thought about it for a second. Women were impressed with fancy, pretentious places, right? Andrea was likely no different. Small-town girl like her in the big city, I’d get her in bed in no time flat. “How about the Marseille Club?” She raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “The Marseille Club? For our casual client dinner, you’re taking us to the most expensive restaurant in the city?” Shit. Her frown was not encouraging. So I smiled broadly. “Don’t worry, it’s on me. I won’t make you blow up your expense account.” Andrea looked down at her phone she’d had tucked in her pants and was on it. Penciling me in? “Fine. I still don’t understand why you are so resistant. I’m here to help you. I’m not your enemy,” she said, very seriously. She crossed her arms under her breasts. Eyes on her face, man, pretend you care about talking business. “Right, sure, okay,” I said. Another sigh and shake of her head. “If you don’t step up your reputation, you’re effed.” I stared at her, fighting back a grin. “Effed? Do you mean I’m fucked?” I rephrased. “Like I said, you’re effed.” I did smile then. “Fucked. You can’t say it, can you?” Her eyes narrowed on me. “What?” Two could play at this. “One of these days, I’m going to get you to say the word.” I winked at her. “Preferably in a very specific context.” Andrea smiled flatly at me. “See you tomorrow then.”  She turned and walked out of the weight room. At 64

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the door, before she left, eyes cutting right to me, she added, “And don’t be late, Napleton.” The door shut, and I laughed to myself. I would definitely get her to say the full F-word. Ideally, when she was underneath me. Or against the wall. Yes, against the wall did have a nice feel to it.

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I took an Uber early to Marseille Club for my professional dinner. The restaurant sat along the Chicago River in the downtown area, on Chicago’s historic Hubbard Street, which was home to many of the best restaurants in the Midwest. I had given Steve the heads-up that I was going to be meeting with Jake, and he even gave me the company card. For the professional dinner (as I kept emphasizing to myself). I finally said, eff it, and wore the three-inch heels that I had been staring at in my closet since I got to Chicago. Wearing them put me in the six-foot-three range, which gave me the interesting experience of feeling like somewhat of an ogre towering over most of the people I walked past on the sidewalk. Eff it, because if I couldn’t wear them to a non-date with a six-foot-six baseball player, when would I ever wear them? Plus, the heels went really well with my sleeveless cobalt sheath dress. Amy was right. What was my problem? Why couldn’t I just enjoy the fact that a very entertaining, charming, and

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yes, sexy man was trying to take me out to dinner? I took a deep breath before heading inside and reminded myself of the new mantra I had adopted, thanks to Amy. It’s about the journey, not the destination. I went through the revolving door, past the coat check, to the host stand. “Good evening, miss. What’s the name?” “It should be under Napleton,” I said with a businesslike smile. I tried not to fidget with the strap of my purse. The host, who was in a white suit coat and black tie, straightened his posture noticeably at hearing Jake’s last name. “You’re with Jake Napleton?” he repeated, very slowly, as though he were having a hard time processing it. “Yes,” I said flatly, staring back at him. He arched an eyebrow at me, still not convinced. “The pitcher for the Chicago Jaguars.” I tossed my long hair back, shot the man a Tennessee smile, and mustered my best Southern twang. “Only Jake Napleton I’ve ever met!” He shook his head and touched his finger to the tablet he was holding. “Mr. Napleton has not checked in yet. You may wait in the lobby until he arrives. Thank you Miss, uhh...” “Diggers. Andrea Diggers.” I sighed. Before I headed toward the lobby, I peered into the main dining room. The interior decoration was impeccable. Overhead was a glass roof that let in a fair amount of evening light. On the far side of the room there was a row of five booths that were slightly raised from the rest of the dining room. All of those raised booths were occupied, except for the booth in the middle. A giant kitschy-looking white-and-blue sign above the empty booth said YES, and nothing else. 67

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My mind started to wander, wondering if the YES sign was some sort of subconscious marketing strategy to get diners to order more. I was about to dig into my purse for my phone and check the time when I felt a hand on my bare shoulder. Must be Jake. I turned around, and my heart nearly crawled up my throat when I saw the face of my ex-boyfriend—and the main reason I no longer dated baseball players—Grant Newman. “Grant,” I said, feigning a smile. “Wow.” “Not who you were expecting?” He flashed a grin at me and came in for a hug. “So good to see you!” I angled my hips away from him and gave him a quick side hug. I felt so fake, going through the motions of politeness. I wanted to slap him and call him an asshole, but confrontation had never been my style. “Really good to see you. How have you been?” he droned on. I was an inch taller than Grant in my heels, and it felt so good, because he’d always been self-conscious about his height. Oh, how many days I’d daydreamed about what I would do and say when I saw him again. He’d been a senior and I’d been a junior when he’d crossed the line, forcing me to break up with him. It wasn’t an easy decision, but in hindsight, I knew the breakup was for the best. He was controlling, possessive, and didn’t like anyone telling him no. I’d learned the hard way what that meant to a man like Grant. There came a point when I knew I had to stop making excuses for him, but sometimes, I’d remember the good times and forget how scary he could get when I’d defied him. But this was that moment I’d been dreaming of. He had a stupid smug look on his face. A tiny platinum blonde 68

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stood behind him, her boobs literally bigger than her head. I’d known he was in town for the four-day series with the Jaguars, and since then, I couldn’t forget the picture etched into my head—of him with a big smile on his face as he held up his Bulldogs jersey on draft day. And it was hard to miss his face being rubbed into the dirt by my new client yesterday; I had taken a screenshot in my mind and saved the mental image for my own personal archives. Jake was actually pulling on my heartstrings with his asshole-ish behavior. It was hard for me to admit, but seeing Grant get a taste of his own medicine had been so satisfying. Though now, quietly, I was seething that he had the audacity—the effing nerve!—to ask me casually  how I’ve been. After everything he’d done, he still acted like he was an angel. With his good looks, he got away with a lot. Knowing I was better off without him gave me confidence. “Actually, I’m doing great, thanks,” I said, lifting my chin and batting my eyes. I gave his body a quick one-sweep. Was he always this short? Then again, I realized I was wearing three-inch heels. And I had Jake on my mind, so maybe that gave me a distorted sense of a normal person’s height. “I’d really like to get together with you soon,” Grant said, on his best behavior. I couldn’t believe how I pined after him for months, pathetically watching his Instagram updates with him and a new model every week. Seeing him in the flesh, ironically, was reaffirming that I had made the right choice. “Are you sure your girlfriend here would be okay with that?” I motioned to the tiny blonde who was playing on her phone. I wondered if she had even heard what I said. 69

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Grant’s face turned red. He was obviously shocked. “Oh come on, Andrea. You know we’re meant to get back together. Admit it.” I stared at him, speechless. When Grant said things like this—in texts or through one of my social media accounts—it scared me, and I didn’t know how to respond. So I usually said nothing. I should block him and get a new phone number, but he wasn’t harassing about it. He always seemed to stay just on the outer edge, and I’d forget until he started up again. Like now. He’d had a rough upbringing, and he was somewhat delusional at times, that was for sure. It was true that he did have a hold on me for a long time, but not anymore. Just being around him put me in a stressful state. I could feel my heart rate elevating in his presence, like I needed to be on guard. My earlier confidence was gone. I needed an easy out to remove myself from the conversation, but there was nowhere to go in the small lobby where we waited. The air hung between us uncomfortably as his little blonde thing played on her phone, seemingly oblivious to what was going on. Either she didn’t notice, or didn’t care. If Grant was willing to flirt so openly with me in front of her, my guess was that she was only his arm candy for the night. Thankfully, I noticed Jake enter through the revolving doors. Somehow, all my anxiety and tension seemed to level out. Grant couldn’t see him because he had his back to the door, but I did. Seeing Jake made me feel better. But I did a double take, thinking this might not actually be Jake Napleton, but instead, a model for one of those men’s razor blade commercials. Up until that moment, I had only seen Jake in workout clothes or in his baseball uniform: sweaty, gritty-looking, and manly—a bastion of raw masculinity. 70

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Tonight, on the other hand, I was shocked at the role change. He wore a light-blue chambray shirt with a tan vest and a dark chestnut suit coat. Below that, he had on white dress pants and brown loafers. The look suited him well, and made him appear to be half California beach boy, half New York businessman. I didn’t hate it. His eyes roamed the room, and he ran his hand over his smooth face—the first time I’d seen him clean shaven— as he glanced around the room. I was pretty sure every single person in the lobby was watching him walk in, which was understandable. At six feet six inches tall, The Big Unit definitely stuck out. Jake’s eyes found mine, and instantly he grinned from ear to ear. In fact, his whole face seemed to light up at seeing me. A chill went through me involuntarily, from my toes all the way to the hairs on the top of my head. Was he smiling like that because he was looking at me? Or did he have some secret that he hadn’t let me in on? Jake, I was sensing, was going to be full of surprises. He strode toward me with long, confident strides, not even noticing Grant. But my ex noticed Jake, and he did not like it. That much was clear by the hard expression on his face. “Hey, sorry I’m a few minutes late. God, you look amazing,” he said as he touched my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek. He brushed into Grant in the process. “I—” He stopped speaking mid-sentence when he registered that Grant Newman was standing next to me. His eyes narrowed, and the smile disappeared for a moment. Then his grin returned, this time slightly sinister, as opposed to the pure joy he expressed when he had seen me. 71

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Neither man extended a hand to the other. “Grant,” he said in a low growl. “Jake,” Grant returned, jaw tightening. “I see you finally got the dirt off your face.” Jake smirked, relaxing his body. “Did your mommy wash it off for you? Because I hear you still live with her.” I coughed, trying not to laugh, since I knew it was actually true that Grant hadn’t moved out on his own yet. He lived from hotel to hotel on the road. The platinum blonde was analyzing her nails, apparently bored while I was being thoroughly entertained. “That was a cheap shot and you know it,” Grant said hotly, ignoring Jake’s dig. I glanced down, seeing his hands fisted so tight, the knuckles had turned white. Now, things were getting serious, because Grant knew how to use his fists, and he tended to lash out quickly. “Ha. You have the nerve to charge me on the mound and say that I’m the one throwing cheap shots? We both know you were the one who should have gotten the suspension, not me.” The tension in the air was so thick, I wanted to request that the chef come out here with his steak knife and cut it. Their “discussion” was also drawing the attention of people around us. People with phone cameras pointed our way. Great. I touched Jake’s hand, and he blinked at me. “We should get to our table…” I said, signaling for him to end it and move on. “What’s going on here? Are you two on a date?” Grant asked, scrunching his brow. Jake turned to me, smiled, and arched an eyebrow, deferring to me to decide how I wanted to define the night. 72

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I didn’t answer, looking Grant in the eye and leaving it open to his interpretation. When Jake took my hand in his, I didn’t shake him off. Grant’s expression was of complete shock and disbelief. Yes, I’m on a date with the guy who kicked your ass yesterday. Even if it wasn’t true, it felt good to wipe that smug look off his face. “Well, we’re going to head in and enjoy our meal,” Jake said, so smooth and suave. I suddenly noticed that Jake was standing a hair’s breadth from me, his other hand on the small of my back. Not many men could make me feel small, but next to him—even in my heels—I felt like I was tiny. I was in a daze, my emotions all over the place. My face felt warm, and I had to breathe in controlled breaths as Jake guided me away from Grant and his blonde. Disaster barely averted, in more ways than one. “What was all that about?” Jake asked as the host took a couple of menus from the shelf for us while we waited at the stand. “We…know each other from high school,” I muttered, then glanced over at him. Jake gave me a surprised look. “You’re from the same town?” I nodded stiffly. “It was a long time ago,” I said. Hopefully he’d take the hint that now was not the time I wanted to get into this. Jake merely nodded, seemingly accepting my lack of a response, or maybe the look on my face was enough to scare him off that topic. He made a hook with his arm for me to grab as we walked to our table. “Shall we?” he said, with his classic easygoing smile. It eased some of my stress away and I was grateful. I didn’t know if I was crossing the line, but I stuck my hand into 73

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that hook and wrapped it around his forearm. Besides, it kind of seemed like it was just a little Southern-style hospitality Jake was extending me. Date or non-date, he noticed that I was off-kilter in Grant’s presence and was attempting to steady me. I should have guessed that they would seat us by the YES sign, which was the centerpiece of the entire restaurant. We ordered a bottle of wine to start. To be more specific, he let me pick whatever bottle I wanted and ordered it. I settled on some bottle that I had never heard of in the two-hundreddollar range called Stag’s Leap, because I liked the name. “Good choice,” Jake said and smiled. But to my surprise, he declined a glass, sticking with water. “You don’t like wine?” “Not as much as beer, as you well know,” he said, giving me a big grin and a wink. I rolled my eyes. “But I don’t drink that much unless I have an off-day the next day. Otherwise, if I go out, I keep it to a three-beer limit.” I was about to pounce on that when our waiter arrived. Since we hadn’t looked at our menus, he made a few suggestions. After we ordered the appetizers and main course, I broke the ice with shop talk, which he instantly took to. We had baseball in common, and it was like talking to a whole new person. It was refreshing, and kind of hard to take with the Jake I knew, not just from my research, but how I’d viewed him since college. Then, with him relaxed, I told Jake about my plan for his branding strategy. How he needed to ditch the frat boy image and keep his antics cleaner, or he was going to end up being the next Ryan Lochte. I also broached the topic of doing some brief interviews that focused on a more personal side of him, 74

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where he wouldn’t be giving smartass, short answers, but he immediately balked at that idea. I wasn’t surprised, but I’d have to figure out a different approach. A sneaky one. “I know you do things besides drink, sleep around, and play baseball,” I said, taking a little break from all the business talk. “At least, I really hope you do.” He chuckled at that. “Not much.” Typical non-answer that he loved to give me. I tried from a different angle. “I know there is more to you than shoving your opponents’ faces in the dirt. Tell me about the real Jake Napleton.” His resistance was getting predictable. “Jesus, I feel like I’m doing a biographical interview on ESPN or something,” he said, frowning slightly at my choice of topic. “It’s just you and me, Jake. Two people getting to know each other.” I paused, letting him absorb that. “So, where did you grow up?” I asked, thinking back to the team’s profile on him and all the Googling I had done, which offered little insight. I started off broadly. “Born and raised in Chicago… right?” Nothing. “Why baseball? From what I’ve read, you were pretty good at other sports, too.” Still, zero response. “I read somewhere you were in and out of the system. I think it was in an interview your sister did when she got a full ride to San Diego State—” “We’re not doing this,” he said, cutting me off. He wasn’t disrespectful about it, just very firm. “My background really isn’t interesting at all, and I don’t like talking about it. End of story. I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s just not something I like revisiting.” Wow. Well that was a lot like running into a brick wall. I leaned back in the booth and swirled the red wine around in its big glass. 75

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Maybe I was pushing Jake too hard. “You know, I can actually relate to that. I have some stuff about my past I don’t like to bring up either.” “Great. So you understand that there are some things about the past that are just better left alone and not discussed.” Jake took a sip of his water, as though to signal to me to move on. I could take a hint. Jake was definitely interesting, and more complex then I’d initially thought. I was also beginning to realize that I’d been judging him through a lens that he provided. And he made it so easy. I learned from watching interviews at how evasive Jake was. In fact, he was an expert at it. Anything personal, and he became guarded, refusing to spill one little detail. His party persona off the field and his dirty plays on the mound were all people talked about, all they cared to discuss. Was it real? How much of it wasn’t? He had the same issues with his last team, the exact same, which was why he was traded. That had to have stung. Ultimately, his defensiveness was telling. While I could relate to not wanting to talk about certain things and let him win this round, we’d have to revisit it. If I didn’t know as much as I could about Jake, his re-branding would be near next to impossible. “Um, okay. Well, I do have another question I’ve been wondering. Where were you going when you rushed out of the locker last Saturday?” The appetizers came out right as I asked the question, providing a convenient out for him to shake off what I had asked. I sighed, wishing I’d come up with better ways to get him to open up. “Handmade burrata cheese, housemade country pâté, and the local tomato and blue cheese salad,” our server announced as he filled the table. My tummy was rumbling, and 76

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I decided maybe now wasn’t the best time to press Jake on his personal life. He was, after all, being surprisingly cooperative in terms of my branding advice. Suspiciously cooperative, I might add. I spread burrata over a piece of French bread. “Enough about me,” he said, taking a sip of water. “Let’s talk about you. So you and Grant Newman went to high school together, huh? Were you also going to mention that you two went to college together, since I know you both went to Tennessee State?” He nodded in the direction of Grant’s table. I felt nervous when I looked in his direction and caught Grant staring right at us. Creepy. I had taken a big bite just before he spoke, so I had to finish chewing. I chewed very slowly to eat up some time as I figured out how I would spin my conscious omission of the fact that, yes, Grant and I had attended the same university. I’m sure Jake would have approved of my delay tactics. “Take your time, Diggs. Geez, the only time you aren’t awkward is apparently when you are out there on the softball field stealing bases,” he jabbed with a smile. I finished chewing and finally was able to talk without embarrassing myself. “That seems like a personal question. I thought we were keeping this dinner professional.” He cocked his head and spread cheese on his piece of bread. The knife looked tiny, and that was when I realized how absolutely humongous his hands were. “So you’re saying you and Grant know each other personally? Interesting.” I could barely stutter a coherent word, realizing that I had subconsciously provided Jake with more information than I wanted to supply him with. He grinned, knowing that he had just backed me into a corner. 77

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“Listen, you obviously don’t want to talk about it, whatever it is that happened between you and him. And that’s fine. The only reason I care is because my, uh, friend, wants to take you on a real date sometime in the future, if you’d let him. And it’s really important for him to know. Especially because I—I mean, my friend, who wants to take you on a real date—is under the impression that you don’t date players.” I picked up my wine glass, swirled it again, and took in its it’s aroma. “Oh. So this friend of yours is a player.” “Yes. He is.” “Is he a clean player or a dirty player?” “My friend is as clean as they come. He’s not a cheater, if that’s what you mean. And he’s extremely loyal to those who earn his trust. He does have a tendency to rub some players’ faces into the dirt, however. But only when they deserve it. Like Pudge over there.” Jake thumbed toward Grant, who shot us another dirty look. My heart began to speed up, and I didn’t know if it was because I was sitting across the table from a man I was incredibly attracted to, or if it was the fact that the man who had left me with emotional scars was sitting twenty feet away. “You’re killing me, Newman!” Jake quietly belted in the direction of Grant’s table, loud enough for Grant to hear, but quiet enough not to make a scene. Then he turned toward me. “Of all the places he could have eaten tonight. Pretty goddamn coincidental if you ask me.” When I thought about it, it was pretty darn coincidental. Perhaps too coincidental? No. I was getting paranoid again, like I used to be when I was dating Grant. But then I glanced across the room and saw Grant gazing—no, glaring—at me. At us. I extended my hand across the table and touched Jake’s forearm, which he was resting on the table. 78

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It felt good to touch Jake, even if it was just his arm. His eyes searched mine for a signal that would indicate he might actually be making headway with me in the romantic department. I kept my gaze neutral, trying not to give away my position. Not like I knew exactly what position that was, anyway. The simple fact was that he had a magnetism about him that comforted me and drew me in. “You have ginormous hands,” I said, wrapping a hand around one of his fingers. He of course took it a step further and wrapped his around mine. “I thank God every day for these hands. They make me able to throw a hell of a curveball, and an even better cut fastball.” He flashed me a grin. “Do you need big hands to throw a cut fastball?” I asked. I’d heard the name of the pitch thrown around a lot by my brothers, but I wasn’t sure how the grip was performed on the ball. “If you have small hands, you can’t get them all the way around the ball, and it won’t work. You need to be able to wrap your two big fingers all the way around the ball. Like this.” He balled my hand up into a fist and wrapped his huge index and middle fingers around it. I couldn’t concentrate on what he was showing me, or anything going on around me, for that matter. I wondered if Grant was still looking at us, but I didn’t really care anymore. Outside of Jake and me, everything went blurry. I stared into Jake’s eyes, which were traveling all around my arms, hand, and animated face. His deep voice kept speaking, saying words that I no longer understood, and his enthusiasm for talking baseball was evident. I didn’t give a damn what he was saying. He could have been explaining 79

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Einstein’s theory of relativity—and I still would have been smiling and nodding. All I could picture—all I could think of—was how those fingers would feel wrapped around my waist. Interlocking with my fingers. Caressing me behind my neck and pulling on my hair. I wondered how they would feel traveling down the sides of my abdomen, down the lengths of my thighs and calves, and back up. His fingers were strong and rugged, yet long like a piano player’s. Something strange was happening inside me. I felt overheated, and my stomach churned over as sheer panic enveloped me. I was thinking things I hadn’t in a year. Things I wasn’t sure I wanted to feel for a very long time, if ever. I could feel Grant’s eyes. His presence was ruining this, and I was letting him affect my mood. Suddenly, this dinner date, or whatever this was, was a bad idea. Jake wasn’t Grant, but this was me likely repeating the same mistake if I didn’t stop it. Sure, Jake was as charming as Don Juan, but I had a very good reason for not dating players. And I couldn’t break my rules. But I also couldn’t control myself in front of Jake. This was a very bad combination. I yanked my hand away from his suddenly. “I’m sorry Jake, I have to go,” I said, standing up abruptly and grabbing my purse. I’d never seen a man look so shocked. “Are you okay?” No, I’m really not. “I just realized that I forgot to… respond…to...an email...” My voice trailed off as we stared at each other, but I felt pulled by his gaze, and I had to look away. All I wanted was to run…away from Jake and the fact that I let this dinner be more than it should have. To Jake, I was just a girl he wanted 80

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to get into bed. For me, he was stirring up things I didn’t want stirred up anytime soon. As in, never. “An email?” he asked slowly, confused. “Don’t you have email on your phone?” “Yes. I mean, no. It’s complicated,” I rambled, probably sounding like a crazy woman. Jake ran a hand through his hair and leaned back in his booth. “What’s this really about, Andrea?” Great question, but I wasn’t about to get in depth about my true history with Grant and why he made me want to remove myself from this restaurant in typical, awkward Andrea fashion. “I have no idea what you’re talking about…” Why the heck was I even still standing there? “Gotta run though. Byyeeiiii.” I walked briskly into the lobby and through the revolving doors. As soon as I was out of eyeshot of the restaurant, I ran. Tears started to stream down my face uncontrollably. I hailed a cab and gave the driver Amy’s address.

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“Worst. Date. Ever,” Amy said. I sank further into her couch. She was shaking her head and smiling a little in disbelief at the play-by-play account I had just given her of my dinner with Jake. The view from her Gold Coast apartment looked out over the vast Chicago cityscape, making me feel totally open. I felt especially vulnerable right now, because seeing Grant had reopened a wound that had never totally healed. “I mean, up until the moment I left, it was a great time. Jake was a good date and—wait—I didn’t mean to say that.” “Because it was a non-date, not a date. Right. Whatever you say. I wasn’t talking about Jake anyway. I was talking about you,” she said, getting up to pour us more wine. “You just marched out of the restaurant in the middle of the meal!” She filled my glass and then hers with the California pinot noir, her voice expressing incredulity as much as surprise. I chuckled at the fact that I hadn’t even had the time to finish the two-hundred-dollar bottle that Jake and I had started, and here I was, drinking fifteen-dollar chuck.

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“Well, to be exact, I didn’t march. I did a sort of shufflerun, the best I could manage in these things.” I pointed at my heels, which I had already taken off my feet. “Seeing Grant so suddenly after I hadn’t seen him in over a year had me spiraling out of control, and then Jake was coming on so strong, he was just so...” “Manly? Protective? I don’t understand what you are complaining about! I would love to have that man wrap his long baseball arms around me. What happened to enjoying the journey?” Yeah. That little mantra had gone right out the window. The truth was, I did want Jake. I mean, what girl with a pulse could sit across from him and not be attracted to him? But it all seemed too good to be true. His charm was hard to resist, sure, but behind the façade? Who knew what was under there? I shuddered, thinking about Grant and how wellmasked he was before I got to know him. “I guess seeing Grant at the restaurant reminded me that if something is too good to be true, it usually is.” “I don’t understand why you had to run away, though,” she countered. “It wasn’t a date, right? It was just a professional meeting. Technically speaking.” I couldn’t help but crack a soft smile. “If I’m being honest, we were starting to cross a line, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to stop myself. He did this thing with his fingers. He was showing me how he throws a special kind of pitch, which apparently only works if you have giant hands. He grabbed my hands and did this.” I tried to imitate the way he ran his fingers over my wrist and hand. “It felt...intimate. Like I was finally getting a piece of the real Jake. But then I felt other things too. All these memories of Grant, of how it had ended, of how it almost ruined me—” 83

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I stopped mid-sentence. Amy was sitting on a beanbag chair facing me. She was in shorts and a tank top, her brown hair up in a messy bun and a bucket of popcorn in her lap like she was watching a movie. Watching me have a meltdown. “Why’d you stop?” she asked, a hint of aggravation in her voice. I rubbed my eyes, mentally wiped and physically exhausted. I wanted to go home, take my contacts out, get in comfy clothes, and cry some more. At the same time, I didn’t want to go home precisely so I wouldn’t spend all night wallowing in self-pity. “I, uh, don’t know what the point of my story is anymore,” I told her, feeling confused. Though probably not as much as Jake. “Well, I do know,” she stated with a handful of popcorn. “Jake Napleton has huge, long fingers, and you are curious how they would feel wrapped around your...wrist…or something.” “Uh, no, what I was really wondering is how they would feel gripping between my—” I realized what I was saying and brought a swift hand to my mouth to stop myself. “You really know how to leave a girl with a cliffhanger!” she remarked and took another sip of her wine. “Are you embarrassed? He’s super hot. I don’t get it. Any normal girl would be thinking exactly what you’ve been thinking. Why are you holding back? You think it’s part of the whole conservative upbringing thing you were talking about the other day?” I sighed and reached for my glass of wine on the coffee table. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe it is. I do know I feel scared. I just feel like if I let myself cross the line, I’ll ruin everything I’ve worked for. What if I do hook up with him, 84

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and then we break up? What if people found out? How am I going to be able to get a job in sports PR again? I’ll just be another notch on his belt. And what if he doesn’t even like me in the first place? What if it ends up being exactly like Grant? I can’t go through something like that again.” Amy ran her finger around the rim of her wine glass, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Grant really did a number on you, didn’t he?” I felt like my stomach was about to collapse inward. “Yeah, pretty much,” I said quietly. “We’ve been over for nearly a year, and I just stopped thinking about him three months ago.” My last year at Tennessee State, Grant’s face had been everywhere since he was the touted number one pick for the draft. He was still the golden boy, but after graduation back in May and getting this internship, it’d felt like a fresh start. “You can’t live in fear,” Amy said sternly. “He’ll win. You deserve to have fun and be happy.” I nodded, agreeing but still glum. “Finally, I was moving on, and then—poof. Now he’s back on my mind.” “I mean, he plays for the Bulldogs. You’re in sports PR. It’s hard for you to totally avoid him, especially since their series with the Jags is for the rest of this week.” “I know. Uggh. It’s just all so stressful.” I sank further into the couch. “Why can’t I just be a normal girl who finds a normal boring accountant guy who just plays a little softball on the weekends? It’s all so difficult.” Amy narrowed her eyes at me and tilted her head. “What did Grant do to you that was so bad?” My heartbeat sped up again. “Sorry, I just…really don’t want to talk about it. I don’t mean to wall you off, but it’s been a really stressful night, and I don’t want to get into it.” 85

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Amy nodded and went silent for a moment, her eyes darting around the room. Eventually, her gaze found her way back to me. She grabbed the wine bottle on the coffee table, smiled, and shrugged. “Sounds like you need some more wine.” I smiled and stuck out my glass. “Yes please. Did I mention how glad I am that I met you?” She took my glass in her hand and filled it up. “Hey, there is nothing quite like a wine night with a non-judgmental friend to get you out of a funk, am I right?”

“I don’t care what you have to do,” Steve was saying. Wednesday morning I was back in his office, getting reamed. I was seated this time, because this had gone on for over twenty minutes now. “I need you to find an angle. Something. Anything that portrays Jake Napleton in a way that isn’t a dumb fucking asshole who drinks and parties too much. Have you seen the latest viral meme?” Of course I had seen it. Everybody had. A picture of Jake with his eyes half open and a beer in his hand had made the rounds on Twitter and was up to over a million shares. It was taken last night. Apparently, after I’d ditched him, he’d called up some buddies and painted the town red. “That picture was so ridiculous anyway. He wasn’t even drunk in it. The shutter just happened to flash when his eyes were just partway open. And it was posted by a third party. We should be suing for them to take down the photo. It’s bunch of bullstuff.” 86

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“Did you just say bullstuff?” He arched an eyebrow at me. I shrugged. “Why is it such a big deal that I don’t like swearing?” He smiled. “It’s just cute, that’s all. Anyways, you got me off topic with your clean language. You know what we have to do, right? I need you to stalk him.” I cleared my throat. “Stalk...Jake?” “Yes. Where does he mysteriously go after games? Why isn’t he accounted for? His teammates sure aren’t telling, and the coaches have no clue. Neither does his agent. Obviously, it’s bad if he’s being this secretive. Is he doping? Maybe we shouldn’t even be taking him on as a client. If he’s a sinking ship, it’s in our best interest to cut him loose.” I got defensive, and I wasn’t exactly sure why. Even though Jake had neglected to go into detail about his background, I felt protective of him. Something told me his frat boy drinking image was the tip of the iceberg, and there was a lot more beneath the surface. “No way is Jake doping. And he’s not a sinking ship. Although yes, he can be a little reckless sometimes.” “Well, if you can’t find an angle, we’re going to have to drop this account.” “I’ll find an angle. Trust me.” I stood up. “Just do it. Do whatever you have to do. We clear, Andrea?” he said, dismissing me as his eyes went to his laptop. Numbly, I nodded and left without a further word.

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“Is your aunt picking you up again tonight?” I leaned on the hood of my car, a blue Dodge Challenger I’d bought the day after I’d gotten my first multimillion-dollar contract four years ago. I wasn’t the type who needed to roll around in a six-figure car to compensate for any below-thebelt insecurities. I had that department covered, anyhow. “Yeah, she’ll come,” Tate said. I’d been waiting with Tate again after our late afternoon game. The ironic thing about being suspended was that it allowed me to coach a Wednesday game. We’d won, but kids at this age didn’t care. There hadn’t been any pizza tonight, and now we were playing another kind of game that we had both become accustomed to: waiting for this “auntie” of his I had never seen. I was beginning to think she was a ghost. “Bet she’ll be here any second,” he said. He didn’t glance down at his ten-dollar digital watch that looked like it came from Walmart. The kid had almost convinced himself of his own lie. I wondered what Tate would do if I wasn’t here to

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call him on his bluff. Would he walk home? At this time of the night? In this neighborhood? I shuddered, flashing back to all of the times I had walked home alone from my games on the South Side of Chicago, taking certain streets to avoid running into certain gangs who wouldn’t hesitate to pull a gun on you for no reason. And even then I’d still get in at least one fist fight every week, it seemed. Hell, at least it had a way of toughening a man up. Came in handy when I had to throw down on the mound, too. “All right, well, what do you say we wait five more minutes, and if she doesn’t come, I’ll take you home.” “Home,” he repeated. “Okay.” Something about just leaning against the hood of my car, waiting with the kid, made me feel so damn at peace. I think Tate didn’t mind it much either, because he always seemed disappointed when I told him he had to go home. Then again, “home” wasn’t always a fuzzy warm feeling for everyone, and when someone paid any attention to you in a positive way, it felt like the best thing ever. I knew. Tate was living it now, and I couldn’t be careless with that, even though it felt foreign to me. I glanced around, noticing how quiet it was, at least right now. Only a few lingering people were around the park. The night was warm but not bad. The brassy lights from the field competed with the dying rays of the sun, but it was pretty, the harsh contrast of false and real light. I smiled to myself when I saw Tate looking around too, copying me. Since I was MVP of the league last season, there weren’t a lot of places I could go and just relax without worrying about being in the public eye. It seemed like every second of my life, someone was snapping a picture of me and putting it 89

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on Instagram without my permission, or taking some stupid thing I said out of context and throwing it on Twitter. It was also the reason I didn’t tell anyone what I did after games. The last thing these kids needed was an army of paparazzi showing up to their Little League games because of me. The blue-collar parents who actually showed up to games seemed to understand that, and they hadn’t posted one pic of me or alerted the press. I could be myself, not fighting the image the media portrayed me as. One I didn’t exactly rush to correct. You spend your whole life chasing a dream, you get it, and then you’re pissed because people won’t leave you alone. The irony was as thick as a steel beam. I glanced down at my phone, at the clock at the top of the screen. Andrea had emailed me a couple times yesterday about setting up a meeting at her office. I hadn’t emailed back a response because I didn’t really want to talk about my social media re-branding or any of that crap. I wanted to talk about Grant, and why that asshole had smiled triumphantly at me when Andrea practically ran out of there. I hadn’t cared about the looks from people. I’d just been so stunned by her sudden change in mood. We’d gone from talking business to getting somewhere good. I was touching her and she was letting me. I’d liked talking to her about baseball, and the look on her face had been worth it. She had been slowly getting comfortable around me. And truthfully, I hadn’t felt comfortable with a woman like that in a while. My last girlfriend, if I could even call her that, had been more about appearances and her dating a baseball player. Our relationship had felt a little… fake and superficial after the initial few weeks. But just being with Andrea had been nice, unexpectedly nice. As much as 90

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my guard was up, hers were equally in place. Didn’t that make us a strange couple? I almost laughed out loud at that thought. Couple. I hadn’t had a truly serious girlfriend since Dani, and that’d ended disastrously. Aside from my sister, I’d had no one to trust my whole life. The one person I thought had my back, didn’t. And it’d reminded me that I only had myself. I looked at Tate, who was right next to me now and watching me stare off into space, thinking about adult problems. I wondered what problems were swirling in his miniature noggin. “You doin’ okay, little man?” I asked him. He almost smiled but then nodded. “I like being here,” he said, almost in a whisper, like he was afraid if he said it too loudly, it’d be taken away from him. I knew that feeling, too. I smiled back and ruffled up his sweaty mop of blonde hair. “Me, too, Tate, me too…” My phone beeped again and I looked down. I had dozens of missed calls, emails, texts, and alerts. But I immediately tapped on the newest email from Andrea, asking if I’d gotten her earlier emails. Her contact info had been in Green PR’s outline for my image rehab, and I’d put her number in my phone and called it a couple of times since our dinner date, curious what had happened last night. Her emails from today had been brisk and professional, not hinting at anything other than impersonal business to attend to. Since I was still suspended, the team had played on without me, and I’d had to watch us lose to the damn Bulldogs. Our four-game series ended tomorrow, with an off-day on Friday. Then we had the Jacksonville Firebirds starting on Saturday, which was a very tough team we needed to defeat to stay comfortably at the top. I hated to admit it, but I couldn’t deny that I might have screwed our season up. Not that one man made the difference, 91

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since our offense was outstanding, but I sure as hell wasn’t making it easy for our team to get to the World Series. And we deserved to play in it, given how hard we had worked to get here the whole season. I thought back to Andrea’s speech at dinner, her plans and strategies. It’d been cute listening to her talk about what she does best, just as I’d enjoyed talking baseball. However, controlling my temper had never been my best skill, and it’d been my hot head that had gotten me to where I was. But I could understand what she meant. What they’d all meant, even though I still didn’t think I was entirely wrong. I sighed, rubbing the spot between my eyes, and caught Tate watching me unblinkingly. Did he think that if he blinked too often, I’d suddenly disappear? When an extra couple of minutes passed, I called time. “Tate. Been ten minutes. Can I drive you home, buddy?” “Uh,” Tate started, his brown eyes looking up at me thoughtfully. “Yeah, Coach. That’s cool.” He showed little emotion as he jumped into the front seat of my car and buckled up. I did the same and turned the ignition. I had the AC on low and no radio with annoying hosts armchairing the game or music I didn’t understand at all. I pulled out of the parking lot. “So, big guy, we going to Altgeld Gardens tonight?” “Nah, my auntie moved.” Odd how he’d worded that. Not, “We moved.” It was like his aunt moved and hadn’t meant to really include her nephew. “So where we going?” “Uh, 2837 Blue Island.” My heart sunk. Christ almighty. This little blond-haired, brown-eyed white boy was living in the heart of the murder capital of the U.S. I felt an anger swell up inside me, not against anyone in particular, but at the mere fact that places like this existed, 92

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and that an innocent kid was being carted around from a crappy neighborhood to an even crappier one. I knew exactly what he was going through, and I hated it because there was nothing I could do about it. Tate was stuck, just like a lot of people were. The funny thing was, he probably didn’t realize how shitty of an upbringing he was having. And it was better this way. Truthfully, I was hoping he didn’t realize it for as long as possible, because maybe this mystery aunt did love him. Maybe she couldn’t show up because she was working four jobs to make ends meet so she could take care of a growing little boy. “No pizza today, huh Coach?” Tate asked, a few blocks out. Hand on the steering wheel, I glanced over and heard his stomach growling loudly. Motherfucker. The kid was starving. His scrawny size was telling enough but, shit, even as a foster kid, I’d usually had enough to eat most days. I ground my teeth. “Buddy, let’s make a quick stop. I need to get some coffee real quick. You can tag along.” He brightened up. “Can I have coffee, too?” Shit. The kid had no idea that coffee wasn’t food. “No, but you can help me eat a huge plate of bacon and waffles at Debi’s Diner. I can’t eat it on my own, so you’re gonna have to do your part, ‘kay?” I told him, glancing over and giving him my serious look. His eyes were big, probably already imagining it. “Okay…” “You need to call your aunt and tell her you’ll be a little late?” Tate’s answer was immediate. A shake of the head and no words. 93

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If I did anything worthwhile this week, I was going to get this kid some real damn food. Pizza was good and all, but if cheese, bread, and tomato sauce was the only square meal he was having in a week, we were in trouble. When I looked over at him again, he smiled, the first smile I’d seen from him since he’d gotten off the baseball field. I turned down 24th Street. We had been driving for a few minutes when we pulled up to a stoplight, and I noticed Tate had been staring into the side-view mirror for a long time. “What is it?” I asked, curious what had grabbed his attention. “We got a follower,” Tate said. I scrunched my face up at him. “A follower? What do you mean?” “That’s what my cousin calls them,” he answered. “White Prius behind us for a few miles now.” The kid was eight, but he already recognized the specific make and model of a car that was following him. Something told me that checking in the rearview mirror was a regular occurrence for Tate. I hadn’t noticed, at least not yet. Getting out of here had been the best thing ever, but it meant I’d lost some skills, and this was one I hadn’t really missed. I glanced behind and saw someone with glasses and a baseball cap through the shadows. It was either paparazzi or it was a gangbanger. Either way, this fucker had no idea who he was messing with. The light turned green and I sped off. The Prius stayed close enough so that he wouldn’t lose us, but far enough away that he wouldn’t arouse suspicion in most cases. Little did he know, I apparently had a future detective on my hands sitting next to me. However, most gangbangers didn’t drive 94

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a Prius. Then again, criminals were changing up the game all the time. I pulled off the road and into the worn down parking lot of my favorite 24-hour diner, and sure enough, the Prius followed, parking several yards behind me. “Stay here,” I said to Tate, unbuckling my seatbelt. “What you gonna do, Coach? You gonna rub his face in the dirt?” Christ.  I really did need to get Andrea to clean up my damn profile. And maybe start listening to her advice. “Don’t worry about it. Just stay put. Keep the doors locked. Okay?” “Okay,” he said, and sank down in his seat a little bit. I only left when I heard the car lock automatically. I approached the car, ready to throw down. My blood boiled, and all I could think was that he better be after me and not the kid, whoever the hell he was. As I approached the car, it started to drizzle a little bit, and visibility became low. All I could see was a silhouette inside the car. I rapped vigorously on the driver’s side window. As soon as the window was half open, I started ranting. “Listen buddy, I don’t know who you are, or why you’re following me, but all I ask is that you leave the kid out of it. Do whatever the hell you want with me—I don’t care. But you bet—” I paused in mid-sentence, and my mouth was agape at the woman I saw as she rolled the window all the way down. She took off her cap, and I had to look at her for a full five seconds before I registered I knew her. “Diggs. Holy fucking shit. What on God’s green earth are you doing here, following me? You a private eye now?” 95

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She was literally shaking, her hands trembling as she gripped the wheel. I didn’t think it was possible for Andrea to shock the hell out of me twice in one week, but she had. I took in her jeans and orange tee, her dark brown hair in a messy ponytail, and her makeup-free face. Her blue eyes seemed larger with her glasses on, but she somehow managed to be adorable. Her mouth was slightly parted, clearly not expecting me to confront her. Good. Glad she was the one left speechless this time… “Nothing. I wasn’t following you, technically. It’s a free country,” she rambled. “Right. Because stalking is everyone’s favorite pastime.” The rain started to come down harder. I was getting soaked, but the rain wasn’t going to wash away my anger anytime soon. “We need to talk. Now. Come inside Debi’s.” “No. I’m sorry. I’m going to leave you alone—” “Goddamn it, Diggs,” I said, sighing. “That wasn’t a request.” She swallowed, loudly. “Okay,” she whispered, her gaze lowering. She got out, and all three of us went into the diner.

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TEN

Debi’s Diner smelled of waffles and bacon and eggs. The smells were especially comforting because the rain poured down outside, and we had barely escaped getting drenched. It reminded me of a place back home in Sugar Tree where my mom used to take my brothers and me after their Little League games. After the divorce, it hadn’t been as fun. Today I had been watching a Little League game, yes, but it had felt borderline unethical following Jake. The glare he’d been giving me for the past ten minutes while I tried to dry off was warranted. I didn’t blame him. He sat across from me with Tate at his left, and the two bantered on and off while Tate ate. From their talk about the game for the past half hour, Jake was his coach, and they mostly talked baseball. I sat there, trying to reconcile that in my head, but I was having a hard time. I wiped my glasses on the only dry part of my tee. The front was nearly plastered to my chest, and Jake, surprisingly, had managed to not give one ogle since we’d sat down. As I continued to clear the water off the lenses, both boys went a

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little blurry for a few seconds. When I could see again, Jake was watching me closely. Tate was watching the both of us just as intently. I looked away, out the window, and watched it downpour. But then I saw my reflection. I looked like a drowned cat. Yeah, I’d stick with watching Tate wolf down his food with gusto. He was the only one eating. I’d ordered a coffee just to have something for my hands to do, but Jake had ordered nothing. A million thoughts had raced through my mind as I’d tailed him after the game on the South Side of Chicago. Maybe he’s dealing performance-enhancing drugs to his teammates? Maybe he’s just a regular-ass old drug dealer, going to make a drop? Or maybe he’s just going to get drunk with his local friends after the game? The truth was stranger than fiction, and now I was sitting across from Tate, a hungry little eight-year-old who was on his second plate of bacon and waffles. The kid could was so scrawny—borderline emaciated—yet he ate like a horse. I also recognized him as the little boy from Jake’s Instagram account. So many questions were on the tip of my tongue, but I refrained, just barely, from asking them. Until I was out of the doghouse, I’d play this real nice and easy. Honestly, I was just enjoying watching these two and didn’t want to ruin that with my questions. “Hungry little fella we got on our hands.” Jake smiled, ruffling the boy’s blond mop of hair with a tattooed forearm. Tate, taking a breath between bites, now looked up, and his eyes darted back and forth between the two of us. Very slyly. “So, Coach…is this your girlfriend?” he asked in a teasing voice that only little boys could do. 98

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Jake paused and looked in my direction. His gaze lingered over me like a fire stays on a piece of wood it wants to burn. “What do you mean by girlfriend?” he asked, winking at me and glancing down at Tate. He scrunched up his face. “Do you, like, leave her silly notes and stuff? And then she writes you back sometimes? And you like it when your desk is sittin’ next to her?” I bubbled up inside. This kid was so damn cute. I couldn’t help but beam a smile at him as I took another sip of my coffee. I waited patiently for Jake’s answer. He gave me a sidelong glance. “Do we like to leave silly notes and stuff? Well, she sends me emails—and they’re silly sometimes. And there’s stuff in her notes that I don’t always understand.” His eyes were on Tate now, but I glared at his perfect profile. “But, yeah, I definitely enjoy sitting next to her.” No. I was determined. I was not going to be flattered by that last comment. He’d just called my emails “silly.” I had spent way too much time composing said emails. But then I realized something. He’d read them. “Why you ain’t sittin’ next to her now then?” Tate looked up as he finished off one of his last slices of bacon. “We’re having a...squabble right now,” Jake said, so patiently. “She’ll be sitting next to me soon enough though.” I gave a harrumph at that and wrapped my hands around my warm coffee mug. Both males ignored me. So typical. “Coach, what’s squabble?” he asked, struggling with the word. “We’re having a fight, but with words,” I interjected. Tate lit up like a firecracker. Not exactly the reaction that I was expecting. “A fight like when Coach pushed the 99

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guy’s head into the dirt! That was awesome. How you do that with words?” I resisted rolling my eyes in front of the kid, but I did shoot Jake a look that said, See what kids are learning from you and your damn adolescent behavior? Jake had no problem rolling his eyes back at me, but he fought back a smile. I was pretty sure he’d officially forgiven me since we were pseudo-flirting and using an eight-year-old as a buffer. “It’s always better to work out your disagreements with words, in a respectful manner, and not, ah, putting people’s faces in the dirt,” Jake added, refusing to look at me as he said it. I shook my head. I heard him say it, and I so wasn’t going to let him forget it. “If you can help it, that is. Cuz some people though, they just don’t listen.” I sighed. I’d almost had him. Jake gave me a wink and a winsome smile. To Tate, he asked, “You gonna finish that last piece of bacon?” Jake feigned like he was going to steal it, and the kid quickly snatched it and chowed down on it. We laughed, but when Tate yawned and blinked sleepily at me like a cat, I looked down at my phone. “Oh wow, nine o’clock,” I said, surprised. We’d been here for over an hour—and I’d just spent an hour watching these two boys talk to each other like they were a movie or something. “It’s really past your bed time!” Jake said, calling at our waitress for the check. “Nah uh, I go to bed at like eleven! My auntie says she don’t care!” I saw Jake wince at that, which surprised me. Had I found a chink in the playboy’s armor? I knew he’d been raised in the foster care system along with his sister. That was general knowledge, but he’d never spoken about it to the 100

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media or in public. I started to wonder if the secret life of this mysterious man wasn’t so mysterious as it was personal. Deeply personal. “If you want to play in the big leagues, you gotta get your sleep, buddy. Got that?” Jake leaned back and looked at the little boy. I wondered if Jake knew what he was doing to me. I had been somewhat able to resist his charm the night before—well, at least I had the wherewithal to run out of the room before I made any bad decisions—but watching him in a tickle fight with this kid was damn near bringing tears to my eyes. Maybe he had found the chink in my armor, too. Jake wasn’t a one-woman man, at least not lately. He never told me any different, and the media image supported that one hundred percent. But somewhere, deep inside, I sure wanted him to be one. And I was certainly regretting my policy against dating players.

“Say goodbye to Miss Andrea,” Jake ordered Tate in a very teacher-y voice once we were outside. The rain had died down, but even as I got in my car and rolled my window down, I didn’t want the night to end. Ironically, I had learned more about the real Jake during this impromptu date—if we could call it that—than I had learned during our official “client dinner.” Tate jumped back into Jake’s car, but Jake lingered by the side of my car window, leaning his forearms onto the doorframe through the open window. 101

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“So. Miss Andrea,” he began, his voice velvety. “Hmm?” I had to resist. Had…to. “You don’t have to follow me, you know. If you want to take me out again, all you gotta do is just ask.” This time I did do a big, sweeping eye roll. He was charming, too charming, but I could see through it. “You know, I felt weird enough that my boss made me follow you this time. But do let me know when the next game is… Coach.” I meant for it to be light, but he stiffened. “What?” I asked. “Do not go telling anyone about this,” he said, a tone of seriousness present in his voice that I’d never heard before. “This is my one escape. These kids and their parents—they’re so poor, they don’t give a shit if it’s Joe Schmoe down the street or Barry fucking Bonds who is coaching the team. They just want someone who is able to give their kids a little extra time and care and show them how to have fun playing the game. And for a few hours a week, it also keeps them off the streets and out of trouble. We cannot go telling people about this hobby of mine. I’m shocked that the tabloids haven’t found me out already, to be honest. They’d never believe it either. They’re too busy looking for ‘Jake the Playboy’ in the north side bars. And I’m perfectly okay with that.” Darn it. He made a fair point, and I couldn’t fault him for that. The supreme irony was that this was the perfect image to give to the public. This was the side of Jake Napleton the world, or rather, most of the world, had never seen. “I hear you…but, well, what the heck am I going to tell my boss then?” I asked, giving him a long look. “I have to produce results. That’s the point of PR.” He sighed, making a face. “I don’t know, say that I was out at some bar getting hammered with my homies.” He laughed. “That’s what everyone thinks, anyway.” 102

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This time, I sighed, very loudly. “You make it really difficult to be your social media manager when you keep all the good parts about you a secret and let the world keep believing that you are some sort of alcoholic fighting Irishman. You really want that to be your legacy?” He shrugged, but he didn’t blow me off this time. He was actually thinking about it before he gave me a stock answer. “Couldn’t give less of a shit what the public thinks about me. Never have. Maybe that’s a bad thing, but I just want to play the game the best way I can, have fun with my friends, and live my life.” Jake paused and looked at his car. “Have the small moments that mean a lot to me, without it being a big deal.” I made a little noise at the back of my throat. It might have been an “Oh my gosh, how sweet” whimper. Jake’s lips curved upward in a slight smile. He leaned in and brushed my hair behind my ear. “By the way. You look extremely hot in those glasses. When are you going to let me take you on a real date, Miss Andrea?” My hands tightened on the wheel. I looked straight ahead. “We already did.” I hoped he’d just agree and move on. But Jake, well, Jake was Jake. He chuckled and took his forearms off the doorframe. “Uh, I don’t think so. You left halfway through. And someday you’re going to tell me what those looks between you and Grant were all about. But I think the place was all wrong. I only did it to impress you.” I tore my gaze away to look up at him. “What?” I asked, jaw dropping. “I  hate uppity places like that. Marseille Club. Bunch of phonies in that place. Case in point—we ran into Grant dipshit Newman there and his fake-ass blonde bimbo. If it 103

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were my choice, I’d take you somewhere honest, a hole in the wall diner, like Debi’s, or a pub with normal people and delicious, juicy homemade burgers and real, down to earth Chicago people. Not the type of jigglypuff place where you pay two hundred dollars for a bottle of wine and then pay more for food that’s not even that good.” I didn’t know what to say to that. Speechless. Me. Who knew! Dear God, the Jake I was discovering was going to get me in trouble. Big trouble. “Hey Coach?” Tate shouted, and I was relieved. Jake straightened up and looked back at the kid, who was standing by the open passenger door. “We goin’ home yet? I gotta get my sleep to be a big leaguer like you!” “Guess you gotta go.” I flashed a smile, glad to have an excuse to end this conversation. “I guess so,” he said, shooting me a look that said this wasn’t over. “Hey, drive home safe.” “Sure. See ya.” He took a step away, then turned and looked back over his shoulder at me. “No. I mean, seriously, be careful. I grew up here, and this is not a good neighborhood. Especially this time of night.” I soaked that up. I grew up here. Finally, a small piece of info I didn’t have to drag out of him, even though I’d figured that out. I smiled, oddly uplifted. “I’m a big girl, I’ll be fine.” “Take main streets to the highway. That’ll get you back safely out of this area.” He walked away from my Prius to his blue Challenger, and I watched. Damn, did he look okay in jeans and a tee— from all angles. Maybe even better than he did in his tight baseball pants. I heard his car roar to a start, and he pulled away, but he paused on the street until I started my car by pressing the button on my dash and turned my headlights on. 104

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I went one way, and Jake went the other. On my phone, I clicked on my Waze app; I used it religiously to direct me around Chicago. The soft English accent floated through my car. Take a right onto 24th Street. Quickest route straight ahead. I drove for a while on the busy street, cranking some T-swift, because that was how I liked to roll. Waze had me turn down a side street, and I followed. Right as Taylor was singing about how she had a long list of ex-lovers, and I was wondering if I could make a bad guy good for a weekend, a car pulled out right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes. I was jolted hard. I felt the seatbelt press against my chest, and then my body slammed back into the chair. “Asshole!” I said. The windows were closed, and it wasn’t like he was going to hear me. The car in front of me, a black Cadillac, moved forward about two feet and then stopped. All four doors opened up, and four men stepped out, two of them with guns. My hands began to tremble. I tried to put the car into reverse and get out via the back route, but a second car pulled up behind me, blocking my route. Hands shaking, I fired off a text to Jake. Then, a man in a baseball cap knocked on the driver’s side window with the muzzle of a gun. “Don’t even think about calling the police, lady.”

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ELEVEN “Hand over your purse,” the man with a gun said to me. I set my phone down and put my hands up, heart racing. “Please,” I begged. “I wasn’t doing anything.” I looked into the man’s eyes. His face was sallow and sunken, and the rings around his eyes indicated some sort of drug use. “You’re right, you weren’t. But here you are in your nice car, rolling around here at this time of night. Give me your purse.” I did what he asked, shoving my purse through the small opening of my car window. He reached into my purse and pulled out a few bills. “Seven dollars?” he asked, dumbfounded. He dug into the pockets, stuff falling onto the street with soft pings and clinks. “That’s all you got?” “Use my card everywhere,” I said, and as soon as I did, I regretted it. The guys behind the sunken face laughed, their guns flashing in the light of the streetlamp. They were a mix of races, all with the same goal tonight.

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“Now that’s a damn good idea you just came up with,” some other gangster guy stated. “Why don’t you get out and get into Jones’s car over here, and he’ll drive you to the nearest ATM.” I hesitated, trying to weigh the options that might end with scenarios in which I didn’t die. I obviously didn’t have much choice. Just as I was about to do as they said, I heard the screech of tires behind us on the street as another car pulled to a halt. “The fuck?!” one of the guys yelled and pointed his gun at the blue car, which had just pulled up. I knew who it was before the rest of them did. The door opened, and Jake got out of the car, long legs first. He was a towering presence even in his street clothes. Relief flooded through me, but as I looked back, catching a glimpse of him in my side-view mirror, I gasped a little. The look on his face was…nothing like I’d ever seen. He was past angry, with a kind of cold fury in his eyes that made me hold my breath. “Who the fuck are you?” one of the guys yelled, his eyes as red as Mars. “Dude. Dude, that’s Jake Napleton!” Jake walked toward their guns. “Yeah, I’m Jake Napleton,” he said, hands up and so calm. “Can I help you fellas?” “Shit, that’s Jake Napleton,” said Red Eyes, way behind the ball. Jake walked toward me. “Diggs. You okay?” he said, lowering enough to talk through the opening of my window. His expression was hard, but when he looked at me, I felt like all he cared about was me and my well-being. 107

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“I hope so,” I croaked, a lump in my throat. I looked up at Jake, and I noticed that he was looking at Sunken Face, who’d put away his gun. “Holy shit,” Jake whispered, staring. “What?” I asked, gripping the door handle and trying to see what he saw. “Fred. Fred fucking Wigginton?” Jake belted, pushing off my car. “What the hell?” My eyes darted between the two. “You guys…know each other?” “Know each other? Shit. We played fucking Little League together since we were four years old,” he remarked. “Oh,” I said in a strangled voice. “How…nice.” “In fact, I’ve known a couple of these guys for years,” Jake added as Fred got his buddies to lay off. They hung back, relaxing near their jacked-up cars. He approached us and I tensed, shrinking back in my seat. The other men standing at the ready with guns were clearly with some gang affiliation and ready to keep this up. They all stared back at Jake with a range of expressions. “Fred, what the fuck is this?” Jake asked. “You’re robbing people for money now? You that hard up?” They moved away toward the front of my car, and I couldn’t hear a darn thing they were saying, but their body language was all casual and friendly-like. My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it. Jake was a shadyas-hell character, a one-in-a-million underdog story. He knew the worst of the underworld but had risen above it. My PR brain was firing in the face of this nightmare. Well, wouldn’t Steve be proud at how dedicated I was until the very end? 108

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They did some sort of bro-thing hug, and Fred was nodding as he and Jake shared more words I couldn’t hear. “That’s more fucking like it,” Jake said loudly, taking my purse from Fred’s hand. “Now get these damn cars outta the way.” Jake turned to me as the cars disappeared like magic. I got out of my car, bewildered and shaken up, but relieved. I took a step toward Jake. He wrapped his arm around me, and goosebumps came over my entire body as I rested my head against his chest. So this is what it feels like to have a guy who made a horrible situation go away? He got bonus points for making me feel delicate. Unfortunately, he released me. “So…um, you grew up with those guys. Wow. They’re so different from you though.” Jake’s light brown eyes glinted under the light of the street lamp. His expression was dead serious. “That’s the scary thing, actually. I’m not much different from any of those guys,” he said grimly. “We all grew up in the same mile radius, went to the same shitty public schools, and came from messed up families. The only difference is that God gave me the gift of being able to throw a fastball one hundred miles per hour. The truth is, if I hadn’t had baseball as my out, I might be in their shoes. Hell, we even have the same—” He cut himself off suddenly and looked at me with his lips pressed tightly together. “The same what?” I asked, my curiosity piqued. “Nothing,” he said in a snippy way that told me the conversation thread had come to a close. I swallowed hard as my heart broke for Jake. I could tell he was struggling with admitting an unpleasant truth to me, and maybe even to himself. 109

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I extended my arm and wrapped it around his bicep. I made sure he was looking right into my eyes as I spoke. “Hey. It’s not your fault. You realize that, don’t you?” He chuckled, attempting to brush off my attempt at seriousness with humor. “Honestly, is anything anybody’s fault?” I gripped his bicep a little harder. “No. I mean, seriously, Jake. You didn’t deserve to grow up the way you did. It’s not your fault. You have to realize that, don’t you? Your talent isn’t what got you out—it was you.” He shook his head at me, almost sadly. “There’s a lot about me you don’t want to know,” he said ominously. “Trust me. It’s best that no one ever know.” I could tell Jake was uncomfortable from the way he was squirming. He’d had to deal with stuff that I could only imagine. But I understood one thing. There wasn’t anything more uncomfortable than confronting those ugly, dirty truths about yourself. Especially your past. Our moment was over. I could see it on his face, and I let it go, because pushing Jake would be useless, and frankly, I needed a moment to think and process everything that had happened this evening. “I’m following you home,” he said. His tone brooked no argument as he handed me my unharmed purse. But he gave me a quick smile. “Need to make sure no other bad shit happens to your pretty ass at this hour.” My pretty ass, I thought as I got inside the car. My mom would have a fit if she heard how many F-bombs Jake dropped on a regular basis. Yet something deep inside me drew me to him. It’d started at dinner, seeing him with Tate. Knowing there was more to him. I thought about Grant, how I’d thought the same things, but this was different. Grant 110

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had never been gentle, or vulnerable. He’d just wanted what he wanted, and I knew he hadn’t factored me in his world. Somehow, me in Jake’s world…it mattered. And that scared me in new and different ways. Despite my weariness, I saw a glimpse into Jake that touched me. After tonight, it wouldn’t be anything but personal for me, too. It’s probably why I didn’t object at all when he offered to tail me home. Besides, if there were any more of these situations, I might need his pretty ass.

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TWELVE My heart hadn’t beat so hard in ages. The last time I’d felt like this, I’d been in the World Series. Thank God she’d been able to text me her location before things got out of hand. I didn’t even want to think about what could have happened had I arrived another minute later. I’d wanted to knock all of those gangbangers’ teeth out. Seeing that text from Andrea just as I’d dropped off Tate had made my blood boil. I was still on an adrenaline high, still ready for a fight. That feral and protective side had been dormant for some time, and when I got really angry, I took out all of my physical aggression on the baseball field. But there was no denying that inside me—although it had been buried for some time—was a monster. The whole incident had brought up parts of my past that I’d tried to block out for years. It made me think of when my sister and I would walk home together from middle school, back to whichever foster home we were staying at. We’d take different routes every day so we could avoid the wigged-out gangbangers who were looking for someone to beat up. But

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sometimes, somehow, they’d find us and stop us. I’d tell Eva to run home while I stayed behind and either took the obligatory beating if I was greatly outnumbered, or beat the crap out of whoever it was that was giving us shit. It wasn’t pretty, but standing up to them was the only way you could gain their respect. But sometimes, I’d gone too far, because I just couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t stop the anger, and I hadn’t cared if they had to limp back home. I’d broken guys’ jaws, knocked teeth out, and even had a couple of blunt object fights that I’d prefer to think never happened. But the fact was, those things had happened. They were a part of me and my upbringing. Andrea had now—for better or worse—gotten a glimpse into my shady, fucked-up past. Though it would have been possible to knock all of those guys out—I was glad I hadn’t unleashed my temper in front of Andrea. I slapped myself in the face as I rode behind her to remind myself of the point. If something would have happened to Andrea, I would have unleashed the wrath on those guys. I would have become the guy I had been in high school—the one who did terrible things to people. But it didn’t get ugly. I didn’t unleash. I was Chicago’s loveable star pitcher frat bro, and that was how things needed to stay. I was going to have to make Andrea understand how this campaign was going down. Maybe I could become a slightly cleaner version of my current social media image, but I wasn’t about to allow for a complete overhaul. That would mean a complete survey of my life up to this point, and there were some things that were just better left locked up. We took a north side exit, turned off the main street, and pulled onto a side street. She lived in Logan Square, which was 113

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a new thriving hipster area in the northwest part of Chicago. It was safe in some parts but sketchy if you turned down the wrong street, which Andrea seemed to have a penchant for. On the end of the block there were a couple of open spots. She pulled into one, and I pulled up right behind her and put my car into park. I jumped out, and we walked together to her building, a large three-story house that had been cut up into apartments. I walked her up the porch and to the door of her place. She opened the screen door and stood there under the porch lights as she looked into her purse for her key. “So, uh, what happened back there?” she asked, clearing her voice when it shook just a little bit. “I don’t mean to pry. But it seemed odd how easy it was for you to diffuse the situation. How do you know those guys?” I shrugged. “Like I said, Fred and I go way back,” I tossed back at her. A vague answer, but this wasn’t an area of my life that I felt like unpacking. She looked up then quickly back down. “Oh?” she asked, very carefully. “Has he always moonlighted as a robber?” Shit. On the other hand, she had a right to know what happened, and a part of me wanted her to understand…me. Understand how this city worked, even if it wasn’t pretty. And she didn’t seem like she was prying because she wanted to dig up dirt on me. Her soft eyes gazed up at me, and I could feel her curiosity seeping through. She wasn’t a fangirl trying to cozy up to Jake the celebrity. She simply wanted to know a part of my life. Even so, I obeyed my natural instinct, which was to close off, and gave her another non-answer. “I, uh, told him I wouldn’t turn him or his buddies in if they left and called it a night.” 114

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She nodded. “They got it easy,” she said, anger inching into her voice. I got it. I did, but I also understood Fred; his desperation had been painful to hear. He was hurting so bad. He looked like he was on drugs, but he was working so many jobs to support his family and still barely making it. “It’s hard to explain, but I understand why they do what they do. I don’t agree with it. I wish I could say something that would change their minds about ever doing anything like that again, but this city isn’t kind to people, Andrea. You grew up in a small, protected town. Your life growing up was different. Here, this is a jungle. Death is part of the landscape of this city. Crime is just a business. It’s not personal.” I paused. “Anyway…I got their plate numbers, too. I know someone, a friend of mine in the PD. He’s a good man, he’ll check up on them to make sure these guys don’t do more harm.” At this, she bit her lower lip and nodded again. “I’m not trying to judge, Jake. But…that was terrifying, and I can’t really see them as normal people. I just see them as criminals.” Hearing Andrea say that sent a shiver through my entire body. If Andrea found out the truth about how I knew them, she’d never see me the same. I tried to explain as best as I could. “And they are. And they’re people, too. People who made bad decisions or didn’t know how to make the right choices. It’s not an excuse. It’s just the world we live in. But it’s not clear-cut. Nothing is ever simple.” She gave me a long look. “This is your city,” she said, digging back into her purse. “So you’d know.” I nodded, slowly. This was my city, and some things were exactly the same, and other times, I had no idea what I was doing. “Some days, I wonder if being traded to the Jaguars 115

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was a mistake.” I glanced at the intercom speaker and saw Andrea’s name listed on the third floor. “But then I realized there’s no other city I’d rather live in. In spite of all the ugly things that happen here, I love this town.” “Well,” Andrea said softly. “I for one am glad you were traded.” I gazed at her, but her eyes were downcast. Girls had no idea how much the normal shit they did could leave a man mesmerized. I liked that I didn’t tower over her. I liked that she wore her glasses in front of me, and I liked seeing her just being her. I liked that she didn’t pepper me with questions with Tate there at the diner. I wasn’t going to lie, I liked her body too. My eyes moved from her eyes to her t-shirt that was tucked into her jeans, and they lingered on her hips for—shit, could have been a whole minute. I couldn’t look away as I took in her whole body and face. I noticed I was licking my lips and—honest to God—wondered what our kid would look like for just a moment. I liked the idea of me and Andrea. Like here, now. It was nice to just be still, to do something normal after shaking off a very scary moment. What I really wanted to do was put my hands all over her, but I fucking couldn’t. Me, Jake Napleton, the man who’d hooked up with not one, but two Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders shamelessly, was utterly frozen and unable to make a move on Andrea as she kept rummaging through her purse. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said, turning to me with worried eyes. “I think your friend Fred either has my house keys or dropped them when he was going through my purse.” 116

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“You don’t keep your house keys with your car keys?” I asked, glad for the reprieve. She gave me a long-suffering glare. “Of course, but my Prius is keyless. If my key ring—with my fob, house key, and other keys—was dropped within range, I can still start my car. So it was probably right there, and I didn’t even realize it.” Right. “You don’t have an extra?” I asked, and she scowled at my tone. She rubbed her eyes, pushing her glasses off. “In my house and in my locked drawer at work. Damn!” “Wow, damn,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. “I didn’t know you could swear.” “Shut up.” She smiled and punched me in the arm. “But seriously. I’m screwed. How do I get in?” I walked from one side of the front porch to the other, examining it for weak points. It wasn’t like this would be my first break-and-enter. “I mean, we could definitely break in,” I said. “But it would involve a rock and a window.” She looked at me, grinding her teeth. “Are you kidding me? That’ll get me kicked out of here real fast.” She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. I raised a brow. “What?” “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she said, weariness in her eyes, “but can I spend the night at your place? I can call my super tomorrow morning to let me in my apartment. I could call my friend Amy, but she’s probably sleeping by now. And I don’t have many friends in the city yet.” I felt my cock grow in my pants at the thought of sleeping in the same apartment as Andrea. Without saying a word, I stuck my arm out like I had on our first date—I mean, nondate—at Marseille Club. I smiled at her. 117

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She took my arm and I led her to my car. Sometimes, one action is worth ten thousand words. I, for one, felt like the luckiest fucking guy in town. With the hottest fucking girl in the city. If I could have been with any girl in the world that night, it would have been her. I opened the door and closed it when she got in.

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THIRTEEN My mother would kill me if she could have taken a snapshot of my life right now—me heading to a man’s house to spend the night. My mother meant well, but she’d kept me and my brothers under such a careful eye that getting out of Sugar Tree had been the only thing I’d wanted. It was almost like escaping. And yet, she may always haunt me. I shrugged off the feeling of her watchfulness. Why did I feel so indebted to her, like I had to live my life with her kind of lens? This was fate intervening, I decided. Fate was telling me that I had to spend the night at this man’s place. And I’d only known him for less than a week. Well, at least I’d known about him for many years. But after tonight, I felt like I really knew him. I got Jake Napleton. And I doubted that many other people had seen this side of him. “You did really well,” Jake said, glancing over at me. “Back there with Fred and his…friends.” I leaned back in my seat, staring down at the road. “Thanks, I guess,” I said, trying to get the picture of the gun pointed at me out of my head, remembering how surreal that

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whole moment had been. “I was just so scared, and shocked. I couldn’t react at all.” He had his iPod synced to his stereo, playing some 80s music on low that I wouldn’t have thought he listened to. It was nice though, and I listened to Michael Jackson sing about the man in the mirror. He had the AC off, and the vents blew in nice summer evening air. “Don’t think about it,” Jake said softly, his arm resting between us on the armrest. “Put it behind you. It’s over now, and I won’t let anything else happen. I promise.” Yeah, I so totally wanted to forget it. Somehow, with Jake telling me to, I could. Already, I felt the fear ebb away, because he made me feel safe. That warm, fuzzy feeling floated through me. It was the first time that a guy had come to my defense, and it was a quaint feeling. I’d never needed saving before, but it felt nice, being taken care of. To know Jake had that potential was startling. For the rest of the ride, we didn’t talk. We didn’t need to. I sat next to him in his car and did everything I could to resist slipping my hand up his muscular arm. He wore a shirt with a white body and blue sleeves, and the sleeves were so tight on his biceps, I thought they might splice open at any time. Up close, the man was a gem. My hero tonight. I watched him while his light-brown eyes focused intently on the road ahead. He was a man who rarely spoke, but when he did, people listened. I listened. Everyone freaking listened. That was both good and bad. And despite his reputation of being a womanizing fighter who played dirty on the mound, someone who cared about nothing more than getting hammered and intimidating his opponents by any means necessary, I wanted Jake Napleton. 120

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I couldn’t help it. I was nearly salivating watching him drive. Just driving. Good God! What would I think if I had seen him do something I actually found hot? Like beating people up. For me. Okay, I knew it was a bad fantasy. But when Jake had arrived, I knew he’d do whatever it took to make sure I didn’t get hurt. That meant a lot to me. When I’d texted him, he’d come right away. No hesitation, no fear. “Jake, I don’t know if I said this, but—” I stopped, wanting to say so many things. Then I thought how absolutely absurd it was that I could think these intense thoughts and feelings in just a few days. I’d heard of instant attraction, but had never experienced it until now. “Uh, thanks,” was all that came out. “Thanks for coming back for me. You pretty much saved my life.” He looked at me, his face tight, as though he was trying to hide his emotions from me. And for a second, we stared at each other, the same way we’d stared at each other at dinner, before I’d left him high and dry. I’d felt glued in place as his eyes had looked into mine, like now. But this time, I could tell he felt it too. He looked away, and the moment was gone. But I’d sensed he’d wanted to say something. And again, getting personal was too much for him. I wondered if he’d ever open up to me. I looked out my window, watching his profile reflected against the glass. C’mon, say something. Tell me I’m not just a crazy girl with a groupie crush on a baseball player. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he finally said. He didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride, giving me nothing to work with. I imagined he would make an expert poker player with how closely he held his cards to his chest.

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“You’ll sleep in my bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch since my spare bedroom has baseball stuff all over it.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. He was being coolly polite and distant as he stood on the other side of the elevator, and this subtle shift in his mood put me on instant alert. He was probably just tired, but I couldn’t help but think it was something else. “Do you have clothes for tomorrow?” I looked at myself in jeans and an orange t-shirt. “Just these.” “I’ll have my agent bring some over tomorrow,” he continued, and the elevator dinged as we arrived at floor 25. It was the top apartment of the high-rise building in the Gold Coast neighborhood, close to the lake. Jake had been acting weird since we got out of the parking ramp under the building. He was masking it well, but I could pick up on his anxiety. Even though I was taking his suggestion to try to forget about the robbery, I wasn’t sure if he was taking his own advice. Was someone like Jake scared of anything? It didn’t seem possible, not the way he’d handled himself and controlled the situation. I eyed his profile. “Jake, is everything okay?” “Yeah, sure,” he said, too quickly. “Just write down your sizes and what you want, and I’ll send a text.” Since I had work bright and early tomorrow, something businesslike, I thought. Then I really processed his words. “Your agent shops for you?” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t worry, it’s her job. And I never give her little tasks like this, so she’ll think it’s fun.” 122

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Her? His agent was a woman? For some reason, that really bothered me. “Oh? None of your other girls have needed dresses?” I asked, now fishing, but he kept his gaze forward. There wasn’t even a hint of his flirty, easy-going charm. I pushed my glasses up on my nose, making sure I saw him as clearly as possible. He gave me a funny look. “Other girls, yes. Of course.” We walked to the end of the hall and finally reached his unit. His keys jingled as he took them out. As he inserted the key, I leaned against the door. He smiled. “Congrats. This is the first dress I’ll ever be requesting from her.” I didn’t respond to that as he opened the door. Inside, I found a larger-than-average open-concept bachelor pad. The walls were brick with black and white art on them. Every piece featured two human-ish figures, seemingly vying against each other for something. It was shockingly neat and orderly. “Wow. I didn’t know you were an art collector.” “Check out this one though.” He nodded to a piece on the far end of the wall, which was a black-and-white cut-out of Ted Williams. We walked toward it to get a closer look. “Signed,” he added. If I wasn’t a softball player, I would have had no idea who the man was. “Teddy. Fought in World War II, but still somehow managed to be one of the best hitters of all time.” “You know who Ted Williams is?” I shrugged. “What, why can’t I know who he is? I come from a baseball family.” He walked into the main room, which had a few bookshelves, a TV, and a coffee table. “I’ll be sleeping here.” He patted the couch as I followed after him. He walked to a side room and opened a door. “And you will be in here.” 123

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He put a hand on my lower back as he turned on the lights to his room. It dawned on me how crazy this whole night had been. Stalking a famous ball player, having dinner with him and his cute sidekick, and then almost dying. Well, okay, could have died if Jake hadn’t taken care of business. And now, I was in his bedroom. My friends back home wouldn’t believe it. My mother sure as hell wouldn’t. Heck, Amy might even have a hard time with this one. I imagined the ensuing conversations with my mother, in particular. I stayed at Jake Napleton’s house last night. No mother, I didn’t sleep with him. We’re friends. Were we? Friends? “So…Jake. You’ve been quiet,” I said as I walked further inside his room. I took off my gold cross pendant and put it on his dresser. “I’m just wondering how you’re dealing with… everything that’s happened tonight.” “I’m fine,” he said, again, too quickly. “Totally fine. This kind of thing happens in bad parts of Chicago.” “Bet you got loads of stories of growing up here, huh?” I asked, hoping he’d take the bait. But he didn’t. Typical. However, he didn’t give me his usual don’t-ask-me-anythingpersonal look, just a tired, quick smile. He passed me on the way to his huge, walk-in closet. From inside, he grabbed a pair of black-and-red flannel PJs and tossed them at me. I barely caught them before he was walking past me. “Hope they’ll be comfortable enough for you. Night!” he said as he zoomed out of the room. I threw the PJs on the bed and followed him out. “Jake. You don’t seem fine. You seem off. Seriously, you can tell me.” I reached out and grabbed a hold of a spot right between his neck and shoulder. He finally stopped and faced me. 124

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He had been avoiding my eyes, and finally, he looked straight into mine with those piercing brown irises. “Fine. You know what I’ve been thinking about for the past hour? It hit me when we were in the car, and then in the elevator. I kept thinking…how it would have been if you’d died tonight. How pissed I would have been. It’s fucking silly. But I was thinking that you could have died before I—” His hand moved and gripped my arm. I felt so many emotions surge through me. Jake was talking much more intensely than I’d ever seen him before. His hand moved from my elbow up to my shoulder. “Before you…what?” I urged and looked at him. “I’d have been so pissed if you—if we’d died, and I never did this.” Jake dropped both of his arms down around my waist and pulled my body to his. I let out a jolt of air, and I couldn’t stop staring up at him. Maybe I was being weak, but I didn’t overthink the moment this time. I let it happen. I pressed my hips into him. He reciprocated by pressing his hips back into mine and lowering his lips down onto my open mouth. “Mmmmm,” I groaned, letting my hands roam his body, feeling the muscles under my fingers. He pulled away for a split second, and our eyes connected again. “Goddamn, you’re gorgeous. So fucking gorgeous. You make me wanna—” In another split second his lips were pressed up against mine again. This time, I was ready for him, and I softened my lips to brace for his. My hands grabbed for his butt and only reached as far as his hips. “Fuck, I like you, Andrea,” he said in a throaty growl as our foreheads touched. 125

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“I like you, too,” I whispered back. He spread my arms out behind me, pushing them toward the sides of the dresser. I leaned my head back and felt his lips move slowly from my cheeks to my neck. He tugged at my orange t-shirt, and I willfully obliged in helping him pull it off. My body was pressed back up against the dresser, and my chest was pushed out involuntarily. Jake stepped back from me and stared, his eyes everywhere on my body. “What?” I asked. “Is it my birthmark?” I followed his eyes to my chest on my left side, where I had a red birthmark the size of a quarter that I’d always been self-conscious of. Jake just smiled and shook his head ever so slightly. He came closer to hug me. His hips gyrated into mine, and I gasped. I felt it again. The same it I had seen in the locker room. Back with a vengeance. Dear God. He backed his hips off me and worked his kisses down my neck to my chest. He kissed my stomach from side to side. I ran my hand through his thick brown hair, encouraging him further, but that same panic that had come out of nowhere during dinner was suddenly back. I wasn’t one of those girls— like the girls Jake hooked up with—that could keep it casual. And I knew that with this man, I couldn’t just sleep with him and pretend the next day it was nothing. I took things personally. Jake didn’t. There was nothing wrong with it, but I needed to remind myself we were operating on different levels. Even though it wouldn’t be fair, I would hate him and blame him for what I felt the day after when it would have been my fault for letting things go too far. Dinner had just been the beginning. And sometimes, you didn’t always get your dessert. 126

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I savored the moment, though. I savored his touch and the fact that he wanted to be with me—at least for a night. His mouth was at my belly, and his big long fingers dipped inside of my jeans. The point of no return. I might regret what I was about to say, but I had to say it. “Jake...” I had to repeat myself a couple more times. “Yeah?” he whispered, looking up at me. The look on his face…I could almost believe he really wanted me, wanted to be with me. That this wasn’t just another night or that I wasn’t some random girl he’d picked up at the bar, but I knew the truth. Reality was rarely pretty. “Come up here.” I guided him up. “You okay?” he asked. He pushed my hair behind my ear, tweaking the frame of my glasses. The gesture was almost…affectionate. “I can’t…I’m sorry.” Jake’s lips curved upward into a slight, sad smile. He seemed so understanding that saying no to him was almost painful. “If that’s what you really want, Andrea…” He waited, searching my face. I nodded. He nodded back. “Okay.” And then he left, and once again, I wondered, what the hell was I doing?

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FOURTEEN “You whaaaat?!” Amy was scolding me the next day, unsurprisingly, for not having hooked up with Jake. And part of me didn’t really blame her. “You didn’t even get his shirt off? Shit, I’m not angry. Sorry for raising my voice there. I mean, you should have at least gotten his shirt off.” This whole thing was getting confusing and complicated. For me, anyways. But who knew what Jake thought of the situation. As promised, his agent, Marissa, had dropped off a chic brand name outfit that could have paid for a month’s rent. I’d only emailed her office once, as a courtesy when I started on Jake’s campaign. So I’d had no idea that he had a female agent, one that was a little too easy on the eyes. I hadn’t dallied that morning, and I’d gotten out of there as fast as possible. Jake had acted normal, like getting turned down was nothing new to him. But I had felt an unspoken tension in the air as I slept. “I don’t know,” I said, sitting heavily in my seat at the bar of a packed McBanners. It was Friday, and I couldn’t be more thankful that the week was over. While the past week

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had been action packed, it had taken a lot out of me. “I just couldn’t. We’ve only known each other a week!” Amy’s expression said it all, and I hadn’t even told her about the rest of last night’s adventure—not Tate, not even about the robbery. “Andrea! You need to get with the way we do things in the big city! One-night stands are a thing! It’s not a big deal! And also, you need to get his shirt off him. Ask about those tattoos.” “Tattoos? What about them?” “Supposedly he has backwards tattoos on his chest. The media has asked him about them, and not once has he given a straight answer why he has mirror images of tattoos on him.” I scrunched my face. “You seem to know a lot about Jake’s tattoos. You know, seeing as how I was the one who almost had a one-night stand with him.” I’d never had a one-night stand, but it didn’t feel very cool to say so. Plus, the last thing I wanted was to be Jake’s one-night stand. If we were together for just one night, that would be a rip off. At least a ten-night stand. God, I cannot believe I’d resisted. The fact that Jake had respected my decision without hesitation had been wonderful, and confusing, too. Had he realized he hadn’t wanted to sleep with me? Or was he the nice guy I knew he was under that dirty-playing, beerguzzling, party persona he didn’t refute? “And then there was the whole ‘sleeping with clients’ thing that seemed like it might get me into trouble,” I added. “Psssh.” Amy waved her hand in the air like she didn’t care. “I think Jake Napleton is one of those worth the risk situations. You don’t agree? Besides, I bet you could turn this into at least a five-night stand.” 129

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I started to regret that I’d even told Amy anything. Even though she was my best work friend, I didn’t feel quite like unpacking the real reason for my hesitation that Amy only knew the half of: my ex. My phone buzzed. I looked down and saw Mama flash on the screen. “Sorry, I have to take this.” “Jake?” She arched an eyebrow. I shook my head. “I wish.” I left the bar, finding an area outside that was quiet enough. I slid my finger across the touchpad to answer. “Mother. How are you?” “Hi, honey! How’s the big city?” My mother would never recover if she knew what I’d been up to. It was like she had an “Andrea got close to hooking up with someone” detector. I pictured her having a stroke listening to Jake and I talk dirty. Why was I even thinking of Jake and me talking dirty? “It’s so great, Mother. Steve has finally asked me to take on a project that really means something. And I’m out at McBanners right now with my new friend Amy.” “That’s…” She took an extra beat before responding. “Grand. Just grand. Well, everybody misses you here.” That was passive aggressive code for, You’ll be coming home at the end of the internship, right? I kept my poker face for the moment. “Good. I miss everyone too.” Then she came in with the really heavy artillery. “Mr. Barnes is holding that social media position at Barnes’ Bar. He looks forward to having you.” I shuddered. For once in my life, I was starting to enjoy myself, to find myself. Now my mother, well-intentioned though she was, wanted to remove me from this growth period. 130

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“Mother, a small neighborhood bar doesn’t need a fulltime social media person,” I informed her, which was very true. “Well honey, he’s holding it just the same. I’m sure you’ll find something to do when you come back here. The softball team needs a coach next spring…” My mother kept talking, but I stopped listening. Somewhere in my heart, I knew she wanted the best for me. But after the divorce, there was another, selfish reason that she wanted me back in Sugar Tree: to keep her company. My younger brothers were both in college now, and I was her only daughter. It’s what good Southern daughters did, took care of their parent. Tears welled up in my eyes just thinking how much I loved and respected the woman. She’d wanted the best for me, she really had. But she was born and raised in Sugar Tree and planned to stay there for her whole life. The fact that I had been in a college relationship with Sugar Tree’s homegrown star, Grant Newman, meant to my mother that I needed to return home with him and start making babies, ASAP. She still lived in a world where we would kiss and make up sometime soon. Maybe it was partially my fault for never totally filling my mother in on why me and Grant broke up. Still, as much as I loved my mother, I had been realizing lately that I needed to separate myself from home and create my own independent being if I ever wanted to be truly happy. “Andrea Jane! Did you hear what I just asked? Have you been going to church on Sundays?” I had, but clearly that wasn’t the point of this conversation. I couldn’t do this anymore. Not right now. Not on a Friday night when I was already two tequila shots and an appletini into my night. 131

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“Mother, I’m so sorry. I have to go. My friend is calling me.” “Well, all right. You watch out for those city playboys at the bar, though. Find you a nice country boy, like that college boy of yours. And Grant’s in Chicago right now. He texted me. Maybe you two can, you know, rekindle things.” I swallowed hard and knew that I’d have to tell her the whole story about Grant soon. Until then, I was doing my best to put him behind me. “Mother, did you just say Grant texted you?” I asked, disgusted that he had the audacity to use my mother to get to me. It would just make it even harder to tell her the truth, especially since she still clearly adored him and he still had her wrapped around his little pinky. “Yes, and he’s really horribly heartbroken after everything that happened. He wants you back.” I stiffened. “Mother. I’m twenty-three. I can handle my own dating life. Please stay out of it.” I heard an elongated sigh on the other end of the phone. “I just worry about you. You know that.” “I love you, Mother. I have to go.” “I love you too.” I pressed the red button on the touchscreen to end the call and breathed a deep sigh of relief as I walked back to the entrance of the bar. The bouncer with a big beard waved me through the line since he knew I had just stepped outside. A drunken call with my mother wasn’t exactly the best way to kick off a Friday, but at the same time, I had been dodging her calls for several days. I sauntered back into the bar area of McBanners, shocked at what I had just done: told my mother off. Cut her off. Ignored her. 132

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For my whole life I’d gone along with exactly what she wanted. Yet, just now, I couldn’t go along with her. She no longer knew what was best for me. Only I knew that. Or did I? All doubts aside, I knew that I needed another drink right now to deal with these feelings that were bubbling up. Maybe not the healthiest way of dealing with them, but hey, I’d been dealing with my feelings in a healthy way for twentythree years, and where had it gotten me? I pulled up beside Amy at the bar, a newfound sense of resolution running through my blood. “Hey, I’ll take two shots of tequila,” I told the bartender. Amy eyed me. “You all right? Who was that?” “My mother,” I answered, giving her a shudder. She nodded heartily, as if that was all the answer she needed. “I’ll take two shots also,” she said, holding up two fingers. “Not going to let you drink alone.” The bartender poured a couple more, and we downed them in quick succession. “Well, this night just got really interesting,” Amy said, scrunching her face before she bit down on the lime. We were both starting to feel a solid buzz.

A half hour later, the night did get interesting. My feelings started to tumble out. “Dammit Andrea, you’re the coolest,” Amy blabbed. She was in full-on drunk confessional mode. “You’re so fucking cool. We had a girl here before, and she would always steal my pens and lie to me. Until one day, I caught her red133

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handed, and she still didn’t admit it. You’re nothing like the pen stealer. And for that, cheers to you.” “Well thanks,” I giggled as we clinked our appletinis together. “Seems like the standards have been set pretty low if all I had to do was just not steal your pens.” “No, that’s not it.” She backtracked. “Besides the pens. You’re a good person. You try so hard to be good. You have Jake Napleton trying to hook up with you for goodness’ sake, and you’re turning him down because you want to keep things professional! My God! The self-control you have!” “Shhhhh. Keep it down!” The bartender had looked our way, and who knew how loud she was screaming at me. We were starting to get borderline belligerent. “Okay!” she said in a loud voice. The bartender laughed and shook his head, then turned to another customer. I wondered what Jake was up to today since the team had an off-day, and Friday off-days weren’t that common. They had their last game of the week with the Bulldogs yesterday. By Sunday, Jake’s suspension would be over, just in time to play the Jacksonville Firebirds. I took out my phone. With all the alcohol swimming through me, I did not think twice and fired off a text to Jake while Amy turned and chatted with the guy next to her at the bar. Me: Hey. How’s the off-day? Jake: Worked out this afternoon, just showering at my place. What’s up? Me: You going out tonight? Jake: I can be. Are you? Me: I’m at McBanners. Jake: Can I come or does that violate your work rules of professionalism? 134

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Me: You should definitely come! Jake: I will. Fast and hard. I sent him an eye roll emoji. Jake: Sorry, should have mentioned you will first. Jake wasn’t even that clever, and the exchange was stupid and arbitrary, yet I felt a wave of heat coming over me as I thought about anything having to do with him and me and coming  and  going. Whether it was the simple act of him coming to the bar or something else entirely, he put a spell on me. The fact that last night had not phased him was a nice surprise. Or was he thinking he was wearing me down? Crap, me inviting him here would just make him think I wanted to pick up where we’d left off. I mean, I did, but, well…crap. “Um, Andrea…?” I spaced in, and Amy was poking me. I put my phone back in my purse. “What?” The bar had gotten considerably more crowded, and I couldn’t tell who she was talking to. She gave me a wide-eyed look, almost like a warning. I found out why when she moved her head out of the way, and instantly a chill ran through me. And not the kind I liked. Grant Newman stood there with a stupid smirk on his face. “Andrea, so good to see you again.” A chill ran over my body. “Thought you flew out today,” I said coldly. “Nope,” he grinned. “Decided to stick around for our off-day.” 135

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“How’d you even know I’d be here?” His grin turned positively wolfish. “Your mom texted me.” Just effing great. I turned to the bartender. “I’m going to need another shot of tequila please.”

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fifteen So now Andrea wanted to hang out all of a sudden, after blatantly rejecting me the night before. My wheels were spinning, trying to figure out what Andrea wanted from me. I’d had blue balls so bad the night before, and now she was hitting me up via text, telling me to come meet her at some bar? I couldn’t figure her out. As good as I was at reading people, much of Andrea was still a giant question mark to me. She was a mystery, and I was damn well going to get to the bottom of her. Besides, it was a good night to let loose. We had a rare Friday off today after a four-game series with the Bulldogs. I couldn’t be happier that Grant Newman had likely left the city this morning on a flight out of Chicago. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why the guy irked me so much. It wasn’t like I didn’t have asshole friends, but at least they’d have my back. Newman, on the other hand, was the kind of guy who would start shit for no reason then blame it on you. I hit up the crew, and of course they were down to go out. My catcher, Dwayne, the right-fielder, Buckner, and the

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closer, Franco. Fucking bunch of bros, they knew this was one of the last nights we could go hard before we started easing up as we made our World Series run. We hopped out of the Uber in front of McBanners, in the middle of a very important philosophical conversation. “Franco, fuck you if you think Emma Stone is hotter than Marilyn Monroe. You have no appreciation for the classics,” Buckner was ranting. “Please dude. That’s not even a contest.  That’s like major leagues versus minor leagues. Marilyn was overrated. Everybody knows nostalgia distorts reality. Napleton, for the love of God, back me up on this one.” I shook my head. “The two are from totally different eras. That’s like asking, ‘Would Babe Ruth hit seven hundred homeruns in the 2000s?’ It’s impossible to know, but we should definitely appreciate the classics. And no fuckin’ way can you say Marilyn isn’t classic.” “I still ain’t convinced of Emma Stone. She’s got those crazy eyes,” Buckner retorted, shaking his head. “Mmmmm. I love me some crazy eyes,” Dwanye chimed in, pointing his eyes in different directions, which freaked us all out. “You seriously need to get that checked out,” Franco said. As trivial as our conversation was, it made me smile. Our team chemistry was humming, and with the playoffs right around the corner, we were peaking at just the right moment to have the best shot at winning the World Series. When I got traded last year, it’d been a low, but my teammates had embraced me without reservation. While they did the same shit that I did, it was me that always got flack for it. Honestly, I never let it bother me, but this idea to behave and not stir 138

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things up sat at the back of my head. If I was going to see Andrea, she expected me to behave, and I definitely wanted to see her. The doorman, Chubbs, waved us ahead of the line, as per the norm. God, I fucking love my home city. “Jakey baby!” We slapped hands. “Good to see you, Chubbs.” “Yeah man. What you doin’ on a Friday night? Ain’t you guys gotta game or something?” “Off-day. Then we fly to Jacksonville tomorrow.” Chubbs nodded. “You’re the second crew of ballplayers in here.” “Really? Other Jaguars came in here?” “Nah man. Some New Jersey Bulldogs players. That guy whose head you pushed into the sand? Yeah, he’s here. And some of his entourage.” Chubbs gave me a knowing look. “You guys cool, right? You ain’t gonna start nothing?” I chuckled. “Chubbs! Please. We left that all on the field. I’m not gonna start shit in the real world. C’mon, bro.” Beneath my confident veneer, I was a little pissed that the Bulldogs hadn’t left Chicago yet. But I couldn’t blame them for wanting to spend an extra night partying in one of the best summer cities in the world. “All right, man. You fellas enjoy the night.” He removed the rope, and we headed through to the bar. Before we reached it, I noticed that Andrea and another girl were talking to that fucking guy. She was leaning away from him while he was leaning into her. “Asshole alert,” I said to my crew, pointing to Grant Newman. “Guys, I gotta hit the john before we get drinks. Meet you back at the bar.” 139

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I split off and headed to the bathroom, wading through a sea of drunk-asses to get there. Shit, it was only seven-thirty, and these people were hammered. I went to the john, then to the sinks to wash my hands. I splashed a little water on my face, reminding myself of the one thing I wasn’t going to do tonight. No fighting. I still remembered that triumphant look on his face when Andrea had left me at dinner. So much had happened since that night. Normally, I didn’t have girls telling me no, but even if they did, that was their right. But I was finding that I really wanted Andrea, and not just for her hot body. Fred holding that stupid gun at her head through the door of her window pissed me off. It had scared me in ways I hadn’t felt since I was a kid. I wasn’t as close to my sister as I’d like since she’d moved to San Diego, but we stayed in touch. Would I have been as scared if it’d been her in that car instead of Andrea? I’m not sure. I felt close to Andrea in ways I couldn’t explain. Her meeting Tate and knowing what I did after practices had also freaked me out, but for completely different reasons. That Jake Napleton is so normal. Most would find that version of me dull. Hell, if they knew about half the shit that I’d been through as a kid, bouncing from foster home to foster home, they might even feel sorry for me, and that was the absolute last thing I wanted. The public wanted the Jake that did stupid shit and kept up appearances. And I liked having fun and partying. I’d earned it. I knew Mr. Yerac, my coaches, and my agent all wanted me to fall in line, but what did that even mean? I thought about Tate, and how he reminded me of myself at that age. I remembered the people I’d looked up to, and they’d all been baseball players, guys who’d appeared 140

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to be great guys—though not all of them had been “good” guys in the traditional sense. I didn’t want to be fake. I also didn’t want to play up an image that wasn’t wholly me or geared to make me palpable to the masses. Could I actually have both? Andrea seemed to think so, and I was wishing I could believe her. I wanted to believe her, because she wasn’t like most people who took and wanted something from me. She was trying to give me something, and she meant it. I heard the door behind me bust open, and the voices were unmistakable. My mood instantly soured. I’d recognize that high-pitched, steroid-popping voice anywhere. What he said would make my non-violent pledge very hard to keep. “I’m taking Andrea home, no doubt about it,” Newman said. “I’m gonna do with her what I should have done in college, but she never let happen.” A cold-blooded surge of adrenaline went through me. I stayed bent over at the sink so he wouldn’t know I was there. “Dude, didn’t you like cheat on her and shit?” I recognized the voice as one of the other bitch boys on the Bulldogs that I had struck out. “Who the hell cares?” “Dude, you were sleeping around on the reg with other girls then.” “Man, what’s your deal? Fuckin’ hater.” I could feel my anger start to edge out the calm. He’d cheated on Andrea? I’d never cheated on a girl I was with. Ever. I turned around, deciding what to do. The two of them were pretty drunk, still talking to each other at the urinal. I walked up behind Newman, looking down at the little pussy. “Shitty hitter, even shittier teammate, so I’m not surprised you’re also a cheater, on and off the field, Newman,” 141

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I said, seething. “I can’t believe Andrea ever dated you. Probably the best thing that ever happened to you.” I swear I saw him tremble a little. He turned around and tried to zip up, but caught his shirt in his fly. “This is none of your goddamn business, Napleton. And I don’t care if you are dating my ex, enjoy it while it lasts, because she’ll always be mine.” The guy had to be fucking with me, trying to get a rise out of me. Yet the fact was that Andrea had walked out of Marseille Club, and I was left with Newman’s dumb ass smiling at me. Suddenly, it made sense. Andrea did have feelings for me, even then, even before I really got to know her. Add the fact that she probably hadn’t even wanted to be in the same room as this jackass, considering he’d cheated on her. Knowing that now, my anger leveled out, but it was still there and would be until Newman finally left Chicago for good. Knowing that he thought me and Andrea were dating put a smile on my face. Mr. Jackass finally pulled his shirt out of his fly and zipped all the way up. I leaned in and got in his face. “You better watch yourself, Newman. Keep this act up and you’re going to be eating a lot more than dirt.” “You better watch yourself, too, Napes. Nips. Napes.” The dude was so drunk I could see him swaying from side to side. I grinned and laughed as I turned to push the door. “Have a good night, ladies.” The one thing I’d accomplished was not punching Newman in the face, but I really wanted to. I marched back toward the bar area, through a sea of people who all stared at 142

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me as I walked. I was used to the staring in Wrigleyville bars, where people acted surprised that Jake fuckin’ Napleton was a real person who went to real bars and had real friends. Some dude put out his hand for a high five, and I nailed it. “Holy crickies. Coolest Jaguars pitcher ever! He’s just getting drunk on a Friday, just like us!” The guy had a backwards Jaguars cap on. I smiled and took a picture with him and gave the camera a thumbs-up. “You mind if I Insta this, bro?” “Course not,” I said. “Insta-away!” “Holy crap! Jake Napleton!” If that beerless pic of me went viral, I wondered if I’d get bonus points from Mr. Yerac. I eventually made my way to the bar area. My teammates were standing around, and they already had a Guinness lined up for me. “Dude, total hottie sitting at the bar over here.” Franco elbowed me. I smiled. He was pointing at Andrea. “Bet you can’t pick her up.” “Bet I can.” Guinness in hand, I strode over to the barstool where she was sitting. She still had on her work clothes that I had ordered for her that morning, and damned if she wasn’t a knockout. I wanted to take her right there. Then, as I made my way to her, she did one of those unbelievable maneuvers that girls do that drives guys crazy— and I was sure she had no idea what she was doing. She put both arms behind her back and stuck her chest out in some sort of stretch. Really, all it did was stick her boobs way out and make them look even bigger than they normally did. My boner pressed up against my jeans. Down boy. You’re going to give away our position. Although it wasn’t like she didn’t know my position after Wednesday night anyway. The way her body felt pressed up 143

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against me would have been enough to give me wet dreams every day for the rest of the week. “Hi there, gorgeous,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. “Can I buy you a drink?” Unexpectedly, Andrea jumped two feet in the air off her barstool and slapped my arm away, whirling around. “Get the hell away—oh. It’s you. It’s you!” Her frown curved instantly upward into a smile, and she wrapped her arms gleefully around me, pressing her chest into me. Yeah, the glassy look to her eyes told me enough. Andrea was very drunk. “I’m...glad you’re so happy to see me.” “Well I am happy to see you. Very happy. Happy.” She held her arms around me for a few extra beats. I hadn’t expected that, but I reciprocated, wrapping an arm around her harder, taking in her smell. She smelled like sexiness mixed with tequila. I loved it. And I greatly enjoyed feeling the full length of her body pressed against mine. God help me, this was going to be a test of self-control, of playing it cool. “Please, don’t leave me,” she whispered in my ear, and I noticed her glancing over my shoulder. For appearing drunk, there was a degree of seriousness in her voice that I hadn’t felt before. She unwrapped her arms from around me. “He’s here.” “I won’t leave you,” I promised, feeling her tense up. I turned my head, following her line of site, and she was looking right at the Bulldogs’ number one prick. Was she… scared of Grant Newman? Now that I knew they had dated, my mind wheeled in a million directions, trying to make sense of the information I had. Why hadn’t she given me the full story about her and 144

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Grant yet? I was dying to ask her, but this loud and noisy bar wasn’t suitable for a serious conversation. “Well, I’m glad Andrea is so good at introductions,” a voice interrupted, right next to Andrea. We released our hug, and a perky, tiny little brunette popped herself into the frame. “Hi,” I said, extending my hand toward her for a shake. “Jake. So nice to meet you.” “I’m Amy,” she replied.  “And thanks, I know who you are. Think I might have seen your face on a Calvin Klein add or two.” I shuddered. “Just so you know, I’ve never let my agent live it down after I let her convince me to do that one.” “Oh, I think it’s quite all right.” She gave me a quick up and down. “Guys, I think we should do another round of shots to celebrate Jake being here!” Andrea interjected. I took a sip of Guinness, which didn’t mesh super well with tequila, in my humble opinion. I set it on the bar next to all the shot glasses and spent limes. With Newman sniffing around, I needed to be alert. And it seemed as though Andrea had her share of tequila shots already. “Stressful day?” I asked. “You’ve no idea,” Amy interjected. Andrea went on, the alcohol taking over. “My mother was mad at me. Then my evil ex came here. And now you’re here. And, this might be the booze talking, but I don’t know what on earth to do about any of this.” “Speaking of evil exes,” Amy added. She nodded behind us, and I saw him and his crew of flunkies approaching us. “I know,” I retorted, annoyed that Newman just wasn’t getting it. I could feel my senses heightening and my blood filling with adrenaline. I tried my damnedest to play it cool in 145

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spite of the fact that I had now confirmed that Andrea used to date Grant Newman, my archrival. In spite of that, my heart began to beat like a predator in the wild. “He’s a little thickheaded, huh?” Amy rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it! She’s been filling me in,” she said. “I’d love to know the whole story myself,” I added. Just then, I felt a tap on the shoulder. I turned around, and guess who? “Napes. Nips. This is my girl. Take a hike.” The noise of the crowd around us died down. Everyone was listening to our conversation. The bro I had taken a photo with busted out his phone again and started recording. “Grant,” Andrea yelled, getting up off her barstool. “I’m not your girl. We’re done! You’re insane! And I’m not taking you back! Stop following me, and stop texting my mother!” She pushed him away, but he came bouncing right back like a roly-poly toy. My adrenaline spiked. I could feel all of my senses heightening. “I’m not going anywhere. And you’re coming back to my hotel with me tonight. Got that?” “Step away from the lady,” I said firmly, inserting myself between the two of them. I could feel the eyes of the entire bar on me. “Listen buddy, this is none of your business.” “No. You listen to me.  This is my town.  You’re on my turf.  And you’re drunk as a skunk. Not that you aren’t an asshole sober, too. You are the one who needs to take a hike. You’re embarrassing yourself. I’m not asking—I’m telling you. Get the fuck out of here.” Where were the goddamn bouncers when you needed them? 146

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“Shut up, Nips. You’re such a pussy. Just ‘cuz you’re a pitcher, you don’t have to get in the batter’s box, you just throw high and in with no consequence. Well, I got news for you, Andrea’s coming back with me.” Swaying like the drunkard he was, he pushed me, trying to make me do something stupid. Even then, I didn’t make a move on him. He spat on my damn shirt, and I didn’t even punch him out, even though my heart was beating so hard I thought it might explode. Self-control. Be the bigger man. Don’t show this side to Andrea. Then he grabbed her wrist, and it must have been hard, because she gasped. I pulled his grip off her and pushed her behind me, but I didn’t miss seeing a touch of fear in her eyes or how red her wrist was. That pissed me off. To be honest, it all happened so fast, I don’t even remember who hit first. All I knew was that it felt real fuckin’ good the way my hand slammed into his nose and jaw. After that, all hell broke loose. It was a good oldfashioned South Side brawl. Except we were on the north side, so the cops showed up within minutes. There was no one to point at but me when they asked who had started the melee. I wanted a goddamn replay booth review of that call, but it didn’t much matter. They cuffed me and booked me. This was going to be a fun one to explain to Harry Yerac.

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sixteen “I’m here to sign for Jake Napleton.” I mustered a polite smile at the desk sergeant, a big black man with a stern expression. I leaned my forearms on the counter. The small and rundown police station was blessedly quiet. It was nearly midnight, and I still had a slight buzz going, which helped make the whole situation less shocking. I’d taken a shower to sober up and had downed strong coffee, both of which helped a little. The officer scrunched his eyebrows together. “Jake’ll be released in a few minutes. Sign here.” He pressed the intercom and said a few words to someone, then turned back to me. “You can take a seat if you want,” he added. Then he was back on the phone. A week ago, I’d never even imagined meeting someone with the celebrity status of Jake. And now I was signing him out of jail. He’d gone too far in the bar with Grant; that was undeniable. After how hard Jake had hit him, according to the paramedics at the scene, Grant would likely have his jaw wired shut for a few days while he ate a liquid-only diet.

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Even though Jake had thrown the first punch, he’d gotten me and Amy out of harm’s way. Then he’d gone back in to get his friends. The media maelstrom had already begun. Amy had gone home to deal with Steve and come up with a strategy to help me salvage this setback. I’d done the same and called Jake’s agent, who then had to call Jake’s lawyers to deal with the bail, court appearance, and getting him released. God only knew when TMZ would get a hold of any video of the bar fight not already posted, or Jake’s booking photo. So far, there hadn’t been many hits on the three YouTube videos that had been posted by people at the bar an hour ago, but Twitter was lighting up like a Christmas tree. So was my phone. I took a seat, hugging my purse to me and while I waited with the other handful of people. Just before Jake had called me to meet him here, his lawyer had called me, informing me that everything had been taken care of. That seemed fast, but Jake probably had top-notch lawyers. I didn’t care. When he called, I came. I wanted to be the one here, the first person he saw when he walked out of jail. Despite the many emotions that were running through me, there was still one that stood out against the others. I felt…at peace. I stared down at my wrist. It still ached a little, but it wasn’t red anymore, and I didn’t think it would bruise; I could still feel how hard his grip had been, nearly crushing. Grant always had been physical, and once again, the way Jake had protected me was something I’d always remember. What’s more, the hate I used to feel for Grant wasn’t there anymore. I hadn’t realized I still harbored a lot of ugly feelings toward him until I saw him again. I’d told myself I was over him, that I’d forgiven him for the things he’d done and had moved 149

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on, but I’d been lying to myself. Since meeting Jake, he’d proven to me twice that he was a guy who stood up for what was right. As much as I hated the fact that he had to resort to violence, his display of defending me had accessed some internal switch deep inside me. There was no denying that when he’d punched Grant, it had been both satisfying and kind of hot. A door buzzed. “Jake, hey.” I stood up and walked toward him. He was very somber. His mop of brown hair fell messily on his head. He was a little surprised that I went in for the hug. He wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on the top of my head. “Hey. Thanks for coming,” he said, his voice rough and tired. “I was surprised you called me. You didn’t have anyone else?” “My sister works for the DEA. She’d kill me if she knew I was getting into another fight,” he said dryly. He stared at his pitching hand and stretched it out with a wince. The knuckles were split and bruised, but he seemed to have full mobility. “Plus she lives in San Diego, so that’s kind of a long way to come bail out your bar-fighting brother. And I know how much Mr. Yerac loves midnight wakeup calls from me when I’m at jail, but I thought I’d take a risk on you.” I shook my head and then stared. “She works for the DEA? That’s badass. I barely knew you had a sister…” He froze, as though he hadn’t meant to reveal that piece of info. He shrugged. “Yeah…a lot of undercover work, I think. She never talks about it.” “And you never talk about her,” I commented, though it explained why I hadn’t been able to find a lot about her. “You close?” 150

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“Kind of…we grew apart in our teens.” Another shrug when I kept staring at him. “Eva’s a year older. Both our parents were out of the picture early on. She eventually got adopted, but I never did. She moved to the West Coast for college and never left.” He smiled, briefly, somewhat bitterly. “Me? Problem kid, always getting into fights, a temper that never cooled, and well, no one wanted to deal with me. Her adoptive parents didn’t like me much. Still don’t. We still talk when we can, though. And when I’m playing in San Diego, I always stop by or grab a bite with her.” I had nothing to say, because what I wanted to say would probably irk him. I didn’t feel sorry for him, not in that way, but I felt for him, the kid that he’d been, getting rejected like that, and how that had obviously affected him as an adult. Jake went to the counter for some reason, and he and the desk sergeant had a quick chat, a laugh, and universal bro-handshake. I led him outside, full of questions. “You know him?” “Hank?” Jake gave me a small smile. “Yeah. Truancy officer at my high school. Let’s just say, we got to know each other real well.” He laughed lightly. “Good guy. Real young when he policed my school. Guess you could say he was one of those people who told me to knock it off, and I actually listened.” Wow, I thought, amazed at this bit of info that I hadn’t had to drag out of him. “He sped things along,” I interpreted. “Yep. And made sure to keep the lid tight,” he added. By that, I knew he meant no media. The street was virtually empty, just a few late-night owls. Thank God for Hank. “Where’s your car?” he asked, looking for my Prius. I pulled out my phone from my purse. “I’m still drunk, silly. Calling an Uber.” 151

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He stared at me confusedly. “What?” “I’ll be damned if you aren’t the most risk-averse girl I know.” Jake had no idea he was my biggest risk, ever. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said as I dropped the pin location for an Uber to come get us. He leaned in close to me to watch my phone. Jake didn’t touch me, but I could feel the warmth coming off his body. “Risk averse, yet somehow you manage to get a fight started over you at the bar.” I opened my eyes wide and gave him my best I dunno shrug. “Seriously, Diggs. I just got booked for beating that guy’s ass. I could feel how scared you were of him. The least you can do is level with me. What’s your history with him?” I took a deep breath as I stared down at my phone. The Uber was still five minutes away. Jake was right. As hard as I’d been coming at him with my questions, he’d never once questioned me. Until now. And after keeping me safe from Grant, and then going to jail for me, he had a right to know. “Grant and I have a strange history. We’re both from Sugar Tree, and we dated in middle school, briefly. We went to the same college too, him to play baseball and me to play softball. So we always sort of knew each other. Then, at the beginning of my junior year and his senior year of college, we started dating. It was sort of a fairy tale: the star softball player and the star baseball player, together.” “Except that was all just a veneer,” Jake said, taking my hand in his. “It was. We tried to be happy—and maybe sometimes we were—but Grant had…issues.” 152

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Jake arched an eyebrow, and his grip on my hand tightened. “What kind of issues?” “He had a bad temper, and…” “Shit,” Jake said as I trailed off. “I have a temper too.” “No, yours isn’t like his,” I said, backtracking. “Well, what would he do?” “It was just…when he got riled up…he yelled a lot,” I said, softening the truth. I didn’t want to go all the way and tell him everything. Maybe, in some ways, I still hadn’t totally admitted to myself what had happened with Grant and me. I just wanted to push it out and forget. Jake squinted at me. I hoped he wouldn’t notice how uncomfortable I was beginning to feel. I did my best to mask it. He broke off his gaze with me, nodding, and glanced off into the distance, as if he had had some deep realization. “I do have a bad temper. And that’s the first time you haven’t just shot it to me straight. C’mon Andrea, I don’t like you because you soften the truth. I like you because you tell it like it is. To me. With me.” I pulled back my hand, unsure exactly where Jake was going. “I don’t understand what you mean.” “Andrea, I’m a celebrity. People line up to stroke my ego. They’re ‘yes people.’ I ask them if what I’m doing is right, and they nod and say yes. Very few people step up and challenge me. Well, except for Mr. Yerac. And my agent—now you.” He paused and tensed his jaw, as if refocusing himself. “Look, my point is, don’t be afraid to tell me like it is. Don’t gloss it over. I have a temper, yes, it’s true, and I’m not always proud of it. But it’s there. Best not to ignore those unpleasant truths about ourselves. If we don’t acknowledge them, we don’t have a shot at fixing them.” He stopped, laughing lightly. “A 153

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week ago, I would have never even thought about fixing a damn thing. You’ve changed that.” He looked over at me. “So basically, what I’m saying is, don’t ever bullshit me, Diggs. Give it to me straight, no chaser. That’s what I respect about you. You’re a straight shooter.” “I wouldn’t tell you anything but the truth as I see it.” But I couldn’t hold his stare. I looked down and away. I put my hand over my heart and adjusted my golden cross pendant, then nervously fondled the claddagh ring I wore that was pointed outward. I wanted to tell him the full truth about Grant, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t yet. My heart lurched a little, but I was afraid that if I told the whole truth, something awful would happen. And I didn’t even know what that thing was.

We didn’t talk the whole way to his condo, both lost in thought, holding hands. I didn’t overthink about how Jake had opened up to me and I’d hesitated. I’d admitted more to him about Grant than I’d admitted to anyone, but he was right, I usually was a straight shooter. The Uber stopped first at Jake’s apartment, which was right off the Kennedy Expressway. So far, it’d been smooth sailing. The streets weren’t that busy, and our driver didn’t recognize Jake at all. “Do you want me to wait and make sure you get in your building okay?” I asked with a tired smile, elbowing him to get out. “Maybe. Are you willing to punch out any possible attackers who come at me in the ten-foot walk to my door?” He grinned. 154

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I managed a small laugh, but I was mentally wiped, and he seemed to sense that. He lingered for a moment before opening the car door to leave, his eyes gazing into mine. “Seriously though. Thank you for getting me. You’re a good person and a true friend, and there’s not a lot of people I’ve ever said that too.” I smiled. “I kinda owed you. Saved me from a robbery, an ex—least I could do.” Jake stared at me for one more beat, then shook his head. “I’m really going to need a social media overhaul after this whole fiasco.” “Already on it,” I informed him with a wry smile. “Goodnight.” He got out and stood up outside the car. He was about to close the door, but didn’t. He padded around his pockets. “Oh, shit,” he muttered, then ducked his head back into the car. “I think I left my keys at the police station.” “You’re serious?” “Dead serious,” he said, checking his pockets again. He was in jeans and a plain black tee. Not a lot of hiding places. “They had a little box where they put some of my things in and…I got my wallet, my phone…but no keys.” “We can go back.” That sounded like the worst idea ever at this godawful hour, on a hot August Friday night, just to go back through one of the most dangerous areas in the city to get to the jail. “Okay,” Jake said, getting back in the Uber. I sighed. “Let’s just go back to my place.” He looked at me with a shocked expression. “You sure?” he asked, and I swear I saw him tamping down his eagerness, playing it cool. “I’d be an ass if I didn’t let you after the other night.” 155

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“Hah. You said ‘ass.’ I’m putting that on my list of Digg’s swear words, right next to ‘damn.’ I like it.” “Why do you?” “I just like it when you’re dirty. Honestly, I’m not sure why,” he said, almost casually. “There’s a lot of things you do and say that turn me on.” A shiver enveloped my entire body from head to toe. “There is no hooking up tonight,” I said to him, very firmly. “Absolutely not.” “Of course not,” he nodded. “Wednesday night was a fluke. I respect your position with the company too much.” I eyed him, a little suspicious at how diplomatic he was being. As the Uber driver eyed us before pulling back into traffic, Jake turned and looked out the window at the city lights that passed us by. I tried to stay on my side of the backseat, resisting the invisible magnetism pulling me toward him, but I could barely keep my eyes off him. The very fact that I wanted him so badly made me feel that there must be something wrong about this whole attraction. I needed to make darn sure we kept this plutonic. Once we arrived at my place, headed up the stairs, and then went inside my small apartment, I looked around for something for Jake to wear to bed. “I was meaning to give these Jaguars PJs to one of my brothers, but I’ll let you wear them tonight.” “Thanks,” he said as I tossed the bottoms at him, but he lingered by my door. “You have a lot of brothers?” I nodded. I’d been in intermittent contact with them since I’d moved. “Three older, two younger,” I told him. “I was the middle child and only girl, so I was pretty much a tomboy growing up.” 156

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He blinked. “Wow. Five brothers. That had to have been interesting.” “Yeah, it had its moments,” I said, nodding and rummaging around for my own PJs. My very not-at-all-sexy PJs. “Baseball sort of occupied our world. It kept us close, you know? Especially after my parents divorced. It distracted us, made the transition to two homes bearable…” I trailed off. Jake was staring, and I was rambling again. “Anyways. Dad was a player, a long time ago, so we all really got our love of the game from him, from the womb, probably.” “Ah, that’s why you played softball and were so amazing at it, huh?” he said. I glanced over at him. “I loved it and I was good at my position, but I wasn’t like you,” I said, resuming my task. “I never had your kind of raw talent. I could have tried to keep playing professionally but, ultimately, I knew it wasn’t my future. So I got my degree and went into sports PR. So far, I’m liking it. I still get to be close to what I love.” Jake gave me a thoughtful smile, and we stood there for a quiet moment before he thanked me again for the PJ bottoms. “I’ll take the couch. Do you have an extra toothbrush or something?” “How lucky are you that you have me?” I teased. He laughed and I got him the extra stuff. I cleaned his knuckles, and once the dried blood was washed off, it didn’t look bad. He said it didn’t hurt much as he wiggled his fingers and worked out a few kinks in his hand. It would probably be stiff for a few days, but he would be leaving for a three-game series tomorrow. I had a feeling his coaches and trainers would have a fit once the news broke out. Their star pitcher in a fist fight. I had yet to look at my phone and had even turned it off. I didn’t want to know. At least not for a few more hours. 157

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After we had changed into our PJs and I had taken out my contacts, Jake went into the living room, sat down on the couch, and put his feet up on the coffee table. He turned the TV on and fired up the Apple TV. I opened up the fridge and called to him from the kitchen. “You want something to drink?” “Yeah babe, you got a beer?” He said the word babe so nonchalantly, I had a sudden flash forward thirty years, kids having finally gone off to college, and him asking me the same thing. What the hell is wrong with me? When I looked over, Jake was looking back at me, but he immediately turned back around and started going through Netflix. Maybe he called every girl he knew ‘babe’? Or maybe he didn’t. I took out a couple Goose Islands and walked to the sofa. After I handed him his beer, I sat down cross-legged. He lounged next to me like he owned that spot on the couch. Like we did this all the time. I hadn’t felt this comfortable around a guy…ever. I thought about the public Jake and the private one. One was a friend to everybody, and the man before me seemed like he had no friends at all. Not really. He didn’t get close; he didn’t let anyone get close. If you kept everyone out, you wouldn’t get hurt. I understood that, too. And it was a very lonely road. He looked over at me, catching me staring intently at him. “What?” “You’re so weird, but your weirdness is what makes you awesome. I don’t understand why you don’t want your fans on social media to know the real you,” I said candidly. He shook his head, snapping open the car of beer. “What the hell are you talking about?” Surprisingly, Jake seemed truly offended. “I just meant…you’re nothing like your social media persona. If I 158

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had to guess how you were based on your Instagram pictures, I’d say you were a binge drinker who occasionally hung out with models.” He nodded. “I like that persona though. And that persona is me…times ten.” I scrunched my face. “And thus, you’re weird.” “Nuh-uh. You’re weird.” I laughed. “What are we, in sixth grade? You’re teasing me about being weird.” He paused and gave me an up-and-down. “You’re right. They only thing you are is weirdly hot. It’s not fair that you just tempt me like this, and you’re so off limits.” My heart started to beat faster. “I’m like the least attractive I could possibly be right now,” I said, pushing my glasses up my nose. “Seriously, I’m more nerd than hot.” Jake huffed and moved a little toward me. “You seriously have no idea how hot you are. And you’re not even trying. I think that makes you even more hot.” “Really, what’s hot about me?” I realized I probably sounded like a vain, vain person to say that, but I wanted to know. Jake’s mind was a puzzle to me. And he didn’t seem to mind answering. “Well, where to start? Your hair has that messy but still-smells-good-fromgoing-out thing going on. It’s pretty. You’re confident enough to wear your glasses around me, when most girls think they have to look put-together at all times, even when they’re sleeping. That makes you beautiful. Your tank and PJs aren’t sexy, but you in them is, and I can’t stop staring—so yeah, all that is what makes you hot.” He took a sip of beer and stared at the TV. “Then there’s the fact that you don’t seem like most girls I’ve known my whole life since being on the fast track 159

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for the professional league. You’ve never seen me as Jake Napleton, the sports athlete. But just me, Jake. I don’t like people prying into my life, but I think you knowing is okay. I don’t feel like you’d use it against me, or judge me. I like that you know things about me that most don’t. Like it’s our secret.” I sat there, stunned. Jake went back to flipping through Netflix, and I just sat there, not sure how to process all that, because it was the longest speech he’d ever given. And they were all really amazing things, things that hit me dead center and made me warm all over. It made me like him even more. And that was dangerous. Jake wasn’t a guy that would last. I already knew that. But I was falling for him, and my attraction to him would only get deeper. “Wow, okay,” I said, nodding. I blinked slowly and swallowed, my throat dry and my palms clammy. “That was quite…nice of you to say all that. And on that note, I’m going to go to bed.” Abruptly, I set my unopened can of beer on the coffee table, and then went inside my room and shut the door. I thought I heard Jake croak out a “good night,” but I was in a familiar mode right now: panic mode. Just like at our dinner, I wanted to flee. This time, there was no Grant to distract or confuse me. This time, I was afraid of what I’d do, afraid I’d really step over the line and break all my rules. I needed to get the thought of doing anything sexual with Jake off my mind, and there was only one way I could do that—by falling asleep as fast as I could. The AC had started to kick in, so I slipped under the comforter. My skin was hot and so sensitive to the touch that I could feel every thread of the comforter scraping against me. I made sure my phone was on the nightstand, putting it 160

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on silent and ignoring all the missed calls, emails, and texts. Everything would be better in the morning. It had to be. I lay there, not at all sleepy, and wondered what it was that I really wanted. It was all just a giant haze inside my head. Here I had this gorgeous man on the other side of the apartment, yet I couldn’t be with him. Why not? asked a voice inside my head. It would never work. Just drop it. I’m not that kind of girl. And if you were, would that really make you a bad person? He’d hurt me. Or he could be the best thing that’s ever happened to you… A cacophony of a million little voices spoke to me in my own head. My mother telling me never to touch a boy because it was wrong, to come home and be a good girl. Steve telling me to “do what I had to do,” or else. Amy saying I was taking this whole situation way too seriously, and I should just enjoy the journey and stop worrying about the destination. The one voice that didn’t seem present, I realized, was my own. What did Andrea want? I slipped a hand inside the shorts I had on and felt between my legs. I was so wet I’d probably have to change these shorts before I fell asleep. If I was going by what my body wanted, it was pretty clear I’d end up crossing the line with Jake. Why was I so insistent on creating these lines inside my own head? Where did it come from? My finger lingered at the top of my slit for a moment. I grazed my clit, letting myself enjoy the pleasure for just a few seconds. A few seconds turned into a few minutes, and 161

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next thing I knew, I was squirming on the bed underneath the comforter, wondering how Jake’s finger would feel doing the exact same thing right now. How would Jake be with me? In one manner, he was so gruff and manly and downright intimidating, yet he had a softer side to him that rarely surfaced. My breathing increased, and thinking became a bit harder as I circled myself with more enthusiasm, knowing exactly how Jake would be. Gentle at first. Tender even, with those long fingers. He was well aware of the power that he had, and he’d use it for good. Then he’d grip my hips roughly—with those same hands that he’d just been using so tenderly before—as he entered me. Oh God. A moan escaped my lips, and I covered my mouth with my free hand. I couldn’t stop now. I was in the moment, and I was realizing that knowing Jake was just outside my door made the experience better. More real. I’d never done something like this. I wasn’t even much of a masturbator, yet trying to fight my desire had only made it stronger. In the midst of the high I was feeling, knuckles rapped at the door. “Hey Diggs. You still up?” Suddenly, I was brought back to the real world. I whipped my hands out from under the covers, and, for some reason, jumped off the bed and onto my feet. “Yes, I’m awake,” I croaked. “Okay, I’m coming in for a second. You decent?” “Uhhh...yeah,” I said, which was technically true. I saw the knob turn, and he appeared at the doorframe. 162

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“There’s something I wanted to say. I was just trying to go to sleep, and I couldn’t. I shouldn’t have said that stuff. My bad. So what if I like you? You’ve been too nice to me, and I know you’re probably nice to everybody, so…just forget what I said, okay? I shouldn’t have said anything that made you uncomfortable…” Jake’s body reflected the light coming from outside my room, and the way it crossed his abs emphasized every last muscle like this was some kind of photo shoot. “Diggs, you okay?” “Yeah, fine.” My chest rose and fell, and I awkwardly stood, staring at him, too frozen to make a move. Did he just say he liked me? Not that he hadn’t said it before, but this time, I believed it. His eyes moved over me slowly, like a finger lightly dragging over flesh. I couldn’t look away from his long eyelashes as his gaze began at my feet and continued up the rest of my body. My mouth parted. Anticipation made my body warmer. My defenses had been weakened to their last line, and I didn’t have much more left. With all of the white noise hurling through my head, one piece of advice stuck out; oddly enough, from Amy: Why are you blocking yourself from having what you want? My eyelids fluttered and returned Jake’s lingering gaze, traveling from his face downward, and landing on the large bulge between his legs. I swear I saw it move. “You don’t look fine,” he finally said, taking a step toward me and destroying the imaginary fence I had put up between us. 163

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I took a mini step in his direction, and eclipsed the remaining space between us, so that we stood inches from each other. “I’m fine,” I stated weakly, and looked up at Jake. “Okay. I just don’t like going to bed feeling like there are unspoken things between us that we need to get out. Goodnight.” He flashed me a grin, then turned and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

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seventeen I stared at the closed door, bewildered. This is probably what Jake had felt the two times I’d done this to him, abruptly ending things before they could begin. It sucked. It really did. I felt deflated, like a hot air balloon that had just been sliced open. I was equal parts relieved and disappointed that this was how my night would end. On the other hand, what else was he supposed to do with the mixed signals I’d been sending him? I took a step toward the wall and leaned my back and head against it. A moment later, the doorknob jiggled, and this time, the door swung open with a noticeable air of authority. He entered my room and looked at me, determined. I couldn’t speak, even if I’d wanted to. My resistance was gone, so I just waited, wanting him, wanting this, however it ended. “Tell me you don’t want me, and I’ll leave,” Jake said, striding toward me. He slipped his arm behind me and rested his hand on the small of my back. “Be honest.” My heart and my eyes fluttered in unison. I raised my hand to his face and ran it over the stubble of his beautiful

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jawline as we locked eyes. I raised myself up on my tiptoes and whispered in his ear. “I want you so bad, Jake,” I muttered. He ran a hand from the top of my head to the back of my neck and let it linger. “Fuck, I love hearing you say that.” Back on my tiptoes again, we kissed, his body smashing mine, wedged between him and the wall. Jake ran his hand from my neck down my back, and on down until he was cupping my ass through my shorts. He touched the underside of my thigh, lifting it up, and I slipped my leg around his body. I leaned my head back as he pressed his muscular weight into me, enjoying the feeling of him against me as he kissed me from shoulder to shoulder. “As sexy as you look in this tank top, we’re going to need to get it off.” I raised both of my arms up as I looked at him through hazy eyes. The yellow tank came off, and Jake’s eyes lingered on my breasts. “Fuck. Fuck, you’re sexy.” He came at my lips with a renewed vigor, then worked kisses slowly down my neck to my chest, then flicked my nipples with his tongue, never losing eye contact with me. When he brought his face back to mine and pushed his hips against me, I felt what I thought for a moment might be a third leg. I slipped a hand downward, outside his PJs, for curiosity’s sake. Good God. Jake grinned. “You’ve got me so hard, baby.” He brought the hand that was on my ass around to the front of me, slipping it between my legs, still on the outside of my shorts. 166

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I let out a long, slow groan. His eyes widened when he touched me through the cloth. “Andrea. You’re already soaked.” I nodded. His light-brown eyes looked darker in the shadows of my sparsely lit room. He nibbled on my ear and said the words in an accusatory whisper, “What were you doing in here, by yourself?” He knows. Jake knows how bad I want him. “Nothing,” I whispered back. Jake smiled. “You really shouldn’t lie to me like that. Even those little white lies will get you in trouble. And you know what happens when you get in trouble?” “I don’t, actually.” I gripped the back of his head with my hand as I arched toward him. “You shouldn’t have said that.” Jake brought both of his hands around my hips and lifted me up by my butt so that I had to wrap both of my legs around him. “Why? What are you going to do to me?” I baited, lips tugging upward in a soft smile. “This.” Jake kissed me one more time, then carried me to the bed and set me down on top of my covers. He stood up while I leaned back against my pillow, watching him undress. The black PJs came off first, and then the black boxer briefs followed. Staring at him naked, all I could think was, Wow. Jake snaked down into bed with me, and we kissed again. I aided him in pulling off my shorts. His body was lean and long against mine. He slid a strategic hand down from my shoulder to my breasts, my stomach, and landed it between my legs. His finger was light and delicate, yet strong and forceful at the same time. 167

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He grazed my wet clit lightly at first, teasing me. Against my thigh I felt his hard length press against me. God it felt amazing. Everything felt amazing. After a few minutes of light teasing, Jake slipped a finger inside me, intensifying the pleasure. “Damn, you’re tight,” he said. I gyrated my hips in rhythm with his finger, my hand latching onto Jake’s shoulder. “Sorry,” I said, feeling a little judged. Jake laughed then looked up at me with a serious face. “You are the most awkward girl I’ve ever met, you know?” My heart lurched. Why was he making fun of me? “And it’s incredibly fucking sexy,” he said, finishing off his thought. I felt relieved, and the relief sent an intense wave of pleasure over me. “You’re always you. That’s what I…like about you. But you should never say sorry for how you feel… with me. Just open yourself up. Let go.” “Jake,” I moaned, elongating the syllables. I grabbed his mop of brown hair. “Shut up and concentrate.” He stared at me for a moment, then kissed each of my cheeks, both sides of my neck, and worked his way all the way down to my legs, taking care to be perfectly symmetrical with his kisses, never taking his finger out of me. He brought in another finger, and I tightened, pulsing around him. He added his tongue, flicking it on my clit. The pleasure built, and I dug my fingernails into the mattress behind me, gasping for air. I dug my feet down and lifted my pelvis an inch. Jake brought his free hand up and grabbed my shoulder. I wrapped my hands around his arm, and that did it. The waves of pleasure kept coming, and Jake showed no signs of slowing down. The enthusiasm with which he lapped me up was bringing me close to the edge. 168

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Suddenly, he removed his mouth from me for a moment, looked up, and met my eyes. “You have no idea how sexy it is when you moan like that.” “You have no idea how sexy it is when you do…whatever it is you are doing right now.” I had been so lost, I had no idea I was moaning. At this point, I might have gotten my own name wrong if Jake had asked me. He settled back between my legs, and his fingers suddenly found a spot inside me that they hadn’t yet touched. Sensations flooded my whole body so intensely that I thought I might pass out. This was heaven. This was release. This was what Jake did to me. I breathed hard, looking up at Jake through lazy, fluttering eyes. “Thank you.” I reached up and grabbed his head. We touched our foreheads together. “God, you are just fucking adorable, aren’t you? You can’t help it.” “Not the adjective I usually get.” Jake was on his knees, leaning toward me, his hard cock dragging on my stomach. “Do you have a condom?” Jake whispered. I scrunched my face together and looked down at him. “You don’t have a condom?” “No. I had to throw them out at jail…” He paused. “Shit.” I was on the pill, but this was not something Jake needed to know. His eyes asked the question without either of us even having to say a thing. “No. God no. We can’t have sex without one.” 169

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He took a deep breath. “You’re right. Fuck! It’s like three a.m. We’re screwed, aren’t we?” I still had post-orgasm pleasure feelings running through me. “I wasn’t expecting this tonight.” “It’s okay,” Jake said with a frustrated groan as he dropped down next to me. “Don’t be surprised if you wake up and I’ve had a wet dream though.” I spun my body around and pressed my naked body into him. I felt a little bad about giving him blue balls, but if he was lucky—if we were lucky—this wouldn’t be the last time this happened. Hell, it had better not be. I drifted off to sleep with Jake’s giant arm wrapped around me.

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eighteen Early Saturday morning, I stirred before Jake and thought about surprising him with a trip to the pharmacy to get some condoms, but then I thought how embarrassing that would be to actually have to face the store clerk when I was buying them. Jake took deep but soft breaths as he slept. I rested a hand on him and felt his heart as his chest rose and fell. His upper body featured several tattoos. One was in Spanish, and another was in English. Both appeared to be mirror images, just like Amy had said. It was strange. I wanted to ask him why he had gotten them and what they meant. But that nagging voice entered my head again, and I began to question my sanity about all of this. Who the hell am I, considering a morning trip to the store for condoms? I hadn’t slept with Grant when we were dating, and we had been together for almost a year. Yet here I was, considering sleeping with a man I’d known all of one week. I felt so comfortable around Jake, and I wanted to open up to him even more. Despite his reputation, he had made it

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clear that he respected my boundaries, whatever I decided they were. I was technically still a virgin, although I didn’t like to make a big deal out of it. The few people I had told had suddenly treated me like I was some sort of science experiment. They couldn’t believe it when I tried to explain that, although I’m sure my religious upbringing surely had something to do with it, I wasn’t saving myself for marriage or anything like that. I simply hadn’t found a guy who made me feel comfortable enough to do it. Apparently my subconscious was now telling me that Jake was that guy. My phone buzzed on the nightstand, and I rolled over to check who would be bugging me at this early hour. My heart dropped when I saw that I had four missed calls from my mother. I shot up in bed and pressed the call back button. She picked up after one ring. “Mother?” “Yes, Andrea, I’m here. I flew in this morning. Where are you? Why haven’t you been picking up your phone?” “Wait,” I said, putting my feet on the ground. I opened my dresser and took out some underwear, a bra, and a dress in full panic mode. “You’re here?” “Yes, here,” she said, sounding a tad annoyed. “Grant called me last night and told me what happened, and I came right away.” “Grant called you?” The nerve, the absolute nerve. “Well, to be fair, he texted me. I guess some thug hit him in the face and broke his jaw! Don’t you see what you’ve done to the man, Andrea? You’ve broken his heart!” Ugh. Why was Grant still texting my mother? But I knew why: another way to control me. I slipped into my 172

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undergarments while holding the phone. Once again, I was regretting that I had never told my mother the whole story about how Grant and me broke up, but now was not the time to get into it. “Mother, please, let’s not go there. I really can’t get into this right now.” “Well, let’s go out to coffee and talk about it. I’m out in front of your building.” If my heart hadn’t already exploded, now it had. “You’re here here?” “What on earth did you think I meant? Haven’t you heard your doorbell?” “The buzzer’s broken.” “Well let me up, for God’s sake.” “I’ll buzz you up in a moment. Hang on.” I hung up the phone, threw on my dress, and crouched next to Jake on the bed. I pressed one hand on his shoulder and another on his leg, shaking him with panic. “What are you doing?” he groaned, his voice throaty. “Jake, my mother’s here.” “Well, you certainly move fast. Makeout-hookup-meet your mother. Hey, that’s fine though, I can deal.” “Jake! This is serious! She will freak if she sees me in here with a boy.” She had never known me with anyone who wasn’t Grant. “I don’t see any boys in here,” he growled back with a slight smile. “Just a man.” Looking over his naked body in bed, I had to agree. “Figure of speech. This isn’t a drill, though. I seriously need you to—” I heard a fist pounding on my third-floor door. “Drea! What on earth is taking so long? What are you hiding?” 173

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I gasped. Someone must have let her in. “Get in the closet!” I whisper-yelled as he sprung to his feet and put his boxer briefs on. “Are you kidding me? That thing is tiny!” “If my mother sees you, I will never live this down!” “Andrea Jane! You open up this instant!” my mother shouted through the door. “You’re twenty-three, your mother will get over it!” I swung my arm around in a motion similar to a windmill as I directed him to get into the closet. Finally, he agreed, and I pushed his head in and tried to close the door. “What, no goodbye kiss?” I rolled my eyes and finally closed the door, then went outside to get my mother. “Sorry, Mother! These locks can be tricky.” “Lockity schmokity,” she said as she walked in. My mother and I were somewhat opposites in our looks. I was tall and dark-haired while she was short with lighter hair. I had her eyes, though. And had inherited her uptightness. She was in her favorite pair of black loafers and a paisley brown dress—conservative, practical, and safe. Her long hair was in a severe bun, and she wore no makeup or accessories. She was still a beautiful woman, but the divorce had made her even more uptight and rigid in her thinking. She briefly hugged me before she breezed past me and into my apartment, dropping her bag in the process. She walked around like a dog sniffing about a new space before settling in, looking for anything that might be out of the ordinary. “If you lived in Sugar Tree, you wouldn’t need any gosh darn locks.” As she was inspecting the kitchen, I looked to the left of the couch and saw Jake’s socks and shoes sitting out for the 174

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world to see. My heart began to thump fast and deep, like a tribal drum. “I was just tidying up a bit when you got here,” I said, nonchalantly lunging into the living room and moving his footwear to the space between the couch and the wall before she could see. She entered the room just as I hid them. “Honey, I just don’t like it that the only reason I come down here is when your boyfriend has an emergency.” “Ex-boyfriend,” I corrected her, rolling my eyes. For some reason, it had never completely registered with her that we had one-hundred-percent broken up. “Oh, stop it,” she said as she ran her eyes around the couches and the walls of the living room, which were bare. Knowing that the internship was temporary, I hadn’t taken the time to truly make the space my own yet. “You really decorated the heck out of the place, didn’t you?” She curved her lips upward in a smile that did not extend to her ears. “Still have a little bit to finish off,” I defended. “Well, don’t bother.” She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head at me. “Your room at home is still ready for you. And besides, Grant told me this morning that he wants you back.” I let out a gasp, and she acted as though my surprise was a surprise to her. “You went and saw Grant?” “Well, yes of course, honey. Of course I saw him,” she said, as though that was the only logical conclusion possible. “And he’s very sorry about how things went last year. He’s ready for you now.” Suddenly, I felt dizzy. Grant was a two-faced sociopath, and it wasn’t surprising that he was able to charm my mother. 175

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To get my mom to fly in just to see him and then use her so shamelessly? That went too far. In the year Grant and I had dated, he’d done things that, at the time, I had simply considered to be extra nice. He would bring my mother flowers, insist that she come out to dinner with us a little more often than what seemed normal. In my naiveté, I had never once thought that maybe he was posturing for control over her. Now, thanks to my lack of communicating the truth, I was facing a mother who thought that I had broken up with Mr. Perfect. I hadn’t realized that she was having an even harder time registering the breakup than I ever had. With Grant, she saw me settling back in Sugar Tree, starting a family, having someone else to focus on, and pretty much running my life. I just stared at her, beyond shocked. Ready…for me now. Seriously?! I wanted to explode, but I couldn’t. I was the peacekeeper of the family and her only daughter. “Mother, don’t you understand? He’s out of my life now. I don’t want Grant anymore.” She frowned and walked toward my bedroom door, ignoring my comment. “Let’s have a look in your room, shall we?” “Mother, no.” I walked briskly past her and put myself between her body and the door. “Nonsense! I want to see how you’ve been living.” She frowned. “You’ll let me through this instant. Unless, of course, you’re hiding something?” She arched an eyebrow, daring me not to let her in. It was like the woman had a sixth sense when I tried to hide something from her. It was incredible. If I caved and opened the door, I was down to my last line of defense: the closet. Dear God in heaven, please don’t let Jake screw this one up. 176

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“Of course I’m not hiding anything,” I said as I opened the door to my room. The shame of my mother finding a halfnaked man stowed away in my closet was something I could handle. I might lose a few years due to the embarrassment, but I’d make it through. “I was just worried that it’s a bit messy, and I know how you get when you see a mess.” My mother, on the other hand, might just die of a heart attack if she found Jake, especially since she was clearly under the delusion that Grant and I would go back to being the same perfect All-American couple. “Your bedsheets are a bit ruffled,” she said, fluffing my pillows. “Yeah, the air conditioning was a little on-and-off last night, so I kind of had to adjust by using different layers of covers.” She eyed me strangely as she continued slowly pacing the room. I tried to assume the least guilty pose I could think of with a gentle smile, standing between her and the closet. Perhaps I was subconsciously blocking her from getting at the space. If worse came to worst, I could physically stop her from opening up the closet door, couldn’t I? “Let’s see the closet,” she said, slightly cocking her head in its direction. “Oh Mother, please, I’d die of embarrassment if you saw how messy that was.” She squinted at the closet, as if trying to use her x-ray vision on it. “Open it.” “No.” She walked toward the closet and put her hand on the knob. “What are you hiding in here, Andrea?” 177

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“Nothing, Mother,” I said through teeth I tried not to grit. She sighed and stepped back, away from the closet. “Well then, I suppose this tour is over.” I turned toward the door, and that second of hesitation was all it took for my mother. She faked one step to the door, catching me off guard. Then she took two quick steps toward the closet, turned the doorknob, and whipped it open. “Mother, I can explain!” I belted, my heart pounding. Her jaw dropped as she reached an arm inside. I couldn’t see what she was looking at, but I wondered if Jake had at least managed to put a shirt on while he was hiding back there. She pulled her arm back, holding a black-and-green cap with a J on it in her hand. “Well, I should hope so! Grant plays for the New Jersey Bulldogs. Why do you have a Jaguars cap in here? Don’t you want to be loyal to his team?” I was shocked. Did she not see Jake? She apparently had no clue that Jake was my client, either. Finally, I walked around the open door so I could look in the closet. Jake was gone.

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nineteen After I’d left Andrea’s place on Saturday morning, I had to pack my bag for the flight out to Jacksonville with the team. Luckily, after some x-rays and a thorough examination, it was determined that my hand was fine, and the trainers weren’t worried about my overall health. But Don sure made it clear to me how disappointed he was. Me, Dwayne, Franco, and Buckner had all been given a stern talking-to from our manager before we’d boarded the bus for the airport, and it’d set the mood for our whole trip. But the guys had stuck up for me, hard, almost angrier about it than I was. But it didn’t matter. I was the instigator; it was my face all over the news. Today—Sunday—was my first official day back on the job, my suspension over and done with. We had the doubleheader we’d just played today, plus another game on Monday before our series with the Firebirds was over with, and we’d fly back home Tuesday morning. As if I hadn’t been through the ringer enough, my agent, Marissa, in her expensive new pantsuit and short pixie cut, sat next to me and kept giving me a look that said to behave. It was a look I knew all too well.

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Mr. Yerac had called me into his makeshift office slash hotel room in Jacksonville. I was tired from a long day of playing. Not to mention that I’d extended my league-leading streak of thirty-seven scoreless innings pitched. But from Mr. Yerac’s angry face, that wasn’t what we were going to discuss. The fallout from Friday night had been pretty swift. He’d flown out from Chicago to speak with me in person. When the busy billionaire boss wanted to speak with you specifically—and flew out to do it—that was never good. As well as I was playing on the field, it felt like shit was being flung at me from all angles these days. I had as many haters as Kanye West screaming at me. But every time shit like this happened and things got blown out of proportion, I ignored it. Andrea had been on me, a lot of other people as well, but her emails and texts had bothered me the most. I was having trouble ignoring her, in general. I mean shit, I had climbed down from the outside window using a vine like fucking Tarzan to escape the clutches of Andrea’s mother, who apparently would not be cool with her daughter hooking up with a professional baseball player. That was a first. Most girls wanted to show me off the moment they were even seen in public with me, let alone hooked up with me. I snapped back to reality as Mr. Yerac paced back and forth in front of me as I sat in the hotel chair. “You are goddamn lucky you have a golden arm, you know that?” I didn’t care for his tone, but he did pay my salary. So I gave the guy a token nod of respect. “Thank you. And sir, I know you think I’m a bad influence on the team. And that I’m giving the Jaguars a bad image. But, with all due respect, our clubhouse chemistry has 180

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never been better. We’re kicking ass on the field. This might not mean a lot, but our teammates have my back more than ever, and I have theirs on and off the field. What’s more—” I paused. The way Marissa cleared her throat, she was sensing what I was about to say was something I shouldn’t. However, this seemed like one of those situations where I needed to speak my mind, and it would probably come back and bite me in the ass. I ignored my hesitation and continued saying what I was about to say, as usual. “What’s more, that fucking guy had it coming. He was harassing the girl I was with and…” “Goddamn it, Napleton, you still don’t get it! You need to see the bigger picture! It’s not about right and wrong. It’s not about whether Grant Newman was being a dick or not. It’s about the fact that you need to control yourself, no matter what. On and off the field. That’s what we agreed upon in your contract. My trade for you included you cleaning up your act. Your last team didn’t put up with it, and neither will I.” Mr. Yerac believed all the bullshit about me, and that was on me, but I wasn’t going sit there and take it when he was being stubborn and refused to hear me out. This was why I had never bothered to explain myself. People had already decided. I stood up, so angry I could barely think straight. “I have to control myself?” I said, my voice low and not hiding my anger. “What about Newman and his behavior? I’m telling you the truth—he was the one that wouldn’t walk away. You trust the dumb media over your own player?” Mr. Yerac shook his head. “You’re constantly bringing negative attention to the team. It’s not a coincidence that a fog of trouble seems to follow you.” He took a deep breath, as if choosing his next words very carefully. “And if you don’t change this pattern, you’re fucking gone.” I stood toe to toe with the man for a moment. Mr. Yerac was young for an owner, was several inches shorter than 181

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me, and wore glasses. As much as I wanted to hate him, I couldn’t. I knew his story. Like me, he was self-made. He was conservative on the outside, and a hard-working maniac once you got to know him. For some reason, though, I couldn’t get through to him, couldn’t explain that the scuffle wasn’t without reason. In this clubhouse, I commanded the respect of every single one of the other twenty-four guys because they knew, if it came to it, I wouldn’t be afraid to take a punch for them. Or throw a punch. “I’m not changing a fucking thing about how I operate,” I said coolly, not backing down. I stared into his icy blue eyes and offered a smile. He eyed me back, said nothing, and then I walked out of the room. I left him speechless. I suppose billionaires aren’t used to people telling it like it is. Marissa was right by my side as I walked down the hallway. She pursed her lips and shook her head at me. “You couldn’t budge, just a little?” “Maybe I’m being a dick, and I could have handled that differently,” I said, still pissed. “But I’d rather be true to myself than sit there and lie to another man. The truth is that if that situation came up again tonight, with that fucker, Newman, laying a hand on Andrea? I’d knock his ass right out again.” Marissa sighed. “Goddamn it, Jake Napleton. Why do you make it so hard for me to hate you?”

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performance. I lay down on top of my covers, still in my towel, and thought about flipping on the TV. Then I decided against it. I thought back to after the game. The team usually signed autographs before we boarded our bus to our hotel. I’d signed my share, but most parents had steered their impressionable kids away from me. I thought, Would Tate’s aunt have done that? None of the other parents at practice or games had acted any differently towards me afterwards, treating me like normal. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the subtleties and nuances of right and wrong. I just hadn’t listened. I’d admitted to Andrea that I needed to fix things, but I’d only dug a deeper hole with Mr. Yerac. I knew his threat wasn’t hollow, and I didn’t take it lightly, but how could I fight against a man who had already decided in his mind I was the bad guy? For the first time ever, I didn’t much care for the image of me that was out there. I texted Eva to see how she was doing. I actually missed getting calls from my workaholic sister, even if all she told me was to stop being a dumbass. Since I hadn’t heard back from her for a few weeks, it meant she was likely undercover or on a case, too busy doing important work to deal with her asshole little brother stirring shit up. Growing up, she’d wanted to make the world a better place and fight the bad guys. She was a hero, my hero. She put her life on the line every day. She put meaning into everything she did. It was a stark contrast to my own life. My phone beeped a few times, jarring me out of my thoughts. I got another text from my teammates about going out, but I was so not in the mood. After my confrontation with Mr. Yerac and parting ways with a somber Marissa, I’d headed to my room and stayed put, ignoring the media. 183

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Speaking of my social media woes, I thought as I went through my contact list and saw Andrea’s number. Damn. Just seeing her name buoyed me. It made all the shit that had happened after the game less frustrating. I wondered if I’d ever have the pleasure of hooking up with the hottest girl I’d ever met again. Andrea was so damn hot, I’d relished going down on her, making her moan and scream and squirm. But I wanted a lot more. Since college, I hadn’t worked this hard to get a girl, and with good reason. Andrea was different, and interesting. A challenge, for sure, but special. Spending the night with her curled up in my arms had felt natural. Like we did that all the time. And I’d liked it. I didn’t do that a lot, even when I did have a steady girlfriend, which wasn’t often. Tonight, I felt a feeling that I hadn’t felt with any woman since I’d first moved away to college: I missed Andrea. My cock hardened just thinking about how she had tasted and how her feet felt up on my back. I pulled out my phone and shot her a text. Me: Hey. Andrea: Hey… Me: 2 more days. Andrea: 2 more days until what? Me: Until we do that again. Andrea: And after you narrowly escaped my mother’s visit? Yes that was so fun. Me: What can I say I’m a magician. I make amazing things happen. Andrea: Yes you do. Me: I’m not talking about your mother’s visit, I’m talking about my mouth on you. Andrea: I figured that was going to be more fun 184

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than a mom visit… Me: I wish you were here right now. I’d show you exactly what I’m talking about. Andrea: You realize my mom would have had a heart attack if she saw you, right? Me: Don’t change the subject. We’re talking about me going down on you. Andrea: Are you mad because I didn’t reciprocate? Me: Mad? It was an honor to lick your beautiful pussy. Andrea: Oh god. You ar… She didn’t finish that sentence, and after a full minute, I realized why. Me: You’re texting one handed, aren’t you?! I waited for a few moments, waiting for those three little dots to run across the screen. Me: …you’re wet. Andrea: Yes. Me: Play with your pussy for me. Andrea: I have been, thinking about how you made me feel… Me: And now you’ve got me hard. Andrea: Jake, please… Me: You think this is wrong? Andrea: You’re a client. Me: You’re right. Andrea: I have to go, night.

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Fuck. Andrea certainly was developing a talent for giving me blue balls. Little did she know, The Big Unit didn’t give up that easy.

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TWenty “Honestly, Andrea, I wasn’t sure about going there, but…you know what? Fuck it. I’ll say it. I regret bringing you on as an intern.” I sat with my hands folded on Steve’s desk. Amy had given me the heads-up that he was none too happy about the previous weekend’s events. I was receiving, as Amy had so diplomatically put it, my “first official ass-reaming by the boss,” a right of passage at Green PR. Apparently, those other times had just been a warm up. “I’m sorry. I will do better next time.” I did my best to sit there with a calm smile on my face. Steve stared back at me with his mouth wide open. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?” I cleared my throat. “Jake has been a tough nut to crack. But I am one hundred and ten percent confident I can turn this around.” “You’re goddamn right you’d better turn this around. This is a fucking mess! Honestly, ever since you’ve taken on Jake as a client, his image has taken a massive nose dive!

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Our name is being dragged through the mud with this latest disaster. If we were paying you to tarnish his reputation, along with ours, you’d be doing a great job. Fucking fantastic. You expect to get hired on by Green after your internship if you tarnish his reputation?” I did my best to control my breaths. I would be out on my butt in one second if Steve knew the full truth about Jake and I. “No, of course not—” “You’re goddamned right, we won’t! You’re not getting it done, Andrea.” This was not good. Why did the one guy I hooked up with in Chicago—no, the only guy I’d hooked up with since Grant and I broke it off—come with the longest list of complications I could have possibly found in this entire city that probably had millions of single men? “Steve.” I rose from my chair and leaned my palms on his desk. “I’m sorry this campaign hasn’t been going perfectly. But this isn’t the kind of thing that happens overnight. Especially when the subject himself isn’t on board. But we’re getting there.” Steve stood up as well, his face as serious as I’ve ever seen. “Andrea, I like you. There is a reason I gave you a chance as an intern. I saw some promise. I did. But when I’m getting ten emails an hour from Mr. Yerac and the front office specifically pointing out precisely where Jake Napleton’s campaign is going wrong, it doesn’t bode well for you.” “What exactly are you saying, Steve?” “I’m saying that if you have any more fuckups, not only are you off this account, but you are going to have to find a position elsewhere.” A shiver ran down my spine as I thought about the “social media” position awaiting me in Sugar Tree. If I was 188

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going to live at home again, it was going to be on my own terms. Not because I failed here in Chicago. “I understand. I won’t let you down.” “I’ve heard that before. Words don’t mean a whole lot without action behind them.” I nodded and walked out of his office. I felt stressed out, but the worst part was that there was nothing I could do to change Jake’s ways, and that was just what the campaign so desperately needed. The man was as set in his ways as a grandpa. He loved having the frat boy/ partier/just one of the guys image, not the family-man philanthropist. I sank into my desk chair with a noticeable sigh. I stared blankly at my black computer screen for a few moments without moving the mouse to unfreeze the screen saver. “That bad, huh?” Amy had snuck up from behind me again. “What time is it?” I asked, spinning around in my chair to face her. “It’s quarter to ten. Why?” “I need a drink.” Amy burst out laughing, then stopped herself. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. But I thought you were joking since it’s a little early on a Monday morning…” She paused as I sat there, depressed and freaking out, and stared at me for a beat. “Damn, you are stressed out...but it’s something else too, huh?” she asked, too observant for words. I nodded, feeling overwhelmed. I had to tell somebody, talk it out because I was so confused and didn’t know what to do. But not yet. I had to figure out a way to turn this around as soon as possible, or I was out of a job. Not just here, but maybe this whole city. 189

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“Margaritas at five?” I begged. She nodded sympathetically, then went back to her cubicle. What was it about this job and its correlation with me having to drink margaritas?

We were in our favorite spot at Valentino’s Pub again, which seemed crowded for a Monday. A day’s work was finally over and done with, and I had managed to avoid Steve at all costs. Actually, pretty much everyone in the office had left me alone, and I’d worked my butt off with press releases and communicating with various media outlets, trying to soften things. I’d kept Jake updated on my end of things and reminded him to keep a low profile. So far, he seemed receptive, but it was hard to tell through emails and texts. Amy sat across from me, her mouth completely agape, with a ridiculously silly expression on her face. This wasn’t surprising, seeing as how I had just told her the saga of how my Friday night had ended up. “You slept with the sexiest man in Chicago, then kicked him out of your house through the window. Oh my God. I am so jealous right now I want to puke. Not really. But I am a little jealous. Happily jealous. Because it’s you and you’re like the nicest person alive.” “You haven’t noticed any pens missing yet?” I joked. “Come to think of it…” She arched an eyebrow toward me, and we both broke out in laughter. “So let me get this straight, though. The sexiest player in the league personally ended your no-O streak, and you 190

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repaid him by giving him blue balls, then kicking him out of your room?” I protested. “Whoa, now you’re making me out as some kind of bee sting. I didn’t want to blue-ball him. We just didn’t have any condoms. Also, what no-O streak? I take care of me.” “Oh wow, not even one margarita in, and we’re having the O conversation. Glad to hear that. And I just meant that you could have at least, you know”—Amy paused, as if searching for the right word as the server walked by—“helped him out.” I shrugged. “I don’t know, it just didn’t feel like the right time. We started cuddling and fell asleep.” “So you didn’t even give him a dry hand rub?” I nearly spit out my drink, I started laughing so hard. I held up a finger and wagged it.  “Okay, I think we all know if you give hand jobs, that means the terrorists are winning.” “Okay, okay.” She cracked up. “We’re getting really far in the weeds with this conversation.” “I’m not saying I’d never go down on him. It just wasn’t the right time.” “I’m just saying, if it were me...” “In other news, I was doing some research on Jake’s media campaign,” I said, not so subtly shying away from a conversation topic that was making me squirm. “Nice try.” “I’m being serious. I’m in crisis mode at work right now. My anxiety is through the roof. But I think I have a solution.” “Do tell.” “Jake has this whole other side of him that he keeps hidden.” Amy gave a short laugh at that. “I know what you are thinking, but you’re wrong. On the surface, he wants 191

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everyone to think he’s this dirty player and a frat bro and nothing else. I just don’t know why—at least, not entirely.” “He was dating Kim Kardashian’s cousin last year,” Amy pointed out. “I don’t think that was an act.” I remembered that, but it’d only lasted for a couple of months and, in the end, it was so obvious that she was only interested in his status as a ball player. “Well, even so. He’s actually a really solid guy.” Amy raised her brows in disbelief before she focused on her drink. “Well, you would know more about how solid Jake is than most people would.” “Ha ha. That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m being really serious right now. Steve was so pissed at me. He said if I have any more eff-ups, I’m out.” “Wow, you’ll be off the project? That’d suck.” Amy wasn’t getting it. “No, like out. Like I won’t be working at Green PR anymore, and I can look for new job somewhere else with a huge scarlet letter on my resume while I try to find work.” “Oh shit,” Amy said, blinking at me slowly. “Seriously?” “Yes.” I shuddered, the image I had thought up earlier in the morning running through my mind again. I’d go back to Sugar Tree, and my mom would passive-aggressively tell me, I told you so for the rest of my life. I couldn’t let that happen. “So, don’t think me heartless or unsympathetic to your shitty work situation, and I’m really sorry you’re stressed and all that…but when are you seeing him again?” “Amy! Why would you think I’d be seeing him again?” She arched an eyebrow and gave me a big grin. “Oh please. It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone. Besides, I’m living vicariously through you to experience The Big Unit.” 192

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She leaned in and sucked on her straw. “Is there any...big reason you didn’t want to go down on him?” “You have a one-track mind, you know?” “People always tell me I think like a guy. Who knows?” I sighed. “If you want to know the truth, Jake gets back from Jacksonville tomorrow morning. He said he wants to see me. Honestly, I want to see him—good Lord, do I want to see him—but my conscience keeps creeping in, telling me that it’s not a good idea.” “Damn it, Andrea!” Amy reached across the table and actually shook my shoulder, and rather hard. “You are so lucky right now! Tell your conscience to fuck off!” It was so easy for Amy. I tried to unpack my own feelings, but for some reason, they stayed knotted up. I made my hands into fists and thought about the man who had left me in this untrusting, devastated state of mind, one where I still didn’t quite think that my own desires and feelings were mine to express. I swallowed. I’d been talking around my reasons for breaking up with Grant to too many people for too long because I wasn’t proud of how I’d handled the whole thing. I realized it was time to come clean, but more importantly, I wanted to tell Jake everything about that relationship and stop holding back. But would I ever find my nerve? Worse, what if Jake thought less of me?

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TWenty-one I sat on the stands of a small baseball field on the South Side of Chicago. I kept staring at Jake instead of the game. Shockingly, he’d been absorbing most of my PR lectures as best he could while he’d been out of town. His slight shift in mood had surprised me, but I didn’t mind it. Meanwhile, I’d been working hard at the office, along with Amy, and doing my best to tame down the uproar of his Friday night fight. Most of my day was either helping out on other accounts and sending my ideas to Steve for review, or looking at all the crap that came up about Jake and coming up with ways to counter it, which I’d then present to my stubborn client. But, I had to admit that he was really listening to what I was saying. Did he follow it? Not always, but I was getting results. And Steve was finally off my back. All day, I’d released several more follow-up statements on Jake’s behalf about not condoning violence and stating that he’d acted too rashly. These had been posted on the Jaguars’ website and given to any media outlet that wanted it. Then Jake posted it on most of his social media platforms.

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That had appeased some of the masses, but not all. It helped that he’d played a squeaky clean series in Jacksonville and that his interviews had been spot on. He did a little joking, as was his way, but he was also serious about winning and had talked about how proud he was of his teammates. He didn’t comment on Grant, but he also didn’t really apologize for it either. Not really. He evaded. With his assault charge taken care of as of this afternoon, it was fading into the background. The Bulldogs’ PR machine was keeping it tame on their end, and it wasn’t being played on ESPN every hour on the hour. It was still on TMZ’s front page, though, but for once, the trash site had worked in Jake’s favor, because their spin was that Grant had started it by attacking me. I wasn’t named, thankfully, since most of the shots and videos are of poor quality and you couldn’t make out my face, but a lot of the comments from viewers sided with Jake. Finally, things were looking up. If only I could get Jake to let me talk up his coaching gig. He was so great at it. It was a warm summer evening, and it made me think of softball games I played in the summer when I was a kid. There weren’t very many parents in the stands for this night game, which wasn’t entirely surprising to me since we were in a blue-collar urban area where the majority of kids came from broken homes and had parents who worked two or more jobs to make ends meet. Jake towered over all of the little players as he stood in the first base coaching box. It was nice to not have to be secretly watching him from the parking lot this time. “Eye on the ball, be aggressive at the plate. Don’t overthink it,” Jake shouted to Tate and clapped. 195

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The pitch came, and Tate hit the ball right on the sweet spot of the bat. The metal clink reverberated throughout the park. Cheers erupted in the dugout as he raced the ball to the outfield. “Nice hit, Tate!” I shouted. I got up off the bleachers and leaned over the chain-link fence to snap a few pictures of Jake and Tate as they high-fived. Jake had to crouch down to meet the little man’s palm, and as Jake extended his hand, Tate had an ear-to-ear smile on his face. Jake was still wearing his Jaguars’ jersey from the game earlier, and both his and Tate’s jerseys had the number 24 on them. A rush of emotion came over me as I watched Jake give Tate a pat on the shoulder and tell him to get his head back in the game. Who was the real Jake Napleton, anyway? Was it this man who was donating his time to coach kids in an area so poor, nobody noticed (or maybe nobody cared) that a top-tier celebrity was coaching their kids? Or maybe they respected Jake so much since he was from here that they had an unspoken agreement not to make these games a paparazzi-fest. Was the real Jake the frat boy, beer-pong champion of Chicago? Or maybe the real Jake was the star pitcher who was on pace to have the most no-hitters of anyone since Nolan Ryan. And then there was the other version of The Big Unit, the one that I had gotten to know briefly this past Friday. I couldn’t piece the parts that I knew about Jake together quite yet, but I wanted to. Jake and I were beginning to understand each other. He didn’t see me as the enemy, and I no longer saw him as the cocky, bad boy of baseball. Well, mostly. He did have a temper, and it flared on occasion, but he didn’t let it get out of control. On the mound with Grant 196

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and in the bar last Friday, he’d been angry and he’d shown it. But Jake hadn’t scared me the way Grant had scared me. Jake was impulsive, yes, but after that initial reaction, he was over it. He wasn’t violent for the sake of being violent. The next kid up to bat struck out, and before I knew it, the game was over. On cue, the kids rushed off the field and into their respective dugouts. I cracked up at hearing the chant that Jake’s kids cried: “Pi-zza! Pi-zza!” Win or lose, there was usually pizza. Why couldn’t real life be more like that? A few minutes later, a guy walked toward the field from the parking lot, carrying a huge red hot-bag. The kids cheered as he came into their sightline. But before pizza, Jake had the boys tidy up and gather some of the equipment into the dugout. Then one of those boys, along with a man who looked like his dad, took two huge equipment bags to their car. I’d noticed how some of the equipment looked new, and there was a lot of it. The jerseys, I’d also noted, were official Little League uniforms. This sport was not cheap. Game uniforms easily cost a hundred bucks. Then the equipment, balls, bats, cleats, hats, gloves—it all added up fast. I wondered if they’d been donated, or if Jake was the sole donor. Jake and the few parents or guardians that had shown up for the game helped set up in the dugout and made the boys stand in an orderly line before they rushed the pizzas and water bottles. The kids scattered around the field, and Jake even invited the opposing team to eat some pizza. I snapped a few more candid photos as the kids and Jake scarfed down pieces like they hadn’t eaten for days. From the looks of some of them, and the way they attacked their food, I realized that it was quite possible that some hadn’t eaten in a while, and I found that incredibly sad. 197

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I went through my iPhone’s Photo Stream. These would make some damn good Instagram pictures. If only Jake would be okay with me putting these up on his social media accounts or releasing them to some media outlets with a quick byline. Jake walked over to the chain-link fence to where I was standing. “You ever not working?” he asked, sighing. I took a page from his playbook and deflected. “I saw a kid and his dad take all the equipment to their car,” I said. “What’s that about?” “Yeah, that was Jackson and his old man.” He gave me a cagey look while I patiently waited for him to continue. “Okay. Don’t blow this out of proportion, cuz it’s not a big deal…” he began, wary. “But I have the kids rotate taking the team’s equipment home for a month. It’s their responsibility to clean and maintain while they have it, then bring it to practices and games. They make a big deal out of who gets chosen. Makes ‘em feel important. Plus they get a kick out of having the equipment with them. They can practice with it.” “A lot of it’s new,” I remarked softly. He nodded. “Yeah. It is.” “And their uniforms?” He shrugged, so casually. “A lot of families can’t afford it. But a lot of families have pride and do what they can. I fill in the gaps if they let me. Besides, can’t play ball without the necessary tools, right?” “Right,” I said, amazed and surprised again by this man. I raised my phone and took a picture of his face, maybe a portrait of him for myself. He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t frowning either. Just relaxed, a little. “You know, I specifically volunteer here so that I  don’t  have to deal with the paparazzi,” he said with his 198

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trademark smirk. He turned his baseball cap backwards and wiped the sweat off his face with the collar of his undershirt. Jake had a constant five o’clock shadow, and I had to admit, he fit in with this setting really well. I snapped another picture. He scowled then laughed. “Don’t tell me that’s your only reason?” I teased, putting my phone away. For now. “Avoiding the paparazzi?” “Nah. It’s fun, and it makes me feel good. Reminds me of when I was a kid, and I kinda like revisiting it. It’s a normal thing to do, you know?” He got serious again as he looked back on the field, then back to me as Tate trotted toward us. “But seriously, Andrea, I don’t want paparazzi to ruin the game for these kids. I care about them a lot, and I don’t want my world bleeding into theirs any more than it already has.” “Hey Coach, what’s pa-pa-par-az-zi?” Tate asked, peeping his head over the fence. “Uh, paparazzi are a bunch of people who like taking pictures of celebrities and famous people.” Tate looked puzzled. “Like famous people that are on the news?” “Right.” I smiled down at him. “My cousin got on the news the other night,” Tate said, a little quizzically. “He got shot in the arm. But he’s not famous.” I stared at him, shocked at how casually he had said that. “Oh my God! Is he okay?” “Yeah. He’s fine.” Tate shrugged. “It happens a lot here.” I looked at Jake, his expression grim. “These kids are so desensitized to violence, it’s just as normal as the rain,” he said. “It’s always been that way around here. Now that I’ve been away from it for so long, I’d forgotten how accepting I was about it at Tate’s age.” 199

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“That’s horrible…” I whispered. “What can we do?” He shook his head, his eyes sweeping around the field and the boys who were laughing and having a fun time. I think I knew what he was thinking, that some of these boys wouldn’t make it to adulthood, or would end up like Fred. He looked back at me. “I wish I knew the answer to that, Andrea. I think everybody wishes they knew the answer to that. But the truth is, I wish I could do something about it myself.” “Jake,” I said softly, threading my fingers through the chain-link fence. “You already are. Don’t you see that?” I looked down at Tate and the field of happy boys and their smiling family members. He averted his gaze, not accepting the truth for some reason. “This is…such a small gesture. Changes nothing, not really.” “You’re wrong.” “If you say so…” “Think about Hank, about how he took his time with you…about all the people that had a part in your life that meant something to you, however small.” He blinked a few times and didn’t answer for several long minutes. “Maybe you have a point…” I wasn’t sure he totally believed me, but there was a look in his eyes that I found encouraging. “You’re Jake Napleton, star pitcher of the Chicago Jaguars,” I reminded him, watching his quiet profile. “That means something to the public, to the media. You know how powerful that can be. An image says a lot. Perception is about what you put out there, or don’t. People pay attention to you, whether you like it or not. You could redirect that to something positive, like shedding light on the lives of the people in this area. Start a meaningful conversation.” 200

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Jake just sighed. “That’s a lot of responsibility.” “Yeah,” I said, agreeing. “It is. But you’re not afraid of anything…are you?” He gave a ghostly smile at my challenge, but it was a genuine one, and it made my breath catch a little. I liked the way the corners of his eyes crinkled just a little bit, how soft and intense they were as he gazed at me. How does one look, one simple smile, make me feel like I’m close to him without touching him? That our connection…was something more? “Coach, is your girlfriend going to come to all  of our games now?” Tate asked, breaking our moment. Jake was clearly not expecting that question from an eight-year-old, and for once in his cocky life, he hesitated, seemingly unsure how to respond. Tate walked around to my side of the chain-link fence. “I like it when you come to games.” He gave me something I was totally not ready for, or expecting: a hug. He ran back as fast as possible as though worried I’d give him cooties. “Well?” he demanded, looking up at Jake. I did too. “Well...Andrea’s…” Jake started, haltingly, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing down at Tate’s expectant face. “Um…we’re definitely good friends, and she is a girl, so…” I smiled. Good friends. I liked that, actually, but I swear, he was blushing. I’d noticed that when he had trouble finding his words around me, he avoided looking at me. “You don’t like her?” Tate fired back, frowning. “I like her!” “Well, no. Er, yes, but...” Jake’s eyes darted to mine for a second, maybe for help, but I didn’t bother jumping in. Jake could save himself, I was sure. I cocked my head, smiling even bigger as Jake continued to struggle with his answer, and I reveled at something 201

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amazing—at how great he was with a bunch of high-energy eight-year-olds. He clearly loved kids. Why spend so much time with them if you didn’t? And he was so patient with each of the boys, and they all looked up to him. Jake may not want to be a role model to anybody, but it was too late, he already was to these boys. Had I finally found the playboy’s weak spot? Kids? My heart fluttered, considering the idea that the sexiest man alive might also make a good father someday. As soon as the thought hit my brain, however, I instantly shook it off, thinking about how much of a crazy woman I was being. For God’s sakes, I was wondering what kind of a dad Jake would make, and we hadn’t even fully slept with each other yet. The fact that I was thinking about Jake as the father of my kids was a huge stretch at this point. But an interesting thought. Yeah. I was melting. And I couldn’t even blame the sun since it was almost 8 p.m. Maybe I’d just blame it on the moon anyway. A rush of warmth flooded me as Jake left me for a few minutes to talk to each of the boys and their parents before heading back to me. He grinned, and his face radiated happiness as our eyes locked. Just like when he’d first seen me at Marseille Club. Pure joy. I couldn’t deny it. Jake had pulled me into his hot orbit, and I had to have him. I had to have all of him. However long that’d be. “Diggs. So are you down to meet up at Charlie’s Bar at like nine? I just have to take this little squirt home and I’ll head over.” He noogied the kid as he spoke. Tate squealed and I laughed, the happiest I’d been in a while. They reminded me of my how my brothers would play around, and I missed that. Just playing around, no harm, no foul. 202

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“Sounds good!” I said, grinning. “I just have to stop at home and change real quick.” “Andrea. It’s a casual, honest-to-God place, not like the f—not like the darn Marseille Club.” Jake choosing not to swear so as not to corrupt a kid? It was settled, kids were his Achilles’ heel. Tate stood right next to Jake, practicing his baseball swing with no bat in his hands. “Hey Tate,” Jake said. “I need a big strong guy to help with the cleanup. You got it?” “Yeah!” Tate did a strong man pose, kissed his tiny little eight-year-old biceps, and then sprinted to the dugout as fast as he possibly could. Jake and I both couldn’t help but crack up. “Works every time,” Jake said, taking a step closer to me so our bodies were just touching through the fence. “Like I was saying, Charlie’s Bar keeps it real. It’s run by… you guessed it, a guy named Charlie.” He leaned his face in, inches from my ear. “And I, for one, think you look damn sexy in your jeans and white t-shirt.” His eyes lingered on mine for a moment, then gradually lowered themselves down my face before landing on my necklace and the cross pendant that rested just above my breasts. I felt as though his eyes had the power to jumpstart my heart into the hundred-beats-a-minute range. So unfair. “It’s starting to get a little chilly,” I said. “I wanted to stop and get a jacket.” “I have the perfect solution for you,” Jake said and began to unbutton his black-and-green jersey. “Wear this.” I exhaled. In middle school, Grant had given me his favorite lucky jersey. Back then, he hadn’t been bad, but he morphed into the man I rediscovered in college. It hadn’t been fate that we’d both ended up at Tennessee State. Just 203

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bad luck. “Uh,” I hedged, feeling weird about such a harmless gesture. “I’m not wearing your used jersey.” “Used?” He gave me a surprised look. “I hardly moved. And I’m a light sweater even so.” I paused and stared at him. The shirt was already halfway unbuttoned. Jake wore a white t-shirt underneath that had a hard time containing his big chest muscles and biceps. Somehow, I wanted how I started with Grant to be different with Jake, and that damn jersey was an omen. Stupid, but superstitions were part of the ball game. “I’m okay.” I smiled at him. “I don’t a need a shirt to keep me warm…” I just need you… “As you wish,” he said, shrugging. He smiled evilly. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget the rubbers this time.” “Coach, what about rubbers?” Tate was right behind him, and we hadn’t even noticed. Jake’s face was hilarious. He wasn’t used to getting caught off guard, which Tate seemed to continuously do. “Oh, I, uh, wanted to ask if you got the pitching rubber off the mound?” I bit back a laugh as Tate gave him a confused look. “Nah, Coach, we leave that here. The rubber is connected to the dirt. It doesn’t come out.” “Of course. I don’t know what I was thinking…” “You’re crazy, Coach,” Tate said, patting Jake on the arm gingerly like he was losing it. “I like you, but you crazy sometimes.” Crazy but likeable. That was as succinct a summary of Jake as I had heard from anyone. Maybe Tate should be the one handling Jake’s social media campaign. 204

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twenty-TWO Charlie’s Pub was exactly as I had imagined when Jake described it. It was an old-fashioned place with two beers on tap, served you popcorn while you waited, and Charlie really was the name of the bartender. In a way, the place reminded me of Barnes’ Bar in Sugar Tree. I wondered if Charlie was worried about his social media presence. Something told me he didn’t really care. “Well, you look like you’re dressed up for some kind of date,” Charlie said, filling up a glass. “You look nice.” “Thanks, Charlie.” He grinned as he set the Lagunitas IPA that I’d ordered on the bar. He had a long white beard and glasses. Even though I’d just met him, he put me at ease, like we’d known each other for years. By the time I got home, the humidity had shot up in what seemed like an hour. Instead of grabbing a jacket, I’d changed into a more comfortable summer wardrobe for the bar. I had put on a striped white-and-gray mini skirt and a loose, low-cut white tank top with a pastel bralette. I had thought for a minute about throwing on some heels, but I

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figured I’d be standing all night anyway, so I nixed that idea. Last minute, I’d refreshed my makeup and made sure the loose braid I’d had at the game was still intact. I didn’t want to seem like I was trying that hard. “Now that’s a cute little accent you’ve got there,” Charlie said, leaning his arms against the bar. “Let me guess. You’re from North Carolina—the mountains?” I blushed a little. It was weird, but Charlie reminded me a little bit of my Grandpa and made me feel so comfortable that my Tennessee accent was beginning to sneak out more than it usually did. “Not quite,” I said, taking a sip of my drink. “I’m from Sugar Tree, Tennessee.” “Well, it’s a lovely accent you’ve got,” Charlie continued. “Reminds me a little of my wife.” “Oh, is she from Tennessee?” “She was from East Texas.” “Was...?” “She died three years ago. Married thirty-two years. God rest her soul.” “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to bring it up…” “You’re fine. I’m grateful I had those thirty-two.” He smiled softly, and for a few seconds, his gaze become a little unfocused, as though he were remembering something. “So,” he said, changing the subject. “You’re not here dressed like that for a drink at my bar. Are you meeting someone for a date?” “You could say that.” “Well, he must be a very lucky guy. What’s his name?” “Jake.” He eyed me weirdly. “You’re not talking about the Jake I think you’re talking about, are you?” 206

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I hesitated, not knowing if Jake would appreciate it if I gave up his identity. “Well, what Jake do you think  I am talking about?” “The Big Unit, of course. Who else?” I almost choked on my beer hearing this old man say The Big Unit. And then I realized that he was talking about Jake’s incredible pitching arm, not his, you know, other big unit. There was only one other person in the bar, a token thirty-year-old frat bro that had arrived shortly after I had and sat at the other end of the bar. I figured it didn’t matter since it sounded like Jake came here often and knew Charlie. “Yes. The Big Unit should be here pretty shortly.” When I said the words, I swore I noticed the guy at the other end of bar perk up. “You must be a very special lady,” Charlie said, stroking his beard and slowly nodding. “Yeah right. I’m sure he takes all of his girls here.” Charlie let out a hearty, Santa-Claus-like laugh. “You don’t know him very well, do you?” “I mean, I’ve known him for almost two weeks now. But everybody knows about his...reputation with women.” Charlie smiled. “I’ve known that boy for years. He’s had women chasing him his whole life. There’s not too many he chases back, though.” I scrunched my brow. “So what are you trying to say?” “I’m saying you’re a lucky girl, that’s all. He’s never brought a girl to my bar. Make whatever you want of that.” I wanted to continue our conversation, but at that moment the door swung open and Jake appeared. “Charlie! My man!” Jake boomed as he walked toward the bar. They hugged across the bar, which wasn’t a problem 207

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since they were both massive. “You’re not swooping in on my girl, are you?” “I thought about it, but I decided I’d back down and let you have this one,” Charlie said with a wink. Then he moved aside to pour a glass of beer. “Well, well, I think I like this outfit even better, especially the skirt,” Jake said, putting his hands on my back while he stood behind me. He moved his strong hands lightly on the flesh of my shoulders, and I instantly felt rewarded for my decision to wear a strappy tank top. “I don’t know how the humidity goes up twenty percent in an hour, but it did,” Jake commented. “That means the rain’s coming,” Charlie chimed in, passing Jake a Guinness. Jake hadn’t even needed to tell the man what he wanted. “I can tell.” Charlie walked over to the other end of the bar, toward the other customer. Jake sat down on the barstool next to me, man-spreading his legs. I swiveled my chair to face him, and he put a hand on my leg. “Well, I’m glad you changed,” Jake said, running his eyes up and down my body. “I didn’t think it was possible that you could get sexier than the jeans and t-shirt you were in. I loved the girl-next-door look on you. But this skirt and top gives you more of a ‘hottie at the bar’ look. Which is cool, because we are in a bar. And you are a hottie.” I rolled my eyes at Jake’s joke. “You really have a onetrack mind, don’t you?” “Well, two tracks, I think. Baseball is a track. And you’re a track. I used to have a one-track mind—baseball only. And then I met you. I added a track.” I tried real hard not to let that go to my head and changed the topic to a safer one. “Speaking of tracks, when 208

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are you going to let me change the track you are on with social media? You need to change up your strategy.” “My strategy with you? I think I’ve got you right where I want you. In a dive bar. Looking sexy as hell in a skirt that’s maybe a little too short, but it doesn’t matter because there’s hardly anyone around. And you’re turned toward me with your legs pointed right at me, and I’m basically getting hard just staring at them.” I swallowed, hard, my heart thumping like a racehorse after the Kentucky Derby as Jake stared into my eyes with a slight smirk. The only thought that came to me was disbelief that a man as sexy as him would think that about me. For my whole life, I’d dealt with men telling me through their words or actions that I was somehow not right for them. They were intimidated by my strength, or thought that I was weird because I was a girl who was obsessed with sports. Well, maybe some of them were simply intimidated because I could throw a ball faster than them. And now here I was, listening to man whose poster I had owned tell me that I was making his night just by being my normal self. The thought was too much. It made me want to run out of the bar like I had in the middle of our first date at Marseille Club. Instead, I steadied myself and steered the conversation back to the thing that Jake continued to fight me on—cleaning up his image. I’d made progress, but it was still a work in progress. “Jake, this is serious. Your social media stuff, I mean. Just let me post one picture. Pretty please with sugar on top?” Jake took out his phone and flipped it around in his hand a few times. 209

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“Okay. I’ll let you, but just so you know, I’m not just giving in because I like you. And your short skirt,” he said but then cleared his throat and darted his eyes down at his phone. “I’m letting you do this because I trust you. I don’t know what it is about you exactly, but I just feel like you get me.” I smiled softly as I took his phone. “Can you unlock this for me?” I took out my own phone and sent him the picture I had taken of him giving Tate a high five. He keyed in his code and then handed me his phone. From the message to myself, I loaded it up to his Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, adding a filter.  I filled it up with hashtags and added the simplest caption I could think of: Just coaching future star player Tate on the South Side. Love the passion these kids bring to the game. “Now, was that really so hard?” “Not when I have someone so sexy to stare at and keep me occupied while it’s being posted.” I handed him back his phone, realizing what this gesture meant to him, and how much it meant to me. In the past few days, he’d started opening up to me, but I hadn’t opened up to him as much. I’d told him some things but kept hesitating. He had let me into his life a little, let me see part of it, and it wasn’t just about sleeping with me. I mean, he still wanted to, but when he said he liked me, I felt it. I could see it on his face, and it made me want to return that trust. But I was still scared and uncertain. Now, I was the one who was holding something back, not Jake. “Thank you for trusting me, Jake,” I said. “I’ve figured out that you don’t trust just anybody…” I breathed in and then out, his gaze never leaving my face. Moment of truth, 210

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something I’d been wanting to tell him for a while. “Jake. We really need to talk about something.” I couldn’t shake the past skeletons in my closet that kept popping out ever since I’d started spending time with Jake. “You know how you said I get you?” Jake nodded and took a slow sip of his Guinness. Nervously, I took a drink of my beer and pushed the glass aside. “Well, I feel like that too, and I don’t know why. But there is something I need to tell you. That I should have told you.” Jake’s face suddenly looked genuinely concerned, the always-on smirk surprisingly disappeared from his face. “Anything.” I was at the brink of telling him my shameful secret, the  real reason Grant and I had broken up. But at the last second, I decided this wasn’t the time. Besides, I had something else on my mind that was bothering me a little, something I was sure Jake was wondering about. “You’ve been so patient with me,” I said. “And I wanted to explain a little. The other night, when I stopped us from hooking up. I feel bad.” A look of concern flashed on his face. He put a hand on my bare knee. I wasn’t sure if he meant to comfort me or to seduce me, but the effect was both. “Don’t feel bad,” he said. “Never feel bad about stating what you think and how you feel, or what you want. I did make that clear, right?” “Yes, you did.” I smiled. “Very clear. I know I stopped us from going all the way. But, the thing was, I did want to hook up with you. It’s just, I come from a somewhat conservative background.” 211

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“Okay…so, what does that mean?” Jake asked, his eyes on me as his thumb slid back and forth against my skin. He was making this even more difficult because he was turning me on, and I needed to focus. “Um, well, after middle school, my mother transferred me to an all-girls Catholic school. I was so focused on softball and trying to get a scholarship, I really didn’t have much time to go after boys or go on dates. And then, of course, my one college relationship ended up being a disaster. Grant and I…uh…I mean, we fooled around a lot, but we never went…all the way.” Jake’s jaw dropped. His hand fell away as he stared at me for a moment without saying anything, then he finished his Guinness and ordered another one, still silent. He was freaking me out with his silence. What was he thinking? “Jake, I know—” “I have a hard time believing that a girl as sexy as you—has never had sex,” he cut in, still looking doubtful at my claim. “Well, in the classical sense, anyway. So, you’re a virgin?” Oh God, was I really admitting this to Jake, a serial womanizer? I gulped, nerves swarming me. “Yes.” “And you’ve never even had a one-night stand?” I took a breath and said, “No...never.” “And this is because of your Catholic upbringing,” he added, not really a question, nor a statement. “Well, partially. Maybe. I don’t know… Maybe I’ve just never met anyone I was both attracted to and trusted enough to go all the way with. Until…now. Sorry. I don’t want to freak you out.” Jake put his Guinness down on the bar, placing his hand on my thigh, under the edge of my skirt, sending goosebumps all over my body. 212

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“You’re telling me you’re a virgin. And you want to have sex…with me?” I swallowed and took a sip of my drink. I was a little surprised that Jake was surprised. “Oh come on,” I said, trying to play this off as no big deal. But his reaction wasn’t what I’d expected, and I really had no idea what to expect. “Plus, it’s not like I’m totally inexperienced. I’ve done…stuff. I just haven’t gone all the way. I’m sure I’m not the first girl who has said this to you. That they wanted you to be the one.” Jake scoffed. “Are you inferring that I have loads of girls just coming to me, asking me to take their v-cards?” “Oh, don’t play dumb. I’ve seen your Instagram.” A slow, warm smile spread across Jake’s face, and he took a long, deliberate swig of his drink. “You—of all people—should know that you can’t believe everything you see on social media and the tabloids,” he said, amused. “I’m everyone’s friend, remember? I take pictures with anyone that wants one. If it looks like something that isn’t, it’s not on me to explain it or defend it, especially if I think it’s harmless. But I get it now, how if that’s all the public sees, they start to really think it’s true. Even people that may know better.” A wave of butterflies spread through me. I sat there, speechless at how astute his observation was. Jake was completely, utterly right. I was his social media manager. If there was one person who shouldn’t have been fooled by pictures of him and pretty models on his Instagram, it should have been me. I was wrongly jumping to conclusions and assuming a lot based on very little, just like everyone had. Even worse, at the very beginning, I’d known that I couldn’t take every picture of him at face value, but I’d wondered, and that doubt was real. 213

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“But you still sleep around…a lot,” I said weakly. “I have one-night stands every night, in every city?” he asked, dryly. I sighed. “I don’t know. Something like that, I guess.” “I’m not going to deny that I do like to party and drink, or that I have been with other girls, or have done some wild stuff, but it’s nothing like what people think. I think you realize that by now?” Did I? When I didn’t immediately agree, Jake leaned back from me for a moment and pursed his lips. “My father has seventeen kids. Well, offspring, I should say. He has no right to call us that.” Stunned, I shook my head at his random change in topic. “Okay…but what does that have to do with you sleeping around? And I thought you said you only have the one sister.” He nodded. “I do. From the one mother. He has seventeen kids with five different women.” I swallowed, eyes widening. “You’re serious.” I suddenly felt a little lightheaded. I didn’t want to believe him. “Hey Charlie.” Jake waved over the bartender. “We have a disbeliever. How many kids does my asshole father have?” Charlie, who was cleaning a glass, retorted, “Seventeen. And probably counting.” I took another swig of my beer, finishing it, and signaled for Charlie to bring another. I was in shock. “Wow…” I trailed off. “He was never in the picture. Didn’t even know Eva and I existed.” “Then how did you even find that out?” “First thing I did when I got my first real paycheck was to find him. I regretted it as soon as I’d done it. I always held him 214

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as a sort of ideal in my mind, a tough guy who probably had been dealt a tough hand. Well, he was dealt a tough hand, that much was true. But instead of choosing to take his life by the horns, he just became the king of whambamthankyoumam.” He paused, exhaling slowly, watching my face. “I don’t want to be like that. It sucked not having a dad or a mom growing up. I would never have a kid and then just…leave him, or her, behind.” I shook my head, gripping the fresh beer that Charlie had just poured me. “Jesus Almighty.” “So my point is that I don’t go for quantity, Andrea. I’d rather go for quality.” He stared at me as he said the words. “Like you. I want you.” Jake paused, letting that sink in before he continued. “But as you also probably figured out, for a guy like me, I tend to attract the wrong type of girls since the good ones know to avoid me,” he said, watching my face intently. “Unless they get stuck with me—shit.” “Shit?” I repeated. “Sorry, wasn’t directed at you. I mean, shit, it feels good to get all this off my chest. I haven’t told anyone about that besides Eva.” “Right. The DEA agent.” His face held onto a smile. He was probably feeling great about getting that off his chest. I felt honored that he felt close enough to me to tell me something like that. I also appreciated the fact that he didn’t seem put-off or even worried that I had just dropped a pretty big bomb on him moments earlier. He didn’t even seem to care that I was a virgin. His feelings mirrored my own. Most guys, when they found out I hadn’t gone all the way, either treated me like a sort of hospital patient who needed kid gloves, or went the 215

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other way and acted like they had scored some kind of manly achievement by being on the road to sleeping with a virgin. Like Grant. Jake, however, was neither of those extremes. He was just…Jake. I leaned in and kissed him, since I had no other words. He kissed me back just as urgently, wrapping his hand around my neck. For such a hard man, his lips were perhaps the only soft spot on his entire body. When I pulled back, we were both breathing heavy. I let my gaze slowly drift down from his face to his chest and abs, which I could see the outline of through the white t-shirt he was wearing.  They finally stopped between his legs. I licked my lips, then brought my eyes back up to Jake. I was finally learning to enjoy the journey. “Let’s get out of here,” I said, looking right into his eyes. That got his attention real quick. I looked around, seeing that a few others had milled in. I noticed the guy that had come in after me walking out the door, in a hurry. “Charlie, can we settle up?” Jake nodded at the man. “Yep. You’re good.” “Dammit Charlie, none of your shit today. We’re paying customers.” “Your money? It’s no good here,” Charlie said, in a voice that imitated the throaty Italian accent of the Godfather. “Besides, it’s not you I’ve taken a shine to. It’s the girl.” Charlie gave us a wink. Jake rolled his eyes, pulled out a crisp hundred-dollar bill, and left it on the bar. “Screw you, old pal,” he said with a smile. Before Charlie could protest any more, Jake had slipped off the barstool and was leading me out of the bar. He was in such a rush, I barely managed a wave as we left. 216

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As we walked out the door holding hands, my thought was, this is so darn easy. I liked him, he liked me, and we would go back to his place and finally do what we’d both been wanting to do since we met each other in the locker room, which felt like ages ago now. I was ready for the wait to be over.

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twenty-three

I leaned my head against Jake’s shoulder on the ride to his place, thinking about what I hadn’t told him. What I hadn’t told my mother. What I hadn’t even admitted to myself. Jake wrapped his arm around me in the backseat of our cab. And here I was, unable to stop that one part of my brain that never stopped running: my conscience. He had laid out the embarrassing truth of his life, of his father’s ways and how he vowed never to be like him. I was the one who wasn’t able to level with him, and it intruded on the amazing moment at Charlie’s Bar. At least, from my perspective it did. I hated that dark cloud hanging over us. I felt like we were actually starting something pretty great, and I was tired of hiding behind my hang-ups. We headed inside, and my heart fluttered, not only because cuddling with Jake in the backseat of the cab had made me feel like I was in heat. It fluttered because I knew what I had to tell him. He unlocked his apartment door and opened it for me.

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“After you.” He smiled and watched me, desire in his eyes. As soon as I went in, I made a beeline for the bar area. It was surprisingly well stocked, and I could pretty much make any drink I wanted. “Old-fashioned?” I offered, needing some liquid courage. “Why, sure bartender. I’d love one.” I used the recipe that Mr. Barnes had taught me: I started with one giant ice cube, then added one and a half shots bourbon, a little simple syrup, a tiny bit of demerara cherry juice, and some bitters. To top it off, I added a cherry and a piece of orange skin. Jake and I, drinks in hand, ambled over to his living room to sit on the couch that overlooked the city lights from up high. “Cheers,” I said with a faded smile as I stared past him at the tall building behind him, my brain trying to figure out how to tell him what I’d been wanting to tell him. “Mmm, delicious. You didn’t look me in the eye,” Jake said teasingly. “You know what that means?” “Please, you are not doing the seven-years-bad-sex routine on me.” I shook my head, still not looking him in the eye. “I just did. But seriously.” He wrapped a hand around my shoulder. “What’s bothering you?” “It’s…nothing,” I said, staring into my drink. “You must think I’m a fucking idiot,” he said, taking a huge swallow of his drink. “Fuck. FUCK!” “What’s the matter?” I asked, taken aback by his outburst. My heart began to thump erratically. Suddenly I was scared and guarded. His face took on a snarl—similar to the expression of pure hate he’d had when I got robbed, or when he’d punched out Grant. 219

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But that look evaporated quickly. “Sorry. Fuck. It’s not you; it’s me. It’s just…it’s the first time I’ve wanted to fuck someone, not just fuck them, you know what I mean?” “Uh, sure?” He took another swig of his drink. “Andrea, I’m gonna tell you something right now and you cannot fucking tell anyone.” I was about to confess something that I felt was important, but he beat me to the punch. “Deal.” He gripped his drink with a nervous tension that I’d never seen in him before. Focusing his eyes toward me, he spoke. “When I was a sophomore in college, I was dating this girl named Dani. God, I thought I was in love with her.” Jake paused and took a strong pull of his drink. “So one day, practice is rained out. I head back to the house where I was living. And who do I find but Dani, in my fucking bed, banging my floormate, who was also named Danny. Dani fucking Danny. Fuck.” “What a fucking asshole!” The words just slipped out, and Jake’s mouth curved instantly into a smile, even in the midst of him remembering such a story. “I like it when you talk dirty,” he said. I gave him a look. “Continue your story.” “I got so pissed…I knocked Danny out—the guy, not the girl, obviously—and put him in the hospital for a couple days.” Just like he’d done to Grant. Wow, I thought, taking a sip of my drink. But my ex had deserved it, and that whole thing had been his fault, not Jake’s. This Danny thing had not come up in my research on Jake, but then again, if he never 220

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talked about it, and the people involved didn’t talk about it, it was much easier to keep things out of view. “You didn’t get in trouble?” I asked, tentatively. “He was so embarrassed, he didn’t want to be known around campus as the guy who went around fucking guys’ girlfriends, so he didn’t report me. He could have; he’d had every right to. And it would have ruined my career. I knew I’d gone too far. After that, I promised myself that I’d never lose control like that again.” He paused and looked at me fiercely. “But, when I overheard Grant talking about how he cheated on you, then I saw how he came after you, and the look on your face, it triggered something in me that I’d wanted to forget for a long time.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I told you, I’ve always had a temper. Living in Blue Island made me tough, and it came in handy, but I just never grew out of it, or beyond it maybe, I don’t know. This is why I don’t want people to know that part of me, or my past. One, I don’t want any pity or cautionary tales spun from my childhood and how I turned out as an adult. Two, it’s why I don’t fight the party image of me, because it makes up for my hot-headedness on the mound, and maybe my asshole attitude off of it. I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder, and it’s always gotten me into trouble. But anyone hurting those I care about drives me crazy.” I fixated on a few words he had said and repeated them in my head. Those he cared about… “The ironic thing was, even though it sucked at the time—I mean, damn, did I ever dodge a bullet by not wasting any more time with Dani.” Jake’s grip around my shoulders grew stronger, and my eyes started welling up with tears. “I need to tell you something,” I said, empowered by his confession. 221

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“What? God, what? Was it something I said?” I took a deep breath. “I’ve never told anyone this. But the reason Grant and I broke up in college—” I stopped short. I didn’t want to come out with it. And I’d been hiding this for so long from everyone. There was no one I trusted with this information. I felt they would judge me or see me as a victim. Or worse, they wouldn’t believe me. I continued. “When we first started dating, it wasn’t bad, y’know? We had fun. There were times I thought he was a great guy, the old Grant from middle school. He seemed to understand me, but it was all a lie. He got more controlling, treating me like a possession. And when I found him cheating on me, he said it was my fault because I wouldn’t sleep with him. He pressured me a lot. And when I refused, especially if he’d been drinking, he…yelled a lot. But he also got physical sometimes. That was what pushed me to leave him.” Silence hung between us. Jake had turned toward me on the couch and had both of his arms wrapped around me now. I could feel him. “Physical?” he asked, slowly. “When I’d tell him no, or confronted him about his cheating, and when I tried to leave him he—” “What?” he said when I didn’t continue. His body had tensed, as though waiting for a punch he knew was coming. “He what, Andrea?” “H-he slapped me a few times,” I said, in a big rush. My voice trembled like a leaf blowing in the wind. “Sometimes… really hard. Sometimes…so hard I couldn’t even leave my apartment for a few days.” I’d never told anyone this. Not even my teammates, who I’d been the closest to. Oh, they saw, but I could blame a bruise on a game or practice. I’d always made an excuse because I didn’t want to be that girl who didn’t know when to 222

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leave an abusive relationship. I hadn’t wanted to look weak. I’d finally left him when I learned he would never change and that he could really hurt me. Luckily, because he was being drafted when I broke up with him, he’d let me go. Or so I’d thought. Jake’s face went red with rage, and he started glancing all around the room, as if his mind needed to get loose. “I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him!” He let go of me, got up off the couch, and literally started looking for his keys, as if he was going to jump in his car and go get Grant right that minute. “Baby, stop! It’s okay.” “No. It’s not okay. Clearly you are still—did you just call me baby?” I put my hands on my hips and licked my lips. Jake had the keys to his car in his hand, like he was ready to go. As much as I hated his temper, his protective behavior was getting me worked up. “I guess. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying right now.” Jake took a few deep breaths and tossed his keys aside. “Where are you going to go anyway? You realize Grant is probably back in Jersey by now?” Jake put his hands on his hips. Our eyes locked and didn’t waver from each other. Slowly, my frown and his rage began to transform into something else. I saw a soft smile tug at his lips, and I couldn’t help but smile myself, even as tears streamed down my cheeks. “That was possibly the single cutest gesture anyone has ever made for me, though.” I felt his anger and tension dissipate, as though he felt calmer with me near him. It felt so good to finally tell 223

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someone, to confide in Jake all the things that had bothered me. I felt like I could breathe again; no heaviness, no more resistance to what I wanted for myself. Jake’s body visibly loosened, releasing the tension that had built up. We both started laughing at the same time, chuckling slowly at first until we began one of those laughs that were impossible to stop. Jake was so protective of me that he had entered into a fog and didn’t even account for the fact that Grant was likely long gone, and I hoped that was a fact. Our laughing slowed, and Jake charged toward me like a bull heading for a bull’s-eye. When he reached me, he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me against his body. I slipped my arms around him and rested my head on his shoulder, feeling the weight from the past year fall away. “You know that none of that was your fault, right?” he asked quietly, into my hair. “That Grant was completely in the wrong, for all of it, and you didn’t deserve how he treated you?” My breath caught, but I nodded, hugging him into me even more. “I’m proud that you knew when to walk away, that you didn’t let him win.” He paused. “Mostly, I’m sorry you’ve been holding onto that for so long, Andrea,” he whispered. “Me too,” I whispered back, tears threatening again. I held onto Jake tighter yet and let go of all the ugliness I’d been keeping inside. “But I’m glad I finally told someone. I’m glad that person was you. So thank you for believing me.” He just held me for the longest time, like he’d do it forever if I wanted to. “All this bullshit in our lives sucks, but maybe there’s a reason for it. I mean, if I weren’t such a total asshole, Mr. Yerac wouldn’t have forced you and your PR advice on me.” 224

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“Jake,” I whispered softly. “I like you. You’re nothing like what they say about you.” His breath close to mine, he answered, “I like you too. I like when you call me baby. I like when you swear. I like when you…fucking stand there. Shit! And when I hear how that douchebag touched you, my God, I don’t even want to think about it. But I know that somehow, in some fucked up way, it’s brought us here. And it’s brought us closer together. Do you feel close to me right now?” I stared up at his face. I wasn’t a bold girl normally, but I was done containing myself. I’d been restraining my desires for a long while, out of fear and shame, and now, the drought was over. I reached for the bottom of his shirt and started pulling it up. He was a little surprised, but that was all it took for him to take over. He slipped his shirt off and tossed it behind him. I ran my hands over the mirror image tattoos on his body. I still hadn’t asked about those, but I would. But not right now. He pushed me backwards into the couch so that I landed on my back on the cushions. I arched my head back, and he took the opportunity to concentrate his wet lips on my neck, his hands on my breasts. He paused and flashed his brown eyes at me like I was his prey. Without breaking eye contact, he reached his hand down my thigh and up to my ass, caressing the skin underneath my skirt. He pressed his hips into me, and I felt him through his pants. The Big Unit. I returned his gaze and moaned, grabbing his shoulder with my hand because I needed something to anchor onto. He circled his hand from my ass and brought it around the front of my thigh, bringing my skirt further up my waist. He ran his finger inside my thong along my sex. 225

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“Your pussy is wet as fuck.” “Your cock is hard as hell.” I let out a gasp and felt myself ready to release so much pent-up stress. I rubbed his length through his jeans and began to unbuckle and unzip him, all the while kissing his neck. The stubble on his face felt a little prickly, and I liked it. I yanked on his jeans and he pulled them down. “Fuck.” “Good girl,” he said, watching me as I knelt down to stroke him through his boxers. He pulled at my tank top, and I lifted up my arms so I could take it off. He reached down and stroked my breasts through my bralette. I put my hand on the outline of his cock through his briefs. “I want to hear you say it,” he said. “Say what?” “I want you to tell me that you want me to fuck you.” I hesitated. I couldn’t believe this was happening as I touched him. But it felt right. “Not ready for that? Okay,” Jake said in a low voice. He was on his knees on the couch, smiling down at me. “That’s fine. But you’ll have to reach your hand down between your legs.” “Jake, I…” He reached his hand down to my face and aimed my chin up toward him. “Do it just like you did over the phone, Andrea. I want to watch.” Slowly, I moved a hand between my legs and snuck a finger underneath the fabric of my thong, my skirt bunched at my waist. Jake, still kneeling, watched me, and I whimpered as I touched the outside of my clit. “God damn, you have no idea how hot you are right now,” he growled. 226

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“Neither do you,” I managed to say as Jake took down his boxers. I let out another noise between a whimper and a moan. His eyes never left mine. “Say it,” he commanded. “I…want…you.” “Good girl. You’re almost there,” he said, smirking. “Just be a little more specific.” “Jake, please.” “Jake, please what?” I swallowed. “Jake, please. Fuck me,” I managed to pant. “That’s more like it.” Jake wrapped his hand around the side of my neck and ear and signaled for me to stand up, so I did. He pulled off my skirt and brought my thong down around my ankles. He pulled me back onto the couch, hovering over me as I lay with my arms above my head on the couch. I felt the heat of his body barely touching me, teasing me with what was about to come as he gently kissed my neck. Then he removed my bra and focused his kisses on my breasts. Finally, he looked up, his face inches from mine. “This is going to be your first time,” he whispered. He ran a hand through my hair. “Yeah.” “I don’t know how I found you, but I feel so lucky. You’re gorgeous, you’re incredible, and you’re mine.” I was slow to respond, dazed while looking at Jake’s face from inches away. “I’m yours,” I finally managed to say. I felt like I was on a high. “Let’s go to the bedroom,” he said, and I didn’t respond, a silly smile on my face. 227

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He got up off the couch, took my hand, and led me to his bedroom. Once on the bed, he pounced on me, and we made out, our hands touching each other in every spot we could find, each wanting to know every square inch of the other’s flesh. “Oh God,” I moaned, my legs quivering as his hand found its way between my thighs. The tip of his finger lightly grazed the top of my slit. I arched my back and squirmed, the pleasure running through me like a ticking time bomb of ecstasy had been released inside me. “Jake,” I moaned. “Andrea,” he groaned back to me, a soft smirk on his face while he stared into my eyes. I reached down and felt him. “I need you,” I moaned. “Please.” “Say it. Again.” My chest heaved, my skin burned, and my heart ached. “I want you inside me. Now.” I stared down at his package, hard as a rock, and a fleeting thought passed through me. “It’ll fit.” He smiled, reading my mind. He leaned his body into mine and whispered. “I’ll make sure you are nice and wet just to make sure.” I’m not sure I can get much wetter, I thought, a burning between my thighs. For a few moments he massaged the outside of my pussy with his cock. I whimpered. “Jake. Don’t tease me. Please. I’m done waiting. I want you so bad.” “You’re so sexy when you beg like that,” he said. “Just hang on.” Suddenly Jake was gone. He was back just as suddenly. 228

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From his pants he had grabbed a golden foil packet. I watched as he opened it and slipped the condom on. He slipped the tip in and I expanded. For the first few pumps he stayed shallow. I felt the weight of his body on top of me as he slowly moved back and forth. “Don’t hold back. I want all of you,” I whispered hoarsely, reaching my hand up and grabbing the hair on the back of his neck. He paused for a moment, still inside me, and I kissed him on the lips. “All of you,” I whispered. Jake kissed my forehead. “What my lady wants…she gets.” He slowly pushed all the way in, one inch at a time. I whimpered and gripped his arms. “Don’t stop looking at me.” He brought his hand to my neck and wrapped it around my hair. “Because I love watching your eyes while I fuck you.” “Okay.” He plunged in and out of me a few times, slowly letting me get used to him. “So tight. How does it feel, Andrea?” “My God Jake,” I responded. “It feels fucking amazing.” He was so patient, so careful, sensing how I was feeling for the first time. The truth was that I didn’t have any of the pain that some of my friends had talked about. Jake fit snugly in me, and on top of me, like we were puzzle pieces created for each other. I ground my hips faster, and Jake sensed my need and sped up the pace. With every thrust I felt myself fill up and empty within seconds. Finally, I saw Jake let loose, and the animal in him came out. He fucked me like I’d been needing it, the way I imagined it would go. “Fuck, you feel amazing. Jesus.” 229

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With every thrust, I felt myself climbing higher on the rollercoaster. I had closed my eyes, focusing on the sensations, but now I opened them to watch Jake’s eyes flutter with pleasure. He gripped my waist and pulled me into him with every stroke. I got to the top of the rollercoaster and let out a loud moan. Jake noticed my vocal change and turned animalistic, letting out a loud growl. The upward spiral took me to the brink. “Fuck. I’m coming…” I whined. “Come baby. I want you to come.” I let out a scream that surprised even me, then felt my entire body overcome with a shudder. I screamed and grabbed hold of Jake so he could anchor me down. “Fucking hot,” Jake groaned. Perhaps he was responding to my vocal cue, and soon I felt his cock pulsating as he growled and gripped every inch of my flesh that he could get his hands on. His growl turned feral as he came, pushing deep inside me. After the fact, we sat for a few moments, skin sticking together and chests heaving. Eventually he pulled out, took off the condom, tied it up, and tossed it in the trash. I lay with my arms back against the pillow and an ear-to-ear grin. “Come,” Jake said, motioning me to his side of the bed as he sat back down on the mattress. “Already did.” I smiled with a confused expression. Jake chuckled. “I mean come here. Come into me.” I scooted to his side, and he wrapped me up in his arms. The AC was on, but our bodies were so hot together, I was surprised there wasn’t steam coming off us. “Jake, thanks,” I said, still breathless and dazed. 230

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“Thank you? Fuck, this is a win-win situation.” “Oh really, how is it win-win?” “Remember what we said at the beginning? Your pussy is wet and—” “Your cock is hard,” I said, cutting him off. “Well, was hard,” I joked. “You keep up this attitude and it won’t be long before that changes,” he said, stroking my hair. “Really? That’s all it takes?” He shook his head. “You know I like it when you talk dirty.” The truth was, I didn’t mind it either. Smiling, I settled against his chest and fell asleep.

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TWenty-four It was beautiful. She’d challenged me every second of the way. Now she was mine, and I didn’t want to let her go. It had been a while since I’d felt this way. Instead of wanting her to get the fuck out of my room after we had slept together, I wanted to keep her as close as possible. And do it again. Outside my window, dawn was breaking. I was restless. All I could think about was Grant fucking Newman and how badly I wanted to hurt him for laying a hand on Andrea. I wanted that punch in the bar back. If I could do it again, I’d hit him so hard—fuck the hospital—he’d be in the morgue. My mind went in circles as I worked myself up, imagining how the scene between the two of them went down. Andrea was strong-willed, but even so, she was clearly still working some shit out. I was too though, so I guess it all worked out in the end. She slept so peacefully, and I stared at her like a creep while her chest contracted and expanded, running my finger

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from her calves to her thighs, hips, up her midsection to her shoulders before I kissed her on the neck. She let out a tiny moan and wiggled her ass into me. The blood began to flow to my cock again. I’d spent the last several years running around like a douchebag playboy, spending time with Tumblr girls with skinny waists and drug habits that I had no interest in. Too much time wasted. I’d told myself that was the best I’d ever get, especially after the Dani-Danny fiasco. My college sweetheart had taught me to not think too deeply about having relationships, just meaningless hookups where no one got hurt and it was all about a fun time. It wasn’t just Dani’s betrayal, but the fact that I didn’t have very many good examples of a healthy male-female relationship. Now, the thought running through my head was, How the hell did I land a girl like Andrea? Cuz I sure as hell didn’t deserve her. She spoke like a lady and screwed like a pro, and I never would have figured she was a virgin. She was so confident, and she trusted me not to hurt her. Right now, I was feeling things I thought I was no longer capable of feeling after how jaded I’d become. And here I was with a fucking princess. It felt like Andrea was my prize for a rocky childhood. I swept my hand lightly along her leg, enjoying the soft touch of her flesh. She turned her head upward and nuzzled her brown hair into me. I don’t know if she was sleeping or what, but she gently took my hand and guided it to the wet spot between her legs. “Hey,” I said softly. “Hey yourself,” she responded. “We fell asleep with the lights on,” I said, stating the obvious. 233

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“And I haven’t slept this good in days. Wait.” She got up from the bed, turned off the lights, and snagged a condom from on top of my dresser before snuggling back into bed with me. “You want to have round two?” She asked so politely, there was no way I could say no. Who were we kidding? She had basically read my mind.

A few hours later, I finally woke up, which meant I had finally been able to fall asleep after our last round. “Good morning again,” she purred, propping herself up on her elbow. “Morning.” I smiled back. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” she said drowsily. “So early,” I growled back. “I know, but I had a dream last night that we got matching tattoos, and I’m curious now. I never asked you what those mean.” She ran her hand over my chest, specifically over the mirror image tattoos I had. Suddenly, a ball of anxiety formed in my stomach. “Diggs, you don’t want to know…” She looked back at me with those stunning blue eyes of hers and fluttered them. She made it so hard for me to stay closed off. “Please,” I said, suddenly feeling awake. “You don’t feel comfortable with me?” She swallowed and turned away from me. 234

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“Wait. Sorry. I do. Listen, I’ve never told anyone about these tattoos. No one. Do you realize how many times I’ve had to make up shit about these? I’ll tell you.” She still had her back toward me, so I crept behind her and pressed myself into her back as I whispered in her ear, “When I was fifteen, I was in a bad place. I had just changed foster homes again, and my new neighborhood was in gang territory. Basically, I had a choice. Get beat up every day at school, or join a gang.” She spun her head back toward me, touching her forehead to my chin. “You joined a gang?” “For the first three months of that school year, I’d refused. They would beat me up every day. But finally, they found out I had a sister and started threatening her. So I did what they asked.” She spun all the way around to face me, on her side. “And they made you get these two tattoos—what do they say?” I sighed. “Trust and Mi vida loca—they look backwards for you, but if I look in the mirror, I read them perfectly. The gang leaders said they wanted me to look at them every day in the mirror so I would remember I was one of them—that was the same gang that those guys who tried to jump you were in.” She wiped a tear that ran down her cheek. “Why didn’t you just get them removed?” I paused for a moment to think while I ran my hand up and down the side of her body. She had just asked me a damn good question. “I don’t know. I guess…I guess I have thought about it. But in the end, it’s the scars that form you and make you who 235

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you are as much as the positive experiences. I like to look at them and remember that I’m the fucker who made it out.” We made eye contact, and I realized that Andrea, while she didn’t have tattoos to remember them by, had her own scars she carried with her. As I caught myself looking up at the ceiling, I felt Andrea’s lips on my chest. I looked down to see her kissing my tattoos. She kissed both of them, then looked up at me. “Never be ashamed to show me your scars,” she said. “I won’t be ashamed to show you mine.” Her teary expression changed into a slight grin. “Besides, your tattoos are hot A-F.” I tilted my head. “Did you just say hot A-F? As in, hot as fuck?” She grinned sheepishly. “Yes.” “One of these days, Andrea, I’m going to get you talking dirty.” I growled at her and brought her body into me for a kiss. After a moment, she pulled away. “Hey, maybe we have time for one more. Can you check what time it is though?” I rolled over and checked my phone. “Shit, Diggs. It’s quarter to nine. What time do you have to be at work?” She rubbed her eyes and looked me. “It’s...what time?” “Almost nine.” Her eyes popped open in alarm. “Crap, crap, crap!” She jumped up from the bed and went about my bedroom and the living room and the couch area, gathering her clothes in all the different places she had shed them the night before. “I wish you wouldn’t have to hurry out of here. Aren’t I your biggest project anyways?” 236

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“Well, yes,” she yelled from the other room. “But my boss doesn’t need to know that I’m sleeping with you.” “So what, I’m just going to be your secret side ho?” I ribbed as I walked into the living room. I had an inkling, and I reached into the couch and pulled out her white thong. I handed it to her with a smile. She returned my gaze with a quizzical look. “How the hell did these...you know what? I’m not even going to ask. I was in a haze for about two hours last night.” “Is that all?” I asked, grabbing her body and pulling her into mine. She was still naked, holding all of her clothes in her arms. I kissed her on the forehead and looked down at her. She stepped into her thong and skirt. “Argh, this is just a little bit skimpy for the office, but I’ll have to let it slide. No time to go home.” My phone buzzed, and I checked the number. I got so many random sales calls, I basically never answered unless I knew the number or was expecting a call, but this was from a 312 number, so I decided to pick it up. “Hello?” “Is this Jake Napleton?” a female voice asked. I frowned, hearing lots of noises in the background, including an ambulance and shouting voices. “Yeah… Who is this?” “My name is Janice Caldwell. I live near Keri and the boys,” she said, as though that explained it all. “Oh-kay, and…?” She huffed and puffed. “Keri Straub?” Oh shit. “Tate’s aunt?” I asked, shocked. Andrea’s ears perked up, and she gave me a look of concern, purse in hand and slipping her shoes on. I shook my head gravely. She took a step towards me, but she stopped 237

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when her phone started ringing. Go, I mouthed, but she came to me to give me a kiss on the cheek, which took me by complete surprise. But a good surprise. “See you later?” she whispered. I nodded, smiling briefly. “I’ll pick up something, okay?” She looked down at her phone, which was pinging like crazy. “Crap, so late. Have a great day baby…” she said quickly with a wave, her eyes still on her phone. She was gone before I could return the favor. “Mr. Napleton?” Janice snapped. I was still staring after the door as it clicked shut. “Hey! You! You hearin’ me?” Janice went on. Fuck. “Uh, yeah?” I said, focusing back on the conversation, but it was hard. “What’s wrong?” “Tate gave me your number. He said you told him to call you if anything ever happened?” My gut twisted. “Yes,” I said hoarsely. “What happened?” “Keri was shot while on her way home from work last night. It’s…not looking good,” she said, her voice hard and grim. But then it softened just a little. “With the situation with Keri’s son, Tate’s alone. But I can’t be watching him after this morning. I got my own family to take care of, see?” Oh shit, I thought, processing all that. “I understand, can I talk to Tate, please?” That got me another sigh, but there was a jostling of the phone and then— “Coach N?” came a wobbly voice. “Is that really you?” My heart dropped from out of my chest cavity to the floor. I heard panic in his voice. “It’s me, Tate. How ya doin’, kiddo?” “Okay, I guess. Coach N, my auntie got shot.” 238

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I bit my lip and resisted letting loose a string of swears. A wave of emotion came over me. I loved this fucking town most of the time, but this was one of the times I hated it more than ever. “I’m so sorry, Tate. Where are you right now?” “I’m at the hospital.” “Okay. But which hospital are you at, Tate? South Side?” A brief pause, then, “Yeah… That’s what Janice says.” “You stay put. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Okay?” For an eight-year-old, he sure as hell was a lot calmer than I would be in this situation. “Tate. You there?” “Yeah.” “Stay right where you are,” I told him, afraid for him, hoping it would all turn out okay, but knowing it probably wouldn’t. “I’ll come get you. You won’t be alone in this.”

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TWenty-five I sat at my desk, sipping on the iced Starbucks vanilla sweet cream coffee that I had ordered this Wednesday morning. The night had been worth it, but I was as tired as a dog now, and I had to at least feign working, especially the way Steve had been on me lately. I was contemplating working on some ad copy he’d wanted me to brainstorm, but instead I pulled up Jake’s Instagram page. It felt a little surreal pulling up a gorgeous man’s page with whom I’d well, lost my virginity to the night before. In the classical sense, as Jake had so diplomatically put it. I had no idea how he’d gotten me to say some of those things, but it hadn’t felt strange saying them. On the other hand, it felt like a whole new world had been opened up to me where I could be another form of myself; a liberated version of myself. But only with him. The picture of Jake and Tate was such a contrast to all of the other thumbnails. It was literally the only one where he was smiling and not trying to look like a cocky asshole. I clicked on the thumbnail to see if the picture had gotten any action since I’d posted it the night before.

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What I saw made me nearly spill the second half of my iced coffee all over my tank top and shriek with surprise. Of course, Steve walked by right then. “Everything okay?” he asked. “Uh, yes. I mean, more than okay!” I said, unable to contain my smile. He frowned just as Amy walked over to my cube. “Andrea, you okay? Oh my God, you spilled coffee all over you!” Her eyes went from my wet tank top to the screen. “Dear God! This picture of Jake Napleton has over three million likes?” I beamed with pride. “Yes. It does. Jake’s finally taking some of my advice. I’ve gotten to know him a little bit, and he’s not such a frat bro after all, it turns out. He actually does have a soft side.” Steve laughed. “Ha! Soft side. That’ll be the day. Look, I’m as impressed as anyone that you were able to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes with this picture. I mean, come on! Jake playing with a cute little mop-headed kid who also happens to have the same jersey number as he does? Jesus, Andrea. I said re-brand, not Photoshop cute kids for sympathy pictures.” “These aren’t Photoshopped,” I said through gritted teeth. “Yeah, whatever. And I have this head of hair without using Rogaine. Hey, it works either way. That’s all that counts, sweetheart.” My blood boiled. Steve had just discredited the single most important part of my campaign. But worse, he called me sweetheart. “Uh, Steve, sorry to interrupt,” Amy said, eying me and then Steve. “But the reason I came over here was that 241

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Marge in accounting was asking for you. Something about the Catalina Wine account?” Steve eyed Amy suspiciously. “Of course. I’ll be right over.” He seemed to say the words begrudgingly. He turned to me one last time. “All I’m saying is that if this re-branding campaign comes crashing down, it’s your ass, not mine.” I gulped and nodded. Once Steve had walked away a safe distance, Amy halfsat on my desk. “Even when you do right you do wrong! This picture is incredible.” “I know,” I said, shaking my head and using a paper napkin in vain on my clothes. She looked around, as if checking to see if someone would be walking by, leaned closer to me, and spoke in a low voice, “So how did you get that picture anyway? It is a little tough to believe.” “Well, the night that I stalked Jake I—” “You stalked Jake?” Amy exclaimed, eyes bugging. “What?” “Well, only because Steve wanted me to,” I said, a little defensively. Amy had a confused look on her face. She shook her head. “I don’t follow.” “It’s not important. Just know that Jake actually is a decent guy at heart. Even if he does feel the need to punch people out once in a while.” The corners of Amy’s mouth curved upward in a wry smile. “Yeah. He specifically feels the need to punch guys that get close to you.” I shook my head and rolled my eyes a little. “Oh come on,” Amy continued, not buying it. “Something is going on.” She made a gesture to my rumpled outfit. “Never 242

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mind that you actually got through to him if that pic is any indication, but you seem different, too…” I didn’t want to kiss and tell. But if I couldn’t tell Amy, who could I tell? “I’m going to tell you something, but you cannot tell anyone else. I’m swearing you to secrecy.” I arched an eyebrow, inviting her to reply and indicating just how serious I was about keeping this on the down-low. She raised her right hand and placed her left on my iced coffee cup. “I, Amy Kershaw, do solemnly swear that I will never tell a soul what you are about to tell me.” She dropped the serious act and leaned toward me with an excited grin. “Oh God, now please tell me. Tell me the dirty details.” I waved her closer to me and cupped my hand around her ear like we were back in second grade playing telephone. “We did it. Like, all of it.” Her eyes widened. “Get out!” I pursed my lips and nodded. Her jaw dropped. “So? How was his…ahem…unit?” “Can we talk about this later? I’ll fill you in, I swear. It’s just…” I looked over at the screen of my computer, then back at where Steve was standing a few cubicles away, still talking to Marge in accounting. “I know, I know. You feel like you’re on your last straw here. Well, three million likes, shoot, if that doesn’t get you out of Steve’s doghouse, I don’t know what will. Good job on that one, Andrea. Drinks after work?” I nodded. This seemed like one of those “you only live once” moments. God, the city was turning me into a happy hour girl. Besides, who cared if Steve didn’t appreciate my hard work? The fact that Jake had gotten so many likes was clearly 243

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evidence that my re-branding plan was working. If Steve couldn’t figure that out, tough beans. For once in my life, things were starting to look up. I was succeeding at my main project, I was meeting Amy for drinks again like the tough city girl I was becoming, and I had a sort-of boyfriend. Or, shoot, maybe it was too early to talk about him like that. But with everything that had happened between us, there was no denying something more than just pure physical attraction.

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TWenty-six I walked through the sliding doors of South Side Hospital to the emergency wing and scanned the seats of the packed waiting room, looking for Tate. The little guy was curled up in a chair, all by himself. I took in his exhausted face, bleary eyes, and hair in disarray. He’d probably been here all night. He was in a worn, ill-fitting pair of jeans and a plain t-shirt, and he looked completely hopeless. “Tate.” I smiled slightly, more due to the fact that nothing else had happened to him other than the situation he was having to endure. When his eyes tagged me, his face lit up. “Coach!” He rose up from his chair and ran toward me. I lowered to my knees, and he all but bulldozed into me and gave me a hard hug. A wave of emotion went through me, half anger, half relief. Tate didn’t let go for several long minutes, and I felt his little body shaking. I’m not a touchy-feely guy, but I only let go when he was ready. Sometimes a hug did wonders. Tate wiped at his eyes, which leveled me, and once again, I hated this whole situation he was in.

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After I was sure that Tate was okay, I stopped by the front desk to check on the status of his aunt. The guy, Simon, was a lanky black guy in scrubs and constantly busy, either on the phone or his computer. It took about five full minutes to get his attention, and then another few minutes to get an answer to my question. “Well, she’s in a coma right now,” Simon said. “The bullet did a number on her. We really can’t say when she’ll be conscious. Could be hours. Could be days. Could be months. Could be…” “Months? She’s this boy’s guardian. What the hell is he supposed to do until then?” Simon shrugged, and I realized I’d yelled at him. I calmed down, and to my relief, he didn’t take it personally. “Look, sir, around here, we see a lot of these cases. But he can’t stay here. Not your kid, obviously?” He gave me this look, the kind I knew well. He recognized me—maybe he even recognized me from my own visits to this hospital—but then he sighed, letting the wear and tear show on his craggy face. “No other contacts are listed…the woman who came with Ms. Straub’s nephew didn’t know much. Maybe you can ask the boy to tell you if he has other relatives somewhere, anywhere. If not, well…” And I knew what he was going to say. Those words I hated. “You could try DCFS. I don’t know, man. You know how it is on the South Side.” I nodded, numbly. I did know how it was here. “He’ll be put in the system…” I said, swallowing hard and trying to be strong, for Tate, but for myself too. All of this was bringing back horrible memories of my own experiences with DCFS, of how Eva and I had to deal with the choices made by complete 246

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strangers who cared, but who were also so overwhelmed and tired, they couldn’t care about every case, every lost child. “If he’s got family, hopefully they’ll take him in,” Simon offered. “I’m sorry. Wish I had a better answer…” I ran a hand through my hair but nodded in resignation. This wasn’t Simon’s fault, and he was doing what he could. I had to remember that too. “Thanks…” “It’ll work out, man,” Simon said, giving me a brief smile. “You’re looking out for him, so I hope you figure out something…” “Thank God you’re here,” a woman interrupted, speaking from behind me. I recognized her voice as the woman I’d spoken to on the phone. I turned to greet her. “Janice, I presume?” I stuck out a hand for a shake. She was a middle-aged woman with glasses. “My name is Jake. I’m so sorry to hear what happened to Keri.” “I know who you are,” she said, almost dismissively. “You’re the boy’s coach. He wouldn’t stop talking about you. Listen, Tate needs someone to take care of him. I would love to bring him to my place, but frankly, I have enough mouths to feed as it is. Now, do you know any place he could stay while his aunt gets better? I just…I can’t.” “Well, you’re in a pickle, aren’t you,” I said, mostly to myself, but Simon gave me a sad look. I looked back at Tate, who was now standing next to me. I couldn’t tell if he was tuned in to our conversation or not, but kids always picked up more of the conversation than you thought they did, absorbing it like little sponges. “I wish I could take him in, but I can’t. I’m asking you. Begging you. I’m going to get fired if I miss another shift as it is, so I have to go soon.” I considered my options. Tate’s options, really. No way in fucking hell was I going to let him be taken by DCFS. 247

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Going through that…was a nightmare. Having my sister with me had made it a little easier, but Tate was small for his age, and he was also sensitive. He wouldn’t make it in there. He’d slowly die, like so many kids who didn’t get mean right away or didn’t enter it already tough. Fuck it, I decided. “Tate can stay with me,” I said. “Thank you, thank you!” she said, already hustling toward the front doors without a backward glance. I was the only person in this whole city who gave a damn about him, and at this time, he needed to be around someone he knew, not around a bunch of adults who were as beat down and hopeless as the kids going into that machine. Yeah. There was no other choice. I wasn’t going to let Tate go through what I had. Simon arched an eyebrow, but clearly this wasn’t truly going to be an issue for him. Sometimes, in the ghetto, you just had to live and make due. “Tate,” I said, ruffling the kid’s hair. “You ready for a little sleepover?” “Yeah,” he said. Tate was never one to use a ton of words. But he smiled from ear to ear, and fuck if the kid didn’t have a bull’s-eye for my soft spot.

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TWenty-seven

My phone buzzed on the table as my boss waited for my response. I glanced down and saw Jake’s name flash across the screen. “I’m going to have to take this,” I said. Steve turned his head toward me. “Where are you going in the middle of a meeting?” “Just trying to keep my number one client happy.” I flashed him a fake smile and showed him Jake’s name flashing across the phone. Steve rolled his eyes but reluctantly waved me out of the conference room. “Jake. Everything okay?” “No, it’s not.” He spoke with noticeable weight in his voice. That put me on alert, hearing his distress. Jake was the happy-go-lucky frat guy. When he was serious, something was really wrong. Also, there was a pain in his voice that I hadn’t heard before. Not when he’d been in jail or talked about Dani or his gang tattoos; not even when he’d been suspended from the team. Not ever.

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“Oh my gosh. What happened?” “It’s Tate. I need you to pick him up from school today.” My skin erupted in goosebumps. “Tate? Why would you…? Why would I…?” “I’ll explain everything later. Right now, it’s almost eleven, and I’m going to be late for my warm-up before the game. Just please. Trust me.” Despite his seriousness, I smiled. “Since when have you cared about being late?” He didn’t answer for a long second. “I’ve always cared,” he said. “I know that’s my fault for not getting that across, because it does matter to me—my job, this game. You made me realize the things that matter to me, I have to fight for a lot better than I have been. And there’s nothing wrong with people knowing that I care.” He sighed. “Just...pick Tate up later today and bring him back to my place, please? I’ll be home later, and I’ll explain everything.” I exhaled, just letting his words sink in. “Okay. But… I don’t have a key.” “I gave Tate a key.” Something wasn’t adding up. Something was going on, enough to freak Jake out. This was a highly irregular request, but Jake was asking for help. My help. I had a feeling this wasn’t easy for him. “All right…” I said. “I’ll pick him up.” His relief was so visceral that I felt it. “You’re the best, Andrea. Gotta go.” He hung up, so did I. A half-second later, he texted me the address of Tate’s school. I slid the phone back into my pocket and stood there, not sure what that had been about. When I got back into the room, Steve was drumming his fingers on the desk like I’d kept him waiting an hour. 250

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Everybody else in the room gave me a glance before turning back to Steve and the other managers. “How’s Jake?” Steve asked. The corners of his mouth curved upward in a smile that could not have been more fake. “He’s good. Just called to say that he’s been thinking over the new strategy, and he thinks the new community service aspect of his campaign is a good idea. He was fighting me pretty hard on it at first.” “Impressive,” Steve said. “How did you get him to change his mind on that?” Oh, I dunno know…letting him pin my body against the couch? Me getting under his skin? Oh, nothing all that revolutionary. “I gave him the pitch,” I said, with a boost of confidence, because I was proud of Jake and how far he’d come. He’d fought me, hard, but now he was realizing that I was here for him, on his side. “He’s finally buying into my strategy.” Amy, from her spot near Steve, just smiled knowingly. “Well, I’m just glad people will finally see the full, unfiltered version of The Big Unit,” she said. “He’s clearly got some really great aspects  to him that not a lot of people get to see. I’m just glad you were able to find them.” Steve looked at Amy and, surprisingly, nodded in agreement. “I agree with Amy. Not a bad job, Andrea. Sorry for the freak-out earlier. You’re starting to turn this around.” I was shocked that he was dishing out a compliment. With Steve, I was never sure what he was up to. He did things so sly and under the table that I’d started to question his honesty and integrity. All of the interns and hardworking employees worked our butts off, but Steve seemed to do little other than tell us we needed to be better. But I held back 251

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and went for diplomatic. I was in a room full of my peers and bosses. I had no other choice. After getting robbed at gunpoint? Please. Dealing with Steve and his shadiness was a cake-walk. “I’m glad you feel that way,” I said brightly. “Because I’m going to have to leave early today to take care of something with Jake.” Steve frowned and raised a brow very high into his forehead, then he pursed his lips. He should trademark that look. It’d rival Derek Zoolander’s Blue Steel signature pose. “What exactly are you doing with him?” he asked, almost suspiciously. A lot of R-rated things, I hoped. “We are, uh, doing another photo shoot for his Instagram.” Steve pierced me with another look. “Excellent. Just get results.” “I will, I promise.” Amy bit her lip, holding back her laughter.

I knew that the food situation in Jake’s apartment was dismal (did he eat out for every meal?), so I had stopped at Whole Foods before I picked up Tate. I remembered back to what my brothers always liked to make when we were kids, and one thing stuck out: pizza. So I’d picked out flour, tomato sauce, some pepperoni, and mozzarella cheese, as well as other ingredients to create different kinds of homemade pizzas. I didn’t make any money as an intern and was totally relying on what my dad had given all of us kids after the divorce. I was a tight budgeter, but with Tate, I just wanted him to not worry about a thing. 252

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Besides, this would be a time-consuming process, and I needed an activity that I could do with Tate from the time of four p.m. to whenever Jake got back from his late-afternoon home game. “First, we have to smash the dough and let it sit for a while,” I told Tate. I didn’t cook or bake as often as I used to, but I’d always found it relaxing. And cooking with kids was even more fun. “We just let it sit there?” Tate repeated, dubious. “Yes. Which will be perfect timing, because we’ll be able to wait for Jake to get home. That should give us some time to get through your homework.” “Homework?” “Yes, don’t you have any homework?” I felt a little bad talking about homework when the woman who was evidently his only living relative was in a coma at the hospital. But what else could we do? Tate had been matter-of-fact when I’d asked him what was going on. And just like when he’d told me and Jake about his cousin getting shot a few days ago, he was sad but accepting of the situation. I couldn’t believe it, but I was starting to understand it. And it was devastating that he almost expected everyone he knew to just…die. And leave him. I thought about Jake and how he’d become a foster kid. I couldn’t imagine how much it would have hurt to have your sibling adopted but not you. Rejection was the worst feeling ever. And I realized that was why Jake had taken Tate in. To not have to go through whatever Jake had gone through. It broke my heart, twice over. My childhood had been hard, but this was harder. He looked reluctantly at his backpack before he finally unzipped it and pulled out a textbook, staring at it. I patted 253

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the seat on the couch, inviting him to take the cushion next to me. Tate slowly took a seat on the couch. “Are you doing okay, Tate?” I asked again, brushing my fingertips through his hair. He shied away a little. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, without the slightest conviction in his voice. He held the book in his lap but put his arm over the cover, shielding it from my view. It was a spelling workbook for third graders. He had a sort of glazed look over his eyes, and he didn’t want to make eye contact with me. I wondered if he’d learned that from Jake. I opened the book up to one of the first pages. There was red marker everywhere. But that wasn’t what scared me. What freaked me out was that every word—every single word—was spelled wrong. The words weren’t even close. I was sure the little guy was smarter than he let on, because he saw me reacting to all the red marks, and his eyes got a little teary. “What happened here?” I asked, with the warmest smile I could. Tate didn’t look at me. “I don’t like spelling. Spelling sucks. Ain’t good at it.” I looked again at the letters. He had drawn shapes— basically nothing was legible that he’d written. He appeared to not know a single letter. Did Tate not know how to read? I mean, I knew South Side schools were bad, but no letters at all? Tate sat next to me, closed off. Glancing around the room, I noticed that Jake had signed his no-hitter jersey from last year. It’d been framed and hung on the wall. 254

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“Well, let’s start somewhere. What letter is this?” I pointed to the N that began Jake’s last name. “That…that’s Coach’s jersey!” he said excitedly. “Right! And what’s Coach’s last name?” “Napleton,” he said without hesitation. “Good. How about we learn how to spell that first?” We went through all of the letters of Jake’s name, and I’d never seen a boy’s eyes light up with such enthusiasm. For a few seconds, he forgot that he was in third grade and still didn’t know almost any letters of the alphabet. So for the rest of this tutoring session, he copied “Napleton” into his notebook. Several times. Maybe tomorrow we would make an anagram of Jake’s name.

Tate and I had just put the finishing touches on the pizza fifteen minutes before, and we were checking on it in the oven when we heard Jake’s key rattle in the door. “Coach!” He ran to the front door, and as soon as Jake came in, Tate wrapped his arms around him, his head barely reaching Jake’s chest. “Hey, buddy,” Jake greeted, exhaustion clear on his face and in his voice. But he grinned down at Tate with affection. “Did you have a good time with Miss Andrea?” “Yeah! She taught me how to spell your name!” Tate led Jake to his notebook, which was open on the coffee table. We’d gotten bored of just copying Napleton (even though that was almost too hard for Tate to do), so I showed him how to do an acrostic out of Jake’s name. My cheeks flushed red 255

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as Jake picked up the notebook and read Tate’s ideas. They were transcribed in my handwriting, so he probably thought I came up with them: Not a bad guy. Always eating pizza. Player (of baseball). Laughs. Eats Pizza. The best player in the world. On suspension a lot. Never lets me down. Jake shot me a funny look. It wasn’t worth explaining to Jake that the first letter of his last name was about the only letter this kid knew in the world. “Pizza’s ready!” I smiled from the kitchen. “Smells great, Miss Andrea,” Jake said. “Well it should,” I said and pulled the pizza out of the oven. “We made it fresh, here.” “Wow. You cooked pizza from scratch? Well, that’s a plus one.” Jake smiled as he kissed me. I always felt a little weird displaying my cooking talents, but it was true: I kicked butt at cooking and baking. I didn’t like to show it off, though. I wanted guys to like me for me, not my cooking skills, as ridiculous as that sounded. I cut it into slices and put some plates out. I felt Jake’s hand creep its way down my back as he grabbed a slice. His brown eyes seared through me, and he brought the piece of pizza to his mouth. “Oh wow, that’s hot.” He smiled and grazed my hip with his other hand. “I think we had better go sit on the couch and eat this like a civilized family, don’t you think?” I said, grabbing 256

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Jake’s hand to stop it from going places where I wanted it to go, just not in front of the kid. He turned his attention from me to Tate. “Yeah! You want to go eat some pizza on the couch, buddy?” The kid smiled like I’d never seen a boy smile. Something clicked in my mind at that moment—that this whole rebranding-of-Jake-Napleton thing wasn’t just about me and my job. It was about kids, everywhere, who looked up to someone. And a hell of a lot of kids looked up to Jake. They needed to know that it was cool to be a humanitarian. A good father. All that stuff Jake apparently thought was too good for him. Everyone needed a role model who let them know that it was very, very possible to have all those good qualities— loyalty, family, strength—and be, nonetheless, oh so fuckable. Check that. More fuckable. Pardon my French, but there was no other word to describe the feeling that came over me as I watched Jake and Tate laughing hysterically on the couch. The boy who had been so stoic for the entire day was having a blast, face lit up like he was the luckiest boy on the planet. Funny thing was, though, Jake’s face lit up just the same. Jake looked over at me as I awkwardly stood there, holding my plate and piece of pizza while I stared at them. “Andrea, come sit.” “Yeah, Miss Andrea!” Now that was a beautiful darn sight. It was a temptation I couldn’t resist.

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TWenty-eight I’d done my damnedest to take the little bugger’s mind off his aunt and cousin by playing with him all night, and it tired the shit out of me more than the damn ballgame I had played earlier. No young boy deserved to go through that sort of trauma at such a young age. His only damn guardian had suffered a shot to the head from an errant bullet. I mean, talk about shitty luck. It was all too normal these days to get caught in a gang’s crossfire, though. On my way home, I’d called the hospital for an update on Tate’s aunt. She was in ICU now, but it wasn’t looking good. From what I got out of Tate, his cousin was staying with Keri’s boyfriend, but I wasn’t sure where. Up until today, I hadn’t really tried to find out too much. I knew enough about each of the boys on the Little League team I coached, but getting too entrenched in their lives would get messy. I’d known that when I’d started coaching, and so I kept it strictly about baseball and having fun. I was realizing that the lines had blurred now, and that while I did care about those boys, Andrea was right in that I could do more than just be a casual observer of the plights in

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the South Side. I didn’t know how to make their lives better, but I knew Andrea would have some ideas. I was finding that I didn’t think messy and complicated always had to be a bad thing. For the past half hour, I’d been sitting on the little guy’s bed in the guestroom I’d cleared out and was reading him a story with a flashlight. He was tucked into my left side, staring down into the book as I read. I couldn’t believe the kid didn’t even know how to read. When Andrea had told me after dinner while we’d put on a movie for Tate, it’d made me angry and sad. My own education growing up had been poor and quite spotty, but I’d known how to read. I was never the straight-A student, but I’d done decently, even in college. Now that I was opening my eyes and really seeing things, I did feel a responsibility to do something. I’d cared before, but not enough. I looked over at the door every once in a while, surprised Andrea wasn’t Instagramming the shit out of this moment. But she wasn’t. I could hear her down the hall in the kitchen while some dishes clanked away. I smiled as I finished reading the chapter and called it quits. “Coach, you can’t stop there! I need to know if Harry finds his parents!” “Sorry, buddy! You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out. For tonight, just imagine what he’s doing in your dreams.” “Okay, Coach. Goodnight.” “Goodnight, Tate.” I was halfway out the door when I heard Tate pipe up. “Hey Coach. No one’s gettin’ in here, right?” I froze. “Getting in here?” 259

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“Yeah. Like ain’t no one gonna bust in here at night?” Jesus Christ. I went back into the room and sat down next to him for a moment. “Listen, buddy. The doors are locked. We have a lot of security here. But if not, I got a big bat. And you know what I do with a big bat?” Shit, maybe I shouldn’t be encouraging violence, but it just came out like that. “Push guys into the dirt?” Okay, I really needed to expedite that media overhaul. “Pushing people into the dirt is only something you do to very, very bad people.” Like Grant Newman. “Okay Coach, thanks. I’ll sleep good tonight.” I tucked him in and shut the door. I had a little bell that I’d attached to his doorknob so that I’d know if he was going bump in the night. Not only would it give me peace of mind in the extremely unlikely case that someone snuck into my apartment, but I also had to know if he left his room for other, selfish reasons. Andrea had me in heat from the moment I walked through the door. I hated to admit the dumb fucking thought process my mind was following, but there was something that turned me on about watching her being all mom-like, making pizza and taking care of Tate. It was incredible coming home to the sounds of laughter and the smell of a home-cooked meal instead of silence and takeout. I’d never had that, but I had always wondered what being part of a family would be like. I couldn’t figure out why I loved watching her and Tate together, but I did. It awakened something deep and primal within me. I considered this as I crept into the kitchen from behind her, watching her hum as she filled the dishwasher. 260

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She looked so damn luscious from behind. She’d changed into tight white jeans and this little black tank top thingy. The tight jeans accentuated her curvy ass and legs in a way that made me feral. She hummed the melody to that Journey song everybody knew: Just a small-town girl, Living in a lonely world, She took the midnight train going anywhere. Just a city boy, Born and raised in South Detroit… Off in her own humming world, she didn’t notice me behind her. I took advantage of that to watch her. Her hair was up in a ponytail with some brunette strands dangling down. Everything about her drew me in. To me, she seemed to be a free spirit who’d had a conservative upbringing. I took a few steps closer and swooped in from behind, scooping my arms around her. She was so surprised she began to scream, but I covered her mouth with my hand. “Well, I’m not from South Detroit, but I am from the South Side of Chicago. Besides, isn’t South Detroit in the river? Jesus, honey! You’ll wake the kid.” I smiled at my own tongue-and-cheek joke. I wasn’t sure if she’d appreciate it, because she was taking huge, gasping breaths and looking wide-eyed at me. She brought her hand to mine and removed it from her mouth. “Damn, Jake, you scared me. I thought you might be someone…more dangerous.” I grinned. “Oh? And who around here is more dangerous than me?” She arched her spine back, into me. 261

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“Jake, you can’t. Tate. We’ll wake him.” She spoke the words but tilted her head back and stared at me with those beautiful blue fuck-me eyes. The flesh of her ass and thighs pushing into me added fuel to the hard-on that was rapidly solidifying in my jeans. She pretended she was being innocent as I felt her apply more pressure to my cock by wiggling her ass into me. You dirty girl. “Your words and your ass are saying two very different things, honey. You better get your story straight.” There was a clank of silverware hitting the steel sink as she lowered what was in her hand. “Jake,” she whispered, rotating her upper torso around to face me. We kissed. “Yeah?” “I think you’re amazing. Incredible. I wish other people got to see this side of you…” She wrapped her arm around my left bicep. I might have been wrong, but I thought I saw her tearing up. In that moment, I could admit that I was an asshole sometimes. I would probably always be one to some degree, no matter what, and I didn’t care if only Andrea saw this part of me. I looked deep into her eyes, a window to her soul. I wrapped my hand around her head and smashed her lips with mine like I owned every inch of her. And she let me. I spun her body around and pressed her into the kitchen island. We devoured each other relentlessly, like high-schoolers kissing in the minutes before class. My hands explored every part of her that I could reach. There was something about feeling Andrea’s flesh through her shirt that excited me. Maybe it was the anticipation of what was to come. Her. 262

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I lifted her body onto the island and set her down. Her chest was heaving, her breasts growing and falling with every breath. Her eyes were half shut, and it looked as though she were an opium addict getting her fix. For a few minutes, I concentrated on kissing the upper half of her body. Anywhere her skin was exposed, I attacked her with my mouth. “Jake,” she said. “Hold on.” I eased up on my full frontal attack on her for a moment. I thought it was impossible that this encounter could get much hotter, but I was dead wrong. “Switch places with me,” she said. No, commanded. It came out like more of a command. “As you wish,” I growled, helping her down from the granite kitchen countertop. Before I could jump up to sit on the island, she tugged at my jeans. “First, we’re going to need to get these pesky things out of the way.” She didn’t have to tell me twice. In an instant I had pulled down my pants and hopped onto the countertop, buttass naked. I leaned back on my palms and took in Andrea’s beauty. She moved her hands slowly up my thighs, and all the blood in my system that wasn’t already in my cock, rushed there. She smiled sweetly, her brown hair falling over her shoulders, the ends brushing my legs. Finally, she gripped my cock at the base and gracefully moved her hand up and down. “Fuck, you’re hot,” I blurted out. “Likewise,” she said with a smile, her eyes flashing back at me. 263

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She kissed and licked the sides of my cock, and I moaned every time she touched me. Finally, without warning, she wrapped her lips around me, lingering for a moment around the tip before she plunged down to the base. I rolled my head back in pleasure, then brought my eyes back down to hers. Mouth around my cock, she looked me dead in the eye. Goddamn, there wasn’t a better thing in this world than a good girl with her naughty lips wrapped around you as you stare into each other’s eyes. She began to bob her head up and down, her hair getting in the way. I reached down and made a makeshift ponytail with my fist while she slurped me up. God she was good. And there was something so hot about the sounds she made, that instinctively, my hips began to gyrate in rhythm with her motion as she pumped up and down on the length of my cock. She had me on the edge and it had been—what? Minutes? “Andrea.” I spoke in a low, throaty growl. “Yes?” she answered, pausing and taking a breath. I sat up, back on my palms. She straightened, standing again. I slipped my hand down her abdomen, right under her jeans and her panties, between her legs. “Fuck, you’re wet already.” I grinned. “Sucking my dick makes you wet.” “Yes,” she whispered. She grinned, her hands still resting on either of my thighs. “Take off your pants and grab my wallet from my jeans,” I commanded. She started taking off her pants but gave me a funny look. “What do you need your wallet for?” 264

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“A condom, honey.” I smiled as I brought her into me for one more kiss. My hard dick slapped up against her stomach as she leaned over me. “Jake, maybe this isn’t the perfect time to have this conversation, but I trust you.” I raised my eyebrows at her. “You…trust me?” “Yes! I know it’s crazy. I know you’re…God, this isn’t the right time for this conversation. But I’m on the pill and I trust you. So forget about the condoms. If you want.” I hadn’t had condomless sex since—shit, I didn’t even remember. But there was no one in the world I trusted more than this girl. “Forget the wallet,” I said. She smiled at me, now totally naked. My dick hadn’t lost an inch of hardness in the time we’d been talking. I didn’t think it could get harder, but the thought of feeling Andrea’s wet pussy without a layer of latex made me hurt, I was so hard. She climbed up onto the counter and straddled me. “Never ceases to amaze me that I fit all of this inside me,” she said. “How about your mouth?” I arched an eyebrow at her. Whatever humor was in the air quickly dissipated when she brought her pussy down on the length of my cock, inch by inch. I grabbed hold of the sides of her hips as she eased on. We started slow at first, but after a relatively short time, she was bouncing all the way up and down the length of my cock. This is fucking heaven. She leaned back and dug her palms down as she gyrated her hips like a goddess. My goddess. It was like her pussy was made perfectly for my cock. I lost control and started bucking like a wild man. She moaned, 265

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and I could hear her on the brink of screaming. I wrapped my arms around her back and brought her upper half down to mine, her tits smashing into my chest. Suddenly, our faces were inches from each other, and I could hear her breathing, moaning. She let out a nasally mmmm of pleasure, grinding against me faster and harder. I gripped her hard and gave her ass cheeks a couple of light slaps. “Fuck baby, I want you to come. God, you’re hot. Come all over my big, thick dick.” That sent her over the edge, and I could feel her tensing up between her legs, wrapping her pussy lips harder around my cock. I had to cover her lips with my own to keep her from screaming so loudly she might have woken up the whole block. She showed signs of coming down, and got up from her knees. Then she turned her attention back to me, nibbling on my ear before whispering, “I want you to come inside this pussy.” Fuck if that doesn’t send a man over the edge. Knowing that she wanted this as badly as I did turned me into a beast. She pulled off me for a moment, spun her body around, and squatted down on my cock. Her wet pussy gripped all around me until she had taken it all. She tossed her hair and looked over her shoulder at me with a look that made me struggle not to come right fucking there. “Baby, I’m gonna come. Where do you want me to…?” The flesh of her ass against me as she bounced up and down was sending me over the edge. And then she said the hottest words any girl had ever said to me: “Come inside me, baby.” She gripped me, and I came so damn hard I thought I might have met God. Nope, just my goddess. 266

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“Did you like it?” she asked when we were done, both of us lying on the kitchen counter. “I think we should go again.” “You want to do this round in the bedroom?” “Nah.” “You don’t want to go again?” she quipped, concerned. “I don’t feel like waiting the ten seconds to get there.” I wrapped her up in my arms.

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TWenty-nine Over the next couple of weeks, Jake, Tate, and I had settled into a sort of routine. Jake, when he wasn’t traveling, would drive Tate to school early in the morning. Then I would leave the office a little early to pick him up and bring him to Jake’s apartment. Weird wasn’t exactly the word to describe how I felt, picking up a boy that wasn’t even mine from school, helping him with his homework, cooking for him and Jake, and generally playing mom. On the other hand, it felt all too natural. Sometimes, when Jake had a three o’clock game, we would watch him on TV, Tate’s eyes glued to the screen. And then there were the, ahem, late-night activities. I couldn’t wait to get this Friday at work over with and have an entire weekend with my boys. As I sat at my office desk sipping my morning coffee, Steve came by and put his hand on my shoulder, materializing out of nowhere like he always did. “Good morning, Andrea.” “Morning!” I said, perhaps a little too chirpy. But that was how I felt.

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“Well, you’re certainly dapper today. Your skin looks like its glowing.” I swallowed. “I’ve been using this new lotion.” Was it that obvious that the amount of orgasms I’d had in the past two weeks were more than the entire 2 decades combined? “Well, whatever it is, it’s working. Hell of a job you’ve been doing on Jake’s re-branding. I have to say, I doubted you at first. But yesterday, Mr. Yerac sent me an email saying he’s been noticing the lack of, uh, pictures of Jake with adult beverages on any of his social media platforms. Not to mention no fights or other shady activities. And those Little League pictures of him coaching those South Side kids—I’ll be damned if that wasn’t a stroke of genius I had to have you go and do that.” I swallowed, debating if I should challenge him on the big mistake he just made. “The idea that you had?” I asked, for clarification. He scrunched his eyebrows together like I’d just told him the moon actually was made of cheese. “Yeah, of course. It was my idea that you follow him and see where he was going, right? Anyways, Mr. Yerac has been spreading the word about our PR genius. It wasn’t like this had been my plan or anything, but it turns out that individual re-branding is something our firm could capitalize on. The board is very excited. Well, I gotta run. Keep it up.” Once Steve left, I exhaled. “Congratulations. You just got ‘Steved.’” Amy appeared behind me. I spun my chair around to face her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. She leaned against the wall of my cubicle. “After working here for three years, I can always tell when Steve is about to 269

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drop one of his ‘complement-but-really-letting-you-knowthat-he’s-taking-credit-for-something-you-did’ bombshells.” I sighed. “Yeah, that’s a bunch of bull. Bullshit.” Amy’s eyes widened. “Did you just say...bullshit?” “Yeah. So?” I returned, still disgruntled. “So, you don’t swear. You’re the wholesome Tennessee girl. Wow. You must be pretty pissed if you are using that kind of language.” “Apparently hanging out with a baseball player who swears like a sailor is rubbing off on me.” Amy’s already wide eyes bugged out. “You’ve been hanging out with The Big Unit? Oh my God, it all makes sense now why you’ve been cutting out of here early. Tell me! I’ve been missing our happy hour together.” “Oh, it’s not like that,” I said, trying to deflect. “Just been putting in some extra hours, brushing up on my old undergraduate texts, that kind of thing.” What was I even saying? It was funny that I hadn’t minded sharing details about my relationship with Jake back when we’d just been this casual, undefined thing. But now that I was starting to really care about him, it didn’t seem right to go kissing and telling. There was also the part about us basically raising a foster kid together for the past two weeks. Tate’s aunt was still in a coma, and we’d been visiting her once a week. Jake and I had been discussing a long-term plan concerning Tate, but we couldn’t keep Tate indefinitely. So far, we were friends of the family, and that was working, for now. Amy cleared her throat to get my attention and rolled her eyes at me. She tilted her head toward one shoulder. “All right. So, if you haven’t been stepping up your relationship with Jake, then who are you seeing?” 270

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That took me by surprise. “What do you mean?” I asked, cautiously. “There’s no one else…” She motioned to my right hand, at the ring I was wearing. “Your claddagh ring. The point of the heart is pointed toward your wrist.” She raised a brow and smiled. “Or was that a fashion oversight this morning?” I blushed. The way I’d unconsciously put it on this morning indicated that I was in a relationship. I didn’t wear much jewelry other than my cross pendant, but the ring had been my mother’s. She’d given it to me when I was young, before the divorce, when she still believed in love. I hadn’t worn it since Grant and I broke up, and I’d started wearing it again after meeting Jake. I guess I was feeling…romantic, or something. “Look, Andrea, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble here. I’m just asking for you to throw me a little true-life romance.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ve been reading enough romance novels lately to get my book boyfriend fix, but I need something real.” I nodded. “Sorry. I should know better than to bullshit a bullshitter.” She smiled at that. “Well, how about this,” I started, trying to suppress a huge grin. “I hardly get any sleep these days because The Big Unit keeps me up all night.” Amy looked up at the ceiling, as if saying a silent prayer. “Doesn’t he have any brothers? Anything?” she asked, pleading with me. I thought for a moment. Jake had told me about the seventeen children his father had, but that was for my ears only. “Sorry, he’s only got a sister. She sounds pretty badass though, from what I’ve heard.” 271

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Amy nodded and pursed her lips. “A sister? Hmm. Well, maybe...” She looked at me, gauging my reaction. “You thinking about playing for the other team?” I ribbed. By now, I knew her tricks. “Just kidding around. Although with my boy problems, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to deal with men. But what can I say? I do like them for some reason, God only knows why. Anyway, I gotta run,” Amy said. “Let me know when you can finally have a happy hour and tell me about how perfect Jake’s abs are again. Bring pics. And videos.” I rolled my eyes. She was shameless, and in a way, her honesty was refreshing to someone like me who came from such a repressed background. Maybe I was a free spirit at heart. My phone buzzed on my desk. I slid my finger over the screen to open it. My stomach dropped when I saw the name on the screen. Grant: Hey. How’s your new boyfriend? I hesitated. I thought I’d blocked him. And this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to be having. Me: How’s your new girlfriend? Grant: Don’t evade the question. So you think you know him pretty well? Me: Why are you even talking to me? You know we’re done. Grant: I thought that was what you would say. Go to The Yawper Sports Gossip site. Me: Why should I? Grant: Fine. Don’t. You’ll have to deal with it eventually though… Hesitantly, I pulled up the site in my browser. The headline I saw made me want to jump out of my skin. 272

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Jake “The Big Unit” Napleton: Community Hero, or Child Kidnapper? The byline underneath was, The answer might surprise you. The page view counter was 500,000 and rising every second. On the main page, there was a picture of Jake dropping Tate off at school in the morning. There wasn’t even any substantive content in the short paragraph. Something about Tate’s aunt and that his family was looking for him. His family? Since when? Tate hadn’t been able to recall any other family members other than his cousin. Marissa had been helping us locate that cousin and his aunt’s boyfriend for information, but she had found nothing so far. My phone buzzed. It was Grant’s number. As much as I didn’t want to talk with him, I had to pick up and find out what he was up to. I slid my hand across the touchscreen and put the phone to my ear. “Grant, you’re a fucking asshole,” I said, seething. “Honey. Baby. Don’t say that. You know we’re destined to be together. And I’m not an asshole—Jake’s the asshole. You don’t believe he really enjoys doing any of that community service shit, do you? It’s all an act. The guy’s a scumbag gangbanger.” My blood boiled at Grant’s nerve. “You wouldn’t know jack shit about Jake. Just like you don’t know jack shit about me.” “Whoa, honey. I don’t think you should be talking like that. That’s not very ladylike of you.” “I don’t understand why you think I still give a damn what you think, Grant.” Still on the phone, I scrolled farther down the article, trying to find the author’s name. These damn Yawper articles 273

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were the worst. They pretended they were above the tabloids, but no reputable journalist would ever put their name on them. Finally, I saw a source name. Frankie F. Where had I seen that name before? My blood suddenly ran cold. One of Grant’s fraternity brothers in college was named Frank Feathers. They’d been tight for years. The guy was as obnoxious as Grant. “Grant, did you…was this your doing?” I heard him chuckle through the phone, a low, maniacal laugh. “Andrea, honey, you haven’t been seeing things my way for a while. So I used some of the connections I had to make you see things my way. Jake Napleton is a fraud. You need to face the facts. I’m the guy you’re meant to be with, not him.” “You have no idea what you’ve done,” I whispered, horrified at how truly delusional Grant was, that he’d destroy another man’s reputation, his life. And with it, mine. “Just come back to me, Andrea, and we won’t release any more dirt,” he cajoled. “What are you doing next week? I’m going to be in town for my—” I hung up the phone, vibrating with anger, but also helplessness. If I didn’t go back to Grant, he’d make up more bullshit about Jake and make sure everyone knew about it. There had to be a way to fix this. But how? Fuck him. Fuck Grant Newman. I stood up when I started hearing a loud murmur break out in the office and phones starting to ring like crazy. I peered over the wall of my cubicle, catching Amy’s shocked gaze from where her cubicle was on the other end of the 274

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office. She pointed behind me. I turned and saw Steve, face redder and angrier than I’d ever witnessed, literally running toward me. “Andrea, what the hell is this! Are these pictures for real?” he shouted. “Child kidnapper? And is that you and Jake kissing?!” What? I tried to remain calm, but I was just as panicked as Steve, and still reeling from my conversation with Grant. “I can explain…” I leaned over my computer and scrolled down to the bottom of the page. I hadn’t thought this could get any worse, but it did. There was a picture of Jake and me from our night at Charlie’s Bar. And it didn’t show a professional setting at all. Not to mention the fact that my outfit the next morning had been noted by my co-workers, and now they knew why I’d dressed so sexy when I usually dressed conservatively for work. The image itself was clearly from a phone camera and shot at a weird angle. I knew there was something out of place with that asshole sitting at Charlie’s Bar that night. Had he been trailing me for a picture? How had he even known I’d be there with Jake? Could it have been Charlie? Somehow I knew it wasn’t. This was deliberate. And the fact that Grant had texted me about this… “Well?” Steve said, impatient. I looked Steve right in the eye. “You’re not going to believe this, but—” “You’re right, I won’t. This is pointless,” Steve said, cutting me off. “I’m done listening to you. You’re done here. I want you gone immediately.” I sat down, stunned, still trying to process all of this. “Seriously, Steve, I—” 275

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“This is an utter disaster,” Steve went on, shouting at me and drawing the attention of everyone on the floor. “Not only are you done here at Green PR, good luck finding a PR firm in this city that’ll hire you.” Steve rubbed his face, still livid. “Like I said, I want you out of this office, effective immediately. Or I’ll have security escort you down.” I nodded at his retreating back, the wind completely knocked out of me.

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THIRTY I cleared out the few things I had accumulated throughout the couple of months that I’d been doing the internship. There was a mug, and a couple pairs of free sunglasses; it wasn’t much. I had Amy’s number, and that was really the only person I’d be staying in contact with. I couldn’t remember leaving or how everyone watched me leave. I couldn’t remember walking to get on the “L.” The only think I could think about was how to fix all of this. Not only had Grant ruined Jake, he’d screwed me over. There was no way I was going to live this down in this city when it all came out. As soon as I found an empty seat in the emptiest car of the train, I called up my mother, the decision made. There was only one solution I could come up with that lessened the damage to just me. I didn’t explain anything, just told her I was moving out, leaving Chicago, and that I needed her help. Then, I made the toughest call yet. Jake answered after one ring. “Hey,” he said tonelessly, not giving me much to work with.

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“Hey,” I returned, equally verbal as the city whirled past me. “You see Yawper?” “Hard for me to miss. It just got picked up by mainstream media a few minutes ago… My agent and manager both reamed me. I’m about to get reamed by Yerac soon, probably after today’s game.” He sighed. “We really got fucked on this, Andrea.” To think that this morning, I was on top of the world, and within the span of a few hours, my world had come crashing down. “How’s Tate?” I heard loud breathing on the other side of the phone, as though he were trying to control his emotions, or his anger. Both, I’d guess. “DCFS called. They’re picking Tate up from school today. Apparently, the boy’s long-lost father called them and ‘wants to be involved in the child’s life’ all of a sudden. I mean seriously, what the fuck? They can’t just do this.” I recalled the brief paragraph that accompanied the picture of Jake and Tate. His “family,” I mused, shaking my head. How convenient. All of it. Was Grant behind that, too? Would he go that far to get me back? I knew he was controlling, but it was even worse than that; he was absolutely crazy. “I think they can, Jake. Dammit,” I said, wishing Jake and I had thought this through better. “I knew we should have gone to DCFS, figured out a way to keep Tate in our custody while his aunt recovered.” Jake scoffed at that. “Doesn’t work that way. This gets even worse though. Tate’s father—he’s a drug addict. The guy is as skinny as a stick and blows all of his money on meth,” he added. “I have no idea how this guy even came into the picture when he hadn’t been around since Tate was a baby.” 278

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“Probably a money grab.” When you made as much money as Jake did, lawyers would use any excuse to sue him if it meant they had a shot at his millions. “I’m just—I’m pissed. The worst part of the whole thing is about how this will affect Tate.” My heart lurched. I needed to come clean about the reason the attack was launched in the first place. “Jake, I have to tell you something.” “What? Are you okay?” “Well, no, but this isn’t about me right now. I feel awful about everything that has happened to you, because it’s all my fault.” “It’s not your fault. Don’t say that.” “Yes it is. You don’t understand. The only reason those pictures got posted was because Grant isn’t over me. I’m pretty sure he’s been looking for dirt on me, you, and us together ever since that night in the bar.” Silence on the other end of the phone. “Jake? You there?” “Yeah. I’m here. I’m just picturing what I’d do to that motherfucker the next time I see him. I’m gonna fucking kill him. Fuck it, I’m going to give Fred on the South Side a call and see if he can put a group together to go after him. I’m gonna—” Jake kept talking about how badly he wanted to harm Grant. I thought about his gang tattoos and his dark past and how—at his core—he did self-identify as a sort of vigilante. He was a good man, but a man who pushed boundaries and didn’t always follow the rules. He was a calm man, but if someone crossed his path and threatened Jake’s friends or loved ones, God help them. Because he would bring the 279

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wrath. And now, his whole future was at stake because of my own past demons that I’d yet to put to rest. “No! Stop! This whole thing stops here,” I shouted, cutting him off in the middle of his angry rant. “This is my fault. And I’ve decided that the best thing for everyone at this point will be if I just move back home to Tennessee.” “Andrea! No! What about everything we’ve started here? You and me? You’re just going to throw the last few weeks away? Fuck that. I won’t let you.” “There is no other way. I got fired from my job today, and I already called my mother to come pick me up to drive me back to Tennessee. I’m sorry, Jake. I knew I should have never dated players.” I didn’t wait for Jake to make his case. I just hung up the phone. Tears streamed down my face as I stared out the window of the empty train car. Jake would get over me, I reasoned. I’d move back to Tennessee and do a great freaking job running the social media campaign for Barnes’ Bar. And if Grant knew I was leaving Chicago, he might leave Jake alone. There were no other options left. Grant played to win—he played dirty— and I wasn’t the type of girl to stoop to his level. As much as I wished I was, I just wasn’t. I hated to admit it, but my mother was dead right: I wasn’t cut out for the big-city life. It hurt now, but I might as well cut my losses and get the hell out of Chicago. I leaned my head against the window, looking outside at the big-city skyscrapers. They would soon become a distant memory of a fun summer internship I once had.

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THIRTY-ONE Even in September, Chicago day games always held the possibility of being steamy and hot. Today was exactly that. My Friday afternoon game started at 2 p.m., and it was a rough one. We’d already clinched the division, so the outcome of the game didn’t really matter. Good thing, because I was getting my ass kicked on the mound today. Arizona had just smacked another double, and Don was making a slow walk to the mound. I took a deep breath and fanned myself with my cap. There were a dozen things on my mind, and baseball was not at the top of the list for a change. Tate was gone, off to live with a druggie father. And Andrea. Because of me, she’d gotten fired and was heading back to Tennessee. My own boss had told me before the game that he and I needed to have “a very frank sit-down” in his office. To make things even worse, I was getting rocked on the mound by fucking Arizona, who had the worst offense in

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the entire league. I was playing terribly, like a rookie, like I’d never thrown the ball. The crowd was getting pissed and had even started booing at me or chanting to bring in Hugo. Don arrived at the mound at the same time Dwayne did. “Napleton, you ain’t got it today,” Don said, shaking his head. “That’s for damn sure,” Dwayne retorted, shoving his catcher’s mask up onto the top of his head. Even though he, like the other guys, had been supportive and sympathetic to my personal life being an epic clusterfuck, they still expected me to do my job. And I was failing them magnificently. Baseball is a mental game, and I was inside my head, my brain’s energy consumed by everything but the game. I didn’t even know why I was here. There was so much shit going on, and everyone knew about it. Andrea needed her space to clear her head. I needed to play baseball to clear mine, but it wasn’t working this time. “I don’t know what to tell you, Coach.” Don looked down at the ground and hocked a big loogie. “I’m gonna be honest. I’m just buying time for Hugo to warm up in the bullpen. You’re done after this batter.” I nodded. I’ve never been a man to say superfluous words, and there was nothing I could say about today’s performance. I was legitimately getting my ass rocked. The plate umpire walked up to break up our little powwow on the mound. Before the ump arrived, Don turned and headed back to the dugout without another word. “Hey,” Dwayne said, patting my arm. “It’s all mental. It’s all up here.” He pointed to his temple. I nodded. “I know. That’s the fucking problem.” The batter dug in to the box. I took the sign and nodded. Curveball. Low and away. 282

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I wound up and threw. C’mon, ball, go down. Down and away. It stayed right up in the zone. I swear I saw the batter licking his lips as it came to him. He cracked a homerun so far into the seats, even our home crowd made a collective wow sound. My manager called to the bullpen for Hugo, and I walked off the mound into the dugout. Nobody talked to me once I took my seat, which was good. I wanted to give the world a haymaker punch. Fuck my life.

After watching Hugo win the game for us, I sat in my manager’s office with a load of ice strapped around my right shoulder and arm. “So, Coach, you called me in here. I know you got some bad news. Why don’t you just tell me,” I said, wanting this over with. Lloyd sighed and pressed the intercom. “Mr. Yerac? He’s ready for you.” I froze. “Mr. Yerac? Why the hell does he need to be here?” Though I was pretty sure I knew what this would be about. I just didn’t know to what extent I was in trouble. “You know he’s always been a very hands-on owner,” the club’s manager reminded me. “And this is one of those times he has taken matters into his own hands.” I had a very, very bad feeling about this. The doorknob opened, and the old man walked in slowly. “Thank you, Lloyd,” Mr. Yerac said, his expression grim. “You can go ahead and leave me with Mr. Napleton.” 283

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Lloyd nodded and left us alone. Mr. Yerac took a seat at the desk across from me. I stood. “Why don’t you sit, Jake?” “I’m fine. I like to take my bad news standing up.” He nodded. “Well Jake, we’ve had a good run, haven’t we?” “Stop dancing around and just come out with it, Harry.” “Fine. If that’s how you want to play it.” Mr. Yerac paused, and I braced for it. “The news that broke today. I don’t know how or where it came from, or if it’s true that you…kidnapped a child.” I gritted my teeth. “It’s not true in the slightest.” “Be that as it may, since the story broke this morning, there’s been a shitstorm from all kinds of organizations calling for your suspension from the league. And I don’t mean a fivegame one like before. I’ve been on the phone with the league commissioner all morning. This is really, really, fucked.” Mr. Yerac rarely swore, so I knew he was angry. I shook my head at him, frustrated. I couldn’t believe people thought I’d actually kidnap a kid. Marissa had done her best to field the press, but she wasn’t a PR pro like Andrea, who would have started pushing back on the negativity. Plus, she was personally implicated, which made it harder for her to fight back. “People like to run their mouths and they don’t do their research. I think if people knew who I really was, they would be surprised.” “Would they, Jake? You’re a dirty player. That’s what you’re known for. You like throwing high and inside. You shove people’s faces into the dirt. Off the field, you apparently kidnap kids. Oh, and let’s not forget that you punch out fellow players at bars for no apparent reason.” That really had me seeing red. “If you’re referring to Grant Newman, that man is an asshole and a bully,” I said, 284

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seething, “and I still don’t regret knocking that motherfucker out. I’d do it again if I had the chance.” Mr. Yerac’s face hadn’t altered from its cold and stern expression. “You know what? I’m done here, speaking with a tattooed thug like you. I’ll just get to the point of why I’ve brought you here. You’re done in this league. I doubt you’ll ever play again. We’re letting you go.” The air came out of me like I was a deflating balloon. He’d said all this so calmly, like he’d rehearsed it. Maybe he had. God knew I’d been in trouble often enough, and it was ironic that it was all coming back to bite me in the ass. But I’d realized that possibility a long time ago. “You’re…releasing me?” “That’s right. Under clause 507b. Since you probably didn’t read that part of your contract, it means that you’ll get none of the guaranteed money that’s due to you. As long as we can prove that your character is a financial damage to the team’s image, which we can now prove, it’s all become very simple, Jake. I’m told that charges are already being drawn up by the father of this boy as we speak.” I took a step toward Mr. Yerac. “You think I give a shit about the money? Because I care about two things here: the truth, and the fact that I’ve worked my ass off to make sure we make it to the World Series this October. I’m the best pitcher we’ve got, and we can’t win without me. You know that.” “Don’t try to challenge me, boy,” Mr. Yerac said with a frown. “You think I give a damn about winning the World Series? Or the rest of the team? I’m not saying I want to lose, but in the end, what’s important is our bottom line. And the money we’ll save by getting you out of your contract far outweighs what we’d make by getting into the World Series.” My blood boiled. I wanted to smack the man. 285

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But that wasn’t how things were done in the front office. I didn’t care about the money. Though not playing baseball, and so close to the biggest prize in the game… at the moment, I knew none of it mattered. It was done. I also didn’t have any choice but to take responsibility for it. Whatever anyone said, I cared about the fact that I’d let down the fans and my teammates, but most of all, I cared that I was disappointing Tate and Andrea. I was a dirty South Side motherfucker at heart, and now I was back to square one. If Tate’s father had a good lawyer, I could even end up losing all my money. I was back to being the man I thought I’d grow up to be: the black sheep nobody wanted. As much as a man tried, getting away from his roots was impossible.

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THIRTY-TWO My mother arrived the next day to help me pack up my things into her van and my Prius. She had arrived so fast, almost too fast, in a way. It was like she’d been lying in the weeds, expecting me to fail. It was a long nine-hour drive from Sugar Tree to Chicago, and I knew my mother had probably practiced every piece of advice she would give me when she arrived. To her credit, she hadn’t made one comment about Jake, and I wasn’t even sure how much she knew. She could know everything and was waiting to unload on me once we got home, for fun. Or maybe she knew she’d won and wouldn’t bother with her forty lashes of motherly wisdom. God knew I was raw enough. Mentally, I was exhausted, not having slept a wink. Emotionally, I felt dead inside. I’d spent most of the night before just walking around Chicago. I thought about Jake a lot, too often, and then Tate, sad that he was once again stuck in a situation that was even worse than before. “You look awful!” she said to me. Again.

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I sure felt like it. I was in sandals, jeans, and a fitted blue tank top. No makeup. My hair was down, still drying, and I didn’t care what I looked like. “Yeah, I know, Mother,” I muttered to her. If she noticed my depressed mood, she was making up for it by being way too chipper. She was in her Sunday best, like she had something to celebrate. “Well honey, you’re not cut out for this fancy life anyways. You belong in your place back home, and it’s good that you learned your lesson now, when you’re young,” she said to me as we put another bag in her van. “Yes, lesson learned,” I said dejectedly. Whenever my mother was around, she pulled me into her orbit. I couldn’t defy her, and I wasn’t sure why. It was a little pathetic that it’d only taken me a few hours to pack up. One of my neighbors, Kyle, a retired corporate type, had even come out to help me with the larger items, not that there was much. I hadn’t known him long or very well, but it was nice of him, and it made me a little teary-eyed. I was just starting to feel like Chicago was home. It was barely even 10:30 a.m. Most of the large furniture pieces had come with the apartment, and I’d contacted my super that I’d mail him back the keys once I got back home. I didn’t care about the deposit. I didn’t care about anything. Everything had turned out so wrong, and I felt helpless in changing it. I was giving up. I knew that, and I needed to be away from this city that reminded me of Jake. Last night I’d had several missed calls and texts from Jake. I didn’t listen to his voice messages or read any of his texts. I couldn’t. This was all my fault, and it killed me. If it weren’t for my involvement with Grant, none of this would have ever happened. I still had a hard time thinking about facing reality and telling him the truth about Grant blackmailing me. 288

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Then this morning, I had seven missed calls from Amy. “I made a hair appointment at this place I like, in Lincoln Park,” my mother said, shutting her van door after Kyle had fit in the last large box. “Do you want to go with me?” After I said my goodbye to Kyle, who wished me well, I looked back at my mother. “Well?” she said. I shook my head at the ridiculousness that only my mother would find a hairstylist she loved in Chicago after just a couple of visits. “I don’t really want to tag along.” “Oh please. It will only be a couple of hours.” A couple of hours? Is this a joke? I had made my decision, and I was ready to get out of Dodge. At that moment, my phone conveniently rang, interrupting the flow of the conversation. I picked it up. “Amy. Hey.” “Hey yourself. What the hell? A goodbye text! You weren’t even going to say goodbye to me in person?” My mother stood next to the van, smiling at me while she eavesdropped on the conversation. “I would love to get together one more time. Want to meet at South Bottle?” “Sure. When?” “In about twenty minutes?” “Done. See you soon.” I hung up and turned to my mother. “I have to say goodbye to my friend Amy before we go. I’ll meet you at the hair place. Give me the address.” She rolled her eyes, wanting me to just tag along with her, but she gave me the address. I drove to South Bottle to meet up with Amy for what would be my last couple of hours in Chicago. 289

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We sat down over beers, nachos, spinach dip, and fish tacos. I went all out since this was my last Chicago meal. For once, my shy self did almost all of the talking, and Amy just smiled, nodded, and shook her head in disbelief. I told her about how I’d followed Jake, fallen for him, and gotten mixed up in the whole Jake-and-Tate routine that had been two of the best weeks of my life. How I had finally felt whole. And last but not least, I told her about Grant and how badly he’d messed me up. And how it was all my fault that Jake was in this mess, and I needed to go far, far away to make it all stop. When I finally finished telling her everything, she bit into one of the last nachos on our shared appetizer plate, then took a decent-sized swallow of her beer to finish it down. Amy wasn’t usually so quiet. It was odd seeing her like this. “So Grant. He’s basically blackmailing you.” I hated to admit it, but I nodded. “Kind of.” “Please. You’re being too nice about this and making it so damn easy for Grant. He’s holding you hostage, telling you that if you don’t play by his rules, he’s going to keep releasing stuff on Jake.” She had a point. “Not if I leave,” I reasoned. Amy looked like she wanted to throttle me. “None of this is your fault, Andrea! It’s that asshole, Grant Newman,” she said loudly. “You’re running scared! You are literally running away, pretending this problem will just simply go away, and I get it, but you’re letting him win. I know his type. Been there, made that mistake. He’s a controlling asshole. And I have 290

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news for you, honey. Maybe you’ll get away from Grant for now if you go back to Tennessee. But if you don’t confront him, he’s going to keep coming back to you.” Damn. She was right. How had I not realized that? As I knew full well, Grant wasn’t one to just give up, and he’d proven to me he’d go to extremes. I nodded and spun my phone around in my hand, a nervous habit I’d picked up in just the last day. “So what are you suggesting I do?” Amy looked around to see if anyone was within earshot, then she leaned toward me, her elbows on the table. “I’m suggesting,” she said, speaking with a tone of seriousness in her voice, “that you do something you don’t normally do with Grant. The Bulldogs arrived here for their three-game series with the Jaguars that starts tonight. So Grant wants to play it like this and post these ridiculous photos on Yawper? Fine. But you’ve got to show him that you can play dirty, too. But my question is, can you, Andrea, play dirty? Because you’re the most wholesome girl I know.” I nodded. I rarely uttered a dirty word, let alone thought about retaliating against someone. But desperate times called for desperate measures. “What did you have in mind?”

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THIRTY-THREE A few minutes past noon, I sat nervously at the De Maupassant Hotel bar, waiting for Grant to come down. I checked my purse and tried not to fidget. Amy had lent me her makeup she kept in her purse, and I’d kept my hair down, just the way Grant liked it. I wasn’t wearing the cutest outfit ever, but it was tight, and the tank was low-cut. I had arrived earlier than we had arranged, and after picking my seat because it was right in front of the security camera, I made seemingly innocuous conversation with the bartender, being sure to repeat my first and last name and leave an impression on him. I took a sip of my soda water with a lime and turned to the entrance to see Grant walking toward me with that cocky smirk on his face, the same smirk that once upon a time Jake had punched right off. I’d wasted so much of my time on him. Had I ever wondered what our kids would look like? What kind of father he’d make? I couldn’t recall. All I could picture was Jake and how he was with the boys he coached, and how much Tate looked up to him. I already knew what kind of

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father Jake would make. I knew the kind of man he was, and he was a better man than the one walking towards me. That gave me strength. He took a seat next to me. “Hi, handsome,” I said in my best flirty voice. He looked at me suspiciously, squinting his blue eyes in my direction. “What’s up with you? Why’d you invite me down here?” “Well, I’ve been doing some thinking,” I said. “And, I went through a rough patch there, but I’m ready to forgive you.” Grant ordered a beer from the bartender and turned his attention back to me. “What on earth would you be forgiving me for?” he asked with a laugh. “Oh please.” I leaned in and lowered my voice. “You used to hit me. And here you are, trying to slander my good name and ruin Jake’s reputation? I don’t think so. If word got out about what you did to me, I doubt you’d find that very funny.” Grant didn’t even flinch. “So what if I did hit you? You deserved it. Besides, you could never prove anything.” His expression turned ugly. “And you wouldn’t dare tell anyone about that,” he said. “You know what the social repercussions would be. You’d forever be known as ‘the victim girl.’ I still text with your mom on a regular basis. She loves me. You’re going to marry me, Andrea. You know it.” I looked into his eyes, the windows to his soul, and I saw an empty vessel staring back at me. The man was delusional. I wasn’t sure how he’d arrived to the conclusion or why he had chosen me to be his Southern belle trophy wife. I felt sorry for him, because he was living in a world separate from reality. Maybe he had never been turned down by someone 293

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who wanted him, and I’d have to spell it out for him. “You hit me when I confronted you about your cheating, and when I wouldn’t sleep with you. You hit me so hard sometimes that I thought I needed to go to the hospital. I’m saying I forgive you. This isn’t even for you, it’s for me. I need to let go of the angst I’ve been holding on to. And you won’t even accept my forgiveness.” “I would, except for the fact that I don’t need to say anything. I did nothing wrong. I was just putting you in your place.” I stared at him. Initially, I’d been angry, but now I truly felt sorry for him. He believed what he was saying. Anxiety built in my stomach. “You’re saying you never hit me or cheated on me?” “Who cares? Men cheat. That’s what we do. Especially someone like me, who has options,” he said matter-of-factly. “And you’re blowing that other thing out of proportion. A couple slaps aren’t anything to whine about. When we’re married, telling me no won’t be an option, Andrea.” I stared at him, horrified. “Married? To you? Never. Never…” I whispered sharply, beyond shocked and numbed by his words. Grant truly was a monster. “Yes, we’re going to get married. That’s going to happen. And if you’re not used to it yet honey, get used to it.” As he said the words, his expression changed from grin to grim. He took a nice long sip of beer and looked into my eyes. I wanted to see something good—God knows I tried— but all I saw was a man whose soul had been taken over by greed and entitlement. He would never truly love a woman the way she deserved. And perhaps even more tragically, Grant seemed to not love himself at all. 294

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He put his hand on my wrist and gripped it tightly. It reminded me of the night at McBanners, and his touch sickened me. I wished Jake were here to punch him in the jaw again. Calmly, I took out my phone with my other hand, pressed the “end audio recording” button, and fired the file off in an attachment to Amy, as we had agreed. This had almost been too easy, but as Amy had pointed out, Grant was so arrogant and egotistical that he thought he was above it all. The mighty, I knew, usually fell the hardest. Grant put his hand on the back of my neck, tight enough that it was slightly uncomfortable. I grabbed his hand, pushed it away, and looked him in the eye with the bitchiest face I’d ever made. “This. Stops. Now,” I said loudly. “Why don’t you just pipe down, woman,” Grant remarked. I hadn’t planned it, but my right hand came up, and I slapped his cheek so hard that he let out a little yell. “Hey!” he said. His eyes flashed. “You cut that out.” The bartender noticed our argument and briskly moved toward us before Grant could retaliate. The bartender was a pretty big guy and looked like he could be a bouncer. “There a problem here, Andrea?” he asked me. He eyed Grant, who was holding onto his cheek. “Sorry,” I said. “We were just having a heated discussion, and he suggested that the Jaguars weren’t the best team in the league.” The big bartender narrowed his eyes at us. “Well, you just let me know if you need anything,” he said. Then he walked to the other end of the bar once more. “You listen up,” I said in a stern voice. “I recorded our whole conversation and sent it to a PR friend who knows 295

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exactly what to do with it if you force my hand. This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to revoke the whole sensationalist story that you had your friends at Yawper make up about Jake. You’re going to do that right now, before we leave here. And then, you’re going to text my mother and tell her that we’ve been broken up for over a year, and that you’ve been lying, trying to lead her on and stay in her good graces.” His jaw dropped. “Here.” I scribbled the number for Yawper down on a napkin. Amy had used one of her media connections to find a direct line to one of the associate producers. “And if you don’t make this call, you’re going to be outed for what you really are. A sad, tragic man who controls women through physical means. I’m sure the league won’t really care about that, especially given its recent campaign against domestic violence. But do you really want to take that chance?” His scowl turned into a slight, forced grin. “You wouldn’t do that.” I arched an eyebrow his way and pointed to the number he needed to call. “Try me.” He ground his teeth and sneered. I relished in the bitchy grin I gave him right back. “Grant Newman, you are done controlling me. Don’t you see? It’s really over.” He gave me a nasty look as he dialed the number into his phone. “Hello, I’d like to speak with Carla Bornsberry.” My lips curved upward in a slight smile. For once, I liked being the bad girl.

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THIRTY-FOUR The sun was already high in the sky the next morning when I woke up with one hell of a headache. I felt like shit and I reeked of alcohol. A couple of my teammates had come over last night and gotten drunk with me, but they left early, around midnight, and I was still cranking. Goddamn I’d been so shitfaced. I wanted to erase the memory of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Yet the more I drank last night, the more depressing things seemed. Usually, it was the other way around. You know when Benny Jenks, the biggest, goofiest, drunkest guy on the team, is telling you to “take it easy,” that you’ve moved past happy-drunk mode and into “I’ll probably only remember a few things about this night” mode. I wanted to forget everything. I wanted to forget all about my shitty performance on the field. I wanted to forget that I’d probably be getting some sort of trumped up charges brought against me from after I tried to help Tate. His father had lawyers behind him who were surely looking to milk every dollar they could from the Jake Napleton Empire.

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They’d take me for all I was worth. And there was plenty to take. While I didn’t mind spending the money I’d earned through my baseball contracts and endorsement deals, I also hadn’t blown through it either. I had few vices. Soon, I’d be reduced to what I started my life as: another loser foster kid from the South Side of Chicago whose potential was going unfulfilled. Even so, the money, I could live without. What killed me, though, was that Andrea had gone dark on me. After the game last night, I’d gone to her place but got no answer, just like with all my calls and texts. She’d faded away into the background, like I used to do with Tinder hookups I didn’t want anything to do with after one night. If I weren’t so angry, I might have found some laughter in that. I couldn’t go around anywhere in the city without getting recognized and hounded. The harder I tried to defend myself, the less people believed the truth. I needed Andrea, not just to help me clear my name, but because I just needed her. She’d become a part of my life, and I wanted her to stay there. I pulled out my phone and gave her one more call. Pick up, babe. Pick up. No answer. Again. I think I’d called her a couple dozen times by now. I opened the bottle of Jack and poured myself another whisky, neat. George Thorogood would be proud of me, I thought, drinking in the morning. All I needed now was a scotch and a beer. I sat down at the TV and did something I almost never do—I turned on SportsCenter. They were doing a Saturday morning special—featuring me. One of my old, shitty 298

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Instagram pictures was on the huge flat-screen behind the talking heads. The talking point listed in big letters below them read: Is Jake Napleton the next Johnny Football? One of the announcers blabbed, “Now folks, we all know the story of Johnny Football, taken number one in the draft, but plagued for years by too much booze, women, and money—and how is Jake Napleton any different? I mean, look at the guy in this picture. He looks like someone who would be more likely to haze you at a frat party—not someone you would trust being around your kid. And will we ever get this story straight about what happened with him and this little boy he was supposedly helping?” I shook my head at the TV and took a nice long swallow of my whisky as they flashed to perhaps the most unflattering picture I had available to the public. It was an old Facebook photo that showed me with my eyes half open. Hey, we all have our bad moments. Then I made my second mistake of the morning—I fired up Twitter on my phone. #BigUnitsaphony was the number two trending hashtag. Now, I have thick as fuck skin. And there’s been a lot of words used to describe me. But phony? I might be as big of an asshole as they come, but at least I’m genuine in my assholery. People were tweeting at me from all over the damn country, hell, the whole world. None of these people had any idea about the actual story of what had happened, but still they felt they had the right to tell me to go fuck myself. It was up to me to change the public’s perception, even if it was too late, but I felt helpless against the constant stream of hate. I wasn’t going to apologize for my past behavior, but I needed to take full ownership of it. I needed to think instead 299

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of just react and stop being my own worst enemy. It was time for me to grow the fuck up. “I don’t know, Chuck,” the other announcer chimed in. I looked back at the TV. He was another one of those stupid talking heads who felt entitled to an opinion even though he had never played professional sports himself. “But one thing is for sure. Good riddance. Can you imagine having to pay more than one hundred million dollars over five years to a guy like this? And the other thing is that he stinks. He’s a joke. He was a one-hit wonder. Sure, he had some highlightworthy performances in the last few years—and a stellar first half of the season—but the Jaguars are almost certainly better off without him going into the playoffs. Did you see how hard he got shelled by Arizona? He’s an embarrassment to the city of—” I turned off the TV. The talking head had no idea what he was talking about. Ten seconds later, my phone buzzed. For a moment I considered chucking my phone out the window without checking to see who had called, but for some reason I didn’t. I was glad I didn’t when I saw that it was my sister, Eva. “Well hello there, sis. Wasn’t expecting your call. Aren’t you supposed to be undercover or something?” “Shhh. How did you know that?” “You called me and told me you were on a life-or-death mission the other night, and that if you died I should donate all of your things to charity. I thought you were joking.” “Ha. I must have had a few tequilas that night. Anyways, I can’t talk about the undercover piece right now. But let’s talk about you. There’s a media firestorm right now. You got released? What the hell is going on?” 300

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I filled her in on the whole situation, as concisely as I could without leaving any of the important details out. “So let’s get this straight. You stood up for what you believed in—punching out some asshole who was being super creepy to his ex—and then you tried to help one of the South Side kids. And you ended up crucified on social media.” I nodded. “That’s pretty much it.” The phone went silent for a minute. “Eva? You there?” After a delayed pause, Eva spoke again. “Sorry, I put the phone on mute so I could curse the world for a second. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘No good deed goes unpunished’?” “Yeah.” “This is you right now. Isn’t it ironic? All those years of being a womanizing asshole, and now it sounds like you’re trying to not be that asshole, and this stuff happens.” The irony wasn’t lost on me. “You’re spot on. That really doesn’t help me, though. I don’t know what to do. I’m finished.” “Goddamn it, Napleton. You’re not finished. No way. Why are you giving a crap about what people think of you all of a sudden? In middle school, how many times did we tell those gangbangers to go to hell when they pressured us to join them? We weren’t popular. We didn’t care what they thought of us. Now all of a sudden some Twitter twats are sitting on their couch eating potato chips and yelling at their TVs, so you think they know you? They think they know what happened? Fuck that. Never let the haters win. Put down the bottle of Jack and go get your girl back.” Eva paused and chucked. “Wow, I just made a great rhyme. You catch that?” A smile flashed on my face. “How the hell did you know I was drinking whisky?” 301

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“That whole sibling connection thing. Genetics. You can’t see it, but I’m tapping my head right now to emphasize our slight telepathy.” I sighed and put the whisky down. “Thanks, sis. Love you. You be careful with this undercover shit you’re doing.” “Shhhh. You didn’t hear that. I know you won’t tell anyone, but it’s pretty serious. Love you too. Go figure out how to fix this.” I hung up the phone, and as soon as I did, I felt strangely energized. Even if I didn’t see her very often anymore, I was lucky to have Eva there for me when I needed her. I picked up the phone to dial Andrea’s number, but I already knew she wasn’t going to answer. Well, fuck it. It was time to do this the old fashioned way, before cell phones were invented. If she wasn’t already gone, I’d go to her apartment and fucking grovel. And if she’d gone back to Tennessee, then to Tennessee I’d go. Nothing was going to stop me. Damned if I was gonna sit here and become a selffulfilling prophecy of being the next Johnny fucking Football, falling from grace. Even if my reputation was going to be tarnished forever, I still needed to give Andrea and me a shot.

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THIRTY-FIVE I had expelled two demons in one fell swoop by getting rid of Grant for good and making him undo the damage he’d done. But there was one loose end I still needed to tie off. I headed back to where my mother had gotten her hair done, and right as I entered, she was getting ready to pay. “Oh good, you’re here,” she said. “Mother, I need to stay here for one more day,” I said to her as she handed her credit card to the woman at the front desk. “I don’t think so, honey. We need to get on the road right now if I’m going to see my Saturday-night shows.” She tapped her wrist with two fingers, like a heroin addict might tap her arm before getting a hit, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a similarity there. I stood with my arms crossed, waiting. “I don’t want to go into details here, but some very big stuff has happened in the last couple of days, and I need to see this through.” “Ma’am? Just sign here,” the woman said, pointing to the receipt. My mother signed and turned back to me.

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“Oh, I’m sure it’s really tough. Dating a professional baseball player and then breaking up with him. I just wish all of my children felt as entitled as you,” she said sarcastically. “Stop it. You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said in a low voice. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. “Oh, is there something I don’t understand here? You broke up with Grant last year, and ever since, he’s been trying to get you back. But ohhh no, you’re off cavorting with guys like The Big Unit on social media. I heard all about it on the radio on my way up here. You just need to face the facts, honey. Grant is the best you’ll do. And he’s not a bad man.” I looked down at my feet and rubbed my thumb and finger against my forehead. To be fair, I’d sugarcoated everything that had happened between Grant and me, so she had a reason for her opinion. Now was the time for me to break that reality. I got my height from my dad, and my mom was pretty small, but she’d been surrounded by tall men and me for years, so when I brought my face close to hers, she returned my look with equal measure. “Mother. I should have told you this a long time ago. Grant was a liar and a cheater, and I broke up with him when he crossed the line, not because I needed space.” I paused. “Did he text you that?” She scrunched her face up. “What on earth are you talking about?” Unbelievable! “I’m talking about the fact that he slept with other girls while we were together, then told me that I had no right to complain, and that that was just the way it was! And when I stood up to him, he fucking slapped me!” I said, and none to quietly. “He hit me when I refused to have sex with him, and when I tried to leave him.” 304

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There was a collective gasp from all of the women in the room. At this point, I didn’t care anymore who heard me. My mother just stared at me, completely bewildered, like I had just spoken in Klingon. “G-Grant?” she stammered, confused and blinking rapidly. She had her hands over her heart like she was in pain. Maybe she was. I’d never yelled at my mother or swore, and I knew that was throwing her. “I don’t believe it. I just can’t! I’ve known his mother for decades! He comes from a good, solid family. He’s the sweetest boy—” “Why do you side with him? You should side with your daughter! Grant Newman was a douchewad who treated me like crap. He made me feel like a horrible person. I was so ashamed of telling anyone, especially you!” I shouted, finally standing up to her. I was so mad that I felt my eyes stinging with tears. “He’s been trying to control me since I broke up with him. He’s crazy! And he was blackmailing me to go back to him or he’d release more lies about Jake!” My mother started fanning herself, trying not to cry. She looked at me. Her eyes scanned my face, and I could tell she was starting to realize I wasn’t making shit up, because she burst into tears. “It’s just, I thought you two were perfect. I thought, I thought…” She lost the ability to form words, and the tears started pouring out. “Oh God honey, I’m so sorry! Of course I believe you—I wish you had told me,” she said between shaky breaths. “I hate that you’ve been alone in this…” She stepped toward me and wrapped me up in a huge hug. I started to cry harder, not holding back. It felt amazing to finally tell her, to tell the whole truth. The entire room had broken out in applause, and I cracked a smile through the tears as we pulled apart. I wiped at my eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. And to be honest, Jake’s the one that got me to open up and admit that 305

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to myself. He’s been really supportive and wonderful about it.” “Yes…about this Jake guy you’ve been seeing,” Mother began, still sniffling. “What’s that all about? Did he really kidnap that child?” I laughed, shaking my head at the mess I’d helped create. “Dear God, no, he didn’t kidnap anyone. Everyone thinks he’s an asshole, but he’s actually a really great guy.” The door chime jingled, and someone who looked incredibly out of place in a salon walked in. “You’re still here,” he said, relieved. “I think I’ve visited every salon in this area of Chicago looking for you.” I stared at Jake, jaw dropping. “What the…how did you find me?” “Your neighbor, Kyle? He said you’d moved all your stuff out.” Jake looked around, all eyes on him. “Um, well, he mentioned something about a hair appointment in Lincoln Park.” “Why are you here?” I asked, not sure I was awake. He gave me a meaningful look. “Andrea, there is a crazy hailstorm happening right now in the media, and I’m getting my ass kicked. You probably think I’m crazy, but we need to face this together. We’ve both been running from our old selves for a long time. And right now, I need you. I can’t face this shitstorm without you. You and me.” He paused. “That okay?” I was dumbstruck. “Okay?” Jake searched my face for a more in-depth answer, but my tongue stayed tied for some reason. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Right in front of my mother, he wrapped his arms around my body, slipping them dangerously low toward my ass as 306

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he enveloped my lips with his. I stopped his hand before it cupped my ass. Even though that was exactly what I wanted, I figured that might be a bit much for my mother right now. “Ahem,” she said, right on cue. I opened my eyes, and she was poking her head between us like a referee trying to break up a fight. “Mother, this is Jake. Jake, this is my mother.” “So nice to meet you,” she said. “Have we met before? You look familiar.” “No!” I blurted out, recalling their almost-encounter a few weeks ago. “No, you’ve never met Jake. He likes to keep a low profile.” “That’s a lovely haircut you have, Miss Diggers.” She actually blushed, fluffing up her hair. “Oh, thanks. Is it?” “I think so,” Jake said with a wry grin. And just like that, my mother was swooning and nodding and laughing. I wondered why the hell I’d been so afraid of telling her everything in the first place. Jake slipped his arm around me and discretely rested his hand on the small of my back while he charmed the shit out of my mother. Yeah, Jake had really rubbed off on me. And I think I was okay with that.

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THIRTY-SIX The term ride-or-die chick is what came to mind as Andrea and I sat on my couch for almost two days straight that weekend, hacking away bit by bit to repair my public image. I was getting my ass kicked by the mainstream media, and I never for one second doubted that Andrea would stay by my side even when just about everyone I knew had given up on me, passing me off as some kind of monster. Combating the twenty-four-hour news cycle was relentless. A ball of stress sat in my stomach and didn’t leave. Tate was with DCFS now, and I had been through that transition many a time. The ambiguity of where you would live next, the fact that you didn’t have a real place you could call home—thinking about what Tate was going through gave me the strength to have extreme focus in spite of our lack of sleep. We both had our computers out as we tweeted, emailed, and reached out to anyone who would communicate with us. Andrea pushed her glasses up on her nose, staring down into her laptop and typing intently. She shook her head and rolled her eyes slightly, then looked up.

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“ESPN just picked up your story. Bad news—it’s a hit piece.” “What are they saying?” “It’s those two dumb talking heads who get paid to debate crap. Guy number one says you deserve to get released because you’re a child kidnapper. Guy number two says you don’t deserve to be making those millions that have been guaranteed to you.” “So they agree.” “Yes. Bastards.” Andrea snuggled in closer to me, touching my leg to readjust her position on the couch. Since I had met her, I’d been instantly attracted to her, but there was something about seeing her working that touched me even deeper. She had the ability to throw her brain into a deep mental focus that couldn’t be broken. When I thought about how she was doing all of this for me, just to clear my good name, even after she had already been fired and was on the way out of her PR firm, it made me feel like I finally had a partner in crime. My entire life, I’d fought as a lone wolf for what I wanted. To achieve my dreams, I relied on no one but myself. And then suddenly, I saw those dreams crumbling to the ground. For the first time, I realized that things had spun too far out of control for me to get back on track on my own. Andrea shook her head and sighed. I knew I should be sending more emails and searching for more mid-size sports blogs and YouTube channels who might grant me an interview, but I couldn’t stop staring at her. She had on a light-blue tank top and black yoga pants. Since I’d found her at the salon two days ago, we’d been lying on the couch, working. We had taken some time to sleep and grab a quick brunch, but aside from that, all we’d been doing is trying to defeat the demons who were coming after us. My demons. 309

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“Some of the smaller blogs we’ve been reaching out to are responding,” Andrea said as she squinted her eyes at her computer screen. “We just need to make sure we keep reaching out. Are you ready for another video interview? Maybe one more podcast today?” I had done two hour-long video interviews from my living room this morning. The interviews went well, but each of them only had a few thousand followers, so it wasn’t like we were reaching the world at large. We had to start somewhere, though. “If you say I should be there, I’m there.” I sighed and gripped her thigh with my hand, then leaned over, guided her face to mine, and kissed her. We paused and made eye contact for a few seconds before we went back to work. There was a time for play and a time for work, and now was a time for work. The strategy Andrea had suggested was unorthodox, but it was working. We had been reaching out to independent sports blogs, podcasts, and even some gossip websites. We made sure our pitch included the hashtag #moretoJakesstory, which was starting to trend. The reality was that no one really knew the full story about Tate and me. No one knew about the complexity and depth of my relationship with Andrea. And while she could just throw Grant under the bus if she wanted to and come out about his vicious ways—it wouldn’t solve the overall issue we were facing. Plus, it would cause Andrea a whole bunch of unwanted media attention that she had decided she didn’t want. Also, I had firmly decided—and reached out to Grant to tell him—that if he came near Andrea again, he was toast. It was a fun conversation where I had asked him if he had 310

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ever been to the South Side. He said no. I told him if he ever wanted to come near Andrea again, I could give him a ride around the South Side of Chicago—the parts where they don’t think twice about taking a life and making it untraceable. Harsh, but I think he finally got the message. I sighed and opened my own laptop back up. PR wasn’t my thing, but I could do my best to respond to as many personal messages as possible that were coming in, and they really were coming in.

We worked for what seemed like days. I never thought that rebuilding my image would be such a problem. “Watch this,” Andrea said, her expression suddenly transformed from morose to satisfied. She closed my own laptop and set hers on top of it. I glanced at her, then back to the screen. She pulled up a YouTube video that had been shared more than three million times. The scene started on a small baseball field. The release date was a year ago, and a group of kids sat around, eating pizza. Immediately, I recognized the field. The video was taken on 16th Street on the South Side of the city, where I had first coached when I’d joined the team the year before and moved back to Chicago. I stood there, shit-eating grin on my face, as I brought in the first round of pizzas for the team. Some parent or coach who was in the dugout at the time had clearly filmed it. The camera turned from the dugout to me, and then stayed on Tate for a moment. My phone had been buzzing off the hook for the weekend. There had been a lot of haters calling me to tell me what a 311

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horrible person I was. I had no idea how they’d gotten my number, but for that reason, I had turned my phone off, and we were using Andrea’s phone as our one and only telephone vessel. It rang. “It’s a three one two area code,” she remarked. “Should we get it?” “Why not?” She answered the phone, put it on speaker, and set it on the coffee table. “Hello, this is Andrea.” “Andrea. This is Harry Yerac.” We both gave each other a confused look. Andrea squeezed my leg as we both wondered why he’d be calling after the harsh way he ended things with me. “Mr. Yerac. I wasn’t expecting your call.” “I didn’t think so. But listen. I think I may have jumped the gun with releasing Jake. No one can get a hold of him. Not his agent, none of his teammates, not anyone. Have you seen him?” Her frown morphed into a sly grin. “I…might be able to guess his whereabouts.” She ran a hand through my hair. “Why do you need to speak with him?” Harry let out a long sigh. “I’ve had every single man on the team, including the coaching staff, stop by to tell me why they think I’m an asshole, and that I needed to find out the truth about Jake instead of listening to what the media was playing.” He paused. “So I did. And I know when I’m wrong. I’ve had my own team on finding out the truth. I’ve been listening to the podcast interviews he’s been doing. And the new YouTube video that’s gone viral as well. There’s a lot more to this story than I first saw. I need to talk with him 312

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and…hear the whole thing from him, just him and me. I know now that I should have heard him out the first time.” There was noticeable pang of regret in Mr. Yerac’s voice. “And his contract?” Andrea said sharply. “Are you going to reinstate him?” Watching Andrea in her element was a huge turn on. She had handled this campaign like a boss; the grassroots stuff was all her idea. And now I had another idea. I blamed her for sitting there all smug and looking so damn sexy. A couple of strands of brown hair dangled down in front of her face. I peeled them back, leaned in, and caught her by surprise with a kiss before she could even take her glasses off. Mr. Yerac sighed, pausing before saying his next words. As he spoke, I scattered kisses on Andrea’s face, cheeks, and neck. She didn’t resist, running both hands through my hair. She took off her glasses and reciprocated, trying to quietly kiss me without smooching so loudly that Mr. Yerac would hear on speakerphone. “That’s what I wanted to discuss with him,” Mr. Yerac said. “But I’m sure if you’ve worked with Jake firsthand, you know that he isn’t exactly a pleasure to deal with.” I heard the word pleasure and I couldn’t resist. I whispered, “I’m going to prove Harry wrong about this pleasure theory of his.” Then I worked my kisses further down her body until I tugged at the pajama bottoms she was wearing. She braced her shoulders on the cushions and lifted her hips up, allowing me to slip them off her. “Well, you know, I’ve found that Jake does require some extra attention, but once he opens up to you, he goes a lot deeper than you ever thought he would. At least, that’s been my…” My mouth now between her thighs as I knelt on the ground, I slipped my hand under her panties, tugging them 313

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off, and rubbed my thumb ever so slightly on her clit. Her breath was starting to speed up, and she fuddled the end of her sentence, the last m syllable sounding more like a moan then a word. “Andrea? Are you there? Everything alright?” “Mmmm, oh yeah. Everything’s peachy,” she said and smiled down at me. “Please, Jake,” she whispered. I arched an eyebrow at her and whispered back, “Please what?” “I don’t know,” she said, and brought her hand down to my hair again. “You don’t know? What don’t you know?” Mr. Yerac asked in a confused tone. I watched as Andrea seemed to locate every available ounce of brainpower. “Harry, listen…I found Jake. But he can’t talk right now. I’ll have him call you back, though. Promise. I have to—” I reached over to the coffee table and ended the call. “I think that conversation was about over anyways. It’s okay, I’m a jackass. I know.” “Yeah, you kind of are. But you’re my jackass.” I shook my head. “How did I get so lucky?” Andrea shrugged and flashed a hazy smile my way. “Let’s talk about this later. Speaking of lucky, I would love to get lucky right now.” “I can help you with that.” Andrea was naked from the waist down. I stood up from the couch, and she helped me pull down my athletic shorts. Then I took my briefs off. She pulled off her shirt, and I did the same with mine. I looked at her, lying totally naked on the couch. She flashed her blue eyes at me and smiled. For a moment I was frozen, staring at her. The woman 314

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was a masterpiece, and more than that, she was my personal masterpiece. She saw through my shit, and even threw it right back at me. She was loyal, tender, and feminine, yet fierce at the same time. “What are you doing?” she snipped, jolting me out of my daydream. “Looking at you,” I said in a voice that came out lower and throatier than I’d intended. I swooped down and joined her on the couch, pressing my flesh against hers. She warmed me up. Inside and outside. She pulled me into her mouth for a kiss. I needed to tell her something. Something I had only told one other person in my life. “Need to tell you something,” I growled, once again the words not coming out quite as I’d imagined them. Her eyes went wide, and she sensed the nervousness in my tone. “What? What do you have to tell me?” I took a deep breath to center myself. “Andrea, I know it’s only been, what, one month since we started hanging out.” “Oh God.” I ran my hand along her thigh and legs. There was no other way to say the words than to just say them. “It’s that…I…love…you.” A tear formed in her eye, and she wrapped her arms and her legs and her whole body around me and kissed me with urgency. After a few moments, she pulled her mouth away. “Dammit, Napleton. You had me worried for a second.” “Why?” “I thought you might have something else that you were hiding from me.” I grabbed hold of her shoulder. “Never. I never want to 315

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hide anything from you.” “Good,” she said. “You’re a pretty big guy, anyway. It’s hard for you to hide.” She reached down and grabbed my cock, which was rapidly becoming a steel rod. She wrapped her hand around it, then guided me in between her legs. Slowly, I pushed in, inch by inch, my chest muscles pushed up against her breasts as her heat surrounded me. Her legs wrapped around me and pulled me further into her. “God, Andrea. Fuck. I love you,” I said as I pushed her hair back behind her ear with my hand. She tilted her head back. “I love you too.” I smiled and whispered in her ear as I began to thrust my hips slowly. “Damn, I love hearing you say those words.” And then we were wordless. She tilted her hips and began to gyrate them faster, in rhythm with mine. I reached around and cupped her ass, loving the feel of her cheeks in my hands. She began to moan softly in my ear, gripping the cushion behind her for an anchor. I rocked my body into hers, and we became one rhythmic motion as we gripped each other tightly. I kissed her again and tongued down to her breasts, pausing to flick my tongue on her nipple. Judging by the way she arched her back up and pushed her chest into me, she was loving this as much as I was. She snapped her head forward, bringing her forehead to mine, and wrapped her hand around the back of my neck. “I’m going to come, baby,” she whispered through moans. Hearing her soft voice sent me soaring. She opened her eyes and stared into mine, and I peered through those 316

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sparking blue windows to her soul. Her being was full of passion and compassion, and I would never fully understand why God decided to bless me with her. “Come, baby,” I whispered back. “Come for me.” She screamed and dug her nails into my back, and that sent me over the edge. The heat building inside me was screaming to get out. I gripped the hot flesh of her body and yelled as I came in her. When it was over, we lay on our sides, chests heaving, looking into each other’s eyes. “I love how you fuck,” I panted. She got a little red-faced. “I just go where you take me.” I smirked a little. “Bullshit. We go there together.” The corners of her mouth turned up in a half-smile. She ran her hand down my chest and my abs. “Well, wherever we go, it’s pretty awesome. I love fucking you.” I laughed. “Ha! I got you to say the F-word! You didn’t say effing!” I was joking, a little. But there was something truly fantastic about hearing Andrea’s clean mouth say the word fuck. “Only with you, babe. Only with you.” I wrapped my arms around her, and she scooched her body closer to me. “Well, you better plan on saying the F-word a lot. Because I’m never letting you go.”

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Four Weeks Later I sat in the front row at State Farm Field for game two of the World Series. Two of my favorite people in the world flanked me, Tate and Amy. To Amy’s left sat Mr. Yerac, who had insisted on joining us for part of the game to show his gratitude to Amy and me. The night was cool for fall, and the lights shined down on the stadium. Jake shook off a couple of signals from the catcher before throwing a fastball high and inside that the batter whiffed at. “Come on, Coach, strike him out!” Tate yelled. He was wearing his Jaguars number twenty-four jersey, and his blonde hair glistened under the lights. Tate was clearly Jake’s biggest fan. Behind us were the rest of Jake’s Little League team, and their parents. Public opinion had drastically shifted in favor of Jake as the truth came out, and he used the power of the media to his advantage instead of ignoring it and just riding it out. Tate’s dad had mysteriously disappeared again, and with his aunt still in the hospital but out of her coma, Jake had petitioned

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to have official custody of Tate until further notice. It was quite possible that Jake could adopt Tate since his father had, technically, abandoned him since his birth, and the evidence was quite clear on that. Also, if his aunt was incapable of caring for Tate once she got out of the hospital, DCFS would take him and put him in the system. “Ladies, I just can’t thank you enough,” Mr. Yerac said. “I’ll be honest—I didn’t think we had a shot at turning around Jake’s reputation after that hailstorm. With the 24/7 news cycle, sometimes you feel like it’ll never end.” Amy smiled. “Well, you can repay us, you know. Andrea and I are looking for some startup capital for our branding firm.” “You’re not with Green PR anymore?” He ruffled his brow. “Mr. Yerac, may we speak freely?” I asked. “Of course.” Amy and I made eye contact. She nodded. “Green PR was once solid, but lately Steve has been lagging behind,” I explained. “He’s not catching up to the rest of the digital world with how he does things. And he’s quite abrasive when it comes to working with him. He doesn’t take criticism or outside ideas well.” “Plus, Steve kept using Andrea’s ideas, then taking credit for them,” Amy added. “We’re going out on our own, starting our own business.” Mr. Yerac nodded. “Well, after the miracle you’ve pulled off with Napleton, I’d be silly not to at least take a look at a proposal from you two. I’m not making any hard promises, though. But in any case, I can definitely put you in touch with some clients who need branding help.” “That would be incredible,” I chimed in. 319

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Mr. Yerac shook his head as the umpire sent another batter to the dugout, compliments of a strikeout by The Big Unit. “I still don’t understand how you did it, Andrea. It was like overnight. Yawper retracted their story, issued an apology, and then that video in the hair salon went viral. Though I’m not too sure about your…involvement with Jake, but love does come in many different packages. And your orchestration of that whole thing was incredible.” “Thanks.” I nodded. Amy rolled her eyes a little, since she had been listening to people compliment me on the whole thing for weeks. I had been lucky, sure, but I also wasn’t afraid to get mixed up with Grant, which was what ultimately won out. The lucky part was that one of the women who was getting her hair cut had recorded the whole interaction between my mother and me and had recently posted it. She’d even caught Jake’s entrance on video and posted it on YouTube with the title, “There’s more to the story.” Soon, a variation of the hashtag we’d used weeks earlier appeared again. #Moretothestory was still the most popular hashtag on all social media platforms, and, ironically, the people of Twitter demanded a more in-depth exploration of the Jake Napleton Saga. As for Grant, he’d finally gotten his just desserts. Last I’d heard, the Bulldogs were planning to release him. Good riddance. Jake had been interviewed by every major TV show, and people were finally getting to see the real Jake. And he wasn’t fighting it. Oh, he still wanted to keep a few things to himself and cracked jokes, but he was talking about his past in ways that he hoped resonated with others. But Tate’s interview was the clincher. When the cute little blonde kid got in front of the camera and started talking about how hard life was in that part of Chicago, and that Jake 320

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coaching Little League gave the boys that played there hope and something to do, the nature of the debate shifted greatly. Instead of talking about some sensationalist, gossipy story, the debate turned to the lack of resources allocated to poor and disadvantaged neighborhoods. Ironically, Jake went from “child kidnapper” to an icon for social change almost instantly. The best part, though, was that when Jake got his contract reinstated by Mr. Yerac, he told me I could pick the name of the charity that we’d be starting to help kids on the South Side: The Big Unit for Change. I sat back in my seat, took a deep breath, and watched as Jake struck out the last batter of the inning with a fastball. “Holy shit!” some guy from behind me yelled to his friend. “The Big Unit’s on fire tonight. He’s throwing like a hundred miles per hour every pitch!” Jake started his slow, cocky walk back to the dugout. He looked at me, winked, and blew me a little kiss. I blew him one right back. “Awww, aren’t you two so cute,” Amy said. I rolled my eyes. “I think we’ve been through enough to deserve a little kiss-blowing while he’s on the mound.” Tate poked me, a quizzical look on his face. “Miss Andrea, why do they call Coach The Big Unit?” Amy stifled a laugh. Even Mr. Yerac arched an eyebrow, probably curious how a PR expert would handle this situation. “Well Tate, that’s a good question. It’s a nickname because he’s a big guy and he brings the heat.” “Yeah, he does throw pretty fast,” Tate said. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief. My mind drifted off to what me and The Big Unit would be doing later, after we put Tate to bed. 321

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The game ended in a 7-2 Jaguars victory. I left Tate with Amy, as we had planned, and headed down to the locker room. The security guard, Scotty, smiled when he saw me. “Hey, Andrea.” I was a little surprised he knew my name. “Thanks for everything you did with Jake. We all knew he was a good guy at heart, even if he can be a little much to deal with sometimes. We couldn’t have won the World Series without him. So thanks.” “Wow, Scotty. That means a lot to me, but Jake’s the one who deserves the credit.” “Well, maybe, but you’re the mastermind behind it, and whatever you did…it worked. Now get in there and have some fun. You want a poncho?” I ruffled my brow. “Why would I need a poncho?” “Some of the reporters have been using them. You know what, you look like you’re ready for some fun. Just head in.” When he opened the door, I heard the roar coming from inside the locker room. “We Are the Champions” blasted over the speakers, and all of the players were hooting. As soon as I was inside, I realized why he had asked if I needed a poncho. So many players had opened up bottles of champagne and were spraying them all over the locker room, it was basically a champagne rainstorm. I had worn jeans, Jake’s jersey, and a baseball cap to the game, and my shirt was rapidly becoming drenched. Without warning, I felt a body press up behind me. As soon as I felt the long arms wrap around my torso, I knew who it was. 322

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“Hello,” Jake said, kissing me on the cheek. “Nice jersey.” “Thanks.” I spun around and wrapped my arms around Jake’s neck. His face was an ear-to-ear cocky smirk. “I thought you had a pretty strict policy against dating players though. Weird. Must be a pretty great guy.” The corners of my lips tugged up, and my smile matched his. “At first I thought he was a pretty big asshole—to be honest—but after I got to know him, it turned out he had some redeeming qualities.” “Maybe he just needed a special lady who was worth changing for. And you were that girl.” “You think so?” “I know so.” He pulled my body into his. I could see the flame of desire in his eyes. Since I’d come in, many of the players and the staff had begun to file out of the locker room. They had abandoned their champagne bottles and seemed to all be leaving with a purpose. Soon, it was just a few stragglers, everyone taking the party outside and all over Chicago, probably all night long, too. “Hey Napleton,” Dwayne yelled, the last player to leave. He was already halfway out the door. “You comin’? We’re going to Mars Club. Gonna be a crazy night.” He arched an eyebrow at Jake. “Go with your friends,” I whispered. Jake looked at me, then back at Dwayne. “I’ll catch up with you all soon, Dwayne.” Dwayne nodded and left. A couple of other odd people filed out, and we were left in a suddenly empty locker room. “You should go hang out with your friends and do the after-party,” I urged. 323

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Jake kissed me. “You’re my friend. How about we have our own after-party?” “Jake Napleton, king of the rowdy after-party, wants to stay in. I feel honored. What do you want to do?” He looked at me and smirked, his eyes traveling from my legs upward and finally landing on my face. “You mean besides undress you with my eyes?” “Funny. That’s exactly what I was doing.” His hand in mine, he glanced toward the shower. “I was thinking, you seem a little dirty. And I think we could both use a good rinse.” I grinned, and he took my hand, leading us toward the locker room showers. My heart beat furiously. “You don’t think anyone will see us, do you?” “Nah. But if they do, fuck ‘em. If I can’t have a little fun with my future wife, who can I have fun with?” I froze. “Did you just say future wife?” Jake stopped short. “Shit. Shit. That slipped out… Freudian slip? I mean, it’s only been a couple months but… when you know, you know, I suppose. Damn, I probably freaked you out.” Tears formed in my eyes and started to stream down my cheek. I gripped his forearm and bicep with my arms and got on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “It’s okay. When you know, you know.” I nibbled on his ear, and his grin returned. He led the way into the shower so we could have our own celebration, just the two of us.

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Dear Readers, Thank you so much for your support. If you enjoyed this book, please sign up my newsletter so we can stay in touch. I use my newsletter for sneak peeks at upcoming books, live author events, giveaways, and a ton of other fun stuff. Visit the link to sign up now! - http://bit.ly/mmsp29 Also, feel free to check out my website at www. mickeymillerauthor.com It’s my goal to create romance for your reading pleasure, and I wouldn’t be able to do that without your feedback. If you have any, feel free to email me at mickeymillerwrites@gmail. com. I love hearing from you.

note from

the author I am a guy, Mickey is my real name, and I do love writing romance. I this past year, and I couldn’t have made it this far without all of the wonderful friends I’ve made along the way. Shot outs to Melissa, Julie, Anissa, Dee, Kat and Josie. Thanks to all the awesome bloggers, reviewers and readers I’ve met so far. I also need to thank the team who helped make this book a reality. In particular to my editors, Katie and Holly, formatter Elaine, designer Sophia, and my PA, Cheryl. I could not have done it without you all. And also to the special people in my life who give inspiration and make writing romance so much fun. And most importantly, a shot out to you, the reader, for loving romance and reading about it. Much Love, Mickey