Of course, there’s the no fraternizing with the players rule. Because what’s a story without a fucking HR nightmare ready to unfold?
But oddly enough, that’s not the worst part. No, the worst part is how she sees Penn and how she sees me. And I have no clue how to change that or how to change me.
Basically, I’m screwed.
Chapter One
WALKER
“Strike three.”
“Fuck,” I scream, loud enough for not only both dugouts to hear, but for my booming voice to bounce off the eardrums of the first twenty rows in the stadium. I swing my powerful body around to the umpire, who’s taking off his mask and resetting his clicker. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I spew. “That pitch was at least a foot off the plate. Where was that call when I was standing in front of you, protecting you from ninety-five mile-per-hour fastballs?”
Not even looking me in the eye, Joe Verity, one of many umpires I’ve come to know well during my years behind the plate says, “Walk away, Rockwell, before I chuck your ass out of here.”
“Go ahead, the game’s fucking over.”
Brow lifted, he makes eye contact. “Don’t think I won’t get you suspended for the next few games. Watch yourself, Rockwell, I know you’re on thin ice already.”
Gripping my bat in both hands, I step over the plate and mumble over my shoulder as I walk toward the dugout. “Fuck. You.”
“Rockwell . . .”
I ignore the warning tone in his voice and make the walk of shame back to the dugout. I glance over my shoulder at the scoreboard.
Six to five.
Final.
I went zero for four with two strikeouts, one pop-up, and a goddamn groundout to the pitcher, a grounder my grandmother could’ve fielded. I haven’t been in a slump this bad since my first season in the minors.
Fans start to clear the stands, disappointment on their faces, accepting another loss for our barely five hundred season. We’re still in the running for the playoffs, thank you long baseball season and other teams slumping, but for a team with the potential to win the World Series, this is a pathetic showing, and it starts with me not being able to put wood to the ball.
I jog down the steps of the dugout, bypassing my teammates, who are collecting their gloves and fleeing to the locker room. They can sense what’s going to happen next—destruction.
They can see it in my face.
And it wouldn’t be the first time.
I can feel it in my tense shoulders as my vision tunnels to black, rage seeps from every pore, and the bat in my hand turns into a weapon, not a means to win a game.
Heading to the far corner of the dugout, I raise my bat, let out another swear word that would scare the Jesus out of all believers, and smash it on the blue water cooler.
The first connection of my bat to the plastic vibrates through my wrists all the way up my forearms. Fuck, that stings. But the next two hits ease some of the pent-up tension in my shoulders. The few after that make me feel alive for the first time all day.
It isn’t until the water cooler has lost all of its contents and keels over, wrapped around my bat, that I feel satisfied. And that’s when I take a deep breath and turn around to not only find my manager staring at me, hands stuffed in his pockets with a disapproving look on his face, but I also find every camera on the field pointed at me.
Fuck.
***
“I liked the water jug,” Ryot, our third baseman, says from next to me. “Why’d you do it, man?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I mumble while leaning forward in my chair, towel wrapped around my waist, and a death march to my manager’s office hanging over my head.
After a pleasant walk while cameras flashed at me through the dugout, Coach met me in the hallway and told me I wasn’t to leave this stadium until I stopped in his office for what I can only think will be my third verbal lashing of the month.
Still caught up on the water cooler, Ryot whispers while glancing around for listeners, “When you were in the shower, they wheeled the poor fella through the locker room on a gurney with a towel draped over his limp body.”
Ryot Bisley, third base for the Bobbies, an arrogant yet hilarious prick, is my best friend—my only friend. Normally, he can make me laugh, lighten the mood, but not right now.
Not today.
I stand from my chair, whip off my towel, and put on a pair of boxer briefs, my muscles aching with every jagged move I make. With each passing year, this job gets harder and harder. Despite my young age of thirty-three, I can already feel the ache in every one of my bones from squatting for a living.
Sensing my frustration, Ryot bends over to tie one of his shoes and says, “It was a bad game. Shake it off.”
“It’s been four bad games in a row,” I answer through gritted teeth as I yank my jeans up my legs and sit back in my chair again, facing away from the rest of the team.
“The loss isn’t just on you. None of us had our bats tonight.”
“The rest of the team isn’t facing trade and forced retirement rumors like I am.”
The All-Star break is coming up and despite it being a week where those who weren’t chosen for the All-Star game get to take a breather, it’s also one of the most hectic times for the front office, trying to make those last-minute trades to stack your team for the end-of-the-season run to the World Series.
My name has been tossed around, speculation that I could be possibly sent to Oakland or Phoenix, both teams I would rather not touch with a ten-foot pole.
Not when my home is in Chicago.
Not when the only thing I care about is here.
“So you think beating the fuck out of a water jug is going to grace you with a shining image?”
“No.” I grind my teeth together while the urge to punch the wood of my locker pulses through me, but I hold back. “Should’ve just broken my bat over my knee instead.”
“You performed that trick last week. You can’t keep showing off,” Ryot says with blatant sarcasm.
The smallest of smirks passes over my lips before I quickly wipe it away. The look on Ryot’s face when I broke my bat over my quad is still engrained in my head. Horror and respect crossed his eyes at the same time.
Unfortunately, I still have a bruise on my leg to show for my loss of temper.
“I need more time in the cages. Meet me at ten tomorrow?”
“You don’t need time in the cages. You need to get laid.”
I roll my eyes and pull my Bobbies T-shirt over my head. “Sex can’t fix everything.”
“It sure as hell can loosen you up. Your shoulders were so tense at the plate, I swear they started to eat up your bat.”
“I’m fine.”
“When was the last time you actually fucked someone?”
I scratch the side of my jaw, my nails scraping over my rough five o’clock shadow. “Don’t know.”
“Fuck, dude, if you don’t know, that’s a problem. You and I both know in an adrenaline-laced job like ours we need to work it off in the bedroom. Don’t you have a fuck buddy? Someone you can call? You need to come, man, and not in your hand, because if you show up tomorrow with your shoulders still touching your ears again, I’m going to blow you myself.”