It’s more that we have no intention of calling in favors just to get screwed over if she decides to sell to someone else.
And Davis is right—she’s getting cash of her own somehow to fund the team. That look on her face last night when I asked if it was Wellington…
There’s something there.
I know Lila’s an orphan. She’s only ever worked for Wellington, and she started high up at a young age. According to some of the information Davis and the team found, she steered a majority of the company’s business developments and off-shoot companies, all of which were sold to the employees over the course of the last three years in the build-up to Wellington’s retirement.
Her boss has been letting her run the ship.
My jaw aches, and I make myself unclench it.
Maybe he’s been a father figure.
Or maybe he’s less into retiring, and more into still controlling part of her life through influxes of cash into the broken baseball team she inherited.
Whatever it is, I don’t like it.
I could be investing in the Fireballs. We could be co-owners.
Wellington sure as hell won’t be getting big-name acts onto Duggan Field, and he won’t be contacting celebrity friends to get them here often enough that fans will start coming out in hopes of catching a glimpse of someone important, and he also won’t be seeing a single dime of his money back anytime soon.
The ceiling creaks again, but this time, it’s closer to the lounge. I flip on the flashlight on my phone and aim it upward, ignoring the water stains and pink gum stuck to the ceiling while I track the sound.
First ducks.
Now what?
Raccoons? Squirrels? Fox? Deer?
Fuck.
Better not be deer. How the hell would a deer get into the ceiling?
Actually—how would anything get in the ceiling?
I’m reaching for the radio clipped to my belt when I hear another distinct noise in the ceiling.
A noise that sounds very much like a feminine oh, shit.
And that’s all the warning I get before a leg pokes through the textured drywall between two buzzing fluorescent light panels right above my head.
Plaster and insulation rain down on my head and all over my covered coffee cup. “What the hell?”
There’s a shriek, a crack, and then an arm punches through the ceiling, followed by a whole body.
I reach out to catch her the same time I realize there’s a fucking body falling through the ceiling.
Also, gravity isn’t working in my favor here, and while I was once an extra on the set of one of Jessie’s movies, playing a man who saved a baby stroller from a runaway truck, there’s no way to catch a body falling without getting the wind knocked out of you and crumpling to the ground yourself.
“What the fuck?” I snarl as my ass hits the threadbare carpet over concrete. My coffee is toast, spilled and sprayed all over the room.
Lila flings an arm that nearly does for my face what her hand did to my balls just a few hours ago. “Let go!”
“You’re welcome for cushioning your fall, you crazy-ass idiot.”
She jerks her head to look at me, mouth going round. “What are you doing here?”
Her curly red hair—which might’ve been pulled back in a ponytail a minute ago—is covered with dust and dirt and spiderwebs and puffed out at odd angles. Her cheeks are smeared with grime. Her shirt’s ripped just below her breasts. And her eyes are watery and red, blinking rapidly while she reaches for them with her dusty hands.
“What are you doing in the ceiling?” I fire back. “When you’re supposed to be on a plane to New York?”
She doesn’t answer.
Probably because she’s wincing too hard while she rubs her eyes.
I disentangle myself from her for the second time in under eight hours, grab her by the arms, and jerk her to her feet. “Are you hurt?” I bark.
Jesus.
She could’ve broken something. Or gotten lost in there and eaten by rats. Or fallen when no one was around. And she’s probably in danger of losing her eyeballs to an infection if she doesn’t get them rinsed out.
Fast.
“Are you hurt?” I repeat, and when she doesn’t answer quickly enough while she tries to rub at her eyes, I scoop her up, toss her over my shoulder, and race us to the showers.
Water.
She needs water to rinse out her eyes.
“Let—me—urff—down,” she pants.
I spin a handle on the wall and shove her under the spray. “Rinse your eyes,” I order.
She yelps and fights, but I hold her there.
My pulse is pounding. If this doesn’t work, I have to take her to the hospital.
Fuck. Fuck.
Not the hospital.
I’m gonna throw up my coffee.
Why don’t we have eyewash stations around the stadium? People could get beer or peanut dust in their eyes at any given time. Or get dive-bombed by bird poop. Look up at exactly the wrong time, and splat. And then they’d have to wear a pirate eye patch the rest of their lives because of a bird poop infection that could’ve been avoided if we had eye rinse stations around the park.
I’ve seen a man have to wear a pirate eye patch before.
Don’t tell me it couldn’t happen.
“What are you doing?” she sputters.
“Saving your fucking eyeballs,” I snarl back while my pulse goes past I’m running a marathon and into complete and total panic mode. “Quit rubbing before you scratch your cornea and get an infection.”
She blinks up at me, and I tilt her head so the water will run into her eyes.
She won’t lose her eyes.
She won’t get an infection.
It won’t spread to her brain.
She won’t die.
Not on my watch. Not if I can wash her eyes out.
She won’t die.
She won’t die.
She coughs and sputters and takes a swing. “Back off.”
“Rinse your fucking eyeballs.” My own eyeballs are wet. My clothes are soaked, my voice is hoarse, there’s a boulder of fear and regret cutting off my air supply, and she’s trying to stop me from saving her life.
“I will if you back off.”
My toes are numb. My toes are numb, and there’s a dull throb forming at the base of my skull that might be an aneurysm waiting to burst, and if it is, who’s going to raise my kids?
Who’s going to fucking raise my kids?
“Fine,” I roar. “Lose your fucking eyeballs.”
I spin and head through the clubhouse to the dugout.
Need fresh air.
Need so much fresh air.
I burst out onto the field with my lungs heaving and my stomach roiling.
Logically, I know I’m overreacting, even as the thought hits me that the water in the showers probably has specks of calcium and lime and thousands of other minerals that shouldn’t go in human eyes either.
“Mr. Wilson? Mr. Wilson, sir, you okay?”
“Towels,” I grunt. “Get Lila a towel.”
“Mr.—”
“Go.”
I refuse to toss my cookies on this field. Instead, I gulp in air, so fucking grateful that my kids are safe with my mom and don’t have to see this. Black dots dance at the edges of my vision and my fingertips are tingling now too.
I slump to the ground, my back to the wall separating the field from the stands, and shove my head between my knees.