“I’ll sleep here.” Even if my bed probably has two months’ worth of dust on it. It’s fine. I can sleep on the couch. Hell, I can sleep on the floor.
I get dressed—shirt, pants, whatever—as they pull on their clothes. Savannah goes to the bathroom for a few minutes and comes back with water dampening her hair. My hands twitch to brush it from her forehead. I keep them at my side.
She comes over to where I’m standing by the door, kisses my cheek and whispers agoodbye. My hand cups her back, briefly, the kind of touch I’ve wanted to do for months. As if she could be mine the way I’m already hers. “I’ll talk to him,” she says.
“He’s…” I shake my head. “He’s right.”
Her forehead wrinkles, as if this was a puzzle we can solve if we just keep trying different options. “I wish it wasn’t like this,” she says finally.
But it is.I’ve been told all my life that, even though I was good at baseball, I was probably the wrong fit. I didn’t let it hurt. I just made myself better until no one could deny me. Except I’m the one denying myself now. “It’s fine.” Even if she can tell it’s not.
She presses another kiss to my cheek, then slips out my front door.
Brayden comes over. He’s hastily dressed, disheveled in a way I shouldn’t find charming. He reaches out a hand toward me, and I smack his palm away. “Go to hell,” I say.
“Yeah.” He casts a look down at his shoes that are only loosely tied like he can’t wait to get out of here. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
And he leaves before I can say something back, something likeI’m sorry too.
Chapter Forty-Two
Brayden
The next day.An afternoon game. “That big ol’ thing in the sky is the sun, boys,” Coach says as he sends us out on the field. “Don’t let it fool you. It’s as much your enemy as the other team.”
I tip my sunglasses down over my nose, jog out to right field, alone in a sea of grass. Adler sets up in center a hundred or so feet away. I won’t watch him. Not the hang of his uniform on his shoulders or the cling of his pants or the way he spends time between plays waving to people in the stands who shout highlights from his time playing for Chicago’s other team. It’s easy to love someone who leaves.
I shouldn’t be looking at him. Thinking about him. Last night was just a temporary lapse in judgment. What Blake called it when he’d bailed me out of a Georgia county jail at three in the morning. This was clearly just another instance of that. It didn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean anything.
I can’t let it mean anything. I just need to get back to myself. Who I am. Who I’m supposed to be, anyway.
So I don’t look toward Adler. Or not more than is strictly necessary. Except my eyes keep drifting to him like I can’tfocus anywhere else, as if I’ve been suddenly magnetized. I’m in sunglasses, my face shaded by the brim of my cap.Who could even tell?I can and that’s bad enough.
Sometime during the third inning, the afternoon goes from sunny to hot. In between plays, I pull off my hat and fan myself with it. Think about cool ice water on my skin, a cascade of them, a drop of sweat rolling down Adler’s chest?—
No. Stop.
I shake my head to get rid of the image.Distraction leads to defeat.One of the many things Brad liked to say. I won’t let myself be distracted, I won’t.
And I’m so focused on that I almost don’t hear the sound of the ball coming off the bat—not hard enough to be a home run. A fly ball careening back toward the outfield wall. I race toward it as Adler does the same, yelling, “I got it, I got it.”Not again.
He doesn’t wait for me to respond—just runs back, dives, body momentarily aloft before he crashes into the outfield wall.What a showboat, turning a routine play into something that’ll be on every highlight reel. I’m about to yell just that when he ricochets off the wall onto the dirt warning track ringing the field, then collapses in a heap. He’s…not moving.
Fuck.
I run toward him. Did he hit his head? Twist something? My brain floods with a hundred possibilities, each worse than the one before it.
I arrive, kneel on the dirt. His eyes are shut; his breath is coming shallow. “Adler—” I start, then remember the flash of hatred in his eyes when I’ve called him that before. “Asher, wake up.”
The words come out softer than I’d like. I run my hand on his chest feeling for the reassuring beat of his heart.
Asher’s face does something. For a moment, I worry he’s having some kind of seizure but then I realize he’ssmiling.
His eyes blink open. “Hey.” He pushes himself up, or tries to, when I splay my palm on his chest.
“Wait for the trainer to clear you,” I tell him.
“Careful,” he says, “someone’ll think you don’t want me dead.” But he lowers himself back down.
