“We’re fine. Just debating the next game. Sorry,” Roddy says, tugging my sleeve again and pulling me out of the room and onto the sidewalk outside. College kids are scurrying in all directions, and it feels odd to be in a place like this now that I’m a pro. It also feels strange to be lectured by a forty-year-old man who is six inches shorter than me.
“For the love of God, Hunter. Why did we all spend our day off taking your punishment? You know Coach put this together to call you on the lie. This isn’t a thing they do. Ever.”
My eyes freeze open and my stomach tightens.
“It’s not?”
Roddy’s chest rumbles with frustrating laughter, and he takes a few steps back as he shakes his head.
“You’re like this naïve little kid, I swear. No, Hunter. This was put together to make you feel uncomfortable. And yeah, the other young guys probably think it’s normal and that it was the team looking out for them. But the rest of us? We know better. This is what they do when they want to make a point. And that point is, you don’t bail on the team unless you have a damn good, unselfish reason. So, one last time, Hunter. What was yours?”
I hold his hot stare for a few quiet seconds, until my mouth waters the way it does before I throw up. I think I’m afraid he’s going to punch me. I lift a shoulder and bunch my guilty lips, and give it to him straight.
“Renleigh.”
“Well, no shit,” he fires back. “But what about Renleigh? What did you do?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes shut.
“Man, I don’t even know how it all happened, but basically, there this girl I hooked up with in college, and she showed up, and somehow got in my room, and Ren was there, and then?—”
Roddy’s heavy laughter cuts me off.
“It’s not funny,” I protest.
He holds up a palm and bends in half, laughing even harder. His cheeks are actually turning red.
“Come on, Roddy. It’s not funny.” I rock back on my heels and tilt my head, giving him the hard stare this time.
“Oh, it’s funny. But also, it was bound to happen. Hunter, you’re going to need to learn a thing or two about beingthe guy.” He straightens his spine, then slings an arm over my shoulder, urging me to walk along with him back to the parking lot “Come on. You’re buying my beers.”
“I can’t,” I utter, my shoulders low and ego deflated. “I told Renleigh I’d be over to watch the Texas game with her and her dad.”
“Good. We’ll sneak Dale a beer too. You could probably use the tutelage of a couple of wise, older men.”
I give in and let Roddy lead me to our trucks, then hop in with him to go to the grocery store about a mile away from the Blackwood house. By the time we leave with a fruit platter to make Renleigh happy that we’re following her dad’s diet, along with the twelve-pack of Sam Adams meant to counteract the health effects, I feel as if mastering my pitching technique was nothing compared to the minefield that lies ahead.
Sloane was a friend, or at least a genuine person from my past. The next woman to show up in my room, especially when I get called up, might be a complete stranger. And while sixteen-year-old Hunter would have rubbed his hands together excitedly at the prospect, twenty-three-year-old me is bloody terrified.
“You really had a woman fake a pregnancy to get you to marry her?” I respond to Roddy’s latest story as he pulls up in front of the Blackwood home.
“Sure did. And when I tell you that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my crazy-ass journey . . .” He settles into asad sort of laugh, flopping his hands over the top of his steering wheel as his focus drifts to something far away, beyond the Blackwood home, I think.
“Maybe one day you’ll fill me in on the rest.”
It takes him a few seconds to answer.
“Probably not, kid. Probably not. Let’s go eat.” He ends the view into his life there, effectively cutting my questions off with a swift exit from his truck and a slammed door.
I snag the beer and fruit, then follow along behind him to the screen door propped open with a faded wooden porch chair.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in!” Roddy puts on his thick Oklahoma accent as he stretches an arm out and hugs a woman who is almost the spitting image of Renleigh, only twenty years older. It’s clear this is Renleigh’s mother.
“Roddy, I heard you were back in Sweetwater. Good to see you.” Her mother’s gaze stops on me as she hugs him.
“I hope you’re planning on hiding that beer from the man parked in front of the big screen,” she says.
“Did I hear beer?” Dale chimes in.
