There’s a particular quality of anger I don’t often feel. The cold kind rather than the hot kind. The kind that doesn’t push or shout but settles in and calculates. It’s the same quality I bring to a batter I’ve already decided to strike out.
It’s not fury, but certainty.
This ends on my terms.
I don’t respond to the number. Reactive moves are bad moves, and I learned that lesson young enough to have it embedded. I put the phone down and plan. I think through what I know, what Lena knows, what she’s likely to do with it, and what I’m going to say to Ava tomorrow.
Because Ava needs to know about the image before she sees it somewhere else.
And she needs to hear from me, in person, not over a screen, that I’m not running scared, not walking back anything, and not letting Lena Hart dictate how this story ends.
There’s a voicemail from management’s office when I wake up, left at seven fifteen, which means someone was at their desk early enough to be worried.
The gist—the posts have their attention. The extension timeline remains on track. They have full confidence in me as the cornerstone of their pitching staff.
And then, almost as an afterthought, ‘We’d appreciate a low profile over the next few weeks, Reece. Just until this settles.’
I listen to it twice, standing in my kitchen in the early light with my coffee going cold on the counter.
Then I delete it.
Not because I’m ignoring management, I’m not stupid, but because the advice is noted and already bumping up against what I know with equal certainty—a low profile doesn’t fix this. The photo exists. Lena is circling. The only thing sitting quietly buys me is more time for someone else to shape the story.
I’m a pitcher. I don’t wait for the batter to set the pace.
Tonight, I’m going to see Ava, and we are going to talk about all of it. The photo, the contract, Lena, and the three months management wants clean. We’re going to talk in the same room, with her face in front of me and not behind a screen, and I’m going to make the case I’ve been building since approximately the second she rolled her eyes at fifty thousand people chanting my name.
She’s worth the complication.
I’m worth the risk.
And Lena Hart is about to find out what happens when I decide to stop playing defense.
I drain the cold coffee, grab my keys, and head for practice.
Chapter Thirteen
Reece
Practice starts at nine. I’m there at seven thirty, which is becoming a habit and not the healthy kind. The stadium is quiet at this hour. There are no grounds crew dragging the infield, and only one of the bullpen coaches running sprints in the outfield, and the near-empty arena echoes that turns every footstep into an announcement. I like it best like this. Before the crowd, before the noise, before fifty thousand people decide they have opinions about what I do with my arm.
I find the mound and stand on it for a minute doing nothing, which is something my pitching coach calls centering and the rest of the team calls Reece being weird. Both are accurate. The clay is firm underfoot, the morning air carrying the faint smell of cut grass and fresh dirt, and I breathe it in and let the night’s accumulated nonsense settle.
Lena’s photo.
Derek’s ninety-second call.
Management’s voicemail, already deleted, but still audible in my head.
Ava’s single word, ‘tomorrow,’ and everything compressed inside it.
I roll my shoulder, find the seam on the ball in my hand, and start throwing.
By nine, the full squad is in, and the coaching staff is running drills with the focused intensity Bishop demands in the second month of the season, when early form becomes habit and habits become outcomes. I’m paired with Mack for the first rotation, and he crouches behind the plate with the easy familiarity of several hundred sessions between us, calling signs I could read in my sleep.
I throw well. This is not a surprise. I throw well under pressure, scrutiny, and conditions that would make most people tighten up and lose their mechanics. It’s the one thing I’ve always been able to rely on. When everything else is chaos, the mound is clarity.
What’s different today is the extra weight behind each pitch. I’m not angry. Not distracted in the way the management’s voicemail implied I might be. I’m something more productive than either of those things. I’m decided.
