“Bye, Mav.” Tilly choked and then ran from the house. She left the door hanging open, unable to take even the spare second to close it behind her, and ran across the street to her own home. Maverik called after her. She ignored him. Let Brayden tell his dad what he’d done. She closed the door and collapsed against it, sobbing her whole heart out. She slid down the wood, lading roughly on the cold tile floor.
She prayed for shock, for numbness so she didn’t have to feel the heavy loss that pulled her into the depths of misery. She’d thought that nothing could be worse than seeing Brayden unconscious at the bottom of a cliff.
She’d been wrong.
Chapter Nine
Tilly
Tilly waved her arm out to the side. “This is a statue of Jake Richmond, the man who dreamed of bringing an MLB team to St. George.”
Some of the third graders craned their necks to get a look at the bronze likeness. Most of them were bored. Tilly sighed. She just couldn’t muster up the energy to be enthusiastic for them. Kids caught on to a mood like they caught colds, and her chest was an empty shell. The heart that once beat so strongly inside had fallen quiet. Sure, it still pumped blood, but the life had gone out of it when Brayden broke up with her.
He was in the stadium today. So far she’d been able to avoid him, but her whole body was aware that he was around. Her skin prickled the minute he set foot in the building. How did she know that was the cause? The same way she knew Redrocks dogs tasted better with grilled onions—she just knew.
The last couple of days had passed in a blur of tissues and toenail polish, brownies and braids, as Clover tried to make her feel better. She’d even brought over her roommate, Maddie, and a chick flick that made Tilly cry because she’d had that kind of love with Brayden and lost it. Maddie and Clover sat with her on the couch, linking arms and telling her how much Brayden loved her. Which didn’t help. But they were convinced he was experiencing some sort of head trauma from the fall and once his brain healed, he’d come running back.
Tilly didn’t argue, but she’d seen the brain scans. He was fine. Which made what he did to her hurt all the more. None of the pains from smacking into a solid wall of rock compared to what she felt from the breakup.
The third-grade group became restless. One kid tried to climb on Jake Richmond’s shoes. She was losing them. What she wouldn’t give for a climbing harness and a rope right about now.
“Let’s take you out to the seats behind home plate. I think there might be a few players warming up for the game tonight.” There were. Houston was in town. The visiting team always got the early practice time on the field.
Once they reached the top of the steps, the kids ran ahead of her, the teachers calling after them to slow down. This wasn’t Tilly’s finest hour as a tour guide, but she was making it through.
Once they got to the bottom of the steps, the kids started calling to the players, asking for autographs. She swore under her breath and hurried down. “Hey. Hey now.” She put her finger over her lips. “I know it looks like these guys are playing a game, but they’re working. We can’t interrupt them while they work.”
A little blonde girl pouted out her bottom lip. “I wish this was my dad’s job.”
“You and me both,” called a mom from the back of the group, who had the same shade of blonde hair mixed with expert highlights. The other mothers twittered.
She held back her sarcastic remark about dating baseball players not being all it was cracked up to be, especially when they were stupid and selfish.
Tilly motioned for the kids to take seats and asked them trivia questions about baseball. Nothing hard. They were more like “How many strikes until you’re out?” and things like that. The kids bounced out of their seats to supply the answers.
After she’d exhausted her question bank, she told them it was time to head back to the bus to go to the park where they would eat lunch. They cheered and took off at a run.
“Sorry,” said the blonde mom. “They’re crazy full of energy today.”
Tilly nodded. “I wish I could bottle it and sell it.”
“Right! You could make a fortune.” She giggled and then trotted off to catch up to her daughter and her friends.
Tilly waved as the bus pulled away, five kids’ hands out the windows waving back. Once they were out of the parking lot, she slumped and headed inside, where the air conditioning slapped her in the face. She needed to check the bleachers for any left-behind gum wrappers or garbage. Anytime the kids stopped moving, there was a mess left behind, and she’d be in trouble if the primo seats weren’t ready for the game that night.
She decided to go down from the top of the stairs rather than go through the locker room and up from the field, because Brayden might be in the locker room, but he most definitely wouldn’t be in the seats or on the stairs.
TheWHACKof a ball smacking leather had her heart hammering like a runner caught in a pickle. That sound was so firmly connected to Brayden that it took her several seconds to realize he wasn’t the one on the mound. It was the new guy, Gunner Pinch. The Houston players had cleared the field, and the Redrocks trickled in.
She watched Gunner throw another ball—hurtle was a better word. He lacked Brayden’s finesse. She scanned the field, making sure Brayden wasn’t in sight, before slowly making her way down the stairs. She could feel him near but didn’t have a compass to point him out. He’d be one of the few guys not in warm-up gear.
Her well-worn Converse didn’t make a sound on the steps. Which was just as well. What she’d told the kids was true: these guys were at work. She’d be happy to chat with Dustin or Juan. Juan’s perma-smile would be welcome. He’d give her a hard time about something silly or tell a story that took too much time, and she could forget for a minute that she wasn’t part of the inner circle without Brayden. But she couldn’t distract the guys from their pregame routine.
She walked up and down each aisle the kids had occupied, scoring a Rice Krispie treat wrapper and a pencil. Just as she was finishing up, she heard Coach Wolfe call, “Brayden.”
“Yeah.” Brayden’s hand went up, right in front of her.
She panicked and ducked behind the waist-high concrete barrier that separated the stands from the field, pressing her back against the cold. She tipped her head up, seeing only the safety net and the sky. Her heart beat so loud she was sure Brayden could hear it. She covered her mouth with her hands to muffle her breathing. She couldn’t face him. She couldn’t.
