Logan has the higher ceiling. His knuckleball is genuinely dangerous when it’s on—the kind of stuff that makes scouts go quiet and start doing math. But right now it’s not always on, and I am. And that gap is the thing we’re both pretending not to see.
So I throw ninety-eight. I even throw the occasional hundred. Good enough to get noticed and not so good that I have to think too hard about what getting noticed actually leads to.
We part in the hallway—Logan heading toward the weight room, me pushing through the door toward the players’ lot. The February air hits cold and clean, the sky streaked in the deep purples and bright oranges that means the setting sun hasn’t fully surrendered yet. Stadium lights hum to life overhead.
I spot her before she spots me, and it’s a moment that belongs in a movie: her looking gorgeous with the final rays of sunset making her pale blonde hair look like it’s been dipped in honey and hot sauce—all soft glow and sharp edges at once.
And I’m the idiot who can’t look away.
The idiot who glanced at her texts, saw “Scottie’s Boyfriend” show up on her screen, and watched her drop the phone back into her pocket like it was spam.
I’m the idiot who thinks that means something.
Like maybe they’re on the rocks.
Maybe she doesn’t care about him.
Maybe I have a chance.
And it’s that stupid, undying hope that makes me smile when I see her. “Fancy meeting you here,” I say.
She only slows for a second. Just long enough to register me. “Oh, hey. You’re out early, huh?”
“I could say the same thing about you.”
She opens her mouth like she’s about to answer, but then she pauses, her eyes close, and she sneezes.
“Bless you,” I say.
“Thanks,” she says, rubbing the tip of her nose with a sniff.
“So what are you doing leaving so early? I didn’t know you were allowed out before midnight.”
“Well, I tried to go to my office to sneak in some work, and Kayla saw me and sort of … yelled.” She rolls her shoulders, like she’s physically shaking it off. “Apparently she thinks I lack ‘work-life balance,’ and she didn’t think me calling her a hypocrite was appropriate, because, ‘she got here at noon and needs something to take her mind off the fact that her husband’s out of town with gorgeous women asking him to sign their chests while her stomach keeps getting bigger’—it was a little much, honestly. I think she has some misplaced rage right now.”
My eyes widen. “Whoa. Sounds like it.”
Neither of us is walking to our cars.
“So, you got any big plans for the night?” I ask.
“I’m training Pinto to fetch.”
“Cat tricks? Tone it down there, Party Animal.”
“That’s not all. I’m also planning to read. All night.”
I slowly let my head droop and then snap it back up. “What was that? Sorry, I must have dozed off, because that sounds so boring.”
“Shut up,” she says, laughing, and the sound almost steals my breath.
Scottie almost never laughs. She snorts. She smirks. She breathes in slowly or exhales quickly.
But she doesn’t laugh, especially like this, and now I’m glad I’ve never really heard it, because her laugh is torture. The kind that drops men to their knees and makes them beg.
With the dying sunlight and an unselfconscious smile on her face, Scottie Quinn has never been more beautiful.
And I’ve never been more smitten.
