Page 20 of Curveball

I nodded. "You can have Goldfish as long as you eat some apples too."

"K, Mommy." She turned her attention back to her dolls as I made my way to the kitchen to cut up some apples.

My house was a quaint, two-story craftsman, painted a deep navy trimmed in crisp white, and adorned with pale limestone. With a cozy front porch and tucked into a quiet cul-de-sac, the house was perfect for Hadley and me. After the divorce, Hadley and I stayed with my parents until Wildflower Interiors took off and was able to afford me the luxury of buying my own home. My kitchen sat off to the left of the living room, and though the space wasn’t entirely open-concept, I could see enough of the living room to keep an eye on Hadley. The kitchen wasn't very big, but the previous owners had renovated all of the finishes, choosing soft grays, whites, and natural wood.

As I stood at the counter slicing apples for Hadley, my thoughts drifted back to Walker. They seemed to go there more often than I cared to admit lately. Every time I saw him—whether it was in person or on the television, standing tall on the pitcher’s mound—it felt like my lungs seized. My heart tightened as if someone had wrapped a vice grip around it, squeezing until it hurt to breathe. A deep ache crept through me, settling low and heavy, and I found myself frozen in place, powerless against it.

It took real effort to remind myself that I didn’t know that man anymore.

He wasn’t mine.

I had made sure of that when I married Jake.

Walker was one of the best pitchers in the league now, wildly successful, and I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if I could have been the one thing that held him back. If he had chosen me over baseball all those years ago, I might have stood directly in the way of everything he’d built.

How fucked up would that have been?

And now here I was. Divorced. A single mom to a two-year-old. My ex-husband had moved on quickly and was getting remarried. Jake was happier than I’d ever seen him, his firm thriving. Walker and Jake were two completely different men, but they shared one uncomfortable similarity—when I’d pulled away, neither of them had fought to pull me back. They’d both accepted the distance and kept moving forward.

And both had become more successful once I was gone.

I tried not to dwell on that part. I told myself it was a coincidence, even if it didn’t feel like one.

I seemed to be the common denominator.

As Taylor Swift so eloquently put it—It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.

Yes, I had built a successful interior design firm from the ground up. Yes, I had an incredible daughter who was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I just wished that I had someone to share it all with. If I hadn’t been so stubborn, so insecure, maybe I could have had everything with Walker. He always supported my dream of starting my own interior design business, while Jake had wanted a very different life for me—one that felt smaller, quieter, boxed in.

The what-ifs with Walker, nearly a decade later, still kept me up at night.

And that guilt always followed close behind, because if Walker and I had stayed together, Hadley wouldn’t exist.

I reached across my chest and squeezed the familiar knot in my shoulder, letting out a slow, defeated breath.

Hadley bounced into the kitchen, pulling me from my spiral. “Mommy, where snack?”

I chuckled softly. “Sorry, sweet girl. Mommy got distracted.”

I placed the apple slices into a small bowl and added some Goldfish to another before carrying them back into the living room. I sat down on the floor beside her and her dolls. When I tried to sneak a Goldfish, Hadley quickly slid the bowl out of my reach, fixing me with a stern look.

“Ask nice,” she demanded. Ask came out more like ass, but I didn’t correct her. Hadley hated being corrected. She was very much her mother’s daughter.

I held up my hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. Can I please have a Goldfish, Hady-girl?”

Satisfied, she nudged the bowl toward me. “You have one, Mommy,” she said, emphasizing the word ‘one.’

I laughed as I popped it into my mouth. Tough crowd.

“Are you excited to be the flower girl at Daddy’s wedding?” Lily had asked Hadley to be their flower girl the week before, complete with a tiny flower crown, a sweet card, and candy. As much as I wanted to wallow in self-pity, I knew I was lucky that Jake had found someone like Lily. She loved Hadley as if she were her own, and I trusted her completely.

Hadley nodded without looking up from her dolls. “Yes. I got crown.”

“I saw it,” I said softly. “It’s beautiful. You’re going to look like a princess.”

She turned toward me and handed me a doll and a small hairbrush. I began brushing its hair as instructed.

“Mommy get married?” she asked, tilting her head. Married came out more like may-weed.