Page 75 of Wild Card

She frowned. “I can’t imagine you playing baseball for a living is impossible. What do they say? The chances are low but never zero.”

“There are kids coming straight of college, young and fresh and ready to play hard. I’m twenty-eight. Making the majors is a one in a million shot.”

“Is there another league?”

I paused. “Well, sure. The minors, which has a whole bunch of levels.”

“So, why not try? What would it hurt?”

“My pride?” I really was trying to joke.

Jessa rolled her eyes. “Really, Remy. Can you really not see that you’re the only thing in your way? You’ve already given up.”

“But the odds?—”

“Are low, but never zero.”

“Fine, little miss know-it-all. What do you want?”

She didn’t like that. It made me feel better. “I don’t know. Isn’t that the difference? You know exactly what you want, therefore there’s a solution. You only need the means to do it, which in your case is the nerve. My problem is unsolvable.”

“Listen, I’ve got plenty of nerve.”

“And don’t I know it,” she said, chuckling, her eyes on her hands.

“Why not figure out what it is you want? That feels like step one, but what do I know?”

“Trust me, I’ve spent a decade trying to sort it out. More, I suppose. But it doesn’t matter anyway because I have obligations. You do not have such obligations.”

“Those obligations are made up, Jess. Nobody dies if you don’t go back to work in charity. So your mom’s pissed—sounds to me like she might be pissed by default. What, would they write you out of the will or something?”

“Well, yes.”

I blinked. “ Just for deciding you wanted to do something else?”

“As I said. Obligations. My parents have very specific expectations of me, and I’ve only ever met the bare minimum. Truly, I don’t know if anyone could be who they wanted, because it’s only a caricature, an idea. My brother’s only expectations are to work with my father and have children. I, on the other hand, have been jumping through their hoops my whole life, and it feels like the older I get, the smaller the hoops. So it doesn’t really matter if I want something else. I can’t have it, so why torture myself?”

“Pretty bleak, Duchess.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps practical.” For a moment, neither of us spoke, just kept filling up the bucket. But then she sighed and said, “I’m sorry. You brought me to this beautiful place to pick these luscious strawberries, and I made it bad.”

“You could never make anything bad.”

“Awfully forgiving today, are we?”

“When it comes to you? These days it’s every day.”

She gave me a little smile, then looked into the bucket. “Well, this is more than we could possibly eat. Shall we go?”

“Unless you wanted to walk around a little more.”

“No, thank you.” She stood, dusting off her knees. “I’ve got a hungry vacation pussy to feed.”

First I laughed, then I growled, and then I was chasing a squealing Jessa toward my truck with that pussy on my mind.

27

fuckin' truckin'

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