Page 71 of Double Play

Cheetah grins widely. “Yep. We were discussing one of the best romance novels I’ve ever read. This hot chick with pink nipples rides her boyfriend like a rodeo star…and then does his roommate too. So hot. It was playing in my head all night.”

I narrow my eyes at him. I see Layton’s jaw ticking out of the corner of my eye.

Quincy looks at him with disgust. “You’re such a chick reading that unrealistic shit.”

Cheetah closes his eyes and has a dreamy look on his face. “Nope. Not unrealistic. It’s playing over and over in my head.Ooh. She just scraped her nails down his chest, leaving marks.” He rubs his bare chest. “I wish she was doing that to me.”

My eyes shoot to Layton who is covered in my scratch marks. He somehow manages to subtly put on a T-shirt while Quincy is still looking in my direction.

I better get out of here. I stand. “I should get going. We have to be on the bus in less than an hour.” I wiggle my fingers at them. “You boys have a good game.”

I run out the door and get out of dodge quickly.

I head up to my floor and peek down the hallway of our team rooms. The coast is clear. I quickly and quietly make my way into my room. Kam is in her bed, smiling at me. “Ooh, look who broke curfew. You’re a black-bottom ho this morning.”

I show her my feet. “Nope. All clear.”

“I guess you got#laidbylayton?”

I giggle. “Nope. He got#attackedbyarizona.”

Her face lights up. “Look who’s back. ArizonafuckingAbbott, ladies and gentlemen.”

I take a bow. It feels good to be…me again.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LAYTON

Aweek later, we’re lying in her bed, floating on the cloud of post-coital bliss. Her head is resting on my chest, and I’m aimlessly tracing my fingers over her back while she does the same to my chest and stomach. Even something as simple as this feels so damn good with her.

She lifts her head. “Tell me something about you as a little boy. I can’t imagine you as a kid. Did you just have a smaller body with the same giant head?”

I tickle her and she giggles. “You seem to very much enjoy my giant head.”

“I wasn’t talking aboutthathead.”

“That’s the only head you should be worried about.”

“I’m being serious. Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me about your time with your grandmother.”

“After I went to live with her, I was quiet for a long time. I barely spoke at all. I’ve learned from the years at my grandmother’s house that a lot of kids are like thatwhen they suffer some sort of trauma and then move into a strange home.”

“Like Perry?”

“Yep. At some point around eight years old, I went from quiet to angry. Angry at my parents for leaving me. Angry about having no money. We were incredibly poor, and my grandmother always had at least six or seven mouths to feed at a time. It wasn’t easy, and I certainly didn’t make it any easier.”

“How did she get into running a home for kids in need?”

“She couldn’t have kids of her own. Her jerk of an ex-husband left her for someone who could. My father was actually her nephew, but she raised him, and he called herMom. I think she found her calling when he came to live with her, and she began to open her home to more and more kids. She was a teacher, so caring for children was second nature to her. I don’t know how much I truly appreciated everything she did until she was gone. I wish I had been more helpful.”

She kisses my chest. “You were a child. Children don’t have perspective. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re more than making up for it now. How did you go from an angry kid to a baseball prodigy?”

I smile at the memory. “It’s such a weird story. I was at a nearby lake one day. My form of both entertainment and anger management was throwing stones into the lake. There was a man in a canoe, fishing in the middle of that lake. He must have been nearly two hundred feet away. Some random kid bet me a bag of Skittles that I couldn’t hit the guy. Like an asshole, I reared back and threw that rock as far as I could. Against all odds, I hit him square in the shoulder. He jerked in surprise and thecanoe tipped over. I freaked out and ran as fast as I could, terrified of getting into trouble. Two hours later, the man showed up at my house. I thought he was going to rat me out to my grandmother. Instead, he told me that he coached the local Little League all-star team and wanted me to come try out. He said he’d never seen a kid my age throw anything that far. He promised not to tell my grandmother about the lake if I came to the tryout. I went and discovered a talent and passion I never knew I had. Until that tryout, I hadn’t ever picked up a glove or a bat in my entire life.”

“Wow. If you missed hitting him, your whole life could be different. That’s an incredible story.”

“I know. Lloyd, my coach, is the incredible one. He gave me my first glove and my first bat. He was a father figure to me at a time when I desperately needed one. That’s a big part of why I don’t want to leave Philly. Those kids at Linda’s House need me. I try to spend a bit more time with them in the off-season. Even if only sporadically, I know how much a positive male influence can matter in their lives.”

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