Page 78 of Vegas Heat

I follow him up a short ramp, and we’re in the dugout. I stare down at the bench before I turn around and look up, and when I finally do, my breath is stolen once again.

The stadium is before me. It’s empty, but I can already hear the volume of the crowd gathered to root for the home team rushing between my ears.

I look out at the seats that’ll hold over forty thousand fans at one time, and my eyes shift around the place to the scoreboard that I’ll look up at thousands of times in the future.

Finally, my eyes skim the green grass over to the dirt. I focus on the place where third will be once the field is ready…the place that will be my true home away from home.

A feeling of restlessness runs through my legs, and I fucking take off. I run out onto the field with my arms spread wide open, sucking in gulps of fresh air since the retractable roof is open. I run all the way to the outfield before I realize I never asked if it was okay for me to step on the grass, but I don’t care.

This is where I need to be.

This is where I’mmeantto be.

It’s where I feel most myself. It’s where I feel closest to my father. It’s where I feel like I’m home and accepted no matter what else is going on in my life.

I sink down into the grass, and then I lie on my back and stare up at the sky. It’s cloudless, the norm for Vegas, and I pant as I try to catch my breath.

“Good form, kid,” Troy says over me a few beats later.

“Kid? I’m only eight years younger than you.” I chuckle, and then I sit up and draw in a deep breath.

“Everything okay with you?” he asks. He sinks down beside me, and this right here…this is what’s going to make him an incredible manager. Connecting one-on-one with a player. Mental check-ins. All of it.

I huff out something resembling a laugh, though it’s not very funny. “I’m all right.” I stare ahead at third base. I’llbeall right, anyway. Eventually.

This all feels so goddamn dramatic for something that barely got off the ground, and all that does is tell me how very much she came to mean to me.

“What’s going on?”

I clear my throat. “The girl I told you about…it’s over with her.”

“The one you talked about just yesterday when you said fate caused you to crash into each other?” he asks.

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Want to talk about what happened?”

She’s your daughter, Troy.“Nah. It’s complicated.”

He sputters a short laugh. “Aren’t they all?”

“Is Joanie…” I trail off, not sure how to finish the question, and he nods so I don’t have to.

“Yeah,” he says. “Nobody here knows, so if you could keep that quiet, I’d appreciate it.”

I hold out a fist for him to bump as a signal of my silence.

“Look, Coop. I need you at your best, and I felt like I had that for a night when you pulled in, but something’s different today.”

“A lot is different today.” I draw my knees up and wrap my arms around them. “I guess I just realized where my focus needs to be.”

“Can it be here if you’re thinking about her?” he asks.

“Isn’t it better to end it now, six months before we take this field, than to hold out for the inevitable anyway?” I shoot back.

“You do realize what you’re doing, don’t you?” His eyes are on my profile.

“What am I doing?” I ask, keeping my gaze ahead on the dugout.

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