Page 55 of Wild Pitch
That’s baseball speak for he ran like the wind to second base in the fifth inning and has been hurting since. I didn’t see him limp to the dugout after that, so hopefully that means it’s nothing major. And I remember the play because it was quite spectacular, it got the crowd going.
“Try to flex your knee for me and tell me how it feels.”
He winces a little but his leg moves pretty fluidly. It’s good news but only leaves me with a basic course of action for now.
“All right, I’m going to go get an ice pack. Can you prop your leg up against that wall while I get it?”
“Okay.” He sighs like this is the end of the world.
I pull myself back to stand and sort through a floor plan covered in men doing various stretching exercises, and trainers watching out precisely for things like this. Even as I walk with a clear objective in mind, I make sure that whoever I’m leaving behind is doing his stretching correctly. You’d think that men who have anywhere between ten and twenty years doing this seriously would know better, but you’d also be wrong.
Right as I’m about to walk into the training staff room, I get stopped by a hand around my wrist. I don’t even have to wonder who it is anymore.
“Starr.” I turn to glance over my shoulder.
The man himself holds my arm prisoner in his grip, and my eyes catch on the protruding veins traveling up his perfect arm. Perfect because he’s not a dramatically bulky guy, but has the definition and volume every gym rat dreams of.
I guess it’s not just his arm. He’s in a short-sleeved compression shirt in Wild pruple that outlines every nook and cranny of his muscle fibers. I jerk my eyes up to his face, flushed from exercise, damp hair curled over his forehead, droplets of sweat tricking down his nose and chin.
“Garcia,” he says in greeting. “Can you wait for me in the parking lot after we’re done here? We need to talk about something.”
My pulse goes from one hundred to a thousand.
It’s never a casual topic when people saywe need to talk, yet can’t say whatever it is outright. But for the life of me, I can’t think of anything bad that the cowboy might have to say, other than a variation of: you’re too pathetic to consider dating anyone, so I’m quitting as your coach.
And I desperately need that to not be the case. I don’t want to keep feeling like a failure forever.
Swallowing hard twice, I manage to say, “Sure. Not a problem. See you there. At my car. Or I mean, at the parking lot.”
He seems to not find my twisted tongue any weird because he nods, drops my hand, and turns back to his spot to keep stretching his shoulders with a medicine ball. I watch him for a second, the muscles in his back working through the motions and rippling and tensing beneath the fabric. I shake my head hard at myself and continue into the staff room.
There, I collapse against a wall.
What the heck was that? His aren’t the only pretty muscles in this building. I slap my cheeks hard enough to center myself back in reality.
After picking up the correct ice pack and my iPad, I return to the floor to take care of the hamstring situation. After fitting the young guy with the ice pack—and fortunately not getting farted in my face—I step aside to log this incidence in his file so we can monitor him. Steve will hold a team debrief while the players hit the shower, and then I’ll be able to…
Go and wait for Cade Starr in the parking lot.
I keep my eyes fixed everywhere but on him, yet the thought of The Talk—whatever it may be—keeps my heart rate at one thousand. Or okay, I exaggerate, at nine hundred.
Once I’m finished for the day, I trod out of the building along with my coworkers and get in my Jeep to wait. My leg bounces as I watch Steve drive off through the rearview mirror, and then other staff one by one. This all happens in the span of maybe one minute, and yet none of the players are walking out yet. Maybe they’re also getting a debrief from Beau and the coaching staff.
I open my door and climb out, pacing back and forth just to let off some steam. I’m on lap fourteen across the sidewalk whensome of the players start appearing. Freaking Starr is not among them.
Did he forget? Should I text him? No, he has a right to be as slow as he wants. He could be legitimately busy, like if Beau has held him back to talk about tomorrow’s game against Logan Kim’s brother. What do I know.
“Finally,” I mutter when his pretty head pops out of the building followed by the rest of him, this time clad in jeans and a sweatshirt that don’t openly show all his guns. I sigh in relief—except it shouldn’t matter. But it does. I am legitimately glad that I can’t distinguish his body.
While I have that existential crisis, he waves Rivera off and veers toward me. He checks his phone for a moment but after pocketing it, his freaky blue eyes find mine and pin me in place. I don’t have to check my Apple watch to know that my heart rate is skyrocketing the more he approaches.
When he’s maybe ten paces from me, he opens his mouth and I cut right in.
“What? What is it? My anxiety is killing me!”
Starr halts, his eyebrows rising. “You have anxiety?”
“Not until you said the wordswe need to talk. Do you understand how stressful that phrase is?”
