Page 131 of Home Field Advantage
“Yes, bug?”
“Are we even going to still be here for the first game of the season?”
I turn around in the driver’s seat to face her, sitting in the back. “What do you mean?”
She sighs. “I’ve just been practicing really, really hard with the other kids. What if I’m not here to be on the team when the season starts? Will the team be short a player? It’s been so much fun playing baseball, and I want to keep playing. I want to win a game with my friends.”
I sit there in silence, staring at my daughter.
I’ve been so focused on the next step after leaving here and the future plans that I haven’t even thought about what she’dlike to do. She’s different from the day we arrived. Or maybe she’s not, and I just realized it because she’s living with me now. Either way, she’s grown here. She’s made a whole new group of friends, which was inevitable because she’s outgoing and friendly.
But it’s more than that.
There’s a sense of belonging in this small town. It’s hard not to get sucked into the charm of it all and see yourself living here for good. I don’t even know how that would work with April’s job and my career being back in San Francisco.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “Daddy still has a big decision to make next month. I have a meeting with Mr. Harris at the stadium while you’re at your mom’s.”
She deflates, looking down at her hands.
I see the pain written all over her face over the fact that we might be going back. She wants to cry, but she’s holding it together before we step out of the car and head to one of our weekly nights at the barnyard. We spend two nights a week here. Whether it’s practice with the kids or hanging out with Griffin, Tucker, and everyone, messing around for a game of baseball.
She looks forward to these nights more than I anticipated.
“Let’s have some fun tonight,” I tell her, reaching back to give her hand a reassuring squeeze. “We can take this all one step at a time without making any quick decisions, and then see what happens.”
She looks up at me, smiling, before she unclips her seatbelt to get out of the Tahoe.
As I’m about to get out myself, my own words stop me in my tracks.
I used to move fast, running on adrenaline and impulse. I was the guy who said yes before the question was even finished, and walked out a door before it was fully open. That guy? He wouldn’t even recognize this new version of me.
Bluestone Lakes has not only changed my daughter, but itchipped away the parts I didn’t realize were holding me back. Slowly, in a way that rust creeps onto surfaces, I make less rash decisions now, and I think things through.
It’s not like I went and became someone else.
I’m still me, just less chaotic.
And I think I like this guy better.
Smiling to myself, I exit my Tahoe. Hand in hand with my little girl, we walk to the barnyard where everyone waits for us. Tucker is the first to rush over to us, reaching for Sage first as he lifts her in his arms and jogs to meet up with everyone at the field.
Lily and Blair stand off to the side, laughing and drinking, while Griffin runs a hand down the side of the dugout he helped me build, as if he’s assessing the work we put in together to bring this field a new life. Nan is on second base, with a glove open, while Sage giggles, running from first base to second, while Tucker follows her.
How in the world could I ever leave this?
How can I go back to the life I had, when everything I could ask for is right in front of me? A found family that my daughter and I are now a part of.
“So this is what happens on game night, huh?”
The voice behind me forces me to turn around, my body instantly on high alert that Poppy is now here. My eyebrows narrow in confusion, but quickly shift to something I can’t quite explain.
Because she’s here.
Poppy is here for the first time with everyone else.
I’m stunned speechless.
“Poppy?” Griffin says, now standing beside me. “What are you doing here?”
