Page 44 of What We May Be

Chapter Twelve

Trevor yanked his hair into a knot and glared across the cab of his own fucking truck to the smug bastard in the driver’s seat. “Tell me again why protective custody requires you to drive me, in my own ride, to the motel.”

Sean shrugged. “You’re the one who offered.”

“I didn’t mean it literally. Is this payback for not calling?”

Sean slapped his shoulder. “Now he’s getting it.” Trevor batted him away, and Sean put both hands back on the steering wheel. “You had to know it’d freak Charlie out.”

It hadn’t sounded like only Charlie was freaked out earlier—sure as hell didn’t feel like it with Sean crowding him against that hallway wall—but Trevor didn’t call him on that half-truth. He rolled down the window and propped an elbow on the ledge, head in his hand. “It wasn’t intentional, and I didn’t know Julian was gonna turn up dead.” They hadn’t yet made the Four Tragedies connection when he’d left. Maybe if they had, he would have pegged Julian for the next victim, but he sure as shit wouldn’t have pegged Julian as having an affair, already, with a nineteen-year-old. He shivered, despite the hot and humid night air blasting his face. He shifted the conversation in a less unpleasant direction. “And Charlie was supposed to be in Wilmington this morning for that interview. I thought I’d be back—” Trevor cut short his explanation when Sean hung a right three streets too early. “Did you suddenly forget where the motel is?”

“Nope,” he said. “Just remembered where something else was.”

There wasn’t much else on this road at all. There was only one place Sean could be headed. Face back toward the breeze, Trevor closed his eyes and tried to woosah himself to chill, to build a wall against another barrage of memories that were sure to pummel him when they reached their destination.

A barrier between him and the too-tempting man to his left.

Together with Charlie, Sean had expertly calmed him in the hallway when he’d learned of Julian’s death. Then this evening in Charlie’s office, Trevor had woken to the sound of much-missed laughter and fallen into the easy, familiar banter that had been a hallmark of their time together. With those old feelings primed, being out here with Sean now was like throwing a lit match at gasoline. One spark and all his good intentions—to protect Charlie, to protect himself, to move on—would go up in flames. And Sean Hale was always that damn spark.

Maybe grabbing hold of anger again would be easier. Countering the good memories with the aftermath of Sean leaving—Charlie withdrawn and unreachable, their one and only attempt to be together that had ended in tears and a week of radio silence during which he feared he’d lost his best friend. It was the longest they’d ever gone without talking, and it had been the most painful week of his life. All because of the asshole pulling Trevor’s truck to a stop in the empty parking lot of the rusty, run-down batting cage that used to be “their spot.”

Well, fuck him. “This is protective custody?” Trevor sneered.

Sean was already halfway out the door. “Get out of the fucking truck, Trev,” he tossed over his shoulder. “We both need to hit something, not each other, or Charlie will kill us both.”

Despite Trevor’s souring mood, Sean’s eager eyes and unvarnished truth were enough to get Trevor moving. He followed Sean toward the small clubhouse at the front of the fenced-in structure that stood among the grove of magnolias. Bad game, bad day, this was where they’d always gone to clear their heads. Where Trevor had been going to hide out long before Sean ever came to town. “You’re lucky this place is still here.”

“Not sure I’d call it luck considering you hold the deed to the land and rent it to your uncle for a dollar a year.” They stopped outside the clubhouse, and Sean peered inside the glass door. “It’s dark.”

“It’s nine o’clock at night and only open on the weekends anymore.” Owing to his uncle’s arthritis and because most kids nowadays seemed to always have a phone in their hands. Didn’t leave much time or space for a baseball bat.

“You got a key, or do I need to pick the lock?”

Trevor nodded at his keyring still in Sean’s hand. “Third one from the end.”

Sean grinned. “Still a sentimental romantic.”

Trevor’s fingers ached to form a fist, but he forgot about that ache as soon as he stepped across the threshold and his heart ached worse. He came back here once a year to commemorate the day he, Sean, and Cal had won the College World Series. And now one of them was gone way too fucking early. He rubbed a hand over his chest, which did little to ease the pain. Neither did Sean’s question about a different source of heartache. “Are your parents still in town?”

Sean didn’t know about Trevor’s visits to this place after he’d left. But he did know why Trevor had started coming here as a kid, his uncle letting him hang out whenever his parents came home from a months’ long bender, usually still drunk, usually still fighting. He’d slept on the floor behind the counter where Sean stood loading balls into a bucket more than a few times.

“Gone,” Trevor answered as he turned off the alarm and flipped on lights. “Somewhere.” He joined Sean behind the counter, collecting a bat and bucket. “It’s been years now. One good thing Tracy did for me.” He flipped the big handle for the cage lights and led Sean outside. As the overhead flood lights flickered on, Trevor carried the bucket of balls out to the rickety old pitching machine. He loaded it up, turned it on, then returned to the line of batters’ boxes with the empty bucket, shedding his dress shirt on the way. Down to his undershirt, he rejoined Sean in the middle batter’s box just as the first pitch sailed by. Sean didn’t pay it any attention, his gaze locked on Trevor, who leaned back against the dividing fence. “Been a while, Hale?”

As if his voice had broken the trance, Sean blinked fast a few times, then seemed to remember where he was… and what they’d been talking about.

“You wanna tell me about Tracy?” he asked as he stepped up to the plate, his stance as perfect as it had been a decade ago. A natural behind the plate.

“Nope.”

Sean whiffed at the next pitch. Maybe not so natural anymore. Trevor lifted a brow. “Strike two.”

He stepped back and started over. Tapped one toe in the dirt, then the other, then the tip of the bat against the plate. His usual routine. He lifted the bat over his shoulder, then flicked his eyes at Trevor. “Answer the question, Caldwell.”

“She moved to town three years after you left.” The machine pitched the next ball and Sean hit it clean, the crack of the bat an arrow of joy through the bubble of anger Trevor had been trying—and failing—to hold on to. Popped, it even allowed him to recall the joy of those early days with Tracy when he’d thought love was possible again. Because Sean was right; he was a sentimental romantic. “Annie met her first, at the hospital. Introduced us. We hit it off.”

“I’d say so. You married her.” Another hit, a ground ball that skirted over the packed-dirt infield and bounced off the base of the machine. Sean readied for another. Toe, toe, bat, lift. “When’d it go wrong?”

“Probably the first Henby dinner I took her to.”

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