Moonshot (26 page)

Until Tiffany Wharton tainted it.

After that, there was no escape. After that, there was no more running. After that, everything in our world narrowed into one focus: Winning. Our world became a prison, the World Series our key to escape. And my nights on the field? That was my prison time spent in the yard. A big yard, one where gods played. A yard with thousands of steps and halls, plastic and grass and clay. It was the most secure compound in the Bronx, and it was, at times, the only thing that held my sanity in check.

The parking garage was quiet, my Range Rover the only car present, the sound of the door echoing through the empty space. I stepped to the back of it, opening the hatch, Titan jumping to the ground beside me, his nails clicking along the concrete. When I shut the hatch, I set the alarm, dropping my keys in my bag. It might be a fortress, but this was still New York, still the Bronx. I hit the button for the elevator, glancing at Titan as he sat, facing out, at full alert. We got him from Germany, completely trained, his journey to the US accompanied by a handler, a short man who lived with us for two weeks and yelled at me a lot. Apparently I had needed a lot more training than Titan. But now, three years later, Titan and I worked together just fine. He protected me, and I snuck him table scraps when Tobey wasn’t looking.

The elevator opened, and I stepped on, pressing the button for the ground level. As it descended, I picked up the elevator’s phone, listening to the automatic ring. Somewhere, making rounds, were more security guards, four of them. When my miss of the field had become too great, when I decided to move my midnight workouts here, Tobey had worried. Not worried enough to accompany me, his early mornings putting him on a different sleep schedule than me. Initially, he’d had one of the house team escort me. But in the quiet of the night, the extra person had seemed invasive, as if I were being caged more than protected. So we had made an agreement. I’d bring Titan, and I’d check in with security when I arrived and departed. The arrangement allowed Tobey to sleep well at night, and I didn’t feel smothered. Didn’t feel
as
smothered. At some point in my life, I’d find the ability to live a life without pressure. At some point, I wanted a lack of expectations, and appearances, and decisions that affected lives.

Security answered and I cleared my throat, speaking into the phone. “It’s Ty.”

“Good evening, Mrs. Grant. How long will you be with us this evening?”

“About an hour. On the field and in the stands.”

“Wonderful. Will you need us to open the locker facilities?”

“No, not tonight.” The elevator shuddered, the doors opening on the ground level. “Thank you.”

“Certainly.”

I hung up the phone and stepped out, Titan beside me. All was dim, emergency lights bathing the halls in a soft, red light, and I flipped switches as we walked, bringing the hallway to life, my steps quickening as I got closer to the place where I was happiest.

I’d heard that cutters enjoyed the pain of their activity because it caused them to feel. I’d never understood that until the first night I’d stepped back out on this field, almost two years after Chase left. I didn’t know why I first did it. Part of it was because I had ordered myself to stop mourning his loss, and was ready to take the first step. Part of it was because I’d thought I was ready, ready to reenter the world which my pregnancy, which my dad’s retirement, which my marriage—had all taken away. The nights afforded me privacy, the late hours insuring no party to my pain. Each visit, the scent of the grass, the dig of cleats into the dirt … each sensation brought back a flood of memories. Sometimes I cried, most nights I didn’t. But I always felt.

At some point, I’d be able to replace his memories with new ones of my own—my midnight workouts with Titan an attempt to paint over the past. An attempt that hadn’t happened yet. And now that he was back … that goal stretched even further into improbability.

I grabbed a bucket of balls and pushed through the double doors, stepping from the hall and out into the night. I was climbing the steps to the field when Titan’s body knocked against me, his body jumping the final two steps and planting, four feet in the dirt, his hair raised, a loud snarl spitting out.

76

“Achtung.”

The foreign command rolled off her tongue like silk, no hesitancy in the word, and Chase hoped to God it meant something other than
attack
.

“Easy.” He stepped off first base, hoping some light from the stands would light his features, the dark field no help. That’s what he got for lurking here, the last two hours of jogging, stretching, throwing—all an excuse to wait, to hope, for this.

“Ty never comes to the field?” Chase watched the skybox suite, the interior illuminated in the darkening night. Inside it, Ty gave a strange woman a hug.

“Mrs. Grant?” The second baseman spit on the dirt. “Not really. I heard she comes out here late sometimes, to run.”

“Late?” Chase looked away from the skybox.
Mrs. Grant
. The name turned his stomach.

“Yeah. Security mentioned it once.” He shrugged. “They say she used to help out on the field, but I’ve never seen her pick up a ball. Probably just rumors.”

Chase said nothing, stepping back into place and leaning forward, his eyes watching the batter, poised for action.

The information had haunted him, dragging him here for the last week, each night a waste, the security guards barely glancing his way by the third time he pulled up. But it’d been worth it. Because here she was and here he was and they were on, of all things, a baseball field. The perfect setting for this, a moment of privacy, a moment without Tobey Grant lurking around the corner, a moment without anything but the two of them.

She was as beautiful as the week before, but more so, the Ty of his dreams. The one in shorts and sneakers, her hair pulled back, no makeup on her face, a t-shirt clinging to her shape. He didn’t look for a ring, didn’t want to think of anything but the girl he knew. The one who had been as loyal as she’d been fierce. The one who had loved him with a passion and fire that had clawed at his barriers and punctured his walls. The only girl he’d ever imagined a future with. The woman he’d forgotten to get his heart back from, before he left.

“Easy,” he repeated. “You don’t want to kill the Yankee’s newest star.”

“Step forward again, and he’ll rip out your throat,” she called. Beside her, the dog snarled, his teeth bared, every muscle ready.

He stopped, holding up his hands, warily eyeing the German Shepard. “I surrender.” He surrendered everything to her. She’d destroyed him once before. And here, a fool three times over for nights wasted on this field, he could already smell his demise in the crisp night air. Just as before, she held all the power in those little hands. No longer a girl’s hands, they were older, wiser. A married woman’s hands. Ones that could crush him. Ones that could ruin him. Their time in that bathroom hadn’t shown him anything other than her weakness for his touch. He’d wasted that opportunity, going after low-hanging fruit and not the important things.
Did she still love him?
How could he have not asked that question?
Would she leave Tobey?
A scarier question, one that he was afraid to know the answer to.

She was loyal.
He knew nothing if not that.

But would she be loyal to
their
love?
It was a love that hadn’t been touched in the last four years.
Or would she be loyal to her husband?
That question, he was terrified of. That question he could barely form in his mind, much less off his lips.

“Platz,” she said, and every muscle in the dog’s body relaxed as he looked up at her with a disappointed expression, a low whine coming out. “Platz.” He laid down on the dirt, his eyes on Chase. She took one step forward and stopped. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was guarded but not angry.

“Are you alone?”
Do you still love me
? He couldn’t ask it. The words just wouldn’t leave his mouth.

“Yes.” Her eyes darted to the stands. “But there are security guards here. So don’t—”

“I’m not here for that.” And he wasn’t, but it didn’t stop him from wanting to pull her into his chest. To lay her onto the grass and make her whisper his name into the night.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Working out. My hotel’s gym sucks.” He tested the dog and stepped forward, smiling at her, the lie rolling convincingly out.

“Security can get you a key to the gym. It’s on the third floor. I can have them open it for you—” she stopped talking, his head shaking.

“I don’t want a gym. I like the field.” His fingers tightened on the ball and he forced his feet to stop moving, a few steps of separation between them. This close he could see her eyes. This close, he could almost smell her. This close, if she wanted to, she could crush him.

77

God, I love him
. The truth that I’d run from every day of my new life smashed into me like a fastball into a mitt, stinging in its impact, radiating through my bones.
I love him.
Before, in my heels, wearing my ring, my husband standing beside me, it’d been easier to lie. To protect. But now, on our field, I felt naked, nothing between him and I but the truth. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy to destroy your life. There were supposed to be moments where you could divert, could pick new paths that would lead back to success. But in this, there was only one path, a giant vacuum that sucked me in, the end hitting my heart with a resounding thud that shook everything, down to my soul.
I love him
. Still.
More
. Impossible, yet true. Whatever asshole said that absence made the heart grow fonder was right. Before, I fell for him with a teenager’s love, bold and passionate, no real obstacles to overcome, no real consequences to consider. Now, the wind tickling past my legs, I could see the full path of destruction this would cause. I saw it, and in that moment, I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. There was right, there was wrong, and there was love. And love trumped it all.

I said nothing, my silence a waste of space on a blackboard crowded with possibilities.
Take me from this life. I’ll always be yours
. “Did you know I’d be here?”

He didn’t answer, and I could see more of him now, my eyes getting used to the dark. He was in workout pants and a long-sleeved shirt, it fitting snug across his chest, his shoulders, his arms. A glove on one hand, no cap. He lifted his chin and met my eyes. God, those eyes. I saw in them a hundred secret moments, moments out of jerseys and away from spotlights, moments where he had just been Chase and not The Chase Stern. Moments where he had been all mine.

I love you because when I see you, I can’t stop staring at you.

I blinked away the memory. “Did you?” I swallowed. “Did you know I’d be here?”

“I hoped.” He shrugged, reaching down, the eye contact broken, his hand grabbing a ball from the bucket by his feet. “You didn’t show the other nights.”

“We’ve been out of town.” The words shouldn’t have been said. He didn’t deserve an explanation. I wished I could take them back. I wished I could take this night back, put myself at home, before I realized that I was done for, that my world was over, that my heart was still his. I wished I could take it all back, yet I didn’t wish that at all.
The other nights
, he’d said.
He’d been waiting for me.

He tossed the ball toward me, and I caught it. He stepped back. “Got a glove, Little League?”

“You can’t call me that anymore.”

He punched the glove. “Do you?”

I dropped my bag on the ground. “Maybe.”

“Still got that arm on you?”

I reached down, slowly pulling out my glove and working it on. It slid easily over my bare hand, my ring at home, in the safe. I flexed the leather and looked up at him. “Are you wanting to find out?”

He grinned at me, holding up his glove and asking for the ball. I tossed it toward him, and then, despite my better judgment, jogged out onto the field, Titan breaking into a run beside me, my heart beating louder than it had in years.