Going Deep (26 page)

He swung and
missed two pitches, and suddenly, she wasn’t the only one on her feet. The
entire stadium stood. Carrie put her hands over her ears to damp the roar of
stomping feet and raised voices. The scoreboard flashed a colorful graphic of
horses stampeding. The words, Thundering Herd, scrolled across the electronic
banners placed like shiny ribbons around the upper and lower decks, spurring
the crowd into a frenzy. Rally towels bearing the Texas Flag on one side and
the Mustangs logo on the other, whirled in the air. If someone could find a way
to harness the wind energy alone, it would power the stadium lights for a year.

A chant erupted
in an outfield section and one by one, the sections joined in. “Jason. Jason.
Jason.”

How could he not
know how much these people loved him? For this one moment, they’d put aside
their doubts. They believed in him. They wanted to see him break the record.
Accusations and scandal had been forgotten. This was the game at its elemental
base. Man against the odds. She had done her homework, knew the probability of
bat and ball connecting in the right spot, at the perfect angle and speed to
produce a homerun were astronomical, yet Jason did it better than any man
alive.

Carrie added her
voice to the chant. “Jason.”
Please God.
“Jason.”
Come on, Master.
“Jason.”
Do it. Do it.
“Jason.”
Please God.
“Jason.”
You can
do it.
“Jason.”

She stomped her
feet and waved her empty fist in the air. She needed one of those rally towels.
Her heart thundered. Her stomach tied itself in a knot and grew tighter with
each bouncing stomp.

Another pitch. She
gasped when the ball whizzed past Jason’s chest. No swing.

“Come on, give
him something to hit,” Mr. Stupid Opinion yelled.

“Yeah, give him
something to hit,” she echoed.

The cheers
continued. Jason stepped into the batter’s box again.

Carrie chanted
under her breath. “You can do it. I love you, Jason. You can do it. I love you.
Please. Please. Please.” Her fingernails dug crescent moons in her palms. Blood
rushing past her ears all but drowned out the noise around her.

She could watch
him all day. The way he moved. The confidence evident in his stance. She could
only imagine the level of concentration necessary to tune out the crowd and
focus on the ball.

The pitcher began
his windup. The stadium held its collective breath, as if the inhale and exhale
of forty thousand plus people might affect the trajectory of one three-inch
orb. A fraction of a second of silence, over almost too quick to notice it ever
existed. The solid, unmistakable crack of wood colliding with leather. A
collective gasp, as if one and all suddenly realized they’d ceased to breathe.

Jason paused,
his gaze following the ball rocketing toward the center field stands. Before it
cleared the wall, he was halfway to second base, raising a clenched fist in
victory. The crowd went wild.

As he took his
solo lap around the bases, Carrie’s eyes watered. The Mustangs dugout emptied
onto the field to celebrate with him. He performed a celebratory hop on home
plate and disappeared into the clutch of his teammates.

Someone pointed
to the outfield. Renewed excitement rippled through the crowd. She turned in
the direction of their outstretched arms. A door stood open in the outfield
wall. A player appeared, jogging toward the mid-game celebration. Jeff. A
moment later, the brothers emerged from the crowd, their arms around each other’s
shoulders. With his free hand, Jeff pointed to his brother while they turned in
a slow circle.

The moment was
too much. The half-cheering, half-jeering crowd. The emotions—relief, joy,
pride, love, pain—turned her stomach into a giant cocktail shaker. Carrie
dropped into her seat. How she wanted to share her feelings with Jason. To tell
him how proud she was of him, to kneel at his feet and show him he’d mastered
her the same way he’d mastered this game. He owned the game, and he owned her.

When the inning
ended, she gathered her purse and picked her way carefully down the steps. Not
knowing if she would ever have the strength to come back again, she stopped at
a souvenir cart to purchase a rally towel and anything they had with Jason’s
number or likeness on it. The vendor was all too happy to take her credit card,
handing it back along with a bulging bag of Jason Holder loot.

* * *

“Hey,” Jeff said
when Jason joined him at the kitchen table the next morning. “Glad you could
make it.”

Staying in bed
held a lot of appeal, but so did a well-cooked meal, even if it came with a
lecture. He wasn’t stupid. Megan’s invitation after the game had been couched
in terms he couldn’t refuse. Before she was through with him, he would be
crisper than the bacon sizzling on the grill.

 “I never turn
down Megan’s cooking, even if I have to get up at the crack of dawn and drive
twenty miles after a late night.” He winked at his sister-in-law, who rewarded
him with a scowl and an air kiss.

“You didn’t have
to come, hot shot,” she said.

“Let’s not kid
ourselves. I know a threat when I hear one.” He gave her credit, she hadn’t
even bothered to deny her invitation to breakfast had been anything other than
what it was—a chance to rag on him for something. “So, what have I done now?”

 “Nothing,” she
said.

Jason exchanged
a look and a shrug with his brother.

“Well, that’s a
first,” Jason said.

He leaned to the
side when Megan reached around him and placed a steaming cup of coffee in front
of him.

“Don’t be a
smart ass,” she said, returning to the cook top. “You’ve got to do something
about this mess.”

Ah, the mess
.
“We’ve been over this a million times. I don’t want to talk about it. Not now,
not ever.”

“You could end
all the speculation, Jason, and in the process, do something good for a lot of
kids going through the same thing you did. If you’d done it years ago, none of
this would be happening now.”

Jason sipped his
coffee, well aware his brother remained silent on the subject. Jeff understood his
reluctance to talk about his scars. Though his brother didn’t bear any physical
ones, he sported a few of his own from their early years when losing his twin
had been a real possibility. A little support would be good right now. “What do
you think, bro?”

“I think she’s
right.”

Jason jolted,
and his coffee mug clattered against the tabletop. He stared open-mouthed at
his brother.
Well shit.
“Don’t tell me she’s holding out on you until I
cave.”

“No.” Jeff
smiled at his wife. “She has a point, Jase. You know I’ve always supported your
decision not to talk about your heart, but that was then. This is now, and the
timing is right. You could put an end to the steroid speculation and, in the
process, reach a lot of kids and their parents. I think it’s great you talk to
a few at the hospital here, but there are plenty of others across the country
who could benefit from hearing your story.”

“I talked to
Carrie,” Megan said, placing a huge platter filled with bacon and pancakes in
front of them.

He ground his
teeth. “You did what?”

“I talked to
Carrie. She was at the game yesterday.”

“I told you not
to contact her. What part of that did you not understand?”

“I didn’t,” she
said, helping herself to a generous portion. “She found me at batting practice.”

He wouldn’t have
been more stunned if the bacon and pancakes had jumped up and started dancing
on the table. “She was at batting practice?”

“Yep. She saw me
talking to you and followed me. We talked, and then she stayed for the game. I
tried to get her to sit in the family section, but she wouldn’t. Said she didn’t
want to distract you.”

A thrill of
satisfaction tingled along his nerve endings followed closely by abject terror.
“What did you talk about?”

“You, mostly.
She loves you. But you already knew that. She wants to help, Jase.”

“I don’t need
her kind of help, and she doesn’t love me. She doesn’t even know me.”

Megan sipped her
orange juice. “Oh, I’d say she knows you very well…Master.”

Jason choked on
a bite of pancake.
Holy fucking shit
.

“That’s what she
calls you. She understands why a man like you doesn’t want the world in his
private business, but she agrees with me. You can’t let this media frenzy
continue. Have you seen the news this morning? They’re already picking apart
your record, adding the asterisk to it as we speak. If you don’t say something
soon, there won’t be any way to erase it.”

“It’s time,
Jase,” Jeff said. “If you don’t tell the story, I will.”

“Fuck.”

He stood and his
chair scraped across the tile floor. “You two think you have it all figured
out, don’t you? This is my life. My career. My fucking business, and I won’t
say this again. Stay the fuck out of it!”

His gut churned
with the new betrayal. Couldn’t they see? Did they not know him at all? Even
Jeff—his other half.

He needed to get
away. Needed to think. He drove—to where, he had no clue. Anywhere. Away.
Alone.

So fucking
alone. Just like when he laid in the hospital bed—a kid all alone. Jeff had
been at school and his parents had needed to work to pay the hospital bills.
They couldn’t be there all the time like some of the other parents. Being alone
had been worse than being sick. No one to hold his hand, no one to tell him it
was going to be all right. Sure, the doctors and nurses said the words, but
they couldn’t very well tell a scared and lonely kid the truth, could they?

Tears blurred
his vision. He pulled to the side of the road and turned on the emergency
blinkers. If this wasn’t a fucking full-blown flashing light emergency, he didn’t
know what was. The people he loved most, the ones he counted on to be there for
him were going to sell him out. God, he couldn’t bear it. That frightened kid
inside him wailed. No matter how hard he tried to deny him, the child was still
there—afraid of losing control of his life again.

He’d been at the
mercy of others then. Everyone had a say in what happened to his body—everyone
but him. No control. No opinion. Not even a vote. They’d made the decisions and 
left him alone to contemplate what they meant to him, to his life.

Jeff had been
his lifeline. His dream of being a major league baseball player became Jason’s
dream. They made plans. Plans Jason had clung to through all the poking and
prodding and testing. Even through the surgery, the pain of loneliness had been
worse than all the other stuff combined. Jeff would pitch, and Jason would
catch for him.

When he’d gotten
home from the hospital, Jeff had a specially padded chest protector and a mask
waiting for him to go with the catcher’s mitt Jason had kept with him at the
hospital. He still had that mitt—the one he held onto like other kids on his
floor had held teddy bears and favorite blankets. They said he even took it
into surgery with him, but he couldn’t remember that part. All he knew was he’d
had it before, and when he woke up after, it was still in the crook of his arm.
They’d probably lied to him, but at the time, he’d been pretty proud of himself
for hanging on to it. Control. One little thing he could control.

Control was an
illusion. He had no fucking control over anything. He couldn’t stop his family
from telling his story. In a way, it was Jeff’s story, too. But that didn’t mean
he could open Jason’s private pain up to the world without discussing it with
him first.

He reached deep
for some scrap of control. Inhaling deeply, he counted slow, forcing the breath
and a measure of anger out. Again. Each breath was easier than the one before
until he was calm enough to think rationally.

He always known
he would eventually have to tell his story. Megan and Jeff were right, now was
the time. There were hundreds of kids across the country who might find
strength in his story, strength they needed to fight for life, and still others
who were using steroids or thinking about using. If he could convince any of
them to change their course, it might give purpose to his childhood pain—something
besides driving him to grasp for control at every opportunity.

First things,
first. He glanced in the rearview mirror, checked over his shoulder, and pulled
back onto the road. He was going to do it, but he was going to do it his way,
or not at all.

Chapter Eighteen

Jason entered
his brother’s kitchen through the backdoor. Jeff was nowhere in sight, but his blabbermouth
sister-in-law was still there.

“What did you
tell her?” he asked.

“You know, one
of these days you’re going to walk in like that and see something you don’t
want to see.” Megan bent to set a plate in the dishwasher.

Jason grabbed
the plate, slipped it into place, and held out his hand for another. “Let’s not
go there. You cooked, so why isn’t your husband cleaning? Should you be doing
this much stuff?”

“I’m pregnant,
not dying, Jase.”

“Sit down,” he
ordered. “I’ll finish this.”

She gave him a
look he was becoming too familiar with—one that meant she didn’t have to take
orders from him.

“Don’t give me
that look. Just sit down and let me do this. It’s the only apology you’re going
to get for the way I left here a few minutes ago.”

Megan maneuvered
onto a barstool. “Okay, since you put it that way.”

He loaded the
dishwasher and filled the sink with soapy water. “Tell me what’s going on in
that devious brain of yours so I can tell you what’s really going to happen.”