Home Run Baby: A Sports Romance (19 page)

Chapter 24

Hunter

“Hunter…”

“What?” I murmur with my eyes closed.

“Huuunter.”

“What?”

“Wake up.”

“No.”

She nudges my arm.
“Wake up.”

“Why?”

I hear the shutter of her camera closing repeatedly and I squint at the morning light bleeding in through the motel windows, just barely making out her shape.

“Daisy…” I push up onto my elbows, “what are you doing?”

She snaps one more picture of me and lowers the camera, revealing her bright, smiling face. “I’m at seventeen weeks,” she says.

I sit forward and rub my eyes with one hand while extending the other. “Okay, give me the damn thing.”

Daisy drops the camera into my hand and takes a step back to stand against the far wall. “Remember to get my whole body,” she says, raising her shirt over her head, leaving nothing but her bra and panties on. “From head-to-toe.”

“I got it.” I twist the camera horizontally, centering her entire, petite frame in the viewfinder. “Okay, smile and say
unexpected pregnancy
.”

“Unexpected pregnancy!” she says, grinning wide at me.

I take the photo and immediately extend it back to her. “Can I go back to sleep now?”

She walks over and grabs the camera. “No, the bus leaves in an hour. Go shower.”

I groan and fall back onto the pillows. “Why would you wake me up
an hour
early
when you know that I can take a shower, get dressed, and feed myself in twenty minutes flat?”

“Because it’s funny.” She plugs the camera’s memory card into her laptop on the table by the door. “Get up and come see how huge I’m getting.”

I balance up on my arms. “You’re not huge, Daisy.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“There is a noticeable difference between week sixteen and week seventeen.”

“No, there’s not.”

“Yes, there is.”

I throw the blanket off and plant my feet on the floor, rubbing my fingers through my hair as I stand up. “Okay, fine,” I say, lingering over her shoulder. “Show me this
noticeable difference
.”

She points at the screen and I see both photos side-by-side; the one I just took and the one I took in some random motel room last week. I squint, focusing my tired eyes as I look between them.

In truth, she’s right. There
is
a difference but it’s nothing major — just the slightest extension of her abdomen that no one would even notice unless they’re looking for it.

“There’s no difference,” I tell her.

“You little
liar,
” she snaps.

“Daisy, you look
great
.”

“I look
different
,” she says, “and if I look
different
, then Trisha will notice.”

“Trisha will
not
notice. Calm down.”

“No, I think you need to calm
up
, Hunter.”

I sigh and step into the bathroom to grab my toothbrush. “Daisy…” I say, squeezing a bit of toothpaste onto the bristles, “you’re overreacting. Even if she did find out, she can’t do anything. It’s illegal for her to fire you for being pregnant.”

“I know…” she says, glancing over her shoulder at me.

I brush my teeth, staring at her through the bathroom mirror. “So, then, what’s the problem?” I mumble.

“I… just…” She spins back around and stands up to slip into her jeans.

“Daisy…”
I turn into the room, walking and brushing at the same time. “Are you feeling insecure because of your weight gain?”

She points a stiff finger at me. “So, you
do
think I’m huge!”

“I said you’ve gained weight, which is completely natural at this stage. I never said you were huge.”

“You know what?” She throws her shirt back on and grabs her phone off the table. “I’m going to send these pictures to Rose and we’ll let
her
decide,
hmm
?”

“Send away,” I say, shuffling back to the bathroom to spit. I rinse my mouth out and search my bag for my razor while she taps away at her screen.

Daisy’s phone instantly rings in her hand and she answers it, flicking on the speaker so we both can hear. “Hey, Rose.”

“Oh, my god!”
Rose says.
“You’re so huge!”

Daisy glares at me with vindication. 

I roll my eyes. “Thanks a lot, Rose!”

“Good morning, Hunter!” she greets me. “So, Daisy, since you’re really showing now, you think it’s about time for you to tell Mom?”

Daisy’s smile falls off her face. “Uh-oh, Rose—
shhhh
— it looks like—
chhhhhtt—
we’re heading through—
pffffft
— a tunnel.”

“Daisy, knock it—”

“I can’t hear you. Talk later. Bye.”
Daisy hangs up and drops the phone onto the table.

“Really?” I ask her. “The tunnel gag?”

“Hey, I don’t see you rushing to tell your mother about your bastard baby.”

I pause. “What if it’s a girl?”

“Still a bastard.”

“There’s no girl word for bastard?”

“Why should there be?” She grabs her hairbrush from her bag. “Why can’t girls be bastards, too? Why you gotta be so sexist?”

I step away from her devilish eyes. “Never mind. I take it all back. It’s too early for this—”

“Why do we need feminine words for everything?” she quips, rolling the brush through her blonde locks. “It’s not like we call female baseball players
baller-inas
or something— actually, wait—” She cracks herself up. “I’m gonna stop because that word is perfect and, starting right now, I will forever refer to girl baseball players as
baller-inas
.”

I laugh. “How am I supposed to win banter battles with you if you keep pulling out at the last second?”

“Hey, if
you
had pulled out at the last second, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.” She holds up her hairbrush and drops it to the floor like a microphone. “I’ll see myself out.”

“I give up,” I say, shaking my head. 

“I’m going to run down to get some continental breakfast before the guys hog all the bacon again. Want me to save you some?”

“Yeah, I’ll take a slice.”

“
A
slice?” she scoffs. “You’re a guy, so that means
four
.”

I throw up my hands. “Why you gotta be so sexist?”

“Oh, fuck off, bar guy.” She grabs the doorknob. 

“Hey, hey. Wait...” I rush across the room. She pauses with smirking eyes and tilts her head up to accept my kiss. “You look great,” I tell her. 

“Thank you.” She smiles and pops up onto her toes to kiss me back. “Don’t take too long or I’ll eat your bacon.”

“I’ll be right down.”

Daisy leaves, flashing another one of those sweet smiles at me before disappearing out the door.

I strip down and step into the shower to rinse off last night’s fun and sweat, feeling a little warmer than usual. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been on the road together for this long already. Eleven weeks ago, we were nothing more than acquaintances that happened to have sex once. Six weeks before that and we were total strangers but it doesn’t feel like that at all. I don’t panic anymore when I think of that baby and she’s grown comfortable with it, too — to an extent.

I don’t think either of us will be sending out birth announcements any time soon. It’s the start of the fifth month. There’s still plenty of time before we should tell anybody — and even more time before we decide what we want out of this.

I grab a towel off the rack and slip it around my waist as I step out of the shower.

“Jeez—”
I pause in the doorway, my senses flinching at the new presence in my room. “Hey, Trisha…”

She sits on my bed with her legs crossed, gently flicking through her phone while she waits for me. “Sorry, Hunter,” she smirks. “Did I scare you?”

I grip my towel a little tighter. “No.”

She stands up and doesn’t even try to hide the fact that she’s gawking at my naked chest. “Hunter, I need to run something by you...”

“Can this wait for the bus?” I ask. “I’m in kind of a rush…”

“It’s
obvious
,” she says, ignoring me, “to
everybody
, what is going on here between you and Daisy.” She points a long fingernail at me. “Don’t try to deny it. I am not stupid.”

“With all due respect, Trisha,” I say, “that really isn’t any of your business.”

“And you’re right. It’s
not.
But I would be remiss if I didn’t, at least, bring the realities of your situation to your attention.”

“What situation?”

She takes a step closer to me. “Hunter, you’re in a very unique position here. In all my years of covering this sport, do you have any idea how many times I’ve seen a Double-A athlete advance to the majors after only
two
seasons?”

“Yes,” I answer, truthfully.

“But what you probably
don’t
realize is what kind of toll that takes on a person. If you think the minors are rough, just wait until that five-month season changes to a seven-month one.”

“What’s your point, Trisha?”

“My point is that you and Daisy should plan for whatever this is to be very, very temporary because, more often than not,
that’s exactly what it is.
”

I flex my jaw, thinking hard about what to say next but I come up with nothing but gibberish.

“I’m not the bad guy here, Hunter,” she says. “I consider Daisy to be my friend as well as my co-worker and the last thing I want to see is her getting jerked around by someone that’s just going to toss her aside.”

“What makes you think I will?”

“
Experience.”
She stares me down without even blinking. “Believe me, I want to be wrong as much as you think I am, but I’ve watched countless relationships
dissolve
over careers like yours.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” I argue.

“You can have a family or you can live the big shot dream… but you can’t do both. It’s not fair to you, it’s not fair to her,” her eyes flick towards the laptop on the table, “and it’s not fair to that baby you’ll get to see five months out of the year.”

I deflate as I look over to the screen and see the two photos of Daisy still displayed side-by-side. “That’s… not what it looks like.”

“Relax,” she says. “She won’t lose her new job at the magazine, if that’s what she’s worried about.”

“New job?” I ask.

“Daisy didn’t tell you?” She looks me up and down, easily reading my expression. “Let me guess — you haven’t told her about your name on the 40-man roster, either?”

I don’t answer.

“What you two want is one-in-a-million, honey,” she says. “I don’t like your odds.”

She steps outside and closes the door while my eyes linger on the laptop.

I stare into Daisy’s grinning face and that growing belly and it all strikes me down.

Fuck.

Chapter 25

Daisy

“Hey, Daisy, lemme ask you something.”

Devin slides into the chair beside me before I can react. The rest of the motel’s tiny sitting room is packed full of hungry baseballers. Luckily, I got here in time to snatch up a healthy amount of cheap food for myself — and a few extra slices of bacon for Hunter, of course.

“Okay…” I say.

He leans in. “Do you know why they call them creepers?”

“Creepers?”

“Yeah, the little baby onesies.”

I shake my head. “I hadn’t really thought about it…”

He bites into his bagel. “It’s just one of those things that no one knows the answer to but no one gives enough of a shit about to look up like…” he snaps his fingers in thought, “like what the Q in
Q-tip
stands for.”

“Quality,”
I say.

He blinks at me. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“That makes more sense than what I thought it stood for.”

“What did you think it stood for?” I ask.

“Quirky.”

“You thought they were called
Quirky Tips
?”

He nods and tears off another piece of his bagel.

“Devin…
abandon your seat, please.” I look up to find Trisha hovering over my shoulder with her arms crossed. “I need to speak with Daisy.”

Devin smiles and offers her a quick wink. “Anything for you, sweetie.”

“Don’t call me that again.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He clears his throat and slips out of his seat.

“Hey, Trisha,” I say as she sits down in his empty chair. “What’s up?”

“You’re pregnant.”

I freeze. “Um…”

“Don’t deny it. Hunter already confirmed it.”

“He did?”

“I’ll admit, I already had my suspicions,” she says, her expression firm. “You piss more often than my grandfather.”