by Tara Wyatt
“Happy birthday, miss,” he said as he set it down in front of her. She glanced at Dylan with one eyebrow quirked.
“Um, is this a mistake? My birthday’s not until the end of July.”
Dylan grinned, sending her heart flopping around in her chest. He was going to give her a heart attack if he kept looking at her like that. He shook his head. “Not a mistake. I know your birthday’s July 26th. I just figured I had some catching up to do for all the ones I missed.”
With a laugh, Maggie blew out the candle, wishing for nothing.
Thirteen
Dylan took a sip of his beer, the sunshine blazing down on him, the breeze cooling his skin as he waited for Hunter to finish flirting with the women who’d come over to have their picture taken with the two of them. One more day and then he’d be done with the damn brace and he could start taking practice with the team again. Another few days after that, and he’d be back in the lineup. Now, with the team back in town after their road trip—Dylan had stayed behind and managed to keep himself busy with Maggie and getting settled into his apartment—he and Hunter were finally grabbing that promised beer.
Hunter’s eyes lingered on the women as they moved back to their table, giggling to each other. He picked up the tequila shot in front of him—Dylan had said no thanks to a shot of tequila at one o’clock in the afternoon—and then chased it down with his beer. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and his shoulders slumped a little.
“So how you doin’?” asked Dylan, not sure where to start, but sensing that Hunter could use a friend.
“I’m a fuckin’ mess.”
“No shit.”
“Thanks, McCormick. You sure know how to make a guy feel better.”
Dylan took a sip of his beer and set it down, deciding to try a different angle. “You know, I’ve wanted to ask you, what’s it like to have Garrison Blake for a dad? Growing up around the game must’ve been pretty awesome.”
Hunter frowned slightly at the change in topic, but then visibly relaxed, leaning back in his chair. “It was okay, I guess.” He stared off into the distance, seemingly lost in thought for a moment. “He’s a good man. Gave me everything I ever could’ve asked for. But those are some damn big shoes to fill. It’s not easy trying to play in his shadow.”
Dylan hadn’t really thought of that. “Lotta comparisons.”
“Yeah. And not always good ones.” Hunter downed his beer and signaled to their waitress. Dylan couldn’t help but wonder if Hunter’s whole bad boy schtick was just a way of shielding himself from too many comparisons to his father. Deliberately distancing and self-sabotaging because if he didn’t try to fill the shoes, he’d never fail.
“Did he say anything when you got suspended?” Dylan asked, easing back into the original topic.
“Nah. Just said all kinds of supportive shit, like we all make mistakes, and it was only a bump in the road, and I’d figure it all out.” Hunter scowled as though the words tasted bad in his mouth.
“The bastard.” Dylan’s voice was flat.
Hunter snorted and shot back the fresh tequila the waitress had just set down in front of him. Good thing it was an off day today, with no game or practice scheduled.
“Everything’s just a mess,” he said quietly, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “There’s this girl.”
“Isn’t there always?” Dylan shot him a wry smile, which Hunter returned.
“And I’m crazy about her, but…it’d never work out between us. That’s what she says, anyway.”
“And why does she think it’d never work?”
“It’s complicated. Mostly because of her career.” Hunter leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. “The pot I got busted with—it wasn’t mine. It was hers. But it would’ve ruined her if it got out.”
“Shit, is she famous or something?”
Hunter nodded. “Or something.”
“Damn, that’s rough.”
“What do you think I should do? Now that you’ve got shit all figured out with your girl, thought you might have some insight.”
Dylan blew out a long breath and took a sip of his beer. “She know how you feel?”
Hunter shook his head. “Nah. Tried telling her once, she blew it off.”
“That’s where I’d start.”
Hunter nodded slowly. “Not like I got anything else to lose.”
Maggie had been to a lot of Longhorns games during her time working for the team—so many that she’d lost count. She’d watched games from the corporate box, from various spots in the stands, even from some of the fancier offices that overlooked the field. She’d gone on the occasional road trip, too, and had watched them play in other stadiums. But never before had she watched a game from section 120, the area of seating reserved for the wives, girlfriends, and families of Longhorns players.
It felt weird. Like, really freaking weird. Glancing around, she surveyed the rows of women, all ranging from mid-twenties to late thirties, attractive and nicely dressed. Maggie was grateful she’d picked out the pink, white, and green striped sundress she had on. At least her outfit would help her fit in. A few were in varying stages of pregnancy and her stomach did an enticing somersault at the idea of being pregnant with Dylan’s baby someday.
Easy, girl, she chastised herself as she moved down the aisle. Slow down. But she and Dylan only seemed to have one speed, and it was the romantic equivalent of zipping down the Autobahn. It was both the way it had been ten years ago, and how it was now.
A sudden pang of shyness hit Maggie as she slipped into her seat, feeling like the new girl in the high school cafeteria. Not that she’d ever experienced being the new girl, having spent her entire childhood in Ivy Hills, but she imagined the feeling of being a fish out of water who didn’t quite belong was pretty accurate. She took a breath and forced herself to turn to the woman nearest to her with a smile.
“Hey, I’m Maggie Jennings. This is my first game sitting here.”
“Oh, hey! I’m Keegan Anderson. I’m Josh Anderson’s wife,” she answered, mentioning one of the relief pitchers. Keegan was pretty, with wavy blond hair past her shoulders and a tall, athletic frame that she’d softened with a feminine off-white dress. “Who do you belong to?”
Keegan was being friendly, and her tone was warm and welcoming, but her question caught Maggie off guard. It was a harmless question, meant innocently, but it made something inside Maggie’s chest twist uncomfortably.
“I’m dating Dylan McCormick,” she answered before her pause could veer into awkward territory.
Keegan nodded. “Very cool. He seems really great from what I’ve seen. Here, let me introduce you around.” She stood and faced the other rows of women, all chatting amongst themselves. “Hey everyone, this is Maggie. She’s Dylan McCormick’s.” Keegan began pointing. “That’s Kaitlin, she’s engaged to Shawn Beggy. This is Vivian, she’s dating Juan Gonzalez, and that’s Laura, she’s married to Tommy Choo.” Maggie smiled and said hello to all of them, trying to keep their names straight. Leigh, Hannah, Christina, Mackenzie.
“Hey, don’t you work for the Longhorns?” asked Kaitlin, giving Maggie an appraising once over. “I feel like I’ve seen you around.”
“Yeah, I work in media relations for the team.”
“Is that how you met Dylan?” asked Keegan.
Maggie shook her head, smiling. “No, actually. We were high school sweethearts, and we reconnected after his trade to Dallas.” To make a very long story short, anyway.
“Aw, that’s so sweet!” said Hannah.
“Have you ever dated a player before?” asked Leigh.
Maggie shook her head. “No, Dylan’s the only one. I’ve kept my job and my love life separate, but things were different with us because of our history.”
“So are you going to keep working for the team?” asked Kaitlin.
Maggie frowned a little. “Um, yeah? I have no plans to leave my job.”
“Well, until Dylan gets traded again someday,” sa
id Vivian without a hint of malice. “Every July, everyone’s on edge. You’ll see. Everyone is so stressed waiting to see if there’ll be a trade before the deadline, waiting to see if you’ll be packing up the house and moving to a new city. The constant threat of moving makes it hard to maintain a career.”
“Every time you go to a new city, you have to start all over, find a new job,” said Laura. “I’m a NICU nurse, and my career means a lot to me. Plus, when baseball’s over, I don’t want to just have nothing in our lives, you know? And I don’t think ‘baseball wife’ looks very compelling on a resume. But it’s not always easy to find a new job. And it makes moving up really difficult.”
“And the moving is lonely. I’ve spent weeks by myself packing up boxes and arranging for everything to be shipped,” said Leigh. “One season we were in Houston, then San Francisco, then Seattle. I had nightmares about moving boxes and packing tape. I’d wake up and not know what city I was in.”
A sense of unease settled over Maggie. “That sounds like an emotional roller coaster,” she said, chewing at her thumbnail.
“Everyone thinks that dating a ball player is glamorous, but it’s really not,” said Hannah. Maggie nodded slowly. She hadn’t thought it was glamorous, but then again, she hadn’t really thought about this side of dating Dylan at all. She’d been so focused on the two of them, on their chemistry and reconnecting and untangling her snarled feelings for him. She hadn’t had room to consider everything else.
“Definitely not,” agreed Christina, who was at least six or seven months pregnant. Her hand lay on her stomach, rubbing small circles. “And it gets even more complicated when you bring kids into it. This is our second, and our first is old enough now that she understands that when Daddy leaves, he’s going away for several days, and it breaks her little heart every time. When he’s away, she wakes me up every morning and asks me if Daddy’s coming home today. It’s hard. She misses him, I miss him. We FaceTime when he’s on the road, but it’s obviously not the same.”
“Don’t get us wrong,” said Mackenzie, laying a hand on Maggie’s arm and smiling kindly. “The lifestyle that comes with dating a player is pretty great. But it can be tough sometimes. I guess we’re just trying to let you know what you’re in for.”
“And there’s good stuff, too. The lifestyle, like Mackenzie said, and being looked after. Being devoted to someone and something. The friendships,” said Keegan. Maggie smiled and nodded, not knowing what to say. She let her eyes drift to the field as the players warmed up, searching Dylan out. She found him tossing a ball back and forth with Hunter, and that usual melty feeling expanded right through the center of her chest. As she watched him, her mind spun, whirring and reeling as she tried to process everything the women had just told her.
A hundred what ifs bounced around her brain. What if Dylan got traded again? Would she pick up her life, quit her job and go with him? What if she couldn’t find a new job in that city? What if she was lonely? What if they ended up getting married and having kids and she was basically a single parent for half the year?
What if his life and his career completely swallowed her up? What if being with him eclipsed everything about who she was and what she wanted?
What if being with Dylan meant erasing part of herself?
An anxious panic started to well up inside her as worst-case scenario after worst-case scenario played through her mind. She took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the game in front of her as the first inning started. She was getting way ahead of herself. If and when she and Dylan got serious enough that all of that was a concern, she’d cross that bridge then. There was no sense in getting worked up over hypotheticals.
And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about what Keegan had said, about being looked after, about being devoted to the game. Her thoughts raced back to the Chanel gown and how it had made her feel—inadequate, and unequal. Like she could so easily disappear into the shadows cast by Dylan’s limelight.
What if she didn’t want to be looked after and married to the game? What would that mean for them?
She didn’t know.
Fourteen
“Hey, man, I got some news for you,” said Javi as he strode up to where Dylan lounged in his chair in front of his locker. He glanced up from his phone, which he’d been staring at, waiting for Maggie to text him back. She’d seemed a little off the past couple of days, and when he’d questioned her about it, she’d told him she was just tired and busy with work, but something told him there was more to it than that. He was hoping they’d be able to connect after tonight’s game so he could see her in person to make sure she was okay.
“What’s up?” he asked, tossing his phone down.
Javi smiled, his eyebrows bouncing up and down. “You’re the AL’s player of the month.”
Dylan grinned. “Shit, really?”
Javi’s smile grew. “Shit, really.”
“Thanks for letting me know, man.” He suddenly felt eager to get out on the field. That, and to celebrate with Maggie. In a way, it all felt so surreal. He’d been at such a low point at the beginning of the season almost three months ago, struggling to hit, feeling the growing resentment of his teammates. Getting traded to Dallas had felt like a punishment, but now he saw it as a fresh start and the chance to finally have everything he’d ever wanted. He’d started hitting again, finding his timing and his rhythm. He’d started making the spectacular catches he was known for. Against all odds, he’d reconnected with Maggie, and this time, he wasn’t going to let his father meddle. No fucking way.
His phone buzzed from the shelf where he’d tossed it and he eagerly scooped it up, but then frowned when he saw the message.
Maggie: Hey, I don’t think I’m up for getting together tonight. Work’s been busy and I’ve had a headache all day. Rain check?
Dylan: Sure. No problem.
He hesitated, his fingers hovering over the screen as he debated whether or not to potentially pry the lid off of a can of worms. Did he want to know the answer to the question echoing through his brain? His fingers decided for him, moving over the keys before he’d made up his mind. Before he’d been able to talk himself out of it
Dylan: Are we okay?
He stared at his phone screen, his pulse throbbing in his temples as three little dots appeared, then disappeared, then reappeared for what felt like an eternity. The fact that she was typing, then deleting, then typing set him on edge, a cold pressure gathering in his chest. He didn’t know why they wouldn’t be okay—nothing had changed—except that he’d felt a distance opening up between them lately, and he didn’t know why. If he’d done something, he wanted to know so he could fix it.
Maggie: Yep, all good.
The cold expanded out of his chest and through the rest of him, making him feel numb. He didn’t know what was wrong, but clearly something was. He might not be a genius, but he knew enough to know that something was up, either with her or them, and the fact that she was being cagey about it had dread settling like a rock in his stomach. He wanted to call her, to not let this fester, but it was time to hit the field for the pre-game warmup, and he didn’t have time. Trying to put the worry and the fear churning through him out of his mind, he rose and headed for the stairs that led to the dugout.
Maggie sat at her desk, staring blankly at her computer screen. She yawned and then blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the email open in front of her. Grabbing her cup of coffee, she took a hearty swallow and set it down too hard, sending a little sloshing over the rim of the mug.
“Shit.” Hastily, she reached for a tissue to sop up the light brown puddle soaking the edges of a stack of papers beside her keyboard. She rubbed at her eyes, feeling bleary and fuzzy, before realizing she’d probably just smeared mascara everywhere. With a sigh, she retrieved a compact mirror from her desk drawer so she could clean up the mess she’d made.
The reflection that greeted her was a tired one. Bags beneath her eyes, her skin a little too pale. She h
adn’t slept well last night. Guilt had nibbled away at her for blowing Dylan off and for not being honest about what was on her mind. But at the same time, she knew she needed some space to figure out how she really felt about the possibility of a future with him. Any kind of logic seemed to fly out the window when he was around. All night, she’d tossed and turned and stared at the ceiling as she’d asked herself the same questions over and over again. Did she love Dylan? Yes. Did she want a future with him? Yes. Was she prepared to lose herself, sacrificing her hopes and dreams on the altar of his career? She didn’t know. What if their entire existence as a couple centered around him and his baseball career? What if he expected that of her?
What if no matter how much she loved him, fate, or circumstances, or whatever just weren’t on their side? She didn’t know how she’d survive another heartbreak. But she also didn’t know how she’d survive the slow, steady erasure of herself, either. She knew she needed to talk to him. She just didn’t know what to say. The words weren’t coming, swallowed up by her fear and uncertainty.
A perfunctory knock sounded at her door, bringing her back to the present, and her boss poked his head in. “Hey, do you have a minute?”
She nodded and began following him back to his office at the other end of the hallway. As she walked, she passed the glassed-in conference room where a group of men in suits were gathered around the table. One of them turned, and Caleb McCormick’s eyes bored into her, his lips curving up in the tiniest hint of a smile. A chill shivered down her spine, making the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Her steps faltered, and she glanced from Caleb to Kevin’s back, a few feet in front of her. When she looked back at Caleb, his smile had grown. Maggie’s stomach heaved as she wondered just what the hell was going on.