by Pippa Grant
Partly also because Henri’s undoubtedly going to either dig into her research about me, or want to talk about my father and why I drive Fluffy Maple and live in run-down houses and what went wrong with my own wedding, and I don’t want to talk about any of that.
I want to play baseball. Be in my happy place.
I don’t have crises of who am I? when I’m on the field. I have the sun, the crack of the bat, tossing a ball with kids in the stands between innings, and goofing off with my teammates.
Nonna clomps down the stairs with her luggage, taking a video of herself that’ll undoubtedly be up on TikTok with funky captions on it within an hour, because she’s making faces and lip-syncing something at her screen.
I grab her bag and help her over the bad step.
She pockets her phone and pops out her earbuds, shaking out her long unicorn hair. “I don’t know what your mother told you about Henri, but she’s wrong.”
Now it’s my turn to give a look. “Oh, you like Henri now?”
“Of course I like Henri. She’s off her rocker, but that’s what makes life fun. You need fun. Also, don’t tell her I said that. A woman has to keep up appearances while she’s making sure her gut feeling is right. I’ll be back early next week to check on her progress with you. Don’t do anything stupid. Remember Alonzo.”
“We’re this close to making the playoffs. Can I please get through this season first?”
“Fate waits for no games.” She pats my cheek. “Gotta dash. Pierre-Luc is waiting for me up in DC. We’re gonna TikTok everyone’s socks off for a long weekend.”
“Have fun.” I wait until she’s unlocking her car to add in a mutter, “Maybe you should stay longer and help him with his love life instead.”
“I heard that, Luca Antonio.”
I’m still in a bath towel, and the neighbor across the street is standing in her front window with a phone, which means she’ll probably be trying to sell a half-naked photo of me to a gossip rag soon, so I step back inside and let myself sag against the wall for a minute.
Time to go see Henri.
This whole fake relationship thing has been a shitshow. She couldn’t have known what she was volunteering for yesterday morning, and being this close to what almost feels like a relationship is making me break out in metaphorical hives.
They’re worse than real hives, because they itch in places I can’t scratch.
I woke up this morning knowing one thing for absolute certain—I don’t want to help Henri learn how to not fall in love.
The world doesn’t need more of us all fucked up on that front.
But I don’t want her falling in love with the next random dick she meets either, which puts me in a conundrum.
I can tell her the secret to not falling in love is to learn to be a dick, or I can get over myself, do something good for another human being outside of a baseball team, and take a chance at making everything worse when I’m trying to be that bigger person I’d like my mother to be.
Best I can tell, even if she is crazy, Henri’s not a bad person.
She has awful taste in men and a hair trigger when it comes to getting engaged.
I can convince her marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be without breaking her spirit.
Can’t I?
She’s not bailing on her end of our bargain, crazy as it might be. So I can find a way to live with my part.
Her cat is lying at the top of the stairwell, flopped half on its side, half on its back, with its paws crossed demurely and one eye lazily tracking my movement. It’s the laziest, most chill cat I’ve ever met. Even its coloring is chill—mostly a soft white, with light gray on its face and tail, like the gray couldn’t be bothered to get any darker or spread any more over the cat’s body. Henri’s dressed the animal in the dinosaur costume I grabbed, and I pause to snap a picture of it with its scales sticking up on the back, because it could fit with all the costumes I’m in charge of finding before we leave Duggan Field for our away trip to Boston.
We have a different away series starting tomorrow in Florida, but we’ll be heading to the airport for that trip immediately after the game tonight, so we’re not wasting costume time when there won’t be anyone watching.
Plus, tonight’s for wearing our Fireballs pajamas.
Don’t mock it. It’s a thing, and we’ve swept the last two away series that we’ve worn our pajamas for.
And yes, they’re footy pajamas.
They rock.
I should ask Henri to come with us. It’s not unusual for family to travel with the team. I’ll have my own room, and the hotels always have air conditioning.
Plus, it’s better for appearances, right?
She’s out of the bathroom, so I head to the bedroom.
Not there.
Not in the guest room either.
“Henri?”
A muffled and irritated, “What?” answers me from somewhere back near my bedroom, so I head that way again, rubbing a hand over my face.
“I’m sorry on behalf of my mother and my grandmother. They can be—”
“Shh!”
What the hell?
Is this the same woman who even talked in her sleep last night?
And where is she?
I bend and peer under my bed, because I wouldn’t put it past her to be there, but all I see are dust bunnies gathering on the wood floor.
But from this angle, I hear a weird clicking.
I follow the sound straight to my closet.
Henri’s camped out with her back to the rear wall, sitting on the floor under my clothes in the smallest walk-in closet known to man, typing so fast on a laptop that I should see smoke. Her hair’s dripping on a gray T-shirt that’s inside out and backwards—you can tell by the tag flapping in front—and I don’t want to know what she is or isn’t wearing under that towel around her waist.
“What are you—”
“I’m writing, Luca. It’s my job, and I haven’t been able to do it for weeks, so shh! Go away.”
Her lips keep moving after sound stops coming out, and her fingers fly. The words Confucius, stud, amnesia, craft herpes, and boinky boinky all slip out of her mouth in the fifteen seconds I stand there watching her.
She’s a woman on a mission.
It’s weirdly fascinating.
Also, seeing her in her natural habitat is making the image of her wet and soapy in the shower invade my brain, and was that a surge of blood heading to my limp dick?
No.
It was an itch.
Or was it?
I could grab myself and test it, but if I grab myself, she’ll look up at me at that exact minute and think I’m making a crude gesture.
Jesus.
I’m a baseball player.
Grabbing ourselves is what we do.
Screw it.
I’m gonna—
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Henri snaps.
Right.
I’m gonna go grab myself in the shower.
“What are you smiling at?” she snarls.
Look at that. I am smiling. “Glad to know I’m not the only one pissed this morning.”
“Confucius is having an argument with a daisy tree, if you must know, and when my characters are agitated, I get agitated, but I can’t get unagitated until this daisy tree shifts into a fairy that he can bang, and then I’m going to get horny, so you might want to take your little tush on out to the ballpark before that happens.”
Holy. Fuck.
That’s real, legitimate blood flow to my dick. I almost have half a woody.
Henri blinks angrily at me, a very clear go the hell away blink, and since I need to see if my boner’s as big today as it would’ve been three days ago, I hightail it to the bathroom.
And that’s when I realize I’m getting a woody over Henri, and I freeze.
The Eye is working.
The Eye is working.
Shit.
I picture my mother naked in m
y shower, and my nuts shrink back into my body and my dick asks if it can go with them.
Not much to do after that except shower fast and lie again about needing to get to the ballpark. I should offer Henri tickets to the game, but she’s preoccupied, and I don’t want to know what kind of damage she might inflict if I interrupt her writing again.
Nor do I want to stick around for when she gets horny.
Though, the thought does prompt more of that intrigued movement in my crotch.
I’m broken. There’s something wrong with me.
And when I’m broken, there’s only one thing to do.
Re-center myself.
With baseball.
16
Henri
“Thank you so much for calling me,” I say for the seventeenth time to Mackenzie as she points me to a seat a few rows back from the baseball field. “And I’m sorry about the whole You’re not a vampire, you’re a witch thing when I picked up. I was so deep in writing, I forgot where I was for a minute.”
“Honestly, I’m surprised no one’s said that to me sooner in my life.” She smiles, and I swear she could be a fairy princess. A baseball fairy princess.
Her blond hair is tied back in a ponytail under her Fireballs baseball cap, her lipstick is an adorable pink, her Fireballs jersey fits her like it was custom made for her—which it might’ve been, between her dating one of the players and her dads being drag queens—and she’s totally pulling off the denim skirt over her Fireballs Chucks.
I point to the shoes. “Those are amazing.”
“My underwear matches. Also, I have a few rules about watching baseball with me. They’re little bitty superstitions, but if we don’t follow them, and the team loses, we basically can’t be friends.”
I start to laugh, realize she’s serious, and quickly school my features in the gravest solemnity. “Will I have to quack like a duck?”
“No! No duck. We’re voting against the duck. But you might have to go to the bathroom every time Cooper steps up to bat, and we need to get you your own Fireballs hat. Also, we might start the wave. Can you believe the wave has died out at ballparks? Now that they have bigger video screens, group waves are out, and self-expression is in, but is it self-expression if all anyone ever does is whatever dance is trending on social media?”
“Aw, you miss the wave, don’t you?”
“So badly.” She suddenly sits straighter in her seat and lifts a hand, wiggling her fingers. Out on the field, one of the ballplayers waves back. I squint, looking for Luca, and I can’t find him.
Uh-oh.
Did something bad happen? Was it because of The Eye? Did he trip over something? Or get hit wrong with a ball during batting practice?
Mackenzie nudges me. “Luca’s waving at us.”
I squint harder. “That’s not Brooks?”
She gives me a funny look. “If it was Brooks, I’d be blowing kisses. Eight, to be exact, because that’s his number.”
“Ohmygosh, that’s adorable!” I fake a bright smile and wave in the direction she’s pointing.
She reaches behind me and moves my hand so that I’m waving to the outfield.
Probably I need to see an eye doctor. Or maybe I need to not spend nine straight hours on the computer.
But even though I couldn’t immediately pick Luca out under his ball cap and in his uniform pants—let’s be real, all baseball players look awesome in those uniform pants—I can clearly see the man out there swiping a hand over his mouth like he’s trying to hide a smile.
Or a grimace.
It could be either, especially after our short text exchange when I told him Mackenzie had invited me to the game.
Great. Have fun. Whatever she tells you, do NOT bring live goldfish into the stadium. Also, DO run to the bathroom, do the Hokey Pokey, or eat whatever she tells you is good luck once you’re in your seats.
I texted him that I loved him, that he was my pumpkin pie, and that I couldn’t wait for him to get home tonight, and he replied with a reminder that the team is leaving for Florida as soon as the game’s over, but he’d text me from the road.
“Are you traveling with the team?” I ask Mackenzie. Also, what number is Luca? I’m his girlfriend. I should know this. Isn’t there a program somewhere?
“Nope. Day job. Not enough vacation time. Plus, I haven’t yet, and they’re playing really well, and I don’t want to mess with their streak by changing whatever it is they’re doing. The Lady Fireballs have made a pact—no changing any routines. If any of us wives, girlfriends, and fiancées started the season by traveling with the team, they keep traveling. If they didn’t, they don’t. Consistency is very important. With an exception for Tanesha, since she and Darren just had a baby, which changed their routine by default.”
“How did you meet Brooks?”
“I stole the meatball mascot costume and cock-blocked him a bunch of times during spring training.”
“You stole the—wait. That meatball costume?” I point to the field—close to us, right on the third base line—where a giant flaming meatball is having a pool noodle sword fight with a firefly with the largest ball of ass I’ve ever seen.
“This whole mascot contest that the new owners are running is so dumb. Can you see the other two over there? The duck and the echidna?”
I squint at the opposite baseline and nod. They’re blurry, but I can see them. Who knew writing that many words would short-circuit my eyeballs today? “Why an echidna? I didn’t know what an echidna was until I stumbled over it while researching different cool animals for shifter ideas. Are the new owners Australian?”
“No, they’re evil.” She sighs. “And friends of mine, so I shouldn’t call them evil, but on this, they’re definitely so wrong. I’m almost positive they picked the echidna because people wouldn’t know what it was, and then they’d spend more time thinking about the Fireballs and their new mascot options while they researched why there are such odd choices, which is unfortunately brilliant and also working, even if I will die a little inside if they don’t bring back Fiery the Dragon. And speaking of, here. I brought you a Fiery Forever button.”
A large, muscled man in the row behind us sticks his head between us. “Got any spares, Mackenzie?”
“Of course, I—oh! Hey, Tyler. And Duncan! And—wow. All of you.”
I look back, and an entire row of large muscled men are beaming at my blond companion.
“Training camp starts tomorrow,” one tells her. “Gotta support our weenie counterparts before we head off to be men.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s laughing as she passes an entire bag of Fiery Forever buttons up to them. “Gentlemen, meet Henri Bacon. Henri, meet the Copper Valley Thrusters hockey team.”
Wow. Wow. This is like a research dream come true. Not that I put hockey players in my paranormal romances, but I could.
Couldn’t I? “Ohmygosh, what if they had fangs that got knocked out by pucks?” I whisper to myself.
Mackenzie shoves a button at me. “No. Nuh-uh. You want to put a sports team in a book, you’re writing a baseball book first. Luca would never forgive you if you didn’t.”
“Dude, Luca has a sister?” one of the hockey players says. “He didn’t tell me that.”
“Henri’s dating Luca, goofball. And you’re married.”
“Not to my sister. I didn’t know Luca was into kinky stuff like kissing his cousins and sisters.”
They’re all grinning like they know they’re being funny, but Mackenzie squints her eyeballs at them and points at them individually. “Do not get on my bad side unless you want your team to make the most epic fall from grace ever seen in professional sports.”
Wow again.
She made an entire row of hockey players squirm.
And the ones that weren’t initially squirming start when she adds, “Also, I know how to get in touch with all of your wives and girlfriends. Don’t tempt me.”
I beam at her. “I think you’re my new hero.”<
br />
“Aww, that’s sweet. Here. Your button is crooked. Also, get out your phone so you can vote for a mascot. We’re all voting for Meaty, because I have video of him defacing public property and doing something unspeakable to the Thrusters’ mascot statue outside Mink Arena, and also of him being led away from my dads’ lounge in handcuffs, plus his mugshot, and so we need Meaty to win so that I can drop that bomb two days later and make the owners bring Fiery back.”
“Your brain is amazing.”
She blushes. “I probably need therapy.”
“You have a cause. That’s so admirable.”
“Enough about me. What are you getting out of fake-dating Luca?”
I choke on air and my eyes fly out to the grassy outfield, where there are now two men with their backs to us, and they’re both number eight.
No, wait. One’s eight. One’s three.
“He’s not going to answer for you,” Mackenzie tells me.
“It’s not fake.”
“You write romance novels and just had a bad break-up. His Nonna put The Eye on him and he’s a self-professed love-hater. I can put the bacon and the Nutella together here.”
“Shh.”
“Don’t worry, I’m all for this plan,” she whispers. “No good comes of people being forced to hook up. It’s a recipe for disaster. Especially when his grandmother is screwing with the best season the Fireballs have had in decades.”
I blink at her. “So…you’re not going to say I’m not his type? Or…not good enough for him? I mean, if we were faking this. Which we’re not. We might’ve considered starting this as a fake thing to get his nonna off his back, but we have these feelings for each other, and—”
And I need to shut up.
Because rambling never leads to following the script. Never. I’ve written enough books to know that by now.
But Mackenzie brushes it all away. “I couldn’t even talk to baseball players this time last year. I hummed the national anthem in a closet to keep Brooks from scoring with a woman in spring training, and I’ve dedicated my entire life to being an obsessed baseball fan. I am not one to judge who is and isn’t the right type or good enough. Plus, you’re Nora freaking Dawn. Luca’s lucky you came along when you did, or god only knows what his nonna would’ve driven him to.”