Strike Out

by Cheryl Douglas

  ***

  Zach knew he was venturing into a fool’s territory with Rennie. She was like a drug. The more time he spent with her, the longer he wanted to prolong the experience. The initial tension and awkwardness faded away when he convinced her to join him for a cocktail, and the rest of their lunch had felt natural. Like two old friends reconnecting after a long period of separation. Billy Joel’s “Italian Restaurant” played over the drone of the lunch crowd, making him smile.

  “What are you smiling about?” she asked, bringing her wine glass to her lips.

  “I was thinking about how much you used to love Billy Joel.” He smiled. “Did you ever see him in concert?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” she said, her eyes bright with excitement. “Nathan surprised me with tickets to see him and Elton John a few years ago for my birthday. It was amazing.”

  Her husband’s name hit him like a fist between the eyes. He’d allowed himself to pretend it was just the two of them again. The reminder that it would never be that way again caught him off guard. “Yeah, I saw them too. They were great.”

  “I seem to recall you were more of an Aerosmith guy. Bob Segar, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, that was my kind of music. What made you go see them?”

  “You.” He stared at her, their past scrolling in front of his eyes: their first kiss, the first time they made love, the night he proposed, the wedding that never was… “His music makes me think of you. I was going through a rough time. I guess I wanted to feel closer to you.” He shrugged.

  Rennie stared at him, obviously at a loss for words. She looked at her watch. “Oh wow, it’s getting late. I really should go. So you think the home game on the 14th of next month will work for Jake’s visit?”

  They’d talked about it earlier, when he was still pretending Jake’s visit was the only reason he’d asked her to lunch. It wasn’t. He couldn’t stand the thought of her being so close, yet still out of his reach. But he wouldn’t try to wreak havoc in her marriage, no matter how much he still loved her. “I think so. Just let me talk to the powers that be, and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Sounds good.” She got to her feet. Reaching for her purse, she hesitated to smile at him. “Thanks for lunch, Zach. It was nice.”

  “Yeah, it was.” Nice didn’t begin to describe it, but he would only make her uncomfortable if he tried to make more of it. “I’d really like to come to your son’s game. It seemed like it would mean a lot to him, and I’d hate to disappoint him.”

  “You can’t,” she said quickly, the color draining from her face.

  “Why not?” Realization dawned when she failed to respond. “I don’t want your husband to think I’m trying to—”

  “It’s not that,” she said, looking panicked. “You just can’t come. I’m sorry. I really have to go.”

  Chapter Four

  Rennie sat at her desk several hours later, staring at her son’s photo and wondering how her orderly life had spun out of control in a matter of days. Zach was working his way into her life slowly but surely. He would be at Sheldon’s fundraiser next Thursday, and he’d agreed to meet Jake next month. She could handle all that. It was his desire to meet her son, their son, she couldn’t handle.

  “Hey,” Terri said, looking up from her computer. “I forgot to ask how your lunch with Zach Foster went.”

  “It was fine.” When Rennie realized her voice matched her melancholy mood, she tried to infuse a little more enthusiasm into her words. “It was good. Great, in fact. He and his partners offered to let us have Sheldon’s fundraiser at High Rollers.”

  “Shut up!” Terri’s mouth hung open, and for once, she seemed speechless. The silence only lasted half a second. “That’s amazing, but why?”

  Rennie knew the time had come to tell Terri the truth. She was her friend, and she may be the only person who could act as a buffer between Rennie and Zach. “I, uh, knew him a long time ago.”

  “You did not!”

  Rennie couldn’t help but smile at her friend’s reaction. “I did. We went to high school together.” She would have to break the whole truth to Terri gently, since she didn’t have a paper bag to hand over when she started hyperventilating.

  “So why didn’t you tell me you knew him when I showed you Jake’s letter?” Terri slipped her pen between her teeth as she narrowed her eyes at her boss. “What are you hiding, lady?”

  “It’s complicated.” That didn’t even begin to describe it. She should have told Terri the story over cocktails. Maybe then she would have been able to get the words out without a knot in her stomach.

  “I’ve got time.” Terri settled deeper into her swivel chair. “I skipped lunch today, so technically I have an hour coming to me.”

  Rennie knew the whole sordid story would only take a few minutes, but it was so hard to find the words. She’d convinced herself that Zach was a selfish, immature jerk, and that was the only way she could justify keeping him from his son. But he’d shown himself to be anything but since he’d walked back into her life. Guilt over her decisions was eating away at her.

  “You can’t back out on me now,” Terri said, leaning forward. “So don’t even think about it.”

  “We dated in high school and college.”

  “On again, off again?”

  “No, we didn’t break up until I left town.” Rennie thought back to that day. She’d flown to Orlando to visit her grandmother, who was in a nursing home and suffering from dementia. After that, Rennie moved to Tampa. She’d never felt more alone than she did in the months after she left home. She couldn’t turn to her family or the father of her baby for help. She’d worked every odd job she could find and saved as much money as possible to support her baby. She got a job as a volunteer coordinator soon after Tyler was born. It gave her the freedom to set her own hours while bonding with her baby. Then the man next door stole her heart and restored her faith in relationships.

  She and Nathan had been friends for a long time before she was ready for a romantic relationship, but he saw her through some tough times. He dried her tears and indulged her pregnancy cravings. He walked the floors with Tyler when he wouldn’t sleep. During one of those midnight walks, she realized she’d fallen in love with him. Instead of the kind of all-consuming passion she’d had with her first love, her love for Nathan was gentler, not nearly as combustible. It made her feel safe, as though she could count on him to always be there for her.

  “Was he already playing professional baseball when you left?” Terri leaned over to offer Rennie a stick of red licorice.

  “Yeah, he was.”

  “Is that why you dumped him?” Terri bit into her favorite candy. “Did he cheat on you with some obsessed fan who threw herself at him after a game one night?”

  Rennie smiled. Terri was a drama queen, but she never failed to make Rennie laugh. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Okay, so what was it?” she asked, biting through her licorice like a dog with a rawhide stick.

  “I found out I was pregnant,” Rennie whispered, unable to look her friend in the eye. Jackie was the only other person she’d uttered those words to, and Rennie had believed she would be the last. The past was coming back to haunt her, and she didn’t know how to escape it.

  “Wait a second,” Terri said, pulling her swivel chair closer to Rennie’s desk. “Are you saying Tyler wasn’t Nathan’s son?”

  “He was in every way that mattered.” Tyler called Nathan Daddy, and her husband had loved her son as though he were his own. They’d even talked about giving him a little brother or sister… She shuddered, trying to block that conversation out of her mind. Terri stared at Rennie, obviously waiting for her to explain. Rennie had never lied to her about Tyler’s father. Terri had just assumed that Nathan was his biological father, and Rennie didn’t correct her assumption. A lie by omission was still a lie, but it was her business and her secret to protect.

  “Oh my God.” Terri’s gaze fell on Tyler’s picture. “Now that
you mention it, I see the resemblance. I don’t know why I didn’t see it when Zach was here the other day.”

  “You weren’t looking for it.” Rennie glanced at her cell phone when it buzzed. Karina’s last appointment cancelled, so she would be able to pick up the kids. Rennie texted her “Thanks” before returning her attention to her friend.

  “I take it Zach doesn’t know?” Terri asked gently.

  “No, he doesn’t.” Rennie tried to ignore the judgment in her friend’s eyes, but it wasn’t easy when the same thoughts were going through her head. Should she have given Zach a chance to defend himself? Should she have told him she was pregnant before she left town? Should she have called him when Tyler was born? Would her son hate her if he ever learned that she’d purposefully kept him from his biological father?

  “What did he do that was so terrible, Ren?” Terri asked, touching her arm. “Was he abusive? Did he—”

  “I just found out he wasn’t who I thought he was.” Rennie had thought she was brave enough to tell the whole story, but she wasn’t sure anymore.

  “How did you find that out?”

  “The night before our wedding—”

  “Hold on a minute.” Terri pulled on her earlobe. “I don’t think I heard you right. Did you just say the night before your wedding? You were going to marry him?”

  “Yes.” For a brief moment, Rennie allowed herself to think about the fairy-tale wedding they’d planned for four hundred of their friends and family. Zach already had a contract with the Mariners. They were going to move to Seattle after the honeymoon of her dreams in Maui.

  “Okay, so what happened to change your mind?”

  Rennie took a deep breath, mainly because she needed to collect herself before recalling how she’d felt when she heard the man she loved tell his brother that he didn’t want the baby she was carrying. “He pocket dialed me. I overheard a conversation he was having with his brother.”

  “What did he say?” Terri asked, her normally robust voice a whisper.

  “He said he wasn’t stupid enough to let me get pregnant.”

  “Ouch.” Terri winced. “Had you guys”—she blushed—“you know, always used protection?”

  Rennie nodded, thinking how adamant Zach had been about protection, even in the months leading up to the wedding when she teased him that it wouldn’t matter if she got pregnant because she wouldn’t show on their wedding day. “I guess it’s true what they say—condoms aren’t a hundred percent.”

  Terri shifted, looking uncomfortable. “Did he say he wanted a family, you know, before y’all got engaged?”

  “Yes.” Knowing he had lied to her still hurt more than anything else. If he’d told her the truth—that he wanted to wait until his baseball career ended to start a family—she couldn’t say for certain that she would have agreed to marry him. At least they could have parted as friends who understood they just wanted different things out of life. “I told him I wanted to get pregnant right away because I wanted a big family.”

  “And he didn’t tell you he felt differently?” Terri’s voice took on that edge that Rennie recognized as outrage.

  “No, he didn’t.” Rennie twisted her wedding ring. “He played along like he wanted all the same things I did. I think that’s why it came as such a shock.”

  “So what happened after you overheard the conversation? Did you let him have it?”

  Rennie blushed as she thought about how she’d handled the situation. Revenge had sounded like the best option at the time, but in hindsight, she couldn’t say that it was mature. “I just didn’t show up at the church the next day.”

  Terri clapped a hand over her mouth when she burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, but that is awesome. It sounds like he got exactly what he deserved.”

  Rennie would have agreed with that statement a few days ago. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  ***

  “I don’t see why we couldn’t have invited Zach to my birthday party.” Tyler kicked the back of the passenger’s seat with the toes of his new running shoes. “That would’ve been so cool.”

  Rennie took a deep breath to control her rising temper. She’d asked him numerous times to stop kicking the seat. “I’ve told you ten times. Zach has a game today.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a home game. Maybe he could have come before or after, if you’d just asked him.”

  Tyler had been relentless ever since he’d spoken to Zach. He’d told all of his friends that he’d actually had a conversation with the Zach Foster. Of course, none of them believed him, so parents and kids alike had been asking her about it all week. She politely told them that she knew Zach through business, leaving out the part where they’d been lovers for years.

  “Can’t you just be grateful that you’re having a pool party at your grandparents’ house with all of your friends?”

  Tyler was turning ten, and he seemed determined to challenge her about every decision she made. Their therapist said he was acting out because he felt powerless after losing Nathan, but she didn’t know how much longer she could tolerate his insolence.

  He didn’t respond, but Rennie knew if he’d said what was on his mind, he would have told her she had the power to make it his best birthday ever but had ignored his wishes. If Zach knew the truth, she thought he would have done everything in his power to share every birthday with Tyler. How would he feel if he ever found out another man had helped Tyler blow out the candles on his birthday cakes? Just thinking about his reaction made her wish she could press rewind and relive the past ten and a half years of her life.

  But then she wouldn’t have met Nathan. She’d have stayed in Richland Hills and been bound by a custody arrangement that dictated when she had to give up her son and for how long. Or maybe she would have married Zach, and the three of them would have lived happily ever after, and her baby never would have had to experience the heartbreak of losing his daddy.

  No matter how often Rennie speculated about what might have been, she couldn’t undo her mistakes. She just had to deal with her life as it was and decide whether she could continue to live with a lie that was obviously hurting the person she loved most. Tyler needed a father, and he had one. Did she have the courage to tell him that and deal with the fallout? Would Zach even want to know they shared a child, or would he resent her for upending his life with the news that he was a father?

  She had so many unanswered questions, and as she pulled into her parents’ driveway, she realized she had no answers. Jackie and Mason were already there. They’d promised to come early and help decorate since Tyler had a game he didn’t want to miss. Most of his school friends and teammates would be there within the hour. The house she’d grown up in would be filled with love and laughter, the chaos of screaming kids splashing each other in the pool, and neighbors and parents crowding the backyard as her father grilled hot dogs and burgers. Just like it had been while she grew up.

  She’d loved her time in Florida, but Texas was her home. After Nathan had died, she realized how much she needed her family to help her though the tough times. Convincing Sky’s the Limit to let her move her office to Arlington wasn’t easy, but they eventually gave in when she offered her resignation instead. She was grateful they had let her move because she couldn’t imagine her life without her job.

  “I’m hungry,” Tyler said, throwing the car door open before Rennie could ask him to help her with the bags in the trunk. “I’m gonna see if Grandad’s got the barbeque goin’.”

  Rennie took a few deep breaths as she watched her son throw the back gate open and run into the backyard as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. He only had two speeds: full on and out cold. Just like his dad when he was young. Zach used to play baseball every chance he got, work part time as a groundskeeper at his parents’ golf course, and maintain a straight A average. Everyone knew he was going places, and they’d assumed wherever he went, Rennie would go too. Fate had other ideas.

  “There you are,” Jackie said,
laughing. “I saw the little speed demon, so I knew you couldn’t be too far behind.”

  Rennie tried to shake off her melancholy mood as she hauled her butt out of her Volvo. The day was supposed to be fun, not a day to dwell on the past. “I hope you came to help me carry some of this stuff in?” She slammed the door and walked back to the trunk. “My son took off before I could ask him to help.”

  “Give him a break. It’s his big day,” Jackie said, smiling. She looked great in white denim shorts, a pale peach tank top, and white flip-flops. They shared the same fair hair and skin, but Jackie’s new interest in gardening had given her a healthy glow. Rennie really needed to get out from behind her desk more often.

  “I guess you’re right.” Rennie handed her sister two shopping bags containing party favors and supplies. “Besides, I’m really getting tired of arguing with him. It’s exhausting.”

  “You sure you’re not losing sleep for some other reason?” Jackie leaned her hip against the polished black car.

  “Don’t start with that today.” She’d wasted enough time thinking about Zach and arguing with her son about him. She didn’t need her sister to add to it.

  “You said you’d call and let me know what happened with the lunch,” Jackie said, pouting.

  “Sorry, I got busy at work.” That much was true. Between coordinating three projects and helping out with Sheldon’s fundraiser, she was stretched pretty thin.

  “Too busy to call your own sister? Come on, I’m dying to know what happened with Zach. You can’t just leave me hanging.”

  “Sssh,” Rennie hissed, looking around to make sure their mother wasn’t hovering nearby. “Lunch was fine. No drama.” Spending time with him had actually been nice, much nicer than she would ever admit, even to her sister.

  “Was it weird?” Jackie asked, wrinkling her nose. “You know, going out with him again after all these years?”

  “We did not go out.” Rennie pushed the button to close the trunk once she’d extracted the last three bags. “We had a busy lunch. It was very productive.”