All of Me

by Jennifer Bernard

  She curled her fingers against his chest, the scrape of her fingernails generating a hard thrill. “I trusted you too.”

  “I know you did. And I threw it back in your face like a prize asshole.” He pulled her hand to his mouth and peppered it with kisses. “And then I thought it was too late, and I wanted to die. I don’t want to live without you, Sadie. I want you with me, close as I can get you. I want you to marry me.”

  Oh sweet Lord. Where had that come from? Sheer panic froze him for a second, but then something seemed to burst in his chest, something bright and warm and wonderful, and he knew it was a stroke of genius.

  “Marry me, Sadie,” he said again.

  “Caleb.” The word came as a soft sigh. “You’re feeling guilty. That’s a guilt proposal.”

  “No. No way. It’s the real thing, Sadie. You don’t have to answer now. In fact, I don’t want you to answer now. You’ve been mad at me, and I don’t blame you. Then you got hurt. Then I show up blubbering like an idiot and asking you to marry me.”

  She opened her mouth but he put a finger to her lips.

  “Please. Just think about it. The question isn’t going anywhere. I’ll still want you to marry me tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year, if you want to wait that long. But you need to think hard about it, because being married to a baseball player can be tough. They move us around like chess pieces. And it can be a roller-coaster ride, one day you’re the toast of the league, the next you’re traded to a last place team. The wives put up with a lot of crap.”

  Wives. Wives. God, he really was serious about this. He wanted Sadie to be his wife. In fact, he wanted it desperately, because no one else in the world would do.

  She was frowning, and it looked like she might be falling back to sleep. “So . . . chess . . . and roller coaster?”

  He laughed, nestling her hand against his cheek. “Chess and roller coaster. That’s baseball for you. With a dose of physics and a few dopey sayings. Want to know my favorite?”

  “Hmm?” Yes, she was definitely fading.

  “Babe Ruth. ‘Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.’ Works better for a batter than a pitcher. But you get the point. I struck out with you before, Sadie. That just means a gigantic home run is waiting to happen.” Her eyes were drifting shut, but her lips were forming words. He leaned forward to catch them.

  “Love . . . Caleb.” And she was out. He’d just have to fill in the blanks the way he wanted.

  When Sadie woke up the next time, she was almost a hundred percent sure that she’d hallucinated the entire visit from Caleb. But there he was, his powerful body slumped in the armchair, his head propped on one hand, dozing. She drank him in as if he were rain after a long Texas summer. His legs were sprawled apart, the denim of his jeans straining over the strong thigh muscles. His rumpled T-shirt had gotten pulled up on one side, probably from when he’d slid deeper into the chair. It revealed a glimpse of his lean waist and that ridge of muscle that made her want to lick and bite and . . .

  Well, apparently she was feeling better. She blinked her eyes a few times, relieved to feel no pain. Gingerly, she tried raising herself into a sitting position. That hurt a little more, because she jostled her leg in the process. She gave a slight gasp, and Caleb immediately came awake.

  “What are you doing? You’re not supposed to move. What do you need? I’ll get it. You should have woken me up. That’s what I’m here for. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep, damn it.” He rubbed sleep out of his eyes, looking rumpled and confused and utterly adorable.

  “Relax, Caleb. I’m okay. It’s just a broken leg.”

  Last night, or whenever it was when she learned her leg was broken, it had seemed like a catastrophe. Now, she didn’t mind so much. Because Caleb was here. And he’d asked her to marry him. Marry him! She still didn’t entirely believe it. They were too young to get married, weren’t they? He had a baseball career to pursue, and she had law school, and none of that mattered because she loved him so much.

  “Just a broken leg,” he mumbled. “If I find whoever broke your leg, they’ll regret the day they ever walked into the Roadhouse.”

  “Well, most people do, eventually,” she said cheerfully. “Not me, though. I love the Roadhouse. We danced there, remember?”

  “Of course I remember. I told you, I remember everything. It’s a curse.”

  “How many strikeouts did you get during your first start as a Friar?”

  “Seven. That’s not even a challenge.”

  “Okay. What was the sequence of pitches for the fourth strikeout?”

  “Fastball up high. Curveball down and away. Cut fastball on the inside corner. Boom. Out. Batter was Jorge Dominguez, who’s batting about .300 these days. How’s your head?”

  “Over my heels.” She let a small smile play across her lips while he worked that one out. The flare in his steel-blue eyes satisfied her down to her bones.

  “Head over heels, are you?”

  “Completely.” And it was true, so true. It was terminal, what she felt for Caleb. She’d never be cured of it.

  “Have you been thinking about what I said?” He got to his feet, which had the tragic consequence of covering up that lickable section of torso she’d been eyeing.

  “I’ve been unconscious,” she said dryly. “So, not really.”

  “Oh.” His crestfallen expression made her smile.

  “Besides, it’s not the kind of thing I have to think about too hard.”

  He raked a hand through his already disastrous hair. “I know I sprang it on you out of the blue. And then I told you all the ways the baseball life is tough. But don’t say no too quick. It has some bright sides too. It’s baseball. The best game in the world. And San Diego has a law school. I checked. I’ll support you a hundred percent in that. I intend to get that big contract.”

  The nervous flow of his words made her smile. “Caleb, you’re starting to make me mad.”

  “I am?”

  “I know it’s a tough life. I get it. But you know what’s tougher?”

  At the bewildered look on his face, she held out her arms. “Being away from you.”

  A wild look came over his face, as if he wanted to snatch her out of that bed and snuggle her tight against his chest. The intensity in his steel-blue eyes made her heart hurt. Life with Caleb wouldn’t always be easy. She already knew that much. But she’d throw every ounce of her self into it.

  He moved toward the bed and fell to his knees next to her. The stubble on his chin rubbed against her arm as he gathered her against him. “So you forgive me?”

  “You really hurt me, Caleb.”

  “I know. Baby, I know. I screwed up. Royally. And then a couple hours later I was on an airplane to San Diego and pitching and—”

  She struggled to sit up. “Caleb, what are you even doing here? You’re supposed to be in San Diego!”

  “I got suspended.”

  “What? Oh, Caleb, what happened? Is it Bingo? Did he do something else crazy?”

  “It had nothing to do with Bingo. It was all me. I punched the right fielder in the stomach.” At her gasp, he smiled. “Actually, it was the right transverse iliac muscle. You know, this one.”

  He stood up and lifted his shirt to reveal the rippling muscles of his abdomen. He indicated the ridge of muscle shaped like a V pointed toward a very important part of his anatomy.

  She sucked in a breath. “You punched him there? Why?”

  When he made to drop his T-shirt, she held up her hand. “Please don’t. I’m in a hospital bed, you have to be nice to me. Take it off. Come on, hotshot. Pretend we’re at the lake hunting slugs.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her but obliged, shucking his shirt in one quick motion. She feasted her eyes on his powerful torso. “Okay, so why did you punch the right fielder?”

  “So I’d be banned from the ballpark and no one would miss me if I came here.”

  “So you . . . compromised your baseball career to come
and see me?”

  “Well, a two-day suspension isn’t the end of my career. But yes.” He crouched down and cupped a callused hand around her cheek. “Without you, it’s not worth anything, my love.”

  The tears came so quickly, she couldn’t blink them away fast enough, and a few spilled down her cheeks, running across his hand. “I love you, Caleb. You have no idea how much. I was in a dark hole and then you came along and . . . everything got bright and wonderful.”

  Tenderly, he stroked the wetness from her cheek with his thumb, something deep and powerful glowing in his eyes. “Bright and wonderful, that’s you, my sweet love. That’s completely you.”

  “Then I thought it was all over. I could barely breathe.”

  “Not over. Never. Not in this lifetime.”

  They clung to each other for a long, piercingly sweet moment.

  “But Caleb . . .” She had to force the words from her throat. “If you get famous, and you’re with me, and someone digs up that . . . sex tape . . .”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about that. I really don’t. You didn’t do anything wrong, Sadie. You didn’t hurt anyone, you didn’t break any laws. You were trying to give your boyfriend a nice, sexy birthday gift. It wasn’t anyone else’s business. Not mine, not anyone’s.”

  Something inside her released, a sense of shame floating away like a loose balloon. Caleb was right. She hadn’t done anything so terrible. More tears flowed down her face. “I was stupid. Naïve. I didn’t ever think he would record it. Or do any of the things he did.”

  “Of course not.” He leaned closer to put his arms around her. “Who would, except another jackass like him?”

  “What is going on here?” The indignant voice of the nurse—the young black one named Randall—smashed the moment like a jackhammer. “I did not let you in here to strip naked in front of my patient.”

  Caleb straightened up to his full, gloriously bare-chested height. “I’m not naked.”

  “I asked him to,” Sadie said at the same time.

  “I don’t care if you asked him to do a lap dance. This is a hospital. What’s wrong with you people?”

  “So no naked bodies are allowed in hospitals?” Caleb snatched up his shirt from the foot of the bed.

  “Now now, what’s going on here?” Another nurse stepped into the room, this one in her early forties, with cinnamon red hair, named Andie. Sadie liked her because she always joked about the food.

  “This guy barged in here yesterday,” Randall told her, “then spent the whole damn night here, now he’s boppin’ around with no shirt. Ain’t that some kind of sanitation issue?”

  The red-haired nurse looked at Randall, then at Caleb, who stood frozen, his shirt crumpled in one hand, each chiseled muscle of his spectacular torso standing out in the drab room.

  “It certainly is,” Andie said sternly. “Hospital regulations are very clear on this point. Patient safety comes first at Kilby Community Hospital.”

  “We have elderly patients here,” Randall scolded. “Do you know what a sight like this could do to them?”

  “Heart attack waiting to happen, Mr. Hart. You really should be more considerate. Come on, hand it over.” Andie gestured to Caleb’s shirt. “I’m going to have to confiscate that.”

  “Excuse me?” Caleb’s expression was priceless; Sadie had to bury her face in her pillow to keep from laughing out loud.

  The two nurses burst out laughing and exchanged high-fives. “We’re just having a little fun with you, Hart,” said Randall. “Since Sadie’s doing so much better, we can’t complain too much.” He winked. “Just keep it decent when you leave this room. We know how wild those Catfish are.”

  Caleb whooshed out a breath, the tension leaving his body. He scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I think I’m going to miss Kilby. I really do.”

  Chapter 30

  THE NEXT DAY was a whirlwind, since Caleb had to be back in San Diego in about twenty-four hours. Of course, the sports blogs reported on his suspension, along with speculation about whether he was going through the same kind of meltdown he’d experienced the last time he pitched in the majors. Words like “unstable” and “unpredictable” were tossed around, fortunately intermingled with words like “brilliant” and “sensational.”

  The talk didn’t bother him, because this time he felt at peace with himself. And an encounter with Duke in Mike Solo’s hospital room cemented that feeling. Caleb dropped in to check on his friend, who was sleeping, and instead ran into Duke. “Walk with me,” the manager barked, and gestured for him to follow down the corridor.

  Caleb’s gut clenched. Had he been sent down again, and this was how the Friars were telling him? Had he pushed it too far with his two-day suspension, one day after getting on the roster?

  He shoved aside the worry—no matter what, it was worth it—and strode alongside Duke as he waddled toward an outdoor courtyard where smoking was allowed. They stood in the hot sun as Duke lit a cigar, the spicy scent of tobacco rising into Caleb’s nostrils.

  Duke must have picked up on his anxiety, because he shoved his Catfish cap back on his head and squinted. “Don’t worry, kid. You won’t be back.”

  “You don’t know that. Sullivan—”

  “Sullivan’s getting traded.” He mimed the turn of a key in front of his lips. “Take that one to the tomb.”

  “Traded.”

  “Front office likes what they’re seeing from you. You’re the future, and they know it. I been telling them exactly that for long enough, they ought to know it by now.”

  Caleb struggled to contain the surge of emotion that threatened to capsize him. The spot was his. His destiny awaited him on that beautiful mound in Friars Stadium. “Thanks, Duke.”

  “You can thank me by going all in, Hart. All in. None of that chickenshit ‘I’m doing this for my family’ bull.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Yeah, I know you want to take care of your family. I know you want a big contract. But this game doesn’t work that way. You have to love it, you have to let it beat you up, knife you in the gut and leave you bleeding on the goddamn bathroom floor.”

  Caleb bit at the inside of his lip to keep from laughing at the image. “I’ve shed my share of blood.”

  “Yes, you have. And you came back for more. That’s how I know you’re going to make it this time.” He shifted his cigar to his left hand and stuck out his right. A little bemused, Caleb shook it. Duke stubbed out the cigar on the cement block wall of the courtyard and swaggered back toward the door. “I told Crush my idea would work. Hope the man has learned his lesson by now. Always listen to the Duke.”

  Caleb followed close on his heels. “What idea?”

  “You and that Can the Catfish petition. I told him it would help you out of your slump.”

  Caleb frowned. How the hell had that ridiculous petition helped him out of his slump? He’d gotten himself out, damn it. He’d toughed it out and stuck with it until his head straightened out. That’s all there was to it. “I don’t get it.”

  “Still don’t get it, huh? You had a spell of what I call ‘spotlight-itis.’ A bad case. Most people don’t have fathers in prison. You got up there and saw all those people watching and you got afraid they’d find out about your deep dark secret. You couldn’t step into the spotlight because you were ashamed. Ruined your mojo.”

  “That’s a load of bull.” It had to be. He didn’t believe in that psychological crap.

  Duke ignored him. “You can’t throw a decent fastball with the weight of the world on you, Hart. You gotta do it for love. I put you on the Can the Catfish petition so you’d start having fun again. That thing was so nutty it was guaranteed to be fun. Guaranteed to shake you up and bring a little crazy into your life.”

  A memory flashed into his mind, Bieberman talking about surrendering to chaos. Maybe there was something to Duke’s theory. But he wasn’t about to tell him that. “Duke, you are so full of shit, I’m surprise
d they don’t hose you down and pat you with baby powder.”

  “Don’t give my wife any ideas.” He winked and rolled into Mike Solo’s room.

  After a quick snuggle with Sadie—he didn’t want to be away from her more than a few minutes at a time—Caleb dropped in on Mike and got a complete rundown on what had happened at the Roadhouse. The story made his blood run cold.

  “Thank God you guys were there.”

  “I’m telling you. They were out for blood, those Wades, especially after Donna got up there on the bar and lit into them.” He shook his head, albeit carefully. “This isn’t done, Hart. Those guys are nuts, and they’re mad as hell that we whipped their asses.”

  “I’m going to get Sadie to come with me to San Diego,” Caleb told him. “I don’t want her in the same town as them.”

  Mike grinned. “So you got yourself a woman. Nice work, Hart.”

  “Yeah, and I nearly fucked it up for good.”

  “Good save, then. Way to go. So you’re taking Sadie away from here. Wish you could take Donna too. I don’t know what she was thinking, but she’s put herself in the line of fire, for sure.”

  “I guess you’ll have to watch out for her.” Caleb gave Mike’s shoulder a squeeze. “How long are you out for?”

  “Couple days, max.” Since one of his eyes was swollen shut and Ace bandages were wrapped tightly around his torso, keeping his broken ribs in place, that sounded optimistic to Caleb.

  “That’s the spirit. Shake it off, dude. Heal up and get yourself to San Diego. I can already see the fireworks for your first homer.” Every time a Friar hit a home run, a ship’s bell sounded and fireworks went off in center field. Total circus, and he was glad they didn’t do it for visiting batters.

  “Hold that good thought, bro.” A quick grasp of each other’s forearms, and Caleb went back to Sadie’s room. She had a visitor—a very repentant Donna. Caleb didn’t even have to glare before she leaped to her feet, full of apologies. Sort of.