He hit the ball so hard it sailed over not only the wall, but out of the entire freakin’ stadium.
Then proceeded to hit a ground ball to center field.
A solid hit down the line.
And one more home run.
Needless to say, the scouts were impressed.
***
Sterling
“Can’t believe how far you’ve come when me and dad found you eating out of those trashcans,” Sebastian said, pounding me on the back.
“I’ve told you a million times, I wasn’t eating out of the trashcans, I only made it look like that so y’all would leave me alone,” I grumbled darkly.
Sebastian’s eyes sparkled with mirth.
“And how’d that work out for you?” He asked, punching me in the shoulder.
I immediately returned the punch with just as much force, if not more.
“It didn’t,” I laughed.
Sebastian had been my sponsor into The Dixie Wardens MC.
He’d changed my life.
And I could never thank him enough.
That night, I’d been trying to break into a veterinarian’s office to try to get some medication for Garrison, who’d been sicker than a dog.
Which was apt, I thought, since I’d been breaking into a vet’s office.
It still amazed me, how far I’d come.
The Dixie Wardens had changed my life.
They’d been the reason Garrison, Cormac, and I had gotten out of that helacious life.
They’d helped send Garrison to college.
They’d helped get Cormac a job.
And they’d helped me get into the Navy, and watched over my brothers while I’d been gone.
If you’d asked me ten years ago, I would never have thought I’d be in this position, with the opportunity of a lifetime sitting in my lap.
“So, are you going to take it?” Sebastian finally asked, offering me a beer.
I’d been offered a place on the minor league team for the Shreveport Spark’s, with a chance to move up to the Major League’s if I had enough drive.
Something I knew I could accomplish.
But being on a major league team had never been my dream.
It’d been Cormac’s.
I’d never thought that I’d make it.
I’d thought I’d get here, try out, and be sent home.
Never in a million years would I have thought this day would’ve gone this way.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I need to talk to my girl.”
Sebastian pounded me lightly on the shoulder, and I watched as my wife to be walked to me from across the room.
We were at Halligan’s and Handcuffs.
She wasn’t working today since we’d taken the day so she could come to the tryouts.
Now we were at the bar, celebrating the fact that the Spark’s actually wanted me. A man that was nearly twenty-seven and hadn’t played baseball competitively in a very long time.
Well, I was drinking.
Ruthie wasn’t.
That was because Ruthie was pregnant.
Even though she was still in denial with the news.
We’d thrown out her birth control pills nearly six weeks ago.
Well I had, Ruthie had just gone with the flow.
She had to have known it’d happen.
“You okay?” She asked me, wrapping her hands around me.
I shrugged.
“I always thought it’d be me who died first. I was the one with the dangerous job. I was the one who put my life on the line. Not him. He was only playing baseball. How could this happen to him and not me?” I asked her.
Ruthie’s eyes filled with tears, and they slipped over as she leaned forward and placed her lips against mine.
“I don’t know. Life is unpredictable. You never know what you’re going to get. We can’t see into the future and we can’t change the past. You’ll just have to learn to live with it, and hope you have someone like me and your friends, your brothers, to see you through,” she said softly.
I groaned.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted.
I was so torn.
On one hand I knew what kind of opportunity this was.
Knew that if I did this, this could mean huge things for Ruthie and me.
We could have so many things that my job as a Navy SEAL wouldn’t offer us.
But I loved being a SEAL.
Loved my team.
“This is completely up to you,” she whispered. “And I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“As will we, my man,” Sebastian said.
I hadn’t realized he was still there.
But he was.
And I was okay with him hearing all that was just said.
“So you’re saying I can still be a Dixie Warden if I’m a professional baseball player?” I teased. “There’s not some secret code against that?”
He snorted. “There’s not a rule book on how to be a biker. No one said you can’t do what you want to do. And if baseball is what you want to do, then fuckin’ do it.”
“Yeah,” Kettle said, plopping down on the bar stool beside us. “’Cause you know how I like good seats.”
“You don’t even like baseball,” Adeline said, wrapping her hands around her husband’s neck from behind.
Kettle shrugged. “I do when there’s beer involved. I can handle anything when there’s beer.”
We laughed.
And we were happy.
The woman I loved was at my side.
We had a child on the way.
And I knew that, somewhere in heaven, Cormac was smiling down at me.
Silently urging me closer and closer to the life I was meant to live.
As a husband.
A father.
A member of The Dixie Wardens MC.
And a motherfucking professional baseball player.
Epilogue
Dear Lord,
Thank you for baseball pants.
Amen
-Ruthie’s secret thoughts
Sterling
Seven months and fifteen days later
“You’re up, Waters,” Coach said, slapping me hard on the right shoulder.
I shrugged off the pain and jogged to the bats, picking up my favorite.
Each player had their own bat, and it’d been a real eye opener to me when I’d been “presented with all the equipment options available to me.
I tucked the bat under my arm as I walked up the steps, multitasking by slipping my hands into my batting gloves as I did.
“You ready?” The batting coach, Lou Jacobs, asked.
I nodded.
I was ready.
This would be my thirty third major league baseball game.
I’d started out in the minor leagues, proving myself to all those involved.
Once I’d done that, I was called up to the majors, where I rode the bench for two months before I was ever put in.
But once I was, I’d proven myself.
My first at bat, I’d hit a line drive to center field.
It’d bounced off the wall and given me my first ever double as a professional baseball player.
That’d been the day that everything became ‘real.’
Every day I missed the life I used to have.
But I still had my family.
My friends.
My Teams.
Yes, I said teams.
I was still a member of SEAL Team 11, as well as the first baseman for The Shreveport Spark’s.
Not that I did any more missions.
Things had taken a drastic turn for SEAL Team 11 when the rest of the world learned the full details of the mission to recover the Speaker’s pregnant ex-wife. It turns out that most Americans didn’t much like that their boys were sent into a hostile country on the fool’s errand to intended only as
suage a powerful man’s pride.
Apparently, the Speaker’s pregnant ex-wife actually wanted to be there with the other man. Having eventually had enough, she herself contacted the media when she realized he wasn’t going to leave her alone. She was the one who broke the story, letting the media know that he wasn’t taking no for an answer from her as evidenced by the mission that was in no way a “rescue” mission, but just another flexing of the muscle that her powerful ex-husband, the Speaker, had at his disposal.
The second mission we’d been sent on to bring the senator’s ex-wife home had been eye opening, and the team had learned from the ex-wife and the new lover that the speaker wouldn’t leave them alone, which was why they’d moved out of the country in the first place.
Once this information came to light, our captain immediately pulled us out, much to the Speaker’s frustration.
In an attempt to cover his own ass, the Speaker then attempted to throw Team 11 under the bus. But with the help of Silas and a few other government officials, that backfired on him in a big way.
He was screwed, and SEAL Team 11 was now America’s team.
Since all of our identities had been revealed as a result of the media frenzy, our ability to conduct further covert operations became severely compromised. There wouldn’t be any more missions for us.
Which was also why I hadn’t worried about being a public ‘face.’
America thought it was awesome that a SEAL was playing for the Shreveport Sparks.
They thought it was so cool, in fact, that the newest team in the MLB had an instant fan base overnight.
“Get your head in the game, boy.”
I winced at my coach’s apt words.
My head wasn’t in the game.
It was in my other life.
The one I had when I wasn’t playing baseball.
“Yes, sir,” I said, taking a few practice swings and testing the weight of the bat.
It was the first base coach that had the adrenaline really shooting through my body, though.
“Your wife called, she’s in labor,” Coach Dennis said.
“Fuuuuck,” I said, not knowing what to do.
My eyes moved up to the stands to where all of my ‘family’ had permanent seats, and I could tell right off the bat that Ruthie wasn’t lying.
I could see her hunched over her round belly with her teeth gritted.
But she managed a small wave that let me know she was staying till the end.
“Shit,” I said, turning back around.
“Just bring it in, and you can go,” the coach said from my back.
I took a few lead off steps, resisting the urge that practically screamed for me to go to Ruthie, and watched the batter.
We’d discussed the possibilities of this happening.
When I’d made the suggestion that she stay home today after hearing she was experiencing contractions, she’d looked at me like I was nuts.
But I couldn’t really refuse Ruthie anything.
She could talk me into just about anything without much of an effort.
Luckily, Sebastian sat on one side of her, Kettle on the other, and Cleo was directly behind them.
I knew she was in good hands.
That still didn’t make the next two at bat’s any less painful.
The ball hit the catcher’s mitt, making me wince.
“Get your head in the game!” Coach yelled.
And I did just that not even a second later, hitting a ball down the third base line, and making it to first just in the knick of time.
The next hitter, Consuelo, knocked the ball down the third base line.
I moved to second with my heart in my throat, resisting the urge to run for third.
Years and years of patience had me viciously locking that desire down until the next batter, Gonzales, came up.
Gonzales bunted, and while they were busy trying to get him out, I not only rounded third, but I hit home base as well, surprising not just the opposite team’s players, but the whole stadium as well.
The coach just gave me a roll of the eyes as I ran up to the dugout and started tugging off my helmet.
“I gotta go,” I said urgently.
He nodded. “That’s fine. You just won the game, anyway.”
I probably did, but it was up to my team to shut it down completely in the next three innings.
“Thanks,” I said, hurrying down the field.
I jumped the fence that sat directly in front of my family, and dropped down to one knee in front of my wife.
“Ready?” I asked.
I could see that her water had broken.
But she just sat there, as patient as could be, waiting for me to arrive.
“Yep. Let’s do this.”
Then, to the fan’s delight, I carried my woman out of the stadium.
***
I picked up the soft, pale yellow body suit, and smiled before tossing it into the dirty clothes hamper by the cleanest corner.
It was the same body suit that Ruthie had picked out for her little Jade to wear home from the hospital.
We’d put it onto Cormac for all of thirty seconds before he’d shit all over it.
He’d had to come home in the hospital’s white shirt that declared him a ‘Superstar.’
Which had chapped Ruthie’s ass something fierce.
I’d had to explain to her that it’d be easier to go home with our child rather than sending me home for the outfit that she had for him as a backup.
Something I’d mistakenly taken home with me earlier in the afternoon when I was trying to help out.
Now we were all home, and our house was filled to the brim with family.
Silas and Sawyer.
Sebastian and Baylee.
Kettle and Adeline.
Viddy and Trance.
Loki and Channing.
Rue and Cleo.
Tru and Torren.
My mom. Ruthie’s dad.
Our brother and sister.
Dixie.
Garrison.
Thomasina.
Lily, Dante, and their two children.
And many, many more.
There were so many people that they’d had to spill out on the back deck.
But I wouldn’t change it for the world.
“Here, hold him for a second, would you?” Ruthie asked as she yanked her shirt down and exposed her breasts.
My eyes widened, and my cock instantly became hard.
But that was the way it was with my Ruthie.
It didn’t matter that she’d just pushed out a baby the size of a small house.
Her breasts weren’t affected, and my cock didn’t seem to care that they were now going to go hand in hand with our son for the next year.
All it cared about was the fact that it hadn’t had any of Ruthie for well over a week.
The small ball of life in my arms made a grunting sound before he started to wail his little lungs out, one of the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard.
“Will you change him?” She asked.
I winced.
I’d yet to do that.
I was worried I’d break him.
“I guess,” I said reluctantly.
She snorted as she worked a shirt on over her breasts.
A breast-feeding tank that would tank tops would make feeding Cormac easier for her, especially when I wasn’t here to help.
“Hurry up,” she laughed. “We have a house full of people.”
That we did.
Carefully I opened the door that lead into the hallway, then continued down to Cormac’s room.
His room was a baseball lover’s dream.
Signed balls lined shelves.
The walls were painted to resemble a baseball field.
The bedding was white with red stitching just like a baseball.
Seriously, every kid in their right mind woul
d love this room.
Hell, after seeing it, I’d wanted to do my own man cave to resemble it.
Which was quickly shot down by Ruthie since she’d made the only other spare room into a sewing room.
Something she’d taken to doing when she quit her job at Halligans and Handcuffs to make up the difference in income.
She was actually doing quite well at it, too.
Not that she needed to.
She just wanted to.
Which was okay with me.
Except for the monogramming.
Every fucking thing Cormac had had his initials, or name, or something cutesy on it.
Poor kid was going to grow up with a complex if she kept it up.
I placed a soft kiss on Cormac’s head before I sat him down carefully on the soft changing pad.
I was nearly to his diaper when I was interrupted.
“Got a call today about a certain foster father,” Silas said from behind me.
I raised a brow at him, placing my hand on the middle of Cormac’s chest to keep him on the changing table while my eyes weren’t on him.
“Oh yeah?” I asked nonchalantly.
Silas nodded, coming into the room.
He had his own little girl, Amelia, asleep on his chest.
She was the absolute cutest thing I’d ever seen.
Besides my own child, of course.
Who would’ve thought that we’d all be having kids together with such an age gap between us?
“Seems he took a fall in the yard, had to go to the infirmary. Sustained a broken femur, broken hand, fracture to his right eye socket, and a concussion.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Imagine that.”
I made sure to have my good ol’ foster father taken care of every few weeks or so.
He healed, and he seemed to have another accident.
He was a klutz, after all.
“And seems John Wait had another setback with his treatment,” Silas continued. “He’s been given a new medication that makes him nearly comatose when he’s on it. It’s a thing of beauty.”
I smiled at my son as he wiggled around, hating the fact that I’d just exposed his goods to the cool air.
I covered him quickly with the stupid pee-pee tee-pee thing that Ruthie had gotten at her baby shower.
Something I hadn’t realized that was needed until I’d watch Ruthie, and my mother, get peed on earlier this morning.
Right To My Wrong (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 8) Page 21