Off the Hook

by Laura Drewry

  Not everything. Because somewhere along the line in the last couple of months, what he wanted had changed, and now nothing would ever be the same. He’d made it back to the show in large part because Kate had pushed him, believed in him, and made him believe when everyone else thought he should have packed it in.

  The Buoys had made it to opening day in large part because she’d busted her ass to help get it there. She’d sweated alongside the rest of them, had practically handed them not only a web designer but a chef, and she hadn’t even hesitated when the manure needed to be shoveled.

  Turned out she could shovel shit with the best of them and he’d bought into all of it, and now what did he have? A career that held little appeal and a family business that was tainted with everything she’d touched. And she’d touched everything.

  There was a tiny part of him that knew he deserved it. He’d done the same thing to her, and this was karma coming around to kick him in the ass and show him not only how stupid he really was but how he was right.

  Love wasn’t enough.

  Kate didn’t want him, and his brothers didn’t need him, so the only thing left was baseball. It was a simple thing; all he needed to do was be good to the ball, and it would be good to him. Most of the time. He wasn’t perfect, far from it, but he was working a 3.672 ERA, which was pretty damn good for him, especially considering his fastball was still only brushing this side of ninety.

  During their series in Detroit, he sorted out everything he’d left there before Da died, but when they got back to Oakland, he had no interest in finding a new place, so he stayed in a hotel. His contract was only a year long, anyway, and even if management offered him an extension, which they’d be crazy to do, he doubted he’d take it.

  His arm wasn’t going to give them any more than it already was. He could work two, maybe three batters a few times a week, but that was as much as he had left, and everyone on the team knew it. Still, he’d never disrespect the game, the team, or the thousands of players who’d kill to be in cleats, so every time they called him out of that bullpen, he gave them everything he had.

  He’d bleed out on that mound if that’s what his manager asked of him.

  A month out, leading the Rockies late in the game, Liam got the call again. Game face on, he rolled his neck a few times, then hustled out of the bullpen, forcing everything around him to fade until all he could see was the glove behind the plate, all he could feel was the unblemished curve of the ball against his palm and the small even stitches as he wrapped his fingers over the seam.

  Liam didn’t make a habit of disagreeing with his catcher, but he’d already thrown more fastballs in the last two nights than he should have, so two shake-offs later brought not only the catcher but the pitching coach out to the mound.

  “They’re not expecting you to throw hard,” his coach mumbled from behind his cupped hand. “He’s up there thinking your arm’s thrown all the smoke it’s going to throw this week, so you know what you need to do.”

  Yup, he did. He needed to bleed a little.

  Liam climbed up on the mound and waited for the ump to wave him on. The call came again, and this time Liam didn’t hesitate. Inhaling deeply, he went into his windup and hurled that ball straight down the chute as hard as he could. He didn’t hear it slice through the air, he didn’t hear it smack the glove, and he didn’t hear the ump call the strike, because all of that was drowned out by the screaming pain that exploded inside his shoulder.

  Everything after that seemed to happen in slow motion: stumbling off the mound, the manager’s face so close to his, medical staff surrounding him, everyone talking but Liam not hearing a word. He didn’t need to hear what they were saying, because he already knew.

  They could do all the MRIs they wanted to, they could even try the surgical route again, but none of it would change the fact Liam had thrown his last pitch. Still, he let them poke, prod, wrap, and talk all they wanted, because they had a job to do, just as he’d had his. Bottom line, there was no point pretending his injury was anything less than what it was, and even before his manager came to talk to him, the cards were on the table.

  They were sorry about his injury, they’d of course honor his contract, and their medical team was prepared to do everything they could for him, but the fact of the matter was, they couldn’t leave their bullpen short, so while they didn’t want him to feel rushed, they were going to have to replace him in fairly short order.

  Liam heard everything, but it was as if their voices were filtered through a thick fog. By the time he made it to his locker, most of the team was long gone, which was just as well, because nobody liked to watch a teammate empty out his locker.

  With his right arm basically strapped against his body, it took some clumsy juggling with his left to get everything into his duffel bag, and when he finally got back to his hotel, he didn’t even bother unpacking it—he dropped the bag on the end of the bed and flopped down beside it.

  It was well after midnight when his phone rang, and it was only then that he realized he hadn’t even checked it before tossing it in the duffel bag with everything else. It went to voicemail before he could dig it out, and by the looks of it, this wasn’t the first phone call from the Buoys that night.

  Shit.

  Before calling them back, Liam pulled a couple of beverages from the minibar and then dropped down on the couch. He didn’t even hear a ring before Jessie’s voice was in his ear. Pulling the phone away a bit, he put it on speaker and set it on the armrest next to him.

  “Hey, Jess.”

  “Oh my God,” she cried. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  By the amount of noise coming through the phone, she’d obviously put him on speaker, as well, and Liam could picture her there with Ro and Finn, all huddled around her desk the same way they’d been when she first explained the reservations system to them—the difference being that this time they didn’t wait for an explanation. The three of them all started firing questions at the same time.

  “Rotator again?”

  “What’d the doctors say?”

  “Did they give you anything for the pain?”

  And behind the chaos was something else, something that sounded an awful lot as if one of them was sniffling, crying maybe.

  “What’s that?” he asked. “Is Ro crying?”

  “No!” Ro’s indignant reply was immediately followed by what sounded like someone getting whapped with something and then Ro’s reluctant sigh. “Yeah, okay, whatever.”

  Liam told them everything the doctors and his manager said, ending with a “So I guess that’s it.”

  A moment of silence followed before Ronan cleared his throat.

  “Is there any chance—”

  “No. The arm’s pretty much fucked now.”

  “Sorry, man. That’s really shitty.”

  “Yeah,” Liam muttered. He tried to laugh it off, but sitting alone in his hotel room made it sound pathetic and hollow. “It happens.”

  “So, uh…” Finn hesitated, then asked the question Liam had asked himself a hundred times since walking off that mound: “Does that mean you’re coming home, then?”

  “Jeez,” Jessie growled. “Would you give the guy a couple minutes to get his head straight?”

  “It’s okay,” Liam said quietly. He wanted to go home, that was for damn sure, but just as with his team in Oakland, Liam wasn’t going to be much use to them up at the lodge.

  “I won’t be able to grip a rod for a while.”

  “So? We’ve been training someone new on the boats,” Finn said. “You know, for when Ro goes back to Calgary next month.”

  “Forget the boats.” It almost sounded as if Jessie was smiling when she spoke. “I need help in the lodge: cleaning, busing, you know the drill. There’s always something.”

  Hearing their voices, knowing they were disappointed for him and yet happy he’d be coming home, eased some of the twisting ache in his gut.

  �
�I don’t know,” he said slowly. “My arm’s pretty bad, Jess. I might not be able to do anything other than sit on the dock, lifting a pint of Gat.”

  “Oh, you poor thing.” He didn’t need to see Jessie to know she was rolling her eyes at him. “Lucky for you, the toilet scrubber doesn’t care if you’re left- or right-handed; it’ll work in either hand.”

  They talked awhile longer before Liam cut them off, pleading fatigue. But hours after they’d hung up, he hadn’t moved from his corner of the couch. How was he supposed to feel? Sad because his career had just ended with what SportsCenter was calling a “spectacularly devastating pitch”? Or happy because he was finally going home to stay?

  Was it still his home? For those couple of months, it had felt more like home than it ever had, but now…now he wasn’t sure. And as much as he wanted to see Jessie and his brothers again, without Kate there, the chances of the Buoys ever feeling like home again were slim and none.

  He needed Kate in his life. She filled something he hadn’t even known was empty until she’d walked up the path at the Buoys, pulling that damn suitcase. He’d spent ten years thinking about her, googling her, and wondering what would happen if he called her.

  This time he wasn’t going to wonder. This time he was going to say everything he should have said all along.

  The next five days were a flurry of doctors, arthroscopic surgery, therapy, calls to the Buoys, and settling things up with his agent. And while he tried to focus on everything they said to him, everything they did to him, all he cared about was getting on that plane and heading north.

  He needed to see Kate, to find out why she’d left, and to beg her for a chance to fix whatever he’d done. He knew it was a dickish thing to do, since he’d walked out on her so long ago, but he didn’t care. If being a selfish prick meant he got to see her one more time, then he was damn well going to be the biggest selfish prick out there.

  Sitting in Salt Lake on the layover home, Liam had no idea what he was going to say or do when he saw her. Beg? Plead? Did it matter? He’d be damned if he was going to let her get away a second time without laying it all out there.

  He’d never told a woman he loved her, and while part of him thought he should be worried or nervous about doing it now, he wasn’t—at least not about saying it out loud; the only thing that worried him was that his past experiences would prove right again and love wouldn’t be enough.

  Waiting his turn for a cab in Vancouver was the most taxing thing he’d ever done, but once he was finally on his way, he rattled off the first of the two addresses he’d committed to memory and promised his driver an extra fifty if he’d wait for him as he ran inside.

  The Foster Group took up the entire twelfth floor of a newish building on Burrard Street—nice enough, Liam guessed, with all its glass and chrome, but whoever’d chosen that god-awful pan-flute music was an idiot.

  The receptionist, a twenty-something-year-old guy in a sleek gray suit, greeted him with a wary smile, which Liam could only assume was because they obviously didn’t get many people coming through the door in shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Can I, uh, help you?” he asked, as he plugged his headset into the cord hanging from the phone.

  “I hope so. I’m looking for Kate Hadley; is she here today?”

  “Kate—” Holding up a finger, the kid pressed a button on the phone. “Good morning, the Foster Group, how may I direct your call? One moment.”

  A couple of more button pushes later, the kid glanced at Liam again.

  “Sorry about that. Did you say Kate? Kate Hadley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry, she’s, uh, no longer with the company.” Even if the kid hadn’t hesitated, there was something in his voice that made Liam wonder.

  “Where is she?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr….?”

  “O’Donnell,” Liam ground out.

  A spark of recognition flickered across his face. “Mr. O’Donnell, of course. As I said, Ms. Hadley is no longer with us, but I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to share details.”

  Not at liberty? Did that mean they’d fired her? Or had she quit? No, she said she’d worked too hard to let anything get in her way, so there was no way she’d quit.

  Son of a bitch.

  Part of his brain told him to push past the reception desk and go find this Paul Foster, to tell him what a piece of shit he was for letting Kate go, but that idea was shoved to the very back corner of his mind as he raced outside.

  He could deal with Foster later; right now he just needed to find Kate. After giving the cabbie the second address he’d memorized, Liam twitched in the backseat all the way to Kate’s apartment building.

  “Man the fuck up,” he muttered. He wasn’t going to get another shot at this, that much he knew, so he was already half out the door before the cab even stopped.

  She wasn’t kidding when she’d said it wasn’t anything fancy. Hell, there wasn’t even a security entry. With the cab waiting at the curb with his suitcases, Liam didn’t give himself a second to rethink it; he took the stairs three at a time and banged on her door.

  The sounds of shuffling inside the apartment made him knock again, louder.

  “Kate?”

  As each shuffling step got closer to the door, Liam found himself holding his breath, his hand pressed flat against the wood, desperate for the first glance of her face.

  When the door finally opened a tiny crack, it took every ounce of self-control he had not to shove it open the rest of the way, and he was ever so thankful he didn’t do that, because it wasn’t Kate’s face peering out at him.

  “Yes?” The woman had to be eighty if she was a day, her gray hair wrapped up in foam curlers and her pink-and-purple housecoat secured tightly with a belt.

  For a few seconds, Liam blinked down at her, then at the numbers on the door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought this was Kate Hadley’s apartment. I must have the wrong—”

  “Kate?” the woman repeated, her voice soft as down. “I…Hold on.”

  She left the door open as she shuffled away for a second. When she returned, she had three envelopes in her hand.

  “I think it’s just junk mail, but I didn’t want to throw it out in case she wanted it.”

  Sure enough, all three envelopes were addressed to Kate.

  “I’m sorry,” Liam said, giving his head a short shake. “So this was Kate’s place?”

  “I would think so,” the woman said, nodding at the mail in Liam’s hand. “But the place was empty when I got it, so…”

  “When was that, if you don’t mind my asking?” Desperation began in Liam’s gut and crawled slowly up his throat.

  “Oh. Well.” Her whole face crinkled into a frown. “I guess I moved in about mid-June. Yes, it was the seventeenth; I remember now because it was my grandson’s birthday.”

  The seventeenth? That was…what…almost three weeks ago.

  Three weeks? God, she could be anywhere.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where the woman went, would you? The one who lived here before you?”

  “Sorry, dear.”

  “That’s fine,” Liam lied, nodding. “Would you know which apartment the building manager lives in?”

  She didn’t. All she knew was that he was on the first floor somewhere, so after assuring her he would get the mail to Kate, Liam knocked on every door on the first floor until he found the manager, who wasn’t any more help than the old woman.

  Calls to her cellphone went straight to voicemail, and she had yet to respond to any of the text messages he’d sent. He couldn’t even call her friends, because he didn’t know their last names. She’d only used their first names when she talked about them.

  A smart man would have let it go, would have taken it as a sign and just walked away. But Liam never claimed to be smart. All he needed was time; he’d find her. In the meantime, he couldn’t very well keep driving around the city in that cab, so back to the airp
ort they went, arriving ten minutes before the charter flight to the Buoys was due to leave.

  There were two empty seats on the flight, and as dumb luck would have it, Liam found himself sitting next to Chuck Cagle, an MLB super-fan who had specifically booked in at the Buoys because Liam was part owner and who could barely get one question out of his mouth before the next one followed.

  How was the arm? Who was Liam’s favorite player to pitch to? Had he considered coaching or commentating? Where did he keep his glove during the off-season? Would he sign something? Would he take a selfie with Chuck? Did he have any advice for Chuck’s nephew, who was only eight but, no question, was heading for the big leagues?

  Liam wasn’t a total prick; he knew it was the fans who made it possible for people like him to live their dreams, so he did his best to answer as many questions as he could before they landed, but he didn’t think he’d ever been happier to see that dock come into view.

  BoB was tied up, but Fishin’ Impossible wasn’t anywhere to be seen, which meant Finn must be out on a run with some guests.

  Jessie and Ronan greeted each of the passengers as they stepped out of the Helijet, then pointed them up toward the lodge with the assurance that there were snacks in the lobby and that their bags would be brought either up to their room or over to their assigned cabin shortly.

  It wasn’t until all of them were taken care of that Ro slapped Liam on the back and Jessie finally smiled up at him.

  “It’s good to have you back.” With her big, warm smile, Jessie hugged him gently before putting him to work. “Grab a bag, will you?”

  She didn’t give him a second to relax or get settled, because once the bags had been sorted, they needed to be delivered, the bar needed tending, and Olivia needed a hand in the kitchen. Ronan begged off, disappearing down to the dock, claiming boat maintenance as an excuse.