Hard to Lose (The Play Hard Series Book 4)

by K. Bromberg

  I simply stare at her. I think I fall a little harder with each drop that hits her.

  “Chase?”

  She shouts but not in the way I expected. Instead, she twirls around with her hands out much like she did on our first date, laughing like a loon.

  “Dance with me,” she urges.

  “Why?” I laugh.

  “Because from here on out, every time it rains, you’ll stop and think of me.”

  She’s absolutely fucking right. I’ll never feel a raindrop again without thinking of this moment, right now. Of her sexy smile and her wild eyes.

  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “Yes.” She grabs my hand and laughs. “Can you hear it?” she asks and holds her hand to her ear. When I close my eyes, I can barely hear Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” from the speakers still playing at the bar. “C’mon.”

  And so we dance.

  Body to body, as the warm summer thundershower comes down around us.

  With fields of daisies on either side of us.

  And something definitely growing between us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chase

  The ringing of my cell jolts me awake, causing my laptop to fall off my legs and onto the bed. It takes me a second to orient myself and find my phone where it fell between the two pillows I’m currently propped up on.

  I look at the screen and sigh in relief that it’s not my dad or sisters. Everyone is okay and the worrywart in me can breathe a little easier.

  But it is Gunner. The same Gunner who should be at work right now. Because it’s one in the morning.

  “Hey. Is everything okay?”

  His masculine chuckle greets my ears and I allow myself to melt into the pillows at its sound.

  “I’m good. Everything’s okay. I didn’t mean to startle you. Were you sleeping?”

  “No. Yes. I nodded off while I was working.” I have a million questions I want to ask as to why he’s calling, but I do something rare for me. I sit back and wait without questioning.

  “I’m at work still, so I can’t talk long, but uh, I never answered you tonight, and I didn’t want you to think I was hiding anything from you.”

  “Gunner? What are you talking about?” My mind races over all the questions at Brushes ‘N’ Booze that he answered before returning to our slow dance in the warm, summer storm.

  “My love life. You asked about it and I didn’t answer.”

  “It’s okay. I haven’t even thought twice about it.” And I haven’t, but now with those words, I wonder what is so important that he’d call me at one in the morning to tell me.

  “It’s not okay. You shared and I didn’t.” He pauses. “I don’t have any skeletons in my closet when it comes to my dating life. Like you, I date, but I’ve rarely let anyone get close. I had a lot to deal with after everything that happened over there.”

  “Okay.” And I’m sure that a lot to deal with is yet another understatement of how grueling it had to have been to recover from such horrific injuries. Mentally and physically.

  “And before I start, full disclosure. I may have had a few drinks of liquid courage in order to make this call.”

  “Liquid courage is sometimes needed,” I murmur, suddenly on edge about whatever he wants to divulge.

  “As is a phone call, because to say this face to face is harder.” He emits a nervous chuckle that is so damn endearing.

  “Noted.”

  After a deep breath, he says, “After . . . everything, I needed to heal first. I was also still in the service and promised myself that I wouldn’t ever let someone get attached to me, because what if it happened again? I couldn’t put someone through that like my brothers who didn’t come home did.”

  “Gunner, you don’t have to explain this.”

  “I want to. Please. I’ve been sitting here serving drinks all night while feeling like shit that you opened yourself up to me and I didn’t do the same for you. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  “So it was my excuse while I was enlisted—I kept the women I dated during that time at a distance because I didn’t want to hurt them. It was only after I was discharged, and couldn’t use that excuse anymore, that I realized I also couldn’t let anyone get close until I dealt with the trauma of it all myself. I had to come to terms with the horrific things I saw and did. While I don’t think I ever will, I’ve learned to live with them. To cope with them. And for the longest while, I knew I had to fix myself before I’d let anyone else get close enough to see the scars on the inside that were way worse than the ones on the outside. I was afraid both sets would scare them away.”

  A tear slides down my cheek and I shove it away. He just freaking laid bare his soul to me, his vulnerabilities, and I’m more than stunned. Men don’t do this. They don’t talk like this. They don’t open themselves up and explain.

  Or at least I’ve never been with one who has. Then again, maybe I’ve never cared to listen.

  But I care to listen to Gunner. I want to.

  “You are amazing,” I whisper his words from earlier back to him, a smile on my lips as another tear slides down my cheek.

  “I just needed to explain that to you. To let you know that I dated but didn’t get close like you, but for other reasons. You’re the first person I’ve ever shown both sets of scars to, Chase.”

  “And both sets are beautiful to me.”

  Gunner goes to speak and his voice breaks, so he stops and clears his throat. But I swear I hear him sniff on the other end of the line, and it makes me desperately want to wrap my arms around him and hug him tight.

  It makes me hope that he’ll see the white lie I told at the beginning as nothing but a thoughtless, throwaway line I haven’t bothered to correct. And to beg him not to make it into a mountain.

  He knows more about me than any other person. And I don’t want him to hate me. To think less of me.

  Because I want more of him like this.

  More of him.

  Period.

  “I, uh—need to get back to the bar.”

  “Yes. Okay,” I say. Silence fills the connection, but he doesn’t hang up yet. “Liquid courage or not, telephone or in-person . . . thank you for telling me.”

  “It was good to hear your voice. Night, Chase.”

  “Night, Gunner.”

  And when the connection breaks, I sit with my phone clutched in my hand against my chest. Isn’t that the classic Gunner I’ve come to know? Not the man he talks about being and having to heal from, but a man who wants to make sure I don’t feel more vulnerable than him. A man who called to answer a question that I haven’t thought twice about since I got back to my hotel room.

  Who is this man and how is he so, so good?

  My dandelion wish from earlier comes back to me, and I smile as I snuggle deeper under my comforter.

  For more nights like this.

  I thought that true at the time and I hope it more so now.

  After our dance in the rain.

  After the phone call I just received.

  Definitely more nights like this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Gunner

  Seven Years Ago

  Sal yanks my arm with a force that has my body screaming.

  Everywhere. A 1965 Mustang doesn’t exactly have the same safety standards that cars nowadays have—and fuck, does every muscle and bone in my body feel it right now.

  It doesn’t help that Sal’s fists did a number on me after he found out about the accident last night.

  “Thank God, no one got hurt. Thank God, you’re all right.” My mom’s repeated words over and over did nothing to calm the situation. Not as he told her to leave the room. Not as he threatened she’d suffer the consequences if she didn’t let him teach me a lesson. Not as her eyes met mine when he shut the door, closing her out. Coward.

  And then, I stood there with a shit-eating grin on my face and a fuck-you lift to my chin as he showed me wi
th his fists and insults the “lesson” he wanted me to learn.

  He yanks again, and I grit my teeth as he drags me to the corner of the strip mall, where we stand a foot away from the glass storefront so no one can really see us.

  “So help me God, boy,” Sal sneers. “I’m going to make a man out of you one way or another.”

  “So what? So I can be just as pathetic as you?” I counter. “I’m not going. Not a chance in hell.”

  Sure, I crashed his car, but the prick had it coming to him. There’s only so much a man can take, so much second-string living a person should put up with—and I, right or wrong, reached my breaking point last night.

  “I don’t think you’re understanding the situation, son,” he says, like it’s a slur. “You drove a car drunk, underage, and crashed it. You then fled the scene of an accident—”

  “I did not. I called you.” And it took everything I had to do just that, but I was scared and hurt and Boone hightailed it out of there on foot so he wouldn’t get in trouble, since he’d already had some trouble with the law. “You came to pick me up and pulled the car out of there with your Jeep.”

  His smile is gloating. “Really?” He feigns innocence. “Because from the way I recall it, and how I’ll gladly tell the cops when I file a report, my troubled stepson stole my car out of spite. And despite being only twenty, he broke into my liquor cabinet, got drunk, stole money out of my safe—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He yanks my arm even harder, his fingers bruising and threatening on my bicep. “And after he stole my liquor, my money, and my car, he decided to go drinking and driving where he crashed my car, injured his passenger, and then fled the scene of the crime after damaging a fence and other personal property.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind.” I say the words, but silent panic is suddenly clawing its way up my throat.

  “Am I?” He chuckles. “Officer, I know he’s my stepson and I love him dearly, but I think this time I need to teach him a lesson. I want to press full charges for all of these infractions, because this time he got off lucky and didn’t kill anyone, but next time . . . and there will be a next time, it might be a lot worse.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” But the look in Sal’s eyes says he would.

  “I can be real convincing.” Another creepy smile that makes me feel like he’s been planning on getting me out of their life for some time now, and I just gave him the opportunity to put it in motion. “I already put in a call last night to my friend at the station. He said you’d be in a good three, four years.” He shrugs.

  “Fuck this. Fuck you.” He’s bluffing. He wouldn’t. And yet deep down, I know he’s not. He’s been trying to damage my mother’s view of me ever since they got married. And now that my stepbrother Marcus is getting attention for baseball, wouldn’t it be easier to get rid of the one who shines brighter?

  I feel sick to my stomach and not just because I’m hungover. But because he means it. He means this.

  “By the look on your face, you’re getting it now.” He leans in closer so I can smell the stale smell of alcohol and cigarettes on his breath. “I own a piece of everything you are, Ryan.”

  “Go to hell.”

  His chuckle is low and degrading and has me clenching my fists. “What do you think your dad would say if he could see you now? At least he was an honorable man. At least he would have taken responsibility for his actions. At least—”

  “You don’t know shit about my father.” Tears burn and rage fires inside of me. Fuck Sal. Fuck my father for never coming home and leaving me here with this asshole. And fuck my mother for letting this happen. All of it. Every damn part of it.

  “What I do know, is that I’m marching you into this recruitment office and making you enlist, or I’m calling the cops and pressing charges. Fuck if I care. But you can spend four years becoming a man serving your country or four years behind bars being Billy-Bob’s girlfriend. You decide, son.”

  My heart stops, fucking dies, at his words . . . especially when it hits me that we are literally standing ten feet from the army recruitment office’s doors.

  I was so preoccupied worrying and anticipating another fist, that I didn’t think to notice where he parked. Where we were headed.

  And now I’m frozen with dread.

  “But baseball. What about baseball and—”

  His chuckle cuts me off. “Baseball’s dead. You have a ton of talent but you lack everything else to be successful. Everyone knows it and that’s why no calls have come your way. Do you really think any coach in their right mind is going to sign an asshole law-breaker? A kid with no morals who steals from the hand that feeds and houses him? There are a dozen more pitchers just like you with a clean record and halo sitting atop their head. You did this to yourself, Ryan. All you. Blame yourself.”

  I stare at him and hate him with every fiber of my being. Tears well and it takes everything I have to fight them back.

  “Jail or army. You pick.”

  Anything is better than being here with you.

  And isn’t that the fucking kicker? I was stuck here going to a junior college, playing for one because we didn’t have the money—that and I feared what would happen to my mom if I left—and miraculously, only two years later, the money was found to send Marcus to a four-year school.

  I should have left.

  I shouldn’t have cared about protecting my mom when it’s clear she’s so conditioned it doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do to her, because she’ll never leave.

  She’ll never pick her son over her abusive spouse.

  Anything is better than being here with you.

  And that’s what I keep saying as I stand before the recruitment officer trying not to vomit.

  “You sure you’re here on of own free will?” the officer asks as he eyes my black eye and the bruises on my skin.

  I feel like I’m breathing through water as I stare at him, blinking, silently begging for him to see that I’m not here of my own free will. I think he knows anyway. That this is being forced upon me. That I hate every fucking second of this moment. That the sadist next to me is killing the dream I’ve had since I was a little boy.

  That this is where dreams die.

  Because of him.

  Fuck you, Sal.

  And I repeat those words every few seconds and after every single step of the process.

  The signing on the dotted line.

  The swearing in.

  The fucking everything.

  Fuck you, Sal.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Chase

  “Easton Wylder? Is that you?” I say into my cell, my smile automatic.

  “Sadly it isn’t anyone more exciting.” His deep baritone comes through the line, and I’m transported back to late-night bar trips with his team, the Austin Aces, after big wins. The man is a sweetheart and then some.

  “Someone more exciting, says the man who is always the life of the party.”

  “Hardly.” He snorts.

  “How are you? How’s that gorgeous wife of yours? And the twins? Tell me all the things.” I take a seat on the bed, excited to get caught up.

  “We’re good. All of us. Scout is still busy running her empire. Who knew she’d have sports therapists in twenty different major league organizations? It’s insane.”

  “Not really. That’s Scout for you. She’s amazing.”

  “You’re not wrong.” I love the pride I hear in his voice.

  “And the kids? How are those two munchkins?” I ask of his adorable fraternal twins.

  “Getting big and growing up faster than I ever thought was possible.”

  “Who would’ve thought that one day I’d be talking to Easton Wylder and listening to all the love in his voice when he talks about his wife and kids?” And I mean it. It’s insane and awesome at the same time, how finding Scout changed everything about him in all the best of ways.

  “Scary, huh?”
<
br />   “Very.”

  “You’re next.”

  “Funny. Very funny, Wylder.”

  “And this is where you change the topic, because you’re silently freaking out on the other end of the line.” I don’t say a word because he’s right. So damn right, and I refuse to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. Instead, he bursts out laughing. “See? I was right. You are freaking out. I’ve been there, Chase. If it makes you feel any better about how much life changes in a short time, it feels like just yesterday I was single and hitting on you.”

  “Hardly.” I snort. “I was too young for you and much wiser than my years to know better than to do anything more than have a couple of shots in a bar with a professional athlete.”

  “Smart girl, but I think somewhere along the line your sisters missed that memo,” he says. Yep, the irony that my three sisters are all attached to athletes.

  “Clearly,” I deadpan but grin. “And the broadcasting gig is going well? You’re happy with how it’s all going?”

  “Yes, to the first question and yes, I’m still with that bastard of an ex-boyfriend of yours to the second question.” He laughs over our inside joke in regards to Finn Sanderson. “No, I’m not transferring agencies.”

  “One of these days you will,” I tease, only partially disappointed I’ve yet to pull Easton over to KSM. He’s a rarity in my business. Genuine, professional, kind, and trouble free. Plus, he’s highly sought after—just what I love in a client. “But that’s not why I called you.”

  “What’s up?”

  I spend the next few minutes explaining about The Center and Gunner and picking his brain on the best way to find them donations or help. How to get them on an MLB team’s radar for a possible sponsorship.

  “Sounds like a great program. Let me look into some of the resources I use with the foundation Scout and I set up, and see if they can help narrow down the best places for you to look.”

  “Really? I was merely asking for advice, I didn’t expect you to pull any strings or ask a favor of you.”