Family Camp (Daddy Dearest, #1)(59)

He tried to look at the photo objectively but found it impossible.

“I don’t know. You really think so?”

“Yeah, Travis. Your face isn’t clearly visible and his isn’t either. I’m not seeing a tattoo or mole or anything that would be proof positive. Do you? Am I missing something?”

Travis thought she was missing everything, but he supposed she wasn’t technically wrong. He shook his head.

Marcia let out a long, relieved breath. “Okay. So that’s option number one. We flat-out refute the story. Say he’s a friend. Play up the whole foster kid sympathy thing. A little. We don’t want to overplay it. And we say the kiss photo was staged. You have no idea who those people are, only that it wasn’t you.”

Travis swallowed a surge of bile in his throat. He picked up the coffee mug she’d handed him when he arrived and took a gulp. The taste was unusually bitter on his tongue.

“Or?” he said at last. “What’s option B?”

Marcia sat in the chair behind her desk, heavily, as if her svelte body had suddenly doubled in weight. “You come clean. Come out. Hold a press conference. The media will be all over it, so Rajit says it’s best to do a formal interview with the best talk show you can find so you only have to do it once. But public scrutiny will be intense, there’s no getting around it.”

Everything inside Travis seized up. Oh God.

“I know you were hoping to get at least one more season. If you come out, that’s probably gone. And it could be rough. I’m not going to lie to you about that, Travis.” Marcia regarded him grimly. “If you were just starting out, I’d strongly advise against it. Hell, I still do. But you’re the one who’s going to have to handle the fallout.”

It was everything he’d tried to avoid since he first went into the minors. Thirteen years of trying as hard as he could, being the best he could, showing up at the clubhouse before most other players, being one of the last to leave, avoiding scandals with drinking and carousing. Avoiding the baseball bunnies—not that that had been hard. Keeping himself reined in tight during the season. Only now the fallout was here anyway, and it was hurdling down the mountain for him like an avalanche.

“Can I think about it?” he asked, his voice gruff.

“Yes, Travis, you can think about it. But I’d like to have a decision by the end of today. Can you do that? If you want to talk to your coaches and the team’s owners before deciding, I know they want to talk to you. I’ve had a dozen calls already this morning.”

So had Travis, message notifications racking up on his phone like a slot machine. He hadn’t returned any of them.

Marcia walked him to the door. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, and I wish it wasn’t like this. No one should care if you’re gay. But that’s the business.”

She tried to give him a hug. It was awkward. Marcia wasn’t the hugging type. But her sympathy felt genuine and it did make him feel a tiny bit better.

When Travis called someone, it wasn’t anyone from the Padres, despite a host of messages. He hadn’t listened to any of those. There was only one person he wanted to talk to, one person he’d always been able to turn to in the hardest moments of his life. So even though Travis was scared to face his dad after how he’d embarrassed himself and the camp and all of them, really—and how, finally, there was no hiding anymore what he was—he just had to call him. At this moment, when reality was smacking him in the face hard, he was completely screwed, and he felt like his heart was being torn in two, his need for his dad outweighed his fear.

So he sat in a garage in downtown L.A. and called the camp office on his cell phone. The office phone had caller ID, so he wasn’t surprised when his father answered in two rings with “Travis?”

“Yeah. It’s me.” Travis’s own voice sounded muffled in his ringing ears.

“For cripe’s sake, son! I’ve been worried sick about you. I wish you’d talked to me before you left. Are you all right?”

“I’m all right.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in L.A. I… I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me.”

James was silent for a moment. “There’ll never come a day when I don’t want to talk to you. You’re my son.” James’s voice was grave and sure and there was love under it like a bedrock.

Travis closed his eyes and felt hot dampness coat his eyelashes. God. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry I let you down.”

It hurt to say it, a stab of pain in his throat, as if he’d been struck there with a knife.

James made a pained sound. “If you mean because you’re gay, that’s nothing to be sorry for. The way I understand it, it’s not something you chose, it just is. I wish you’d told me sooner. If anything, I’m disappointed that you had so little faith in me and your mom. In our family. But you don’t ever need to apologize for who you are. Do you hear me?”

Now the relief came in a wave that was dark and heavy and felt surprisingly like grief. God, he hadn’t realized how thick that burden was until it came rushing up out of him, released.

“Thanks, Dad,” he choked out. “How’s mom taking it. Is she…”?

“You know your mother. Nothing ever rattles her. She’s just worried about you. She loves you and I do too. Nothing will ever change that, Travis.”