Stealing Home(54)

I stayed planted by the wall, steeling myself. “If you’re still having problems with it, run it by Shepherd. You two seem to be better suited for each other.”





THE SHOCK LOST the game. A game they were favored by a large margin to win. The top team in the nation had just had their asses handed to them by one of the lowest-ranked teams in professional baseball.

That loss might have had a lot to do with a certain clutch hitter striking out three times, getting walked twice, and getting out before he’d made it to first base the one time his bat did manage to connect with the ball.

Number eleven hadn’t just had an off night—he’d had the kind of night people would be talking about for years. He’d errored more times in this one game than he had in his entire career. He’d moved like he’d just had a hip replaced and the surgeon had gone ahead and replaced his shoulder too.

It wasn’t just Archer who’d been off tonight though—the entire team had. Even though the Shock wasn’t just Luke Archer, in a lot of ways, Luke Archer was the spirit of the Shock. He led the team to victories by example, but tonight, the only example he’d set was one of listlessness.

After Coach had screamed his lungs out after the game, we all left that locker room in a state of shock. What the hell had just happened? was written on all of our expressions.

It was the same question I was asking myself as I rode the elevator to my hotel room. The team would be rolling out bright and early for the next game, and after last night’s state of no sleep, I was eager to crawl into bed and punch erase on this day of horrors.

Like earlier, I’d elected to take a cab back instead of the team bus, explaining I had a few things to wrap up before leaving. After Archer’s and my talk before the game, he hadn’t said a word to me. He hadn’t so much as looked my way, not even when he crawled back into the dugout after each strike out and I held out a bottle of water for him. Maybe what I’d said had finally set in. Maybe he was already over me.

Maybe he was already having someone line up his next Incentive Girl since this season’s had cut him off early. I didn’t have the first clue why he’d gone from seeming like he’d cross an ocean on a paddleboard to keep from losing me to acting like I didn’t exist.

When the elevator doors opened, I stuck my head out to make sure he wasn’t waiting outside my door as I was half-expecting he might be. When I felt a stab of disappointment because he wasn’t there, I made myself remember what Shepherd had told me.

Disappointment was a distant memory by the time I shoved open my door.

My room was not the way I’d left it. It didn’t even look like my room at all. The bags hanging over my shoulder fell to the floor, my mouth dropping open as I took in the room. On every surface that was solid or firm enough to support a vase, a bouquet of flowers had made its way onto it. But there wasn’t just one bouquet per surface—there were as many as could fit on that surface.

At least four on each nightstand, a dozen lining the window ledge, I couldn’t count how many on the desk . . . they were everywhere. Even in the bathroom, I discovered when I checked. Vases were scattered along the floor, petals strewn across the bed, overwhelming and beautiful by every definition of the terms.

A hundred varieties of flowers made up the bouquets bursting with color, creating a scent that was just as sweet as it was floral. It was the grandest gesture I’d ever had done for me. The grandest by far.

I didn’t need to open the note propped on my bed to know who was responsible for this. I shouldn’t have, because flowers or not, it didn’t change anything.

I couldn’t help it though. Lifting the card, I found only one simple sentence scratched down in his handwriting.



You’re more.



My eyes kept moving over the words, almost like they were trying to convince themselves there was some other message I was missing. There wasn’t though.

What did that mean? “You’re more”? More than what? More than a fling? More than the girls before me? More of a pain in the ass? Or more than something else I had yet to discover?

You’re more.

Those words haunted me all night, but by the next morning, I’d realized that words were just words. It was the actions behind them that gave them their meaning.

Archer’s actions did not support his words. These two on the note or the ones he’d uttered in the med room before the game yesterday.

You’re more. Whatever he meant by it, it was just a ploy to keep me on his string for the next couple of months. A damage control measure.

No more. That was my response.





ANOTHER CITY. ANOTHER game. Another disaster.

We were bottom of the ninth, and unless one of those miracle things decided to fall from the sky, the Shock was adding another loss to their season.

The team’s spirit had been sullen from the start and it had only gone down from there. Coach looked close to exploding as he paced the dugout like a wounded lion, cursing under his breath about replacing the entire lot of babies for some real players.

The team didn’t function without every player giving it their all. Especially when that player was Luke Archer. He’d been a mess during the game in New York—he’d been worse in this one. Only a couple of days had gone by since our talk, but to look at him, it was like he’d been marooned on a deserted island for months. His face was unshaven, his eyes sunken, his expression hardened.