The Secret Hook-Up

The best part of the take-no-prisoners attitude that I taught myself to wear to work every day is that none of the hockey players question why I keep popping down the hallway outside of the in-stadium clinic as the Fireballs’ medical staff gets Duncan cooled off and pumped full of fluids.

The worst part is that I’d like to head into the bathroom and cry the same way Paisley did as we watched Duncan get helped off the field.

He was so fucking pale.

I knew that last take was a bad idea.

I knew it.

But he stared me dead in the eye and said he was fine.

Worse, he winked and said he was fine.

And he’s an adult, so I let him make that call, despite my instincts telling me we needed to take a break.

He’s cleared for visitors after half an hour or so, and every last hockey player swarms the room.

The next time I pop down the hallway, Paisley is squatting solo against the cinderblock wall, staring at the door across the hallway.

I squat next to her. “You okay?”

“Why are men dumb?”

The question catches me so off guard that I actually laugh out loud.

“It’s our egos,” Tripp Wilson answers for me as he steps out of the stairwell to our left. “Gets us every time.” He nods to the door. “Mr. Hockey gonna make it?”

“It’s like he didn’t nearly die an hour ago,” Paisley said.

“He wasn’t in danger of dying,” I tell her, which I think is ninety percent true. “He was dehydrated and had the wind knocked out of him.”

“I wanted to have my own apartment for school, but now I feel like I have to move in with him to make sure he takes care of his old ass,” she mutters.

“Ew,” I say.

“Yeah,” she agrees.

“And he’s pretty dumb too, so you’d have to deal with that.”

She shoots me a frown. “He is not dumb.”

“Maybe not completely, but he’s also not smart enough to take batting advice from a pro.”

Her frown turns into an O, and then she dips her head and laughs too. “How did he hit that ball?”

“It was a big target pitched just right.” I nod to the clinic door. “If you want to see him again without swimming in that much testosterone, I can kick his teammates out. They have proof of life now.”

She glances at Tripp, then back at me.

This girl watched her uncle get in a bidding war over me just days ago, after watching us argue about him stripping me out of a dress, and now she’s sitting outside what essentially feels like an emergency room after watching him let his ego take priority over his physical needs.

She has to have questions.

She doesn’t ask them though.

Instead, she pulls herself up. “They don’t bother me,” she says. “But thank you. I’m gonna check on him one more time, and then I have some things I need to do.”

I rise too. “If you like baseball, I’m sure this guy here can get you set up with some tickets for you and your friends without having to take a decrepit old man along with you.”

“Absolutely true,” Tripp says. “I have a hookup.”

She shakes her head. “Thanks, but I have to make friends first, and I don’t like to make them with bribes.”

Tripp hands her a card. “If you change your mind once you’ve made some friends, send a note here. The offer doesn’t expire.”

“Thank you.” She looks at me. “And thank you for holding my hand.”

“It’s scary to watch someone you love hurting.”

She nods, then slips into the clinic.

Tripp eyes me.

“I’m fine,” I say before he can utter a word.

“Personally or professionally?”

Neither.

I blow out a cheek-puffing sigh. “Do you know how pissed I was when I found out the musician I hooked up with was actually a professional hockey player?”

It’s the first time I’ve ever confessed my secret hookup with Duncan out loud. I haven’t even told Francie what happened. Not in so many details.

And I feel like I’m taking a massive risk in telling my boss.

He has the audacity to chuckle. “Speaking as a man who hooked up with a woman who became my boss and then married her…yes.”

“That’s different.”

“Not really.”

“Very different.”

“Failing to see how here.”

“Your relationship with Lila didn’t affect how the team plays.”

“You having a relationship with a hockey player wouldn’t affect how my baseball team plays.”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

I bite the inside of my cheek.

“Makes for great promo spots for community outreach programs though,” he muses.

The clinic door swings open, and a string of hockey players exit.

Paisley’s right behind them.

She gives us a small finger wave, then follows the men, who are all cheerfully talking.

Either Duncan’s having a prostate exam, or he’s been cleared to get dressed and go home.

Tripp’s phone buzzes. He glances at the screen, and even if I hadn’t seen Lila’s name, I’d know who was calling based on the smile on his face. “Can you make sure Duncan gets safely to his car?” he says to me. “I don’t want another medical incident if he trips on his shoelaces.”

“Can I turn him over to security instead?”

“If that makes you happier.”

“Thanks. Tell Lila to tell the guys to kick ass at the game.”

“Will do. Let me know if you need anything after today.” He slips back into the stairwell while he answers the phone.

Do I want to see Duncan?

Yes.

Yes, I do.

Entirely too much right now, in fact.

So I catch a security guy and ask him to be available if the clinic needs to hand Duncan off to get him to his car, and then I head to one of my favorite places.

The stands.

The clinic is on the third-base side, so that’s where I emerge to stare out at the ball field and just breathe. It’s approaching noon, but I find a shady seat high in the lower bowl and let myself hunch over, breathing through the need to cry while my eyes wander over the green grass, the dirt mound, the empty stands, the blank scoreboard, and the dozens and dozens of ads.

The pennants the Fireballs have won the past five seasons wave lazily in a light breeze, but the normal sense of pride in my team is overshadowed by the question what the hell do I do about Duncan?

I’m not surprised when the man himself steps into my row of seats. He looks less like a ghost and more like a normal white man, and if he knows my pulse has just shot into the stratosphere at the sight of him, he doesn’t give any indication.

I swallow the lumps that keep threatening to make me cry and force myself to channel my inner badass baseball coach. “Feeling better?”

“Yes and no.”

My brows lift. No?

“Can I join you?” he adds.

“Of course.”

He steps into the row and sits with just one seat between us, then glances at the field. “Your happy place.”

“My happy place,” I agree.

Mink Arena, where the Thrusters play, is his happy place.

Full or empty.

Or it was, back when we were together. I can’t imagine that’s changed.

He’s carrying a sports drink bottle, and his complexion is holding steady as we both stare at the field.

So is his breathing.

The two of us are a mess. Me in a sling because of a dress. Him giving himself heat exhaustion for the sake of a video shoot.

I’d laugh, but instead, I suck in a slow breath, not letting myself go back to that terrifying place where he fell and then didn’t move.

Second-guessing myself as I leapt into action to check on him.

Wondering if he’d hit something wrong on one of his pads and broken a rib. If he hit his head. If my gut was right that he was overheating, or if it was something else and we needed to not move him at all.

How do you balance caring about someone with knowing that their life doesn’t fit with your life?

How do you care without caring too much?

How do you guard your own happiness when you feel like your happiness is denying someone else theirs?

Do. Not. Go. There.

I don’t owe someone else their happiness at the expense of mine.

My mother passed away not long after I graduated college, a single year after divorcing my father and stepping into living the life she’d always wanted but never put first. If it wasn’t my father making demands, it was us kids.

She chose us. She told me she never regretted what we needed.

But she wished he would’ve helped out more.

He put such a burden on her for decades.

She finally put herself first, only to trip and fall and hit her head wrong coming down the stairs in her rental house before she could live out even a fraction of her dreams.

I finish my long exhale and turn my focus back to what I do know.

Duncan wants to talk.

I can talk.

“What’s up?” I ask him.

“I think it’s time for me to retire.”

A sound I don’t recognize slips out of my lips.

Focus, Addie.

Focus.

Not the first time I’ve heard a player say these words. Won’t be the last.

But it’s the first time I’ve heard a player say these words when I’ve used our schedules conflict as one of the reasons we can’t be together.

Which is a very specific situation that has only happened this one time in my life.

“I’m old,” he adds, quieter.

I swallow hard, again. Today is making me entirely too emotional. All of it. “You feel old, or the numbers say you’re old?”

His knees touch the seat in front of him. He’s in shorts. Bare knees. Strong knees. One with a scar suggesting knee surgery at some point in his career. His arms rest on his thighs as he inhales deeply.

“I wouldn’t have overheated ten years ago.”

“You don’t play hockey in summer weather.”

“It’s been two years since I broke my personal speed record, and I’ve had fewer minutes on the ice every season for the past three.”

“Being a team player is about more than one or two personal stats.”

“There are more guys on the team now who didn’t win our first cup with the team than there are guys who did.”

“It’s been a lot of years since then. Trades happen. Teams slip and rebuild.” Why am I doing this? Why am I trying to talk him out of retiring?

“Ares Berger retired at the end of last season. Wants to spend more time with his wife and kids. Manning Frey retired season before last. Wanted to spend more time with his wife and kids and visit his home country more. Murphy’s been retired for a couple years now. Spends his time mostly with his wife and kids, with a few hours a week devoted to the Thrusters’ front office.”

Heat prickles over my arms.

My pulse is still trying to prove it can outrace a cheetah. “You want that.”

“I always wanted it.” He stares out over the field, where the grounds crew is still cleaning up after the commercial shoot. “You marry your college sweetheart two years into your career, you think you’re gonna have it. And then it falls apart and you think you’ll get a second chance, but the closest you come, you’re more into it than she is.”

I flinch, and I know he notices.

He lifts one shoulder. “Not saying either of us was right or wrong. Just how it was. You didn’t—don’t owe me anything. Sometimes things just don’t work. People are in different spaces, and we don’t always recognize that about each other. People have different histories and different goals and different lifestyles. It just is.”

And this is my biggest problem with Duncan Lavoie.

When he’s not pissed that I need to be independent, he says all of the right things.

You don’t have to pick me. I’d pick you, but I understand you’re under no obligation to pick me back. You don’t need me. I get it.

I want to press about what he meant yesterday when he said he’d reached acceptance with having me back in his life. If this is him treating me the same way he’d treat any other friendly colleague, or if this is his way of trying to prove to me that we could be good together again. How much of it has to do with the text that I’m pretending I didn’t send him Saturday night.

But I’m not ready for that conversation.

“So what does retirement look like for you now?” I say instead.

That’s what players usually want to talk about when they toss around the R-word.

This is what I’ve always done. I know I can’t do it forever, but I don’t know what comes next.

I had the conversation with Cooper as he was starting to pursue dating Waverly while he was standing in the batting cages. You ever think you’ll leave baseball one day, Coach?

Everyone leaves baseball sometime. How soon depends on when you find the next thing that will make your life more fulfilling.

All while knowing that I’m never leaving baseball.

I fucking love this sport.

“I have one year left on my contract.” He scuffs his shoe over the concrete floor. “Got time to figure it out. All of it. Not just the parts I already know.”

“Gonna start your own band?”

He lifts his head and looks at me.

Just looks at me.

Doesn’t say yes.

Doesn’t say no.

Heat builds under my sternum as those bright green eyes bore into mine.

This man wants something.

He wants something from me.

Maybe not something from me though.

More like all of me.

“Duncan—”

He smirks.

He smirks, and my belly drops, my nipples shiver, and my mouth goes dry.

I shake my head, but it only makes the smirk grow bigger.

“Duncan,” I start again, but I have to pause.

And that’s when I realize I’m licking my lips.

My body drifting closer to his.

My breath getting shallower.

This isn’t happening.

Those are the words I’m supposed to say.

Because this isn’t happening.

Our lives aren’t compatible, and even if they were—even when he retires—I don’t do relationships.

Baseball is my one true love. The thing I can depend on while knowing the sport itself will never take anything from me.

It doesn’t matter what team I’m playing for.

Not when I’m on the field. Rain or shine. Hot or cold. Breathing in the fresh-cut grass or dirty infield. Through the bad calls and hard losses and brutal injuries. Soaking in the game-winning go-ahead homers and stolen bases and acrobatic fielding.

And if I think I’m busy now, I’ll be even busier when I take over Santiago’s job.

And if that isn’t next year, it will be another year. The other coaches are older than I am. They have more experience.

But they don’t have the same finely-honed instincts and they don’t have my drive.

They can’t. They haven’t had to fight as hard for it as I have.

I know I might not get the job.

But I’ll do everything in my power to win it. And I meant what I told Tripp yesterday. So long as the Fireballs treat me well, I’ll stay here.

I’ll put the team first.

So me not doing relationships isn’t only because I don’t think a man exists who can supplement my life instead of sucking it away. It’s also that I don’t think I can be an equal partner.

My job isn’t a job. It’s a lifestyle.

Duncan’s staring at my mouth.

I bolt to my feet, my thighs unexpectedly shaky. “I have to get back to work. I hope you find what you’re looking for in retirement. And I’m glad you’re okay.”

His gaze lifts back to my eyes. “I’ll find it,” he says.

My brain hears I’ve already found you.

This is when I should walk out of this stadium, cross the street to the admin building, hit the elevator for the top floor, and go tell Tripp absolutely not.

That I’m done with this specific Fireballs-Thrusters community outreach program.

“Do you need help finding your way out?” I ask Duncan.

He leans back in the stadium seat, then stretches his long legs out and crosses his ankles over the seat in front of him. “I can manage.”

“Do you need more water?”

He lifts the bottle of sports drink and shakes it. “All good.”

“You’re just going to stay here?”

“Pretty day to stare at a ball field.”

I blow out a short breath.

He’s up to something.

I don’t dislike it as much as I need to. “I’ll let security know you’re still here so they don’t freak out on you. And they’ll want to escort you to your car. Liability. That’s all.”

“You really have work to do, or are you running away?”

I’m running away, but I’m calling it a strategic retreat to evaluate and regroup. “I always have work to do.”

“No game two weeks from this coming Thursday,” he says.

I blink.

“Great day for Croaking Creatures,” he adds.

Fuck me.

I owe him a date.

“Fantastic,” I say.

“Looking forward to it.”

“Same.”

He studies me, lips barely twitched up, the tilt of his brows telling me the man has ulterior motives.

And that’s not as irritating as it should be.