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Texan Devils
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Paranormal Romance
Trickster’s Law
A Portrait in Ash & Lace
About Licking the Batter
When Phil Riddle hits a line drive and ball girl Chloe Walsh catches it, she also catches his heart. The attraction is mutual and the two fall into insta-love.
Chapter 1
Phil
“I’m obviously doing something wrong. I just can’t figure out what.”
My brother Paul stared at the computer screen, brow furrowed.
“Rewind it again.”
He rewatched then asked me to stop at a certain spot.
“Here.” I handed him the laptop. “You know what you want to look at.”
His index finger circled back and forth over the touchpad and his thumb clicked, moving the video forward and back again as he analyzed my swing frame by frame. I may be the one who made it to the Major Leagues, but my twin knows the game better than anyone I’ve ever met, including the entire coaching staff of the Carolina Waves. Paul can look at a player and figure out what needs to be corrected. Pitching, batting, fielding, it doesn’t matter. He knows it all, like a baseball savant.
In my opinion, he should be coaching or analyzing on an advanced level, but instead he teaches math at our old high school. At least he coaches the baseball team there, so his skills aren’t totally going to waste. And of course, he helps me out whenever my swing gets screwed up, which happens more often than I care to admit.
I knew the exact moment he spotted the issue. His eyes rounded and his hands moved faster on the touchpad, watching the same sequence over and over again.
“Right here.” He pointed at the screen then played the video in slow motion. “Look at your shoulder.”
“I don’t see anything. What am I looking for?”
“It’s subtle, but you’re dipping your shoulder more than usual. It’s just enough that you’re not hitting the ball square.”
He opened another video and I watched my swing from a month ago, when I was still hitting with a decent exit velocity. Lately, I’ve been barely average, which isn’t acceptable for a designated hitter.
“Son of a bitch. I’ve been asking Rocco what I’m doing wrong for the past month and he said he wasn’t seeing anything,” I said, referring to the Waves’ hitting coach.
Paul played the video again and now that the issue has been identified and pointed out, it’s easy to see. Hopefully it’s just as easy to correct.
“I’m guessing you’re not going to feed me until we head out to the shed and work on this.”
“How’d you know?”
“Must be that twin intuition thing.”
I chuckled as we made our way out to what Paul refers to as the shed, which is basically an addition to my garage that houses a batting cage. It’s equipped with a pitching machine, but when he’s here, I’d rather Paul throw to me.
We each grabbed a glove and I picked up a ball to toss so he could warm up his arm. Starting off close together, every few throws we backed up a step allowing his shoulder to get loose. The venue may have changed, but we’ve been doing this same routine for more than twenty-five years so it’s as natural as breathing at this point. I didn’t even have to ask when he was ready, it was obvious from the velocity of his throws.
I tossed the ball to him and headed over to grab up a bat. We both picked up the net and ducked into the cage. Paul made his way to the rubber behind the protective screen with a bucket of balls as I stepped up to the plate. He threw a fastball down the middle and I popped it straight up.
