AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Prologue
His glove was creaking. Should’ve worn the old one. Alex Winters flexed his hand irritably. The glove was new, but he thought he’d worn it in enough. The old one was barely holding together. His hand had ached more than usual at the end of the last game.
So new glove it was. But he hated it when his gear wasn’t exactly right. When he made it to the bigs he’d make sure it never happened.
Head in the game, Winters.
He settled back into position, studying the field, squinting against the sun. It was a perfect day to play ball. Sunshine. A light breeze. And a batter who had no hope in hell of meeting the demands of Lucas’s sneaky fastball. Alex had studied the guy’s form. He studied all of them. The guy was good when he managed to connect, but that was a rarity when he was put up against a pitcher like Lucas.
God only knew how the dude had ended up with a scholarship in the first place. Good old Kansas State must’ve been seriously light on talent. Or budget.
Alex smiled, good mood restored. Nothing like grinding the opposition into defeat to make a guy’s day improve. And afterward, he and Lucas and Mal had a date with a dozen beers and one of Vinny’s best pepperoni pizzas. The pizza here in Texas wasn’t as good as back home in Queens but, hell, it was still pizza. It went with the beer.
Their usual postgame blowout. Man, he could taste the Shiner already. Cool. Agreeably bitter.
No beer for losers. Time to get this done. In front of him, the batter shifted his stance, hands moving impatiently on the grip of his bat. Nervous. Alex’s smile widened. He nodded at Lucas, waiting patiently up there on the mound, and flicked his fingers between his legs. Once, twice, three times.
Lucas nodded back, his “right, time to die, batter” expression warming Alex’s heart.
Man, he loved this. Loved working with his team. Loved making it all come together with wiles and strategy and sweat.
Lucas’s pitch came smoking over the plate as the batter, predictably, swung and missed. Alex caught it, hands moving instinctively, the weight of the ball thumping into his glove with just enough sting.
Damn, Lucas was getting faster and faster. They called him the Ice Man but if he wasn’t careful, he was going to set his own hair on fire.
Grinning again, Alex tossed the ball back to Lucas.
“And we’re just gettin’ started,” he said, just loud enough for the batter to hear him. The dude did his best not to react but Alex noticed the way his hands tightened just a fraction around the bat.
Sucker.
Oh yeah, this was going to be fun.
He settled back on his heels, flicked another set of signals to Lucas and waited.
Then the world exploded.
The hospital room was clean but for some reason all he could smell was smoke. Mal had dozed off in the chair beside his bed but Alex, despite the painkillers they were pumping him full of, couldn’t sleep. Instead, he just lay there, Coach’s words ringing in his head.
“We have to see how it heals, son.” The words were kind but Alex knew they were bullshit. His hand had steel sticking out of it, holding the bones together. His right hand. His catching hand. Shattered, though he couldn’t quite remember how.
The whole thing was a blur, apart from the stink of the smoke. They’d been told to get off the field, him and Lucas and Mal. Instead they’d run back to the stands. Run into the burning rubble, to see if they could help. Apparently they had. They’d gotten people to safety. But not unscathed. Lucas was in another room somewhere nearby, recovering from surgery on his shoulder.
Alex stared down at his hand and gritted his teeth, trying to tell himself that maybe Coach was right, that he’d heal. But all he could smell was smoke and he knew it wasn’t true.
Shit. He needed his hand. Couldn’t be a catcher with a dicey hand, any more than Lucas could pitch with a blown-out shoulder. Stupid thing to think when people had died. But there it was.
They’d gotten out. They’d saved people’s lives. But things were never going to be the same.
Chapter One
God, she hated tequila. Maggie Jameson squinted at the bottle in the bartender’s hand. The little red devil on the label leered back at her. Perfect. Tequila was the devil’s drink. Which was fitting because her life had just gone to hell. She lifted the shot glass before her, tilted it and slammed the tequila back. It burned all the way down and she sucked lemon desperately. She really hated tequila but it was the fastest way she knew to get drunk.
And tonight she really, really needed to be drunk.
One more shot and she was getting into a cab and going home. Where she would hopefully pass out and wake up in the morning to find that everything that had happened today had only been a nightmare.
Because that was the only explanation for how she’d woken up this morning thinking all was right with the world and was ending the day mainlining alcohol.
