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Baseball team? Was this man a coach?
“What baseball team?” I found myself asking.
Bradley looked at me funny.
“You didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
His smile was grim.
“That the man that you’ve been talking to for the last two weeks has been the most famous, bad boy third baseman in baseball history. Rhys Rivera. The gangster with the wicked left-handed bat. The man that was in the Homerun Derby for the last four years in a row. He’s a fuckin’ god in the baseball world. A baseball world that has been crying rivers of tears since they found out that he was hurt in a motorcycle wreck two weeks ago.”
My brows rose. “Is that impressive?”
He snorted. “Go get your visit in. I’ll bet that the next time you try to come, he won’t be here any longer.”
With that, Bradley turned his back and dismissed me.
I flipped him off and walked across the hall toward Rhys’ room.
“So, you’re a badass baseball man, huh?” I asked him, taking a seat on the uncomfortable leather chair. “What are they gonna do without you?”
***
“You mind?”
I stood up so fast that I nearly hit my head on the bed.
I’d fallen asleep—just like I always did while I was visiting him after a shift—and while I was doing that, the room had filled with men.
“Uhh,” I said as I rubbed my head. “I’m sorry. I’ll go ahead and leave ya’ll to visit.”
The big bearded man shook his head. “Nah, stay. I’m glad you’re here.”
He was? “You are?”
He nodded.
“I’m glad that Rhys wasn’t lying when he told us he’d found someone. I’m just glad he hasn’t been alone.”
I didn’t even know what to say to that.
I blinked. “Where have y’all been?”
I found myself asking that instead of telling him that I wasn’t Rhys’ anything.
“Only family has been allowed in here until now,” he pointed out. “With you here visiting, and us not on the visitor’s list, nobody would allow us in.”
I hadn’t been here the whole time. In fact, if they’d wanted to come in, they probably could have.
Someone had to have told them they couldn’t, though.
I frowned.
“Who told you that you couldn’t come in?” I asked in confusion.
The man’s face morphed into confusion.
“His mom…” He paused. “Said you were there with him, and that we couldn’t come since we weren’t family.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. None.
“I have had to work and had to leave at least six hours before visiting hours were over,” I told the man, eyeing the rest of them. They were all huge, built, and probably could squish me like a bug.
“Are you deaf?”
I stiffened.
The man that was talking to me slapped the man that asked on the back of the head.
“Jessup, swear to fucking God,” the slappy-hand man growled.
“I just think it’s sweet that he’s dating someone that’s deaf like his sister…didn’t you say that he—”
“It’s you!” another man butted in. “Knew you were something when he sent his bodyguard to drive four hours to pick up that thing for your ear.”
I touched the ‘thing for my ear’ as an epiphany dawned.
My neighbor.
Oh, holy shit.
“Is that how y’all met?”
“Maybe we should introduce ourselves,” slappy-hand said. He offered me said hand and said, “Name’s Hancock Peters.”
I shook his hand and dropped it. “Nice to meet you. I’m Henley Diane Cree.”
“My name is George Hoffman,” said the tallest guy I’d ever seen, and oh, God. The tattoos. Come to think of it, all of them had tattoos. Very nice ones, on very nice, muscular arms. Thick, muscular necks.
I shook George’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
He smiled sadly.
“My name is Jessup Steel,” the man who asked me if I was deaf pulled me into a short hug. “I’m sorry if I offended you. I didn’t mean to.”
I patted his hand. “It’s okay. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it.”
And wouldn’t be the last.
It sucked, but it was what it was.
Tomorrow I’d hear a child ask me why I sounded so weird, and I’d have to tell him that I was deaf and couldn’t hear the tone of my own voice sometimes. Then I’d have to explain that when I was younger, I’d not spoken at all until I was almost two.
“My name is Manuel.” A tall, Latino man with a shock of black hair, with one tiny piece in front that hung a little over his eyes.
“Nice to meet you,” I whispered.
“Gunner Penn.” The next one, a younger one than all the rest, nodded. He didn’t offer me his hand, though.
And so, it went. Man after man introduced himself, and I worried that I would never keep them straight.
Then I realized that it wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t see them after today.
I looked over at the bed, watching the man I’d become almost reliant on for the last two weeks, knowing he wouldn’t be here for much longer.
