JAKE
This goddamn sun is a branding iron on the back of my neck. Sweat is pouring from under my catcher’s mask, stinging my eyes as I crouch low behind the plate.
“Drop your hips, McKinney! Keep that frame inside the zone!”
The voice doesn’t come from our catching coach, Coach Davis. It comes from the man standing a few feet behind the pitching machine, arms crossed over his chest, looking like he owns the damn field. Roddy. It’s been two days since Campbell brought that influencer kid—or whatever the fuck he was—out to my mom’s property. Two days since I had to spit out a bunch of manufactured fairytale garbage about father-son magic, and I’m still tasting the bile of my own swallowed rage.
Coach dials the machine in, and it throws a dirty slider from forty feet out. It bounces in the dirt and I lunge, blocking it with my chest protector, but my balance is off. The ball scoots a few feet away as I scramble to snag it.
“You’re lunging,” Roddy calls out.
No shit.
The two rookie catchers standing behind me, panting from their last turn at this drill, lean in closer for a crumb of advice from a three-time All-Star.
“If you keep your weight centered on your haunches, you don’t have to chase the ball. Let it come to you. You don’t win Gold Gloves by diving at shadows, Jake.”
FuckingGold Gloves.Something inside my chest snaps. The heat, the exhaustion, the suffocating weight of my dad’s sudden, unearned mentorship—it all fucking collides in my throat.
I rip my mask off, the straps catching on my damp hair, and slam it into the dirt.
“I don’t give a shit how you won your Gold Gloves, Roddy!” I roar, stepping up as he rushes toward me until we’re chest-to-chest. “I’m the one taking the beatings back here. Keep your pointers to yourself.”
The entire diamond goes dead silent.
Coach Davis walks over from behind the machine and stops just short of us with his hands on his hips. He spits a cluster of sunflower seed shells onto the grass, then looks at me, then my dad, his expression unreadable.
“McKinney,” he says in a flat voice. “Take five. Go hit the dugout, hydrate, and get your damn emotions in order. We don’t do temper tantrums out here.”
I don’t look at my dad. I shove past him, grab my mask from the dirt, and trudge down the dugout steps. The shade offers no relief. I yank off my shin guards, the hard, sturdy plastic clattering loudly against the concrete floor, and grab a paper cup from the water cooler. I down the cool water and refill for a second dose.
I’m tossing the empty cup into the trash when a shadow falls over the dugout opening. I turn just as Roddy stepsinside, his cleats crunching on the gravel. He looks older all of a sudden, the dirt and sweat etching the harsh lines on his face, the ones around his eyes deeper than they used to be. Not that I have a lot of memories to go by. I have pictures from social media stories over the years and from games I watched on TV.
“Get out,” I mutter, leaning against the bench, staring at my hands. My knuckles are bloody. How the hell can I be sweating this much and still have dry skin?
“No,” Roddy grumbles, leaning against the helmet rack. “We’re going to talk, Jake. Quietly. Before you blow a gasket and Davis benches you for the weekend.”
I huff out a cynical laugh.
“Oh no, you mean I won’t get to catch a dozen college-aged pitchers who will be cut before the season ends? Damn,” I spit out.
Our eyes meet, and his are hard as ever. I drop my gaze again.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” I say.
“Well, I have something to say to you,” he counters, his voice rising just a fraction before he tames it. “You think you have it all figured out, don’t you? You think it’s as simple as me picking a damn bat and ball over you and your mother. You don’t know the full story, son. If life were perfect, if the world worked the way we wanted it to, I would have found a way to split time between the game, the road, and being there for you. I wanted to be there.”
“But you weren’t,” I fire back, snapping my gaze to his. The anger is a living, breathing thing in my chest. “You chose the lights. You chose the fans. You chose the easy money. Fuck, I bet you chose the women, too?—”
“Enough!”
My mouth snaps shut. We both glance toward the field.Coach Davis is busy working on blocking drills with the two rookies, though I have a feeling he heard my father’s voice just now. I turn my attention back to find my dad staring at me with his head tilted slightly.
“There are things you don’t understand, Jake,” he says, his eyes flashing with a desperate, suppressed pain. “Things about back then. Choices that weren’t just about me.”
“I’m a grown man, Roddy,” I say, stepping closer, my voice a lethal whisper. I know he hates it when I use his name instead of calling him Dad. “So stop with the cryptic bullshit. Just tell me.”
Roddy looks at me for a long, silent beat. He opens his mouth, then closes it, shaking his head.
