“You want to apologize? Fine. But don’t make it tidy. Don’t make it sound like you just slipped up. You chose your fear of being seen over us. And you chose baseball over me. That’s the part that hurt.”
CJ swallowed, and the tendons in his throat strained with the effort. “Evan,” he said quietly. He sounded wrecked. “I know.”
“Do you?” Evan asked, stepping closer. “Or do you just feel guilty now that we’re stuck on the same roster and forced to play nice?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” Evan agreed. “But neither was what you did.”
Their eyes locked. A charged, heated, unspeakable history lived between them, and it hurt like an unhealed wound.
CJ opened his mouth. Closed it. Then tried again. “I don’t expect forgiveness.”
“Good,” Evan said. “Because I don’t have it.”
Silence settled between them, and they stared at each other until CJ looked away.
“So where does that leave us?” CJ finally asked.
“We’re teammates. That’s all we need to be.” The words came out sharper than he intended, and for a moment, he wished he could rewind and make them softer. But CJ accepted the hit like it was deserved.
“Got it.” He glanced down at his hands, and Evan wondered if the smell of leather and rosin still lived on them.
“This is my team,” Evan said, not sure why he felt the need to explain.
“I know.” CJ nodded slowly.
“And my life.”
CJ didn’t flinch as he met Evan’s gaze. “I know.”
Evan sighed. “I can’t… I can’t be the guy who gets knocked sideways because you walk into a room.”
CJ stared at him for a long beat before he spoke. “Me either.”
“So, teammates.”
CJ nodded once. “I guess I’ll have to live with that.” He pressed his lips together like he was trying to decide whether to continue speaking, then he nodded again, more to himself than to Evan, and stood. “I won’t—” He swallowed, and Evan didn’t watch the bob of his Adam’s apple. “I’ll stay out of your way.”
Evan shook his head and ignored his brain begging him to let CJ’s words be the end of their conversation. “You don’t have to.”
CJ blinked at him. “Evan.”
“We’re on the same team,” Evan said, and it was a version of the truth that would hold up if anyone wanted to look into what he really meant. “We don’t do that here.”
“Okay,” CJ said softly.
When Evan didn’t speak again, CJ left and crossed the courtyard to his room, pausing with his hand on the knob before he disappeared inside.
The quiet that followed felt heavier than their conversation had. Evan stayed where he was for a moment, staring at CJ’s closed door and trying to convince himself that the tight pinch in his chest was leftover adrenaline and not…whatever else it wanted to be. He scrubbed his hands over his face, grabbed his bag, and finally forced himself to move down the short path to his room. The pressure under his ribs hadn’t eased at all by the time he let himself in. He stood there for a moment, eyes closed as he leaned his back against the door before sliding down until he was sitting on the floor with his knees up and his hands in his hair.
The silence of the room wrapped around him, a suffocating pressure he hadn’t felt since his first week in the minors, when he’d realized he was truly on his own and alone. Back then, he’d trained himself to believe that the solitude meant control. He rested his elbows on his knees and let his head drop forward, the muscles at the base of his skull tightening painfully. His heart kept knocking around in his chest like it wanted to escape, and his brain kept bouncing between the raw edges of the conversation he’d just had and the memories it had unearthed without permission.
Evan’s breath caught in his throat, just enough to make it hard to swallow. This is why he didn’t take space the way Eleanor recommended. This is why he didn’t let himself slow down. Stillness meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering. And remembering meant…pain. He tilted his head back against the door, stared up at the bland beige ceiling, and forced himself to inhale.
He needed to get out of his head, needed noise. Needed something that wasn’t the echo of CJ’s voice, or the apology that had cracked open parts of him he thought he’d buried, or the memory of that stupid night on the baseball field when everything had gone to hell. Any other time, he would have found someone to distract him and get him out of his head without it having to mean anything. A few drinks, a crowded room, and enough noise to drown out his thoughts for a couple of hours. It wasn’t a solution, but it was a familiar escape route.
Evan couldn’t think of a single reason to sit alone in this room with his thoughts. He reached blindly for his bag, fingers fumbling with the zipper before he found his phone buried beneath his wallet and a spare pair of batting gloves. The shaking in his hands annoyed him.
