Page 9 of Under Pressure

“I’m not interested. I know rejection isn’t a concept that you couldpossiblyunderstand, but I have no desire to get mixed up with a guy like you.” I fist my hips, gripping my apron as I ignore the pulse in my hot cheeks. “You can come here as many times as you want, but my answer isn’t going to change.”

“What kind of guy do you think I am, Quinn?”

His question isn’t one I was expecting.

I didn’t expect him to ask anything at all, truthfully.

My pause doesn’t deter him. He fastens his gaze on me and knocks his knuckles against the counter, leaning the wide expanse of his torso over it. Closer to me now than he’s ever been, he seems to steal the air right from my lungs. His presence is intimidating, and it eats at my resolve as I release the fabric bunched in my fingers and smooth the wrinkles.

I blink and force myself to speak, too aware of what this is—who.

“The type who believes he can use his looks and his name to get whatever he wants whenever he wants it.”

His smile is slow growing, almost teasing. It has alarm bells blaring in my head and throbbing in my ears. I fix my features into a cool glare and nudge my chin toward the door. Eli’s already slid the macchiato onto the pickup counter, and I jump at the opportunity to snag it and shove it toward Beck.

He lets his fingers brush mine when he takes it, drawing a cough up my throat. Anger makes my palms sweat when I drop it to my side.

“See you tomorrow, Quinny,” he drawls, his voice a low, flirty caress.

With a smooth, confident movement, he strolls out of the café. The sickeningly sweet coffee I ordered for him surely has his stomach turning when he takes a testing sip and pulls the door open. Yet, when he winks at me over his shoulder and lifts the cup into the air in a cheers motion, there’s no sign of the discomfort I was hoping for.

I puff out a breath and turn away.

Fucking athletes.

4

My old mantaught me how to throw a baseball before I could walk.

There are endless photos in my folks’ place of me as a baby dressed in baseball onesies and lying on my belly wearing backward caps that drooped down to cover my eyes, never fitting my tiny head properly. I don’t remember any of this for shit, but Mom loves to retell the same story about me at every family function. The one where I’m sitting in my fuzzy red Elmo chair with a baseball in my lap and a Bobcats jersey with my dad’s number on the back drooping off my tiny body as I said my first word.

Strike.

Both my parents thought it was some miracle. Like that singular word that I had most likely only repeated after hearing a million times in my first year of life was a sign that I was going to take after my dad.

While I don’t believe in fate the way they do, they weren’t exactly wrong.

No magical power selected and determined my path before my birth; instead, I did everything I could to turn it into my reality.Not for my dad or his love of the sport, but because it made me happy.

It gave me a purpose. There was always a fire in me that rode me hard toward success, and baseball fanned those flames. I wanted to be the best. Anything else wasn’t good enough.Isn’tgood enough.

While I always knew baseball was going to be my future, it wasn’t the only sport I ever played. I was an energized kid and an even more antsy teenager. School wasn’t interesting to me, and I only ever did enough to get a passing grade so that I could keep my spot on the team rosters.

There’s no denying that I grew up pretty privileged. I didn’t have to work after school or on the weekends, which left me with too much time to spare, especially when baseball season was over. That led me to get into hockey. I played all throughout junior high and into the tenth grade before I gave it up.

It was fun, but nothing compared to baseball. Not to mention, I risked too many injuries that would have cost me my spot on my baseball team. My one and only fight had my knuckles so swollen I couldn’t throw a ball for a week. I never did that shit again.

Flexing my fingers around the baseball in my hand, I find my placement and get into position. The coach waiting for my throw at the end of the bullpen nods his head for me, and I let the ball go. The crowd surrounding us is deafeningly loud as the bottom of the eighth inning continues on the field. I tune them all out as I watch the ball disappear into the worn brown leather. Stretching my neck out, I lift my gloved hand and catch his return throw.

The Havoc are only up by one in this game, and while Kellan gave me a hell of a hard time when I didn’t play yesterday, there was no reason for me to. Our bats were on fire, and we had eleven runs come home compared to the other team’s four.

That isn’t the case today, and I’m grateful for it, as selfish as that is. I don’t like to sit for over two games max, or I grow toorestless. My recovery is just fine on that timeline, despite some of the armchair GMs who love to say otherwise. They’re white noise to me.

When I first joined the league, I was a long reliever, so constantly pitching only one inning now is easy work for me. It’s not my fault if there are those out there who doubt that. My near-zero ERA speaks for itself, especially since we’re already almost three months into the season.

I steal a glance over the railing. The scoreboard shows a blown-up photo of Wes as “Partition”by Beyoncé plays through the stadium, and he approaches the batter’s box. My eyes roll automatically as I quirk a grin and stroke a finger down the seam of the ball.

We’re already at two outs with the bases empty. Wes isn’t a bad hitter by any means and can homer a ball more often than anyone would have expected, but tonight hasn’t been his best outing. He does a slow practice swing to loosen up before lifting his bat and staring down the pitcher. I feel the blood flowing through my muscles and inhale slowly, filling my lungs to bursting before letting it go.