Page 35 of Serving Bunt

The tension from earlier hadn’t disappeared completely, but it had softened around the edges, settling into something quieter.

After a moment, Matty spoke quietly into the darkness. “I’m sorry I let loose on you like that. Earlier, on the path.”

“You had every right to.”

“Still.” He exhaled slowly. “I don’t usually lose it like that.”

I thought about the way his hands had trembled outside the barn, the panic in his eyes after the cookie box had collapsed.

“No?” I asked gently.

He was quiet, long enough that I wondered if he’d answer at all.

Finally, he said, “I kinda have a thing for perfectionism. It’s something I’ve worked on in therapy for a long time.”

The honesty in his voice caught me off guard.

Not because I thought he was incapable of vulnerability, but because it sounded so . . . practiced. Like he’d had to drag every word out of himself one painful inch at a time.

“My dad is . . .” He paused. “Not cruel. I wanna make that clear. Everything he does, he does for his family.”

“But,” I coaxed softly.

“But nothing is ever done halfway on our farm.” His laugh held no humor. “If a fence needs fixing, you fix it right the first time. If you’re tired, you work faster. If you fail at something, you figure out what you did wrong so you don’t do it again.”

I turned back toward the ceiling and listened quietly.

“When we were kids, he used to say there were two types of people in this world. The kind folks could rely on and the kind they couldn’t. And somehow my brain translated that into if you mess up, people stop loving you.”

Something in my chest tightened.

“Fuck, Matty.”

“I know that’s not what he meant,” he added quickly. “But once baseball entered the picture, it got worse.”

“Because you were good?”

“Because I was good and people noticed.” His voice turned rough around the edges. “And when people notice you for being good at something, you start feeling like you can’t afford to fail them.”

Well, damn. I understood that far too well.

“So, today,” I started carefully. “When the box collapsed—”

“Logically, I know it’s just a baking show. Nobody cares except for me. But at that moment, all I could think about was everyone watching me fail in real time.”

He let out a quiet, embarrassed breath.

“It sounds stupid, I know.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“Peter, it was a cookie box.”

Something sharp and immediate twisted in my chest. And not only because he’d used my first name. I turned my head toward him in the dark, frowning even though I knew he probably couldn’t fully see it.

“You’re doing it again,” I grumbled.

“What?”