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I opened my mouth to answer and then snapped it shut. Saying it out loud would only make the scars open again, would only make all of this hurt even more than it already did.

“Just because you want to win doesn’t mean you have to want the other one to lose.” Mom stepped closer to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You’re both equally passionate about something. What’s wrong with that?”

I shook my head. “But I…I wouldn’t even know where to start. I want to thank him for what happened at the theater, but everything I typed up in a text sounded so stu—”

“My daughter is braver than just sending a text.” She smiled. “Besides, his nana told me you were the first person he asked about when he came to in the hospital.”

I was?

A tiny flutter of hope bubbled inside me before I tucked it away. “But what if we lose, Mom?”

It suddenly hit me that if we did, it wasn’t just about us moving away from Fairfield. I’d be moving away from the one place I had in common with Reed. And if he lost, and his grandparents also lost their farm, it would be the same for him.

Fairfield wasn’t just my home or his.

It was ours.

“You can spend a lifetime going over every what-if, but in the end, what is meant to happen will happen.” She let go of my shoulder and slid her sunglasses back on. “I wish I could tell you what to say to Reed, but I’ve learned two important lessons so far in my life. One: You need to remember that people can surprise you…” She nodded toward the parking lot. Dad waved at us from the back of his truck, where he and two of his assistant coaches unloaded weed eaters and backed up a tractor from his trailer.

Wait. Had he come here to help instead of having practice?

The tears I held back finally fell onto my cheeks.

“And two…” Mom kissed my forehead. “Sometimes you just gotta take a leap of faith.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Reed

“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”

—Babe Ruth

I drummed my hands nervously on the steering wheel of my truck. The morning sun burned brightly in a sky without clouds, and the wind moved just enough to keep the humidity at bay. Would’ve been a great day for baseball.

After being discharged yesterday, Mom and I went back to the farm, where Nana insisted on cooking a meal fit for Thanksgiving, because “hospital food was just plain embarrassing.” Nana wasn’t wrong—the food was disgusting—but I knew the real reason for all the fuss.

Nana cooked when she was worried. And she had a right to be.

We still hadn’t received any word about Dad since Mom first heard from his base three days ago. At this point, even if the news was bad, I’d rather hear something than nothing. The silence was suffocating.

I gripped the tags under my shirt and stared at the hospital doors, out of which a nurse wheeled a young woman as a car pulled up. The clock changed in the truck to 10:00 a.m. I had sat in the hospital parking lot for almost thirty minutes. That was long enough.

No more putting this off, Reed.

I closed the driver’s-side door and pushed my shirt sleeve up a little higher so it wouldn’t rub the bandages still on my bicep. The doctor said the burn was healing quickly, but that I needed to take it easy for a few days.

Right.

I had a championship to prepare for but, sure, I could “take it easy.”

After signing in as a visitor and pressing a sticker onto my shirt, the nurse directed me to the second floor, where I would find Ben. Apparently, he was moved out of the ICU last night.

A familiar-looking deputy stood guard outside of his room. “Reed Fulton,” he said with a smile as I walked up. “Haven’t seen you in years. How’s your granddad doing?”

“He’s doing good, Mr. …” My mind went totally blank.

“Ferguson. Russ Ferguson, remember? I went to high school with your dad.”