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Eliza rolled her eyes as Lauryn tugged on the cardinal head, and then the two of them walked away.

Coach walked over to the phone in the bullpen. “Fulton, good arm. Keep it up.” He picked up the phone and turned around.

“Can you believe that?” Ben kicked the ground.

“I know. Coach actually gave me a compliment.” Maybe the heat was getting to me already?

“No, I meant the princess paying us a visit.” He scoffed. “God, she’s so much like Erin. Snooping around and flaunting her—”

“Hey.” I hit his arm. “She who will not be named, remember?” After what Erin did to Ben, we agreed not to speak her name out loud.

Ever.

“Shit. Right.” Ben grabbed a bottle of water from nearby and took a long swig. “What’s she doing here, anyway?”

“Well, it is Crowley field. And we’re playing her dad’s team today.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t need to come to the pen. Unless…”

“Unless what?” I took the ball from him.

He raised his eyebrows and batted his eyelashes.

“Ha!” I opened the gate, and the two of us started walking across the blazing hot outfield toward our dugout. “Eliza Crowley hates me.”

Granted, neither of us killed the other one yesterday, but she did look like she wanted to punch me more than once while I was there.

“The way you two are with each other…” Ben mumbled. “Seems like the opposite of enemies.”

“Trust me, it’s not.” I mean, she practically threw herself off a catwalk and a railcar just to avoid me, for Christ’s sake.

“Wonder if she wore her pearls when she cleaned the statues.” Ben chuckled.

“She doesn’t dress like that anymore.”

Ben stopped walking and made a face.

I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Uh-huh…”

“What I meant is that she doesn’t need the pearls to play the part of a princess.” Then again, princesses didn’t work in light booths or sit on railcars.

Maybe I was wrong before.

Maybe she wasn’t the princess I thought she was.

An hour later, I stood on the mound surrounded by a sold-out crowd and a scalding sun. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have a summer league play games in the middle of the day needed to choke on my fastball.

Even with sweat in my eyes, I knew when TJ Crowley took the plate before he was announced. He’d gained a good fifty to seventy pounds in muscle, but he still had the same strut and same dumbass smirk. For years, I’d waited for this—to face him on the field. To be the one in control.

Here, he couldn’t shove me down the bank at Potter’s Creek. Or let the air out of my bike tires. Or add salt to my frozen lemonade (couldn’t get the taste of that out of my mouth for days).

On the mound, I called the shots.

The one running away with his tail between his legs today would be him.

It turned out he was just as predictable as any other asshat who took the plate.