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“I trust you.” She picked up a ball and pressed it firmly in my glove. “But you’re never going to be the pitcher you want to be unless you trust yourself. No one owns that mound but you.”

No one owns the mound but me. I needed to save that for my next game.

After she walked back to home, she threaded her hair through her hat and picked up the bat. “Bring the heat, Fulton.”

Lord, don’t let me regret this.

I moved my fingers around for my four-seamer again, but this time, I threw it twice as hard. She swung and missed but smiled. “Hell yeah. Do that again.”

And I did. I threw fastball after fastball. She didn’t miss all of them, but she didn’t hit them as well as the first two pitches of the day.

“Is that a four- or a two-seamer?” she asked after stepping outside the box for a break.

“Four. My two-seamer is a bit…rusty.” I didn’t elaborate. Fairfield was a small town. The odds of her already knowing what had happened last summer at UNC were good.

“Let’s see it.”

Shit. “Eliza…”

“You’re never going to throw it cleanly if you don’t practice with a batter at the plate.”

“But it’s really not ready—”

“Reed, we’re not going anywhere till you show me that two-seamer.”

Fine. I kicked the old pitching rubber. “You know, I never would’ve thought it possible that you could get more stubborn than you were as a kid.”

She stuck her tongue out at me and took some practice swings.

Dad’s voice and old reminders about the pitch played through my head. His tags on my chest felt heavy. “Help me out here, Dad,” I whispered to myself.

Eliza stepped into the box as I got into formation and threw up a prayer before the ball left my hand. The spin looked right, just enough off the center. It zipped across the plate and under her bat.

“That was awesome!” She beamed and threw the ball back to me. “Think you can do that again?”

Doubtful, but what the hell.

I rolled the seams around till my fingers aligned with them. This time, the ball didn’t go as off-center as I wanted, but it moved just as fast. Eliza fouled it off and cursed before asking for another.

After five more pitches, we both called it quits. I waved her out to the mound where I lay down and rested my head on the rubber with my feet pointing toward center field. She put her head next to mine but faced her body toward home plate.

She stretched her arms out. “This is…”

“Weird?” I gulped. None of the guys ever liked lying down on the mound. Said it was too scratchy.

“Actually, I was going to say pretty cool.” She sighed. “I’ve never looked at the ball field from this angle before. It’s so different.”

Finally, someone gets it.

I brought my hand to rest on my chest. “Dad and I used to lie down like this. We’d drive around and look for old ballparks, and when we found one, we always did this first to see if it felt like a good field.”

“How could you tell?”

“It’s kinda hard to explain. But he had me close my eyes and listen to the way the wind moved. I’d run my hands over the dirt too, just to get a feel for it. To understand how long it had been since someone had stood on it.”

“Mine drives me crazy, but I can’t imagine having him that far away.” She sighed. “I bet you miss him a lot.”

My chest tightened.