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I needed to finish this one.

Please, let me finish this one.

Ben reached me a moment after Coach did and spoke first. “Ump’s an ass, Coach. He’s had it comin’ for us the entire game.”

“That’s enough out of you.” Coach pointed to Ben. “You’re on thin ice already. Don’t push it, Talbot.”

Ouch.

I took off my hat and wiped my forehead with my glove. “I’m workin’ with what I’ve got, Coach. I swear. His strike zone has been a hell of a lot smaller for us than it is any time Kominski takes the mound.”

“Yeah, Coach,” Ben added. “Kominski’s throwing beach balls, for Christ’s sake, and—”

“Enough!” Coach spat a sunflower seed to his left. Then to his right.

Mixed signals.

Was I out or would I finish this?

“Can you finish this game, Fulton?” Coach pulled down his Oakleys and stared at me from over the top of them.

My arm felt weighed down with irons, and my shoulder pricked with hundreds of needles, but I faked a stern smile. “I can do it.”

Coach slid his sunglasses back up. “Then get to it. It’s hot as balls out here.”

As he hurried back to the dugout, Ben pressed the ball into my glove. “Let’s end this already. The score is making me itch.”

With us only being up by one run? Yeah, same.

“We good, man?” I asked him as he started turning around to go back to home plate.

Ben cracked his jaw and scratched the scruff on his chin before he lowered his mask. “Just bring the heat. Think you can do that?”

My fingers tightened around the ball. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Ben ran back to home, and the crowd cheered as the next batter stepped into the box. He was three for three already this game, and he looked hungry for another.

I moved the ball around in my glove after Ben called for a fastball. He wanted me to bring the heat, so I’d do just that.

And I was gonna do it with my two-seamer.

I had tried it out on Granddad this morning, and he was thrilled. He had asked me what was different from the last time I had tried, and I replied with one word: “Focus.” What he didn’t know was that I meant I had to focus on a certain person.

So this time, when I blurred out the crowd, I also imagined that the base runner had changed to her.

Eliza.

If I pictured her, I felt calmer. My arm felt confident, and my head clear. Clearer than it had in years of being on the mound.

What was it she had said?

No one owns that mound but you.

I exhaled into my glove and took my stance. My knee drew up a second later, and I released the ball. It hit Ben’s glove directly over the plate with a satisfying thwack.

The ump raised his arm and yelled, “Strike!”

Yes!