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As I closed my eyes and tucked my head into my baby boy’s neck, barraging him with kisses and making him giggle a laugh that was so free, so limitless in its joy that it brought joy to my own heart, I shook it off. Those decisions were made. That life was over. This was my life now. Owen was all I needed.
18
GRAHAM
The alarm blared, and I slapped it to turn it off.
There was a time when I could barely believe those alarms still existed, much less in the posh hotel rooms where I used to stay. Now one of them sat beside me on the nightstand of the bed I was borrowing. Mocking me. Reminding me of what I used to have. Who I used to be.
I had been awake for an hour at least already. My early retirement had done nothing for my sleep schedule. I was still up and awake with the sun, stretching and working out as it rose and had already done what most athletic men consider a full day’s workout before I ate breakfast. I would do another one that afternoon.
But my workouts were different now. They were more focused on recovery than fine-tuning. My shoulder ached all the time, twinges of pain that went down my arm and into my fingers on a regular basis. Sometimes, it felt like hot lead had been poured into my shoulder and caused what was called a dead arm. Other times it just felt tired. Used up. Old.
Now it just ached. Five-thirty in the morning, and I was awake with an achy arm, a mocking clock, and a dread about going to school, a feeling I hadn’t had in fifteen years.
I shouldn’t dread it. I shouldn’t have dreaded it when I went the first time, much less now. My high school life was easy back then. I just had to not fail my classes, not get caught drinking underage or doing anything stupid, and throw a baseball really hard. Aside from the stressors I put on myself by linking up with Debbie Lee, life had been a peach back then.
Now I was staring at the ceiling, wondering how this was going to go. I figured one of two things was going to happen. Either everyone would know me, I would be mobbed and treated like a celebrity, and it would be difficult to get anything accomplished because of it, or no one would remember but the teachers, and no one would care much anyway.
That one would hurt the ego.
Six months ago, I was a Major League pitcher. Now I was stuck coaching at my hometown high school.
I shook my head, trying to fight off the nagging thoughts. I should be grateful. I was lucky to have put enough away to make sure my retirement would be nice. The player’s union had made sure I made enough to do that, which was good. But most of the fortune that people in Murdock undoubtedly thought I had was gone. Either lost to lawyers or doctors or agents or bad investments by my money people.
It meant I needed something solid to do so I could live while my investments grew for the future. While there were minor league coaching options and television analyst jobs available, I needed the break. I needed to get away from the grind of the big leagues for a while. It was too fresh. Too raw.
So, I packed up everything I wanted to keep, stuck it in a trailer, and brought it to Murdock. I’d only brought a single bag inside with me to Ryan’s. Part of me worried I wouldn’t want to stay and would end up driving it all back. But as I stared at the ceiling, I knew there was no going back. I needed this space. I needed this opportunity to break from the life I’d had.
I was grateful to have a job at all. Principal Runnels was over the moon that I wanted to come coach and advise the athletic department in general, working as a sort of councilor for the student athletes. It was putting the college education I had to use and combined with my experience as a student athlete myself, I could guide some of these kids to a fulfilling life. Whether the majors were waiting for them or not.
But part of my success would be tied to being able to find that fulfillment myself. Part of that would be accepting that this was my life now. That this was where I needed to be.
The emptiness gnawed at me, settling in the pit of my stomach and chewing through me like a hungry dog. I was stuck. Starting over completely. I wasn’t mentally capable of handling the more prestigious jobs that were available to me and being back in Murdock was the only way I could reasonably survive and recover.
I had to smile.
I had to pretend.
I had to be the superstar they all thought I was. At least for a little while. At least until I was better.
Whatever the fuck better was.
I sat up. It was a victory on its own because for once I didn’t stick my arm underneath myself and then scream in pain and anger at my own dumb brain for forgettingwhyI was so damn sad all the time.
With one victory under my belt, I went for a second. Sliding out of bed and slipping my feet in the slippers that I had worn to hell and back over the last six months, I blearily looked for my phone. It was sitting on the nightstand on the other side of the bed from the alarm clock. It was not, however, fully plugged into the charger. Meaning it had about seven percent charge.
“Dammit,” I muttered under my breath.
I pushed the cord in and went to turn on the shower. At least I could be fresh and clean on my first day. I hopped in and did my now usual five minutes of slumping against the wall while I let hot water run over my shoulder. It relaxed the muscles there, especially the ones that had been torn, rehabbed, torn again, and then completely fucked six ways from Sunday by a surgeon who I wanted to murder with my bare hands.
When I finally got around to getting soap on my body, I felt like I was starting to wake up. The dreariness and darkness of my mind started to fade, and I felt like I might just have a handle on things. I just needed to get dressed, get some food in me, and slap on a positive attitude.
The smell of cooking bacon helped. It was wafting down into the basement suite from the kitchen just above.
I made it into the bedroom again and got dressed, wearing khaki pants for the first time in two years.
“Morning,” Ryan said. “Allison made eggs and pancakes before she rolled out. She’s got some errands to run before her prenatal this morning. She left me in charge of the bacon.”
