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PROLOGUE
CASS
Midnight has yetto strike but I already fucking hate next year.
All around me, people celebrate but for possibly the first time in my life, I don’t feel like joining in. I don’t want to joyfully welcome the new year because this new year is the first year in three decades that I won’t be playing baseball. That Ican’tplay baseball.
A SLAP tear injury. Common among players, especially pitchers like me. Repetitive stress, chronic injuries, hurling a ball through the air practically every day for almost thirty-six years, all of it is a bitch on your shoulder and mine has had enough. A minor trauma was the final straw.
Long since having drained the whiskey from the glass I’m cradling, I raise it in the bartender’s direction, my shoulder twinging as I do. Swarmed with patrons as he might be, he catches my silent request, dropping everything and ignoring everyone in a quest to refill my drink, and confirming that the Sun Valley Rays—my college team—cap on my head isn’t hiding my identity as much as I hoped.
I’m not supposed to be out on account of the many, many reporters hoping for an exclusive scoop on The Fall of Cass Morgan. I’m not supposed to be drinking on account of the mass amount of painkillers in my system. I’m not supposed to be doing anything but resting and getting ready for surgery, but how can Irestwhen my career, my life, my one true fucking love, is hanging on by a thread?
“It’s just like any other scandal,” my agent, Ryan, keeps saying. “It’ll blow over.”
Except it’s not. This isn’t another pregnancy scandal—all complete lies, by the way—or a leaked nude—a gravely offensive attempt at Photoshop—or an illicit affair—off the record, not entirely untrue, but in my defense, I didn’t know he was married. This is me blowing everything because I just had to have one more drink. I had to be in a sports bar that, surprise surprise, sports fans frequent. Sometimes, those fans aren’t mine and they aren’t particularly fond of drinking with the player who dashed their team’s chances at winning a World Series. They had to make that known, and I had to retaliate. And every paparazzo in the damn city had to snap pictures of the Chicago Wolves’ resident hot mess throwing punches.
Somehow, in the fray, they missed the other guy swinging first.
God knows it wasn’t my first fight immortalized online but it was the only one that ended with me in the hospital and my arm in a sling, essentially fucking the Wolves’ chance for the season. I can’t help but wonder if I’d still be in such hot, steaming shit right now if that little fact was omitted.
As much as I know I should be laying low, I can’t. Even when I don’t have a million problems plaguing me, I hate being alone. I’m not exactlylessalone, moping incognito in a bar, but at least there are distractions here. People and chatter. Not that I’m in the mood to entertain either; I certainly didn’t pick this dingy bar in the ass-crack of nowhere with the intention of socializing. To chit-chat with strangers who think they know me, to flirt with people wearing dollar signs in their gazes, to accept any more fucking condolences. God knows I love the spotlight but tonight, I don’t want it. I just want to drink alone, misery my only company.
The universe, however, has a different idea.
I’m so wrapped up in my thoughts, it takes me a second to register the person beside me. When I do, I sigh. I’m not accustomed to ignoring pretty women—or pretty people in general—but I try. Even if a simple peripheral view tells me this girl is something more than pretty, I still deny myself a better look at what I think is a whole lot of tight, purple satin in favor of silently glaring at the counter.
She doesn’t get the hint.
Fingers prod my good shoulder, gentle but insistent, before a voice as silky as that outfit drawls, “Hi.”
Another sigh. A tight-handed grip on my ever-flaring temper. A gritted smile that hurts to conjure. A small shift to face her that I immediately regret because if anyone has the capacity to cheer me up, it’s a beautiful woman, and I don’t want that.
Eyes the most unnerving shade of greenish-gray—like those plants with the fuzzy green leaves, my whiskey-influenced brain suggests. Flowing light brown hair styled in loose curls that my mind suddenly, inexplicably, fantasizes about ruining. So much flushed skin bared by what I correctly identified as a purple dress, as small and short as the woman wearing it. Even with the platform Converse adorning her feet—an interesting choice, considering the rest of her is fit for a nightclub—and me sitting down, she has to crane her neck to smile up at me.
Fuck me, what a smile.
Once, twice, three times, I have to remind myself I’m not in the mood.
Once, twice, three times, I have to fight the urge to rake my eyes over her, long and slow.
Once, twice, three times, I lose.
Because my self-control only knows so many bounds—and contrary to what the media likes to report, it’s been a fuckingwhile—I take my goddamn time soaking her in. Trace every inch of soft, creamy skin complimented by plum fabric. Try not to linger on the swell of her tits as they try to escape a corseted bodice. Let the sight of her soften the dark cloud hovering above me just a little before reinforcing it.
Tearing my eyes away, I shake my head. “Baby, I’m not in the mood.”
In the blink of an eye, that pretty smile drops. “Pardon me, sir?”
Sir.Jesus Christ. She’s laying it on thick.
I have to say, I kind of enjoy the clueless act. It’s always entertaining when they, oh-so-skillless, pretend not to know who I am. And to her credit, this girl’s pretty good. I’d probably believe her, if not for her friend lingering on the other end of the bar, watching us intently with a big grin—a dead giveaway. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not signing shit tonight. Or taking pictures.”Or bringing you home, as tempting as that sounds.
Almost in slow motion, she blinks. Looks me up and down like I did her except while I was appraising, she’s searching, frowning like she can’t quite figure something out. Squinting, she leans in, peeking underneath the brim of my cap.
I wait for, if she really doesn’t know who I am, recognition to hit. I’m not trying to be cocky but while I might have fled the inner city of Chicago, this is still baseball country. I’m still Cass Morgan. I spotted my grinning face pasted on at least three bus stops on my way through town, advertising everything from sneakers to energy drinks. It would be more unreasonable to assume shedoesn’tknow who I am.
Which, apparently, she doesn’t.
