AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Stop whining, my brother-in-law snaps every time I deign to complain. Nick is just pissed I’m taking up all her free time, and maybe that has something to do with why I put up with the needless hovering with only minor objections. That and deep down, beneath all the groaning and grumbling, I know Amelia is doing it because she loves me. Because I love baseball. And while she loves to bring up retirement—your body is telling you to slow the fuck down, Cassie—she wants me to be happy.
And baseball makes me happy.
That’s why when green eyes narrow and Amelia asks if I’ve been doing my goddamn active motion, I can answer honestly. “Yes,mother.”
Her suspicion doesn’t relent. “I found beer in your garbage.”
“You’re going through my garbage now?”
“I was throwing something away!”
A likely story. “The guys came over to watch the game, you fucking racoon. They drank the beer. I was a good little boy and drank water all night. Ask your husband.”
Not that I would trust him not to lie just to get me in shit.
“Okay.” Amelia carefully lets my arm drop, patting my good shoulder in a loving way that so contrasts how she shoves me off the examination table set up in the middle of her home office. “You’re looking good. Mobility is fine—” I cut her off with a snort, earning myself one of those perfectly stern yet understanding looks motherhood gifted her the power of. “Come on. Cut yourself some slack. Two weeks ago, you couldn’t even lift your arm above your head.”
Like I need the reminder. I’ve never felt so damn useless as I did the first month after my surgery; confined to my apartment, arm bound in a sling, enough pain meds in my system to make me nauseous. Sure, I’m a lot better now but I’m still not at one-hundred-percent, and I am not a man who was made to function at anything less.
I can’t afford anything less.
Scribbling in the notebook that currently dictates my entire life, Amelia casts me a sideways glance. “Have you heard anything?”
“Gonna have to be more specific.” I’ve heard a lot of things lately. About my team and their chances at the world series this year if I can’t play. About myself and myhabits. The one thing I haven’t heard, though?
“About your contract.”
That.
“Nope.” Not a day goes by that I’m not painfully aware of my employer’s silence. Of my contract hurtling towards its final days with no news of a renewal.
I’ve been on the wrong side of the media before but this is different. They couldn’t just get rid of me. I was too good. I was invaluable. I was locked into an iron-clad contract.
But now? The powers that be arepissedand for the first time ever, I’m genuinely worried about my place in the league. And it’s not because I’m basically a senior citizen in the baseball world, or because I’m Black and bisexual and to some people, that’s two minorities too many. It’s all becauseIfucked it up. I single-handedly wrecked everything I’ve worked for.
Most people I started my career with have retired by now but I’m not most people.
I’m too fucking good to justretire.
But if the Wolves let me go and no one else wants me, I might have no other choice.
“No matter what happens,” Amelia says, voice calm and soothing like she can read my thoughts, “you’ll be fine.”
“Is that what you settled for?Fine?”
I know the answer, Amelia knows I know the answer, so instead of responding, she sighs. “Would retirement really be the end of the world?”
Oftheworld? No.
Ofmyworld? Yeah, it kinda fucking would be.
I’m not like Amelia. I don’t have all these… things. The job, the family, the normal, well-rounded life. I haveathing.Thething. Baseball. It’s everything to me, everything I am. Sure, I’d befinewithout but I don’t want to be.
Amelia doesn’t like that answer. She never does. She thinks my one-dimensional life is sad. She thinks it’s unhealthy to have nothing else, no one else, in my life. She thinks I’m too old to fuck around the way I do—like I’m almost sixty, not almost thirty-six.
Which is why she hits me with that look of motherly concern again. “Just consider it, okay?”
I don’t need to. I don’t want to. I’m about to tell her just that—for the umpteenth time—when I’m interrupted.
