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Three hours later, I stared out over the ball field where game one of three would be played against the Athletics tomorrow night. Lifting the beer I was drinking to my lips, I heard the sliding door behind me open, and Nick stepped out onto the balcony. The same balcony where I had met Rose almost a month ago. It was near the end of June, and the weather in Seattle was nice for once.
“Anything?” he asked as he leaned against the railing and looked at me.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“How many of those have you had?” he asked as he took in the small cooler sitting to the left of me.
“Not enough.”
My phone buzzed, and I saw Josh’s name on the screen.
Nick and I both said, “Fuck.”
It wasn’t good news when he was calling you.
Picking up my phone, I swiped to answer it. I flinched when I brought the phone up to my ear. Just lifting my arm had hurt.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Bryson, Josh here.”
“How’s it going?” I asked as I looked up to see Nick watching me. I swore he was holding his breath.
“I’m sure you can guess since it’s me calling you and not Trent, things aren’t going so well. You have a small tear in your rotator cuff. They’re advising you take some time off, and let it heal for a bit.”
“How much time?”
“They want you on the sixty-day injury list.”
“No way am I taking two months off, Josh.”
“If you keep playing, the doctor said you’ll tear it completely, Bryson.”
“I haven’t so far, and I’ve been feeling the pain for the past six months.”
Josh was silent, and Nick scrubbed his hand down his face.
“What do you want me to say, Bryson? You’re the best goddamn pitcher in the MLB, and if you think for one second I want to see you step away for that long, you’re crazy. But I’m not about to put your future in jeopardy because I don’t want you to miss a month or two. It’s this, or a year—or worse, you never play again.”
I sighed. There went the conflict. I hadn’t wanted to just sit on the sidelines and watch everyone else play.
“If you want to travel with the team, you know you can, but Pete has you set up for a PT appointment tomorrow morning at eleven, and I expect you to be there. I’ll let Trent know, and he can start making changes to the rotation.”
My eyes closed, and I felt a heaviness wash over me. I had never known anything other than baseball.
“What am I going to do for sixty days, Josh?”
He let out a humorless chuckle. “Hobbies? Any projects you can work on?”
My eyes lifted to Nick, who was still watching the one-sided conversation. I smiled. “Yeah, there is one project I’ve been meaning to start.”
“Well, you have sixty days to get it done.”
“Challenge accepted.”
Chapter Five
ROSE
I sat in the middle of Aunt Lincoln and Uncle Brock’s living room as everyone gushed over the three new grandbabies. I was, of course, one of the ones doing the gushing.
“What is it like having twins, Georgiana?” Lily asked as she rocked Rhett back and forth. Or maybe she had Ryder and I had Rhett?
“It’s exhausting but wonderful at the same time,” Georgiana said with a wide smile.
My cousin Brock and his wife Georgiana had twin boys two months ago, while my other cousin, Morgan, who happened to be Brock’s baby sister, had a baby girl last month at her baby brother’s wedding. Well, her water broke at Hunter and Kipton’s wedding, and she had little Blakley four hours later.
“How does it feel to be grandparents to three little ones nearly all at once?” my mother asked as everyone laughed.
“It’s the best thing in the entire world,” Aunt Lincoln stated as she looked down at Blakley in her arms.
“Have you heard from Avery?” my mother asked Aunt Merit, who technically wasn’t my aunt, but we all called her Aunt, and her husband Dirk, Uncle Dirk.
Running her finger down the side of Blakley’s face as she sat next to Lincoln, she looked up and smiled. “I did. She misses Montana, and I think she will be coming back home soon. At least she is trying to for the summer. She mentioned something about a movie, though.”
“A movie. My goodness. Modeling and now movies?” Mom said as she gave a weary-looking Merit a soft smile.
Avery was younger than us, seventeen, and had been living in France the past year or so, going to school and modeling. She was a beautiful girl with sapphire eyes and light-brown hair. She was discovered by one of Georgiana’s friends, a designer from Paris. Avery had been working in Georgiana and Morgan’s boutique on Main Street at the time. She really had her entire future ahead of her, and it was endless.
