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“Those assholes,” I repeated her words. “Isn’t that what you should call me?”
She pursed her lips. “I call it how I see it,” she said. “Haven’t you learned that by now? If you were being a dick, I’d let you know.”
I barked a laugh, never ceasing to be amused by her mouth. “Noted.”
“Do you always buy jerks drinks and snacks?” she asked. “Or was that for my benefit?” She didn’t look like she was judging, just seriously curious.
“I’ve done it more than a dozen times,” I said, shrugging. “Some of the fans can’t stand me, and after the incident, that percentage has drastically gone up.” I motioned to the crowd. “As you can tell.”
“Why do you respond that way to them? Those guys were out of line.”
“Were they?” I asked. “In their minds, I punched out an innocent fan.”
She tilted her head back and forth. “Why not tell your side of the story? Set the record straight? Your team made a statement, but it focused on you hiring an anger management coach”—she pointed at herself—“but not the reasoning behind your reaction.”
“I didn’t want to give the asshole the satisfaction of me giving him any more media attention,” I explained. “And honestly, with the way the public vilified me, they’d likely think my explanation was an empty excuse. At least explaining that I’m attempting to get better is honest, even if I think I’m a lost cause.”
She gaped at me. “Offended,” she said, playfully tapping my forearm that rested on the armrest that connected our chairs. “I’m the best, after all. Do you really have so little faith in me?” she asked with a tease in her voice.
“Weren’t you the one who said it wasn’t up to you to fix me? That you could give me all the tools in the world but I’d have to do it myself?” I cocked a brow at her, and she opened and closed her mouth a few times. It was fucking adorable. “See, it has nothing to do with my faith in you.”
Sadness flashed over her eyes as my words sunk in, but she quickly forced that away, replacing it with a challenging look that made my heart rate spike. “You have more insight to yourself than you realize, Ethan,” she said. “You’re going to come out of this just fine.”
“So confident,” I said.
“I’ve done this a time or two,” she said, shifting in her seat to face me more directly. “And that reaction you had to those two jerks? That was a wonderful display of regulation. You felt the anger. I saw it. But you breathed through it and altered the situation to your advantage.”
“It’s not the first time a fan has verbally attacked me,” I said. “It won’t be the last.”
“And you’ve adapted,” she said, studying me. “It’s interesting,” she continued. “You seem to have absolute control when it comes to insults thrown your way, but when it comes to those you care about…” She stopped herself there, pressing her lips into a line.
Tension coiled between us as she held my gaze, looking at me like she really saw me, in a way no one ever had before. She wasn’t looking at me like a project she needed to complete, but like a person she understood.
Fuck me, I could stare into those blue eyes all damn day and never feel the need to look away. Not even when it felt like she was flaying me open.
“Speaking of people I care about,” I finally said, shifting out of my seat. “I’ll be right back.”
She smiled at me before I headed over to the dugout, working my way around so I could see the players. I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes as I found more than a handful engaged in a very serious dance-off competition as they waited for the game to start.
Baseball players were as unique as they come, especially with superstitions. Several of these players always started home games this way, dancing, making each other laugh, telling the same jokes, whatever it was they did before the last game they won. And I didn’t care, as long as it put their minds on the game and their focus on winning. Not that winning was everything, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
I slipped past a field guard, easily heading into the dugout and navigating my way around players that I knew as well as the coach did. When I acquired the team, I made sure I knew each of them personally, and that they knew me. I may not know all the intimate details about their daily lives, but I knew their names, their superstitions, and their game day habits as well as the next person.
I wasn’t a sit-back-and-be-silent owner, and while I had the reputation of being an asshole on this playground that I called home, it was only because I cared about the team so fucking much, like Alexandra was getting at a moment ago. This team was my crown jewel, my prized possession in my claim to wealth. The fans could hate me right now. That was fine, as long as they still loved the team.
