At some point, I’d be able to replace his memories with new ones of my own—my midnight workouts with Titan an attempt to paint over the past. An attempt that hadn’t happened yet. And now that he was back … that goal stretched even further into improbability.
I grabbed a bucket of balls and pushed through the double doors, stepping from the hall and out into the night. I was climbing the steps to the field when Titan’s body knocked against me, his body jumping the final two steps and planting, four feet in the dirt, his hair raised, a loud snarl spitting out.
76
“Achtung.”
The foreign command rolled off her tongue like silk, no hesitancy in the word, and Chase hoped to God it meant something other than attack.
“Easy.” He stepped off first base, hoping some light from the stands would light his features, the dark field no help. That’s what he got for lurking here, the last two hours of jogging, stretching, throwing—all an excuse to wait, to hope, for this.
“Ty never comes to the field?” Chase watched the skybox suite, the interior illuminated in the darkening night. Inside it, Ty gave a strange woman a hug.
“Mrs. Grant?” The second baseman spit on the dirt. “Not really. I heard she comes out here late sometimes, to run.”
“Late?” Chase looked away from the skybox. Mrs. Grant. The name turned his stomach.
“Yeah. Security mentioned it once.” He shrugged. “They say she used to help out on the field, but I’ve never seen her pick up a ball. Probably just rumors.”
Chase said nothing, stepping back into place and leaning forward, his eyes watching the batter, poised for action.
The information had haunted him, dragging him here for the last week, each night a waste, the security guards barely glancing his way by the third time he pulled up. But it’d been worth it. Because here she was and here he was and they were on, of all things, a baseball field. The perfect setting for this, a moment of privacy, a moment without Tobey Grant lurking around the corner, a moment without anything but the two of them.
She was as beautiful as the week before, but more so, the Ty of his dreams. The one in shorts and sneakers, her hair pulled back, no makeup on her face, a t-shirt clinging to her shape. He didn’t look for a ring, didn’t want to think of anything but the girl he knew. The one who had been as loyal as she’d been fierce. The one who had loved him with a passion and fire that had clawed at his barriers and punctured his walls. The only girl he’d ever imagined a future with. The woman he’d forgotten to get his heart back from, before he left.
“Easy,” he repeated. “You don’t want to kill the Yankee’s newest star.”
“Step forward again, and he’ll rip out your throat,” she called. Beside her, the dog snarled, his teeth bared, every muscle ready.
He stopped, holding up his hands, warily eyeing the German Shepard. “I surrender.” He surrendered everything to her. She’d destroyed him once before. And here, a fool three times over for nights wasted on this field, he could already smell his demise in the crisp night air. Just as before, she held all the power in those little hands. No longer a girl’s hands, they were older, wiser. A married woman’s hands. Ones that could crush him. Ones that could ruin him. Their time in that bathroom hadn’t shown him anything other than her weakness for his touch. He’d wasted that opportunity, going after low-hanging fruit and not the important things. Did she still love him? How could he have not asked that question? Would she leave Tobey? A scarier question, one that he was afraid to know the answer to.
She was loyal. He knew nothing if not that.
But would she be loyal to their love? It was a love that hadn’t been touched in the last four years. Or would she be loyal to her husband? That question, he was terrified of. That question he could barely form in his mind, much less off his lips.
“Platz,” she said, and every muscle in the dog’s body relaxed as he looked up at her with a disappointed expression, a low whine coming out. “Platz.” He laid down on the dirt, his eyes on Chase. She took one step forward and stopped. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was guarded but not angry.
“Are you alone?” Do you still love me? He couldn’t ask it. The words just wouldn’t leave his mouth.
“Yes.” Her eyes darted to the stands. “But there are security guards here. So don’t—”
“I’m not here for that.” And he wasn’t, but it didn’t stop him from wanting to pull her into his chest. To lay her onto the grass and make her whisper his name into the night.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Working out. My hotel’s gym sucks.” He tested the dog and stepped forward, smiling at her, the lie rolling convincingly out.
“Security can get you a key to the gym. It’s on the third floor. I can have them open it for you—” she stopped talking, his head shaking.
“I don’t want a gym. I like the field.” His fingers tightened on the ball and he forced his feet to stop moving, a few steps of separation between them. This close he could see her eyes. This close, he could almost smell her. This close, if she wanted to, she could crush him.
77
God, I love him. The truth that I’d run from every day of my new life smashed into me like a fastball into a mitt, stinging in its impact, radiating through my bones. I love him. Before, in my heels, wearing my ring, my husband standing beside me, it’d been easier to lie. To protect. But now, on our field, I felt naked, nothing between him and I but the truth. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy to destroy your life. There were supposed to be moments where you could divert, could pick new paths that would lead back to success. But in this, there was only one path, a giant vacuum that sucked me in, the end hitting my heart with a resounding thud that shook everything, down to my soul. I love him. Still. More. Impossible, yet true. Whatever asshole said that absence made the heart grow fonder was right. Before, I fell for him with a teenager’s love, bold and passionate, no real obstacles to overcome, no real consequences to consider. Now, the wind tickling past my legs, I could see the full path of destruction this would cause. I saw it, and in that moment, I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. There was right, there was wrong, and there was love. And love trumped it all.
I said nothing, my silence a waste of space on a blackboard crowded with possibilities. Take me from this life. I’ll always be yours. “Did you know I’d be here?”
He didn’t answer, and I could see more of him now, my eyes getting used to the dark. He was in workout pants and a long-sleeved shirt, it fitting snug across his chest, his shoulders, his arms. A glove on one hand, no cap. He lifted his chin and met my eyes. God, those eyes. I saw in them a hundred secret moments, moments out of jerseys and away from spotlights, moments where he had just been Chase and not The Chase Stern. Moments where he had been all mine.
I love you because when I see you, I can’t stop staring at you.
I blinked away the memory. “Did you?” I swallowed. “Did you know I’d be here?”
“I hoped.” He shrugged, reaching down, the eye contact broken, his hand grabbing a ball from the bucket by his feet. “You didn’t show the other nights.”
“We’ve been out of town.” The words shouldn’t have been said. He didn’t deserve an explanation. I wished I could take them back. I wished I could take this night back, put myself at home, before I realized that I was done for, that my world was over, that my heart was still his. I wished I could take it all back, yet I didn’t wish that at all. The other nights, he’d said. He’d been waiting for me.
He tossed the ball toward me, and I caught it. He stepped back. “Got a glove, Little League?”
“You can’t call me that anymore.”
He punched the glove. “Do you?”
I dropped my bag on the ground. “Maybe.”
“Still got that arm on you?”
I reached down, slowly pulling out my glove and working it on. It slid easily over my bare hand, my ring at home, in t
he safe. I flexed the leather and looked up at him. “Are you wanting to find out?”
He grinned at me, holding up his glove and asking for the ball. I tossed it toward him, and then, despite my better judgment, jogged out onto the field, Titan breaking into a run beside me, my heart beating louder than it had in years.
I love you because right now, there’s nothing more tempting in life than to pull you on top of me and push inside of you.
We said little for the next hour, falling into an easy rhythm of catching, the ball arching through the air between us, lost in the night, then found again when it connected with the leather of a glove. I caught grounders for the first time in years, my movements rusty at first, then smoothing out, the flex of an old muscle enjoyable.
It was, out of all of my nights on that field, the most painful of them all.
“It was crazy, with the whole city involved—picketers at the game, media crowding the press box, every fan demanding Chase Stern’s return—there were only two people, in that entire city who really knew what was happening.
And only one who could fix it.”
Dan Velacruz, New York Times
78
When we got the call about Julie Gavin, her body left at the East Gate, Tobey vomited. I remember standing at the bathroom door, my hand on its surface, and feeling heartless. He was the man, the strong one. He was the one who climbed mountains and stayed dry-eyed during The Green Mile. Yet he was puking into the toilet and I was calm, uncaring. I remember analyzing my feelings, trying to find the root of my problem.
“Babe.” I jiggled the handle, frowning when I discovered it locked, the sound of retching causing my brow to furrow. “Talk to me.”
“What the fuck is there to say?” he snapped, the words almost drowned out by the toilet flushing.
“It’s not our fault.” I leaned into the door, putting my mouth by the crack, hoping my words would carry. “We did everything we could. The security—”
“It’s a pattern, Ty.” He interrupted. “That’s what Harold said. She isn’t the first.”
Yes, our head of security had been clear on that. This girl, the one that showed up dead outside our gates, a detective had linked her with two other girls. Both also stabbed, and also on the last day of the season. The detective thought it was a World Series freak, someone pissed at the trade of Chase, and punishing the city every year we fell short of winning it all. “They might be wrong,” I said. “Who would kill girls over that? It’s—” I stopped short of saying crazy. Because of course this guy, whoever he is, was crazy. Sane people didn’t murder. And sane people certainly didn’t base murders on a baseball schedule.
“I don’t think they’re wrong.” He had moved, to a different part of the bathroom, his voice echoing off the tiles, and I jiggled the handle, wishing he would just open the damn door already.
I hadn’t argued with him, but I hadn’t taken it seriously. I hadn’t felt guilt. Or pressure. Not until 2014. Not until Tiffany Wharton.
I was the one who found her. I later wondered if it was planned, my discovery of Tiffany. If so, it was brilliantly effective. I’d paid attention to the deaths before; we’d met with investigators, donated money to memorial funds, made personal calls to parents. But her death, at least for me, changed everything. After her, the deaths ruled my life. There was no way to avoid a dead girl. No way to forget the blank stare of her eyes, the open gape of her mouth. I still see her face in my nightmares. I still can hear the scrape of gravel as I skidded to a stop in front of her body.
She was on the edge of our Hamptons’ property, on the service road that led to our back gate. Her body was on its side, as if it’d been kicked from a moving car, no care made to lay her flat, her arms at an unnatural angle. She’d been more than a fan. She’d been a member of our staff, a Human Resources’ admin, her face familiar to me.
Titan and I had come around a curve, his ears up, stance alert, and we’d almost stepped on her. I’d known, as soon as I’d seen her, that it was a message—one screamed through blonde hair and the dust of our property on her face.
In that moment, I understood Tobey’s nausea. I understood his panic. I felt the pressure, the breath of this psycho on the back of my sweaty neck. Whoever the madman was, he had my attention. And from that moment on, he had all of my focus. We needed to win. The NYPD needed to step up its fucking game.
Time was ticking, and everything amped up. Our recruiting. Our training. Our pressure. Tobey changed, retreating into himself, short with everyone but me, his obsession with winning almost manic in its focus. And that day, I became the same way.
79
“Hot Dog Day can’t come before Hoodie Day!” Mitch Addenheim, one of our senior marketers, slammed his fist on the table like he was preparing for war. I stifled a yawn and drew my best impression of Mitch’s hot dog on the edge of my agenda. It wasn’t impressive. “I’ve got suppliers already lined up and committed, plus the calendar magnets printed.”
I glanced at my watch as discreetly as possible, tuning out the argument between Mitch and the others, an issue with our hoodie manufacturer creating a mini-crisis of sorts. It was just after eleven. Forty minutes of hoodie discussions and I was over it. I cleared my throat and Mitch stopped mid-sentence.
“Keep the current scheduling. We’ll hand out the hoodies that we have and issue vouchers for the rest. It’ll give them an excuse to come back to another game.” I waited a half-moment; no objections presented, and moved on. “What’s next? Kirsten?”
The blonde stood, taking over, and I flipped the agenda over, skimming the remaining topics, my mind struggling to stay on point. Three days since I had seen Chase on the field. I hadn’t gone back, the last two nights restless, my legs twitching, my eyes darting to the clock as each grew later. Titan had laid by the back door, too well trained to whine, his eyes following me every time I stood. Normally, during a home week, I was there every night. But not this week. Half of it was self-punishment. The other half? Self-preservation.
I was in hell. Going crazy with thoughts of him, with the anticipation. I couldn’t pull through the stadium gates without searching the cars, wondering if his was there. I sweated through games in the skybox, every glance at him torture, his eyes up, on our box, the contact so frequent that I both dreaded and expected Tobey’s mention of it. A mention that never came, the observation missed, everyone oblivious to what was being screamed, at top volume, for all the world to hear.
I thought women enjoyed affairs. I thought they got sparks of pleasure at the buzz of their phone, thought they ran around with a glow, their world suddenly on fire with new love. I thought they were women with terrible husbands and unhappy lives, an affair the first step in an eventual ending of their marriage. I thought that they were horrible, selfish women. I never thought that I would be one of them. I never thought that I’d be so weak. It turned out being the perfect wife was only easy when there was no temptation, no mistake haunting and overshadowing your marriage.
I loved Tobey. Another man shouldn’t be able to tempt you when you loved your husband. But love felt like a flat emotion with Tobey, something that had grown with time, a winding of two lives, built on a foundation of friendship and respect. I was attracted to him. We had sex, a more active life than most couples. We had all of those building blocks that make a marriage strong … yet one touch from Chase, and I’d crumbled. One moment of eye contact and I’d broken. One hour of throwing a ball with him and I’d been ready to pack up everything and leave my husband.
What kind of woman was I?
What kind of love did that?
Regardless of the reasons, or of my justifications, this entire situation was wrong. It was a black hole, each day with Tobey pushing me deeper, my claw to the surface, to the maintenance of my marriage, getting harder and harder.
I had to go to the fields that night. Not to see him, but just for a breather. I was a drowning woman, and needed my field, my grass, my dirt
. I needed to pound up a flight of stadium stairs and stand in front of an eighty-mile per hour pitching machine. I needed a release, or else I just might go crazy.
80
The ending of everything didn’t come quickly. Pieces of my life flaked off, caught by the wind and scattered, too quickly for me to capture. It didn’t matter; I didn’t want to capture them. I stood in the wind, arms outstretched, and willed it to happen.
Maybe that made me selfish. Maybe that made me smart.
This time, I saw Chase before Titan did, his shape dark, way out by the bullpen. I could have left, gone to a different part of this enormous complex. Or called security and asked them to clear the field. I didn’t. I stepped out onto the damp grass, and jogged toward him, Titan loping ahead, his ears up, gait relaxed.
“Hey.” He tossed a ball toward me as I approached.
I caught it and hefted it back. “Hey.”
“Had given up on you coming.”
“Yet you’re here.”
“Oh, you thought I came here to see you?” He smirked, and my heart soared. “Not a chance.”
“Yeah,” I huffed. “Me either.”
“So now that we’re not here together, want to catch?”
I shrugged, glancing around the field. “I thought I’d go for a run. Knock out some cardio.”
“Want some company?”