Knox (Sexy Bastard #3) (21 page)

I
answer
the door still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, the jersey now crumpled from where I slept in it. I don’t want to take it off. Taking it off feels like admitting defeat. Admitting that nothing will ever be the same again.

Half of me expects to find him on my doorstep right now, begging forgiveness. I can’t help the way my face falls when I realize it’s just Ruby hopping from one foot to the other outside my door.

“Damn, way to make a girl feel welcome,” she says, breezing past me. “Don’t worry, I come bearing Ben and Jerry’s. Our stalwart, best boyfriends who will never desert us. Unlike that no-good egotistical piece of—”

“Don’t,” I mumble.

In her defense, Ruby stops short on the rant she was about to throw down. Not that I’m not pissed at Knox, but he’s still in the friend group. I don’t want to make anyone choose sides.

Another reason you should never date your brother’s best friend: you still have to see him when the whole thing comes crashing to an end.

Ruby shrugs. “Well, Knox is probably sitting alone in his sad little house feeling like a total tool anyway. He’s probably praying for a do-over, so he couldn’t screw it up again.”

I roll my eyes. I may have just been dumped, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I dig my feet under the couch cushions. The sky outside is as gray as my mood, a spring shower threatening to bust open the skies and come crashing down on the sidewalks.

“I wish there were something I could do to make you feel better.” Ruby sets her chin in her hands.

“This helps,” I point out, lifting the ice cream free of its bag. I fetch two spoons, and we lean over my kitchen counter to dig into the pint. Screw bowls. Or manners. This is an emergency. “And it’s nice to just have someone here,” I add, as we lick our spoons clean.

Ruby takes a deep breath, and I can tell she’s about to dive into her reservoir of anti-Knox arguments in a last-ditch attempt at turning my mood around. I can also tell it’s not going to work. I brace myself in anticipation of an even worse tirade.

“For real,” she says. “The bright side of this whole thing is that you opened yourself up to someone, which you haven’t done in forever. And you finally told your big brother to screw off about being so overprotective of your dating life. I’m proud of you, Shelbs.” As she tucks me in tears start streaming down my face again.

She’s right. Knox is the first man I’ve really taken a risk on. But was it worth it to open up like that? Now I’m not only nursing a broken heart, but also an injury to my brother’s and my relationship. I hurt the most important person in my life, my sibling, and for what?

For someone who’s normally pretty cautious, I sure picked a wild hand to play. Now I’m walking away from the table with empty pockets and a heavy, heavy heart.

D
ragging
myself into work the next morning is like wading through concrete. That old saying about just putting one foot in front of the other doesn’t take into account how damn difficult walking can be when you’re trudging through life like a zombie.

Last night I texted Jackson a long-winded apology. I did remind him that I’m an adult, but I also asked him to look past this, and to forgive me for hiding it from him. No reply yet. Looks like rebuilding our relationship isn’t going to be as easy as fixing a broken Lego bridge this time.

I’m still half-asleep by the time I get to work, where the first thing I see is an agitated Tim waiting for me outside my office with a furrowed brow. “There you are. Haven’t you been checking your messages?”

Figures
. The one Sunday I fail to keep tabs on my devices.

“What’s going on?” I ask, trying and failing to even look sorry. Whatever’s happened, it can’t possibly make me feel any worse right now.

Tim gestures with his chin. “In my office.”

I follow him down the hall, cursing myself for having skipped breakfast. The moment I round the corner, my stomach starts to churn with nerves. Karl is sitting at the round table in Tim’s office. The table where you sit when you’re up for an annual review—or something much worse.

What has the idiot done now?

“Can you bring Shelby up to speed?” Tim says.

Without lifting his eyes from the table, Karl clenches his fists and starts. “Footage of Dale’s car crash found its way to Twitter late last night. TMZ and a couple of the sports blogs are covering it this morning. So far it hasn’t gone any wider.”

“Yet,” I say. “It hasn’t gone wider
yet.
”

“They haven’t caught on to the DUI,” Tim interrupts.

“But they will.” I glare daggers at Karl. For his part, he only slumps lower in his chair and refuses to meet my eyes. Which is probably a good thing, because if looks could kill, he’d be a smoldering lump of smoke right now.

“What makes you so sure, Shelby?”

If only Tim knew the half of it.

“Eddie Reese, the owner of the arcade shop on Moreland. He popped back up while you were away on vacation and tried to get Dale to pay him off a second time. The footage would have come from him. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he were giving ESPN an exclusive interview as we speak.”

Tim does a double-take. “You didn’t think to call me with this information?”

“You were on the do-not-call trip,” I mumble, staring at my feet. I can’t believe I’m being forced to take the heat for Karl’s shitty decision-making.

“Would have expected better judgment from both of you,” Tim barks, shoving to his feet. “I’m heading into a meeting with Coach Mike and a few people from legal. When I get back, I expect the two of you to have hammered out some semblance of an action plan. Whatever you’ve been doing, if anything, it’s not working. Come up with something new.”

And with that, Tim storms out the door.

I fix my glare on Karl now. “What did you do?”

He’s jumpy, his eyes darting around the room as he weighs his options. “Nothing, nothing—we just had a talk with Eddie.”

“What
exactly
did you talk about?” I cross my arms, waiting for him to come clean.

“That he should stop the blackmailing.”

“Or?” I prompt.

“Or . . . there would be consequences.”

I close my eyes and pray for more patience than I possess. “So you threatened him.”

“Not threatened! Just . . . mentioned. That things might happen.” He grimaces. “Look, what can I say, Shelby? He gave us the tape. He said it was the only copy he owned. Obviously he was lying, but—”

“So now we’re on the hook, not just for extortion, but also for threatening a witness. Awesome. You do realize that if the DA finds out that you guys,” I make air-quotes, “ ‘didn’t threaten him’ like that, Dale is going to look even worse. He might have to serve jail-time for this. All because he didn’t want to go to rehab, and you don’t know how to push people when they need to be shoved.”

Karl cracks his knuckles. “It wasn’t a
threat
, Shelby, stop blowing it out of proportion. All we said was that Dale had friends in the local circuit—”

My eyes widen. “What, the
street-fighter
circuit?” I’ve hung out with Ryder for long enough to know what they call it around here. “Oh sure, because that doesn’t sound threatening at all. Did you try to hire someone to intimidate Eddie?”

“No.” He drops his head onto the table. “I swear, we didn’t go that far.”

Jesus Christ.

Not much of a silver lining, that there isn’t some hired thug out there who could testify that he was hired, but I’ll take what I can get. “Karl, what were you thinking?”

He rubs his eyes, looking so lost I almost feel sorry for him for a minute. Until I remember who I’m talking to. Then I just want to slap him upside the head. “We thought we’d handled it. And then we were just . . . we were just hoping it would go away.”

I shake my head. “Karl, if this whole thing blows up, the team would never live that down. The stunt you and Dale pulled just made everything a million times worse.”

I go on, wanting Karl to understand the full scope of his monumental fuck-up. When he doesn’t respond, I throw my hands in the air. “You threatened a small business owner to cover up a player’s DUI. How do you think that’s going to look, Karl? Now Eddie Reese doesn’t just have the footage. He also has the fact that an NFL player tried to intimidate him into keeping it to himself. And if we’re really lucky, he’ll have recorded that conversation and will be delivering it into the hands of a tabloid reporter any minute.”

“Fuck.”

Karl pauses, staring at his feet. Then, finally, he looks up at me with a pleading expression. “I’m sorry, Shelby. I fucked up. Bad. I’ll tell Tim everything if you want me to. I’ll tell him it was my idea. I just want to fix this. Tell me what we can do to fix this.”

The very tiniest silver lining of the day: watching Karl beg me for help. Like I said, I’ll take what I can get.

Forty-five minutes later, Karl and I have mapped out a comprehensive plan of attack. We’re hiring a camera crew to record a live apology from Dale. We’ve set up a meeting between Eddie Reese and our legal team. And we’ve booked Dale an ocean-facing room at the Horizons rehab center in Orlando, after explaining how much nicer the décor is there than it would be in prison. That got us our PSA pretty fucking fast.

At least we’re off-season, so we don’t have to worry about him missing any games. He’ll be back in time to show off his dedication to clean living this fall.

And Tim never needs to find out about the threats to Eddie. On the condition, of course, that Karl listens to me the next time I tell him how fucking stupid his plan is.

For once, I actually believe him when he says he will. At least maybe this will stop him undermining me at every turn.

A player with a second DUI isn’t good news for the team. But it isn’t a front-page scandal, either. We’ll make it through this.

I just wish someone would sweep in and apply the same damage control to my life. I don’t think I’m capable of fixing what’s broken on my own.

S
econd call from my manager
, Joe.

I let it go to voicemail. My phone’s been ringing off the hook. Friends, family, former teammates, even a few of the guys I’m currently playing with in my shortest season on record, all of them calling to check up on me.

I’m not in the mood for conversation right now.

Not that I have a whole hell of a lot going on. Two days after my surgery, icing and resting are the only items on my calendar. My entire career has been shrunken down to a regimen of fifteen-minute icing intervals and a marathon viewing of the
Fast and the Furious
franchise. I’m on movie number six, which tells you a lot about my state of mind.

I’ll watch anything to try avoid the footage that’s been replaying on a loop inside my head—the pitch that brought my world to a standstill. In my mind’s eye, I’m not experiencing the pitch from the inside of my body. I’m watching from above. I see my cap, but the logo is wrong—it’s my old Yankees cap. Then there’s the windup, the ball leaving my hand. Then there’s me, falling to my knees. Then there’s the world, crashing down around my broken dreams.

I flip the channel and grab another beer from the fridge.

I
pick
up on Joe’s third try. The old man is persistent, I’ll give him that. I guess it’s why I’ve worked with him for eight-plus years.

“I was starting to think I’d been let go,” he answers when I grunt a hello.

“You’ll be around until I’m officially decommissioned,” I promise. “So, you know. Might want to start scoping out new jobs soon.”

“Knox, my friend. That’s not the kind of talk I like to hear from one of my hottest pitchers. You think we’re going to let one little injury take Cooper Knox out of the running? Not on my watch.”

“Your definition of ‘little’ and mine must be different.” I take another sip of beer.

“Listen, if you want to make it through rehab, it’s all in your head. You need to know you can do it, believe you can do it. Then you will.”

“Easy for you to say,” I mumble.

“Yeah, well, I’m not just anyone here, Knox. You’re talking to an expert at this game. I know the stats here. Do you?”

“Yeah, injuries equal bad.”

I can practically hear him rolling his eyes through the phone line. “Players recovering from rotator cuff injuries have a sixty percent higher chance of returning to the game than players recovering from labral tears. Rotator cuff surgeries can result in a ten- to fifteen-percent loss in flexibility—but an aggressive rehab and stretching plan can mitigate against that loss. Unlike the labrum, the rotator cuff can actually be strengthened through proper exercise. Treat it right and you’ll lower your chances of recurring injury. Translation for the slow kid in the corner, Knox: you could come out of this stronger than ever.”

Some of what he’s saying is penetrating the fog of my self-pity. But a wave of worry rises from my gut and finds its way into my mouthpiece. “Okay, so some of the stats are reassuring, sure. But they’re averages, not guarantees. Shoulder surgery has put away players much younger than me. What if I just can’t make it back?”

Silence on the other end of the line. For a minute there I’m wondering if I just stumped the guy. But then Joe clears his throat. “I meant what I said, Knox. I’ve seen this injury a hundred times. It is all in your head. It is all up to you. How bad do you want to make it back? If you really want it, you’re gonna have to fight for it. That’s the spirit that separates the Greg Madduxes from the athletes whose names you’ve never heard. You don’t get to three thousand strikeouts, four Cy Young awards, and eighteen Gold Gloves by sitting on your couch.”

“I want it more than anyone, Joe, you know that. But . . . ” I swirl the beer bottle in my fist. “I don’t want to come back as a shittier version of the player I used to be. I don’t want to be that trade the Braves regret. I’d rather step down than get traded again or be asked to leave.”

“That’s up to you, too, kid. You might not come back with the same range of motion or speed, true. But what you
can
do is learn to pitch so smart nobody’s gonna wanna trade you. And if that’s what you want to do, I’m here to help. But it’s gotta come from you. You’re a fighter, Cooper. Always have been. You have there Golden Gloves under your belt. Let’s try for a fourth, fifth. Shit, maybe a sixth. And while we’re at it, let’s shoot for the elusive Cy Young that you’ve worked so hard all these years to get.”

I pull my cap down over my eyes and stretch out my feet, the framed Braves photo Jackson and the boys gave me directly in my field of view.

Joe’s got a point. Maddux was never known as one of the game’s fastest throwers, and his pitch slowed down considerably over the years. What he did have was the ability to outwit hitters and trick them into swinging for his strikes.

Coming back isn’t just going to be a physical challenge. It’s also going to be a test of my tenacity and focus. Both of which are in short supply right now.

“I’m in, Joe,” I tell him with more conviction than I’ve felt in days.

“That’s the Cooper Knox I remember,” he says as he hangs up.

A
t least I
’ve still got my crew. Despite everything, and all the weird tension between our group, Ryder and Cash show up shortly after my call with Joe. They’ve already determined what I need to recover—a good stiff bourbon. Trust them to bring the medicine in spades.

Cash gives me the once-over, cocking his head at my sling. “Looking pretty gimpy there, bro.”

“Thanks for the support, jerkoff.”

I’d punch him if I could, but my left hook was never great. I show them into the living room and offer up some of the only food I’ve got left. “Beef jerky, anyone?”

I see Ryder taking in the empty pizza carton, the beer bottles and the opened bag of chips. “No thanks, man. You feelin’ okay? Seems like you’ve been spending some quality time on that couch.”

“Yeah, well, I hear not moving much is good for recovering from surgeries. But glad you stopped by. Misery loves company.”

“Anytime.” Ryder grabs glasses and ice from the kitchen and sets us all up with generous pours.

“Nature’s best painkiller.” I swirl the honey-brown liquid in my glass as my guests make themselves at home on my leather ottomans.

“So what’s the prognosis?” Ryder asks, leaning forward in his seat.

I shrug. “We won’t know for a long time. Gotta rest for a few weeks before I can even start PT.”

“Tough break, man.”

You can say that again. “Enough about me. How go plans for the new bar?” My friends are already concerned. Given my outlook, anything I say about my recovery is only going to make them more worried.

“We’re still in the development phase,” Cash says. “Working on a name, mocking up a logo, crunching the numbers.”

“Well if this whole baseball thing doesn’t work out, maybe you can teach me how to sling some drinks.”

“Please.” He snorts. “We’d have your ass out front with a sandwich board.”

I laugh dryly. Publicity
would
probably be the best use of a former baseball player. If my career goes south, I’ll be trying to cash in on whatever fame I have left before the fans forget I ever existed. Ugh. Not a great life-vision. “Assuming Jackson’s even willing to let me have a piece of the sidewalk,” I add in a grumble. I’m not sure where Jackson and I stand now, but I have a feeling that my breakup with Shelby will only make things even worse, if it hasn’t already.

The uncomfortable look Cash shoots Ryder confirms my suspicions.

I wince. “Have either of you seen Shelby?”

“No,” Ryder says. “But from what I hear Jackson’s still shutting her out.”

You’ve gotta be kidding me. “But we’re over.” I shake my head, reaching for the bottle and pouring myself another glass. “He’s all the family Shelby’s got. Look I get being protective, but Christ, talk about taking that shit too far. He’s going to cut her out because she’s human, because she wants to have one thing in her life he didn’t pre-approve? What, is she supposed to never date?”

The bourbon goes down easier. Sure seems to be loosening my tongue.

“Sounds like you care about her, Knox.” Ryder tips the bottle into his glass, studiously avoiding eye contact.

“Yeah.” I adjust my sling and avoid their eyes. “I do.”

“Well, shit,” Cash says. “Nothing to be ashamed of. If you still care about her, just go for it.”

Ryder nods. “Knox, we know you’re worried about Jackson. But if you and Shelby are the real deal, he’ll come around.” He leans forward, clasping his hands between his knees. “Your chips are down and you’re feeling like life is out of control right now. I get it. I’ve been there. But pushing away the people you care about is only going to make things worse.”

Shoulder surgery sure seems to have a way of bringing folks with opinions out of the woodwork—opinions about how I should be living my life. “I’ll think about it,” I tell him, which is bro-code for
Keep your stupid opinion to yourself.
We spend the next hour shooting the shit about nothing in particular, until the guys head for the Library.

“Come by the bar later when you’re up for it,” Ryder says on his way out.

And risk running into Jackson? No thanks.

But as I close the door behind them, the full extent of the conversation washes over me. Not just my talk with them, but the one before it with Joe, too.

He’s right. How I handle the next few months will determine where I go from here. It’s up to me, and I can choose whether I fight and get back on top of my game, or whether I give up and fade into a corner. And I face the same choice with Shelby. I want her, that much I know. I care about her. I think I might even love her.

So I can cry about it like an injured baby, or I can man up, pull my shit together, and make this thing happen. It’s up to me—or, in this case, up to
us
.

I only hope she can forgive me for all the shit I’ve pulled. But before I talk to her, there’s one more thing I need to face.