Page 176 of The Fall Classic

“Do you?”

Her voice isn’t saucy or flirtatious. It’s sincere—weirdly, kind of rudely sincere.

“Are you asking me to answer for a sin I’d never commit?”

“Yes.”

I put my hands on the armrests but stop myself short of standing up. I tower over her. Wouldn’t exactly go along with my “sin I’d never commit” line.

So I lean forward, switch my cap around so the bill is out of my eyes, and put my elbows on the armrests. I look up at her.

“I’d rather die.”

“That’s easy to say.”

“Not remotely.”

I get up, making sure not to stand tall right next to her, and take two steps to the side. “It was good meeting you, Liv.”

“You don’t have to leave,” she says, suddenly sounding like the Olivia I met last winter. Open, eager to please, vulnerable.

Like the kind of girl I’d go to the ends of the earth to protect.

But I don’t do relationships.

I play baseball.

“Yeah, I do,” I say. “See you back there, Liv.”

I don’t go back, though. I go around the other side of the house to where the horse stalls are, the smell of hay and earth overpowering my senses. I stare into one of their eyes and it stares back, big, stinky, and unimpressed. The sun has sunk low on the horizon, and with all the orange and red and purple in the clouds, the sky looks … angry. Moody.

I get it.

I’m looking at another three months until Spring Training—another three months where I’ll feel irrelevant and aimless. There’ll be a lot more months of that if the players’ union can’t get it together and make an agreement with the owners.

I hate thinking about it. Hate even acknowledging the word in my own head.

Strike.

And for some reason, just considering the possibility of never-ending months without baseball makes me think of Liv’s too-round gray eyes.

Maybe I should think about a relationship so I have something to do if we don’t come to a collective bargaining agreement.

Not with Liv.

A girl like her is dangerous for a guy like me.

But with one of the countless Baseball Annies who slide into my DMs all day, every day.

Or maybe I need a hobby.

“What are you up to?” Scottie asks, finding me in front of one of the stalls, still in a staring contest with the huge black horse.

“Have you ever ridden a horse?”

“No. You want to?”

“No. My contract doesn’t let me ride horses, anyway.”