Page 7 of Rain Delay

“Like really weird…”

“Lila, I’ll be fine.” I pull back from the hug, putting my hands on her shoulders. “If anything goes haywire, you know you’ll be the first person I call.”

“Okay, good,” she sighs in relief. “If you call mom before me, I’ll be mega pissed.”

I laugh again, shaking my head. I wish I could bring her with me — The entire living with a stranger thing would be way better if I had someone I knew there with me.

“I really would prefer to not be the next Netflix documentary, but I’ll keep you posted.” I remind my sister before climbing in my car. Once inside, I sit there for a moment. I can’t help but let the nerves finally take over.

What if this was something I wasn’t cut out for? What if this was setting me up to fail? What if the person I’m paired with doesn’t even like me?

Tomorrow, I will be meeting the player MLB assigned me to.

What I didn’t know was what lied ahead for me would bring me back to a time I tirelessly tried to forget.

Chapter 3

Wyatt

“MITCHELL, Daddy Coach wants to see you in his office.” Liam calls out from across the clubhouse as he strolls through the doors.

The locker room is buzzing with noise. It’s Opening Day, all of us were getting into our pre-game mindsets, going through our superstitions, doing whatever we had to do to get ourselves ready for the game.

I look over at him, confused. It’s quickly overshadowed by the sounds of my teammates immediately breaking into a chorus of “ooooohs”. I glare at them, and they stop. Well, most of them.

“Did he happen to say why?” I ask, shoving my phone into my pocket.

“Nope,” Liam popped the “P”, shaking his head. “Just told me to send your ass to the office as soon as possible.”

I groaned, shaking my head as I walked out of the clubhouse and made my way down to Coach’s office.

Coach Athens never called me into his office for things, unless it was something serious. And considering today was Opening Day, this wasn’t exactly comforting.

I’d say my relationship with Coach Athens is pretty good. I’ve never had an issue with him in my time on the team, and if we did disagree on something, we made sure to talk it out like grown adults.

I couldn’t think of what he possibly wanted to talk about before the game.

Was I being traded? There was no way. I was coming off an all-star season. The team’s reigning Gold Glove and Silver Slugger, they’d be really dumb to trade me on Opening Day.

As I walked in, I knocked and poke my head in, seeing Coach isn’t alone. I see that my agent is also in the room and sitting across from both of them is a woman with hair redder than a damn firetruck, who I’ve never seen before.

Fabulous.

Coach’s office was one of those where you’d walk in and it’s either a complete disaster, or it’s like no one’s ever stepped foot in it. Today, the clutter that usually crowds the corners of the desk were put away, and the office somehow felt bright, even though the mood I was feeling made it feel bleak and dark.

“Wyatt,” Coach says, gesturing to one of the empty chairs. “Have a seat, bud.”

I hesitate before sitting down.

“What’s going on?” I ask. “You’re not trading me, are you?”

Coach chuckles. “Mitchell, we’d be really fucking stupid to trade you away.”

Fair.

My agent clears his throat. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors traveling around about MLB wanting to have some more social media coverage on the team this year.”

I nod slowly. “I’m aware…”