Stealing Home by Tara Wyatt
Thirteen
Dylan took a sip of his beer, the sunshine blazing down on him, the breeze cooling his skin as he waited for Hunter to finish flirting with the women who’d come over to have their picture taken with the two of them. One more day and then he’d be done with the damn brace and he could start taking practice with the team again. Another few days after that, and he’d be back in the lineup. Now, with the team back in town after their road trip—Dylan had stayed behind and managed to keep himself busy with Maggie and getting settled into his apartment—he and Hunter were finally grabbing that promised beer.
Hunter’s eyes lingered on the women as they moved back to their table, giggling to each other. He picked up the tequila shot in front of him—Dylan had said no thanks to a shot of tequila at one o’clock in the afternoon—and then chased it down with his beer. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and his shoulders slumped a little.
“So how you doin’?” asked Dylan, not sure where to start, but sensing that Hunter could use a friend.
“I’m a fuckin’ mess.”
“No shit.”
“Thanks, McCormick. You sure know how to make a guy feel better.”
Dylan took a sip of his beer and set it down, deciding to try a different angle. “You know, I’ve wanted to ask you, what’s it like to have Garrison Blake for a dad? Growing up around the game must’ve been pretty awesome.”
Hunter frowned slightly at the change in topic, but then visibly relaxed, leaning back in his chair. “It was okay, I guess.” He stared off into the distance, seemingly lost in thought for a moment. “He’s a good man. Gave me everything I ever could’ve asked for. But those are some damn big shoes to fill. It’s not easy trying to play in his shadow.”
Dylan hadn’t really thought of that. “Lotta comparisons.”
“Yeah. And not always good ones.” Hunter downed his beer and signaled to their waitress. Dylan couldn’t help but wonder if Hunter’s whole bad boy schtick was just a way of shielding himself from too many comparisons to his father. Deliberately distancing and self-sabotaging because if he didn’t try to fill the shoes, he’d never fail.
“Did he say anything when you got suspended?” Dylan asked, easing back into the original topic.
“Nah. Just said all kinds of supportive shit, like we all make mistakes, and it was only a bump in the road, and I’d figure it all out.” Hunter scowled as though the words tasted bad in his mouth.
“The bastard.” Dylan’s voice was flat.
Hunter snorted and shot back the fresh tequila the waitress had just set down in front of him. Good thing it was an off day today, with no game or practice scheduled.
“Everything’s just a mess,” he said quietly, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “There’s this girl.”
“Isn’t there always?” Dylan shot him a wry smile, which Hunter returned.
“And I’m crazy about her, but…it’d never work out between us. That’s what she says, anyway.”
“And why does she think it’d never work?”
“It’s complicated. Mostly because of her career.” Hunter leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. “The pot I got busted with—it wasn’t mine. It was hers. But it would’ve ruined her if it got out.”
“Shit, is she famous or something?”
Hunter nodded. “Or something.”
“Damn, that’s rough.”
“What do you think I should do? Now that you’ve got shit all figured out with your girl, thought you might have some insight.”
Dylan blew out a long breath and took a sip of his beer. “She know how you feel?”
Hunter shook his head. “Nah. Tried telling her once, she blew it off.”
“That’s where I’d start.”
Hunter nodded slowly. “Not like I got anything else to lose.”
* * *
Maggie had been to a lot of Longhorns games during her time working for the team—so many that she’d lost count. She’d watched games from the corporate box, from various spots in the stands, even from some of the fancier offices that overlooked the field. She’d gone on the occasional road trip, too, and had watched them play in other stadiums. But never before had she watched a game from section 120, the area of seating reserved for the wives, girlfriends, and families of Longhorns players.
It felt weird. Like, really freaking weird. Glancing around, she surveyed the rows of women, all ranging from mid-twenties to late thirties, attractive and nicely dressed. Maggie was grateful she’d picked out the pink, white, and green striped sundress she had on. At least her outfit would help her fit in. A few were in varying stages of pregnancy and her stomach did an enticing somersault at the idea of being pregnant with Dylan’s baby someday.
Easy, girl, she chastised herself as she moved down the aisle. Slow down. But she and Dylan only seemed to have one speed, and it was the romantic equivalent of zipping down the Autobahn. It was both the way it had been ten years ago, and how it was now.
A sudden pang of shyness hit Maggie as she slipped into her seat, feeling like the new girl in the high school cafeteria. Not that she’d ever experienced being the new girl, having spent her entire childhood in Ivy Hills, but she imagined the feeling of being a fish out of water who didn’t quite belong was pretty accurate. She took a breath and forced herself to turn to the woman nearest to her with a smile.
“Hey, I’m Maggie Jennings. This is my first game sitting here.”
“Oh, hey! I’m Keegan Anderson. I’m Josh Anderson’s wife,” she answered, mentioning one of the relief pitchers. Keegan was pretty, with wavy blond hair past her shoulders and a tall, athletic frame that she’d softened with a feminine off-white dress. “Who do you belong to?”
Keegan was being friendly, and her tone was warm and welcoming, but her question caught Maggie off guard. It was a harmless question, meant innocently, but it made something inside Maggie’s chest twist uncomfortably.
“I’m dating Dylan McCormick,” she answered before her pause could veer into awkward territory.
Keegan nodded. “Very cool. He seems really great from what I’ve seen. Here, let me introduce you around.” She stood and faced the other rows of women, all chatting amongst themselves. “Hey everyone, this is Maggie. She’s Dylan McCormick’s.” Keegan began pointing. “That’s Kaitlin, she’s engaged to Shawn Beggy. This is Vivian, she’s dating Juan Gonzalez, and that’s Laura, she’s married to Tommy Choo.” Maggie smiled and said hello to all of them, trying to keep their names straight. Leigh, Hannah, Christina, Mackenzie.
“Hey, don’t you work for the Longhorns?” asked Kaitlin, giving Maggie an appraising once over. “I feel like I’ve seen you around.”
“Yeah, I work in media relations for the team.”
“Is that how you met Dylan?” asked Keegan.
Maggie shook her head, smiling. “No, actually. We were high school sweethearts, and we reconnected after his trade to Dallas.” To make a very long story short, anyway.
“Aw, that’s so sweet!” said Hannah.
“Have you ever dated a player before?” asked Leigh.
Maggie shook her head. “No, Dylan’s the only one. I’ve kept my job and my love life separate, but things were different with us because of our history.”
“So are you going to keep working for the team?” asked Kaitlin.
Maggie frowned a little. “Um, yeah? I have no plans to leave my job.”
“Well, until Dylan gets traded again someday,” said Vivian without a hint of malice. “Every July, everyone’s on edge. You’ll see. Everyone is so stressed waiting to see if there’ll be a trade before the deadline, waiting to see if you’ll be packing up the house and moving to a new city. The constant threat of moving makes it hard to maintain a career.”
“Every time you go to a new city, you have to start all over, find a new job,” said Laura. “I’m a NICU nurse, and my career means a lot to me. Plus, when baseball’s over, I don’t want to just have nothing in our lives, you know? And I don’t think ‘baseball wife’ looks very compelling on a resume. But it’s not always easy to find a new job. And it makes moving up really difficult.”
“And the moving is lonely. I’ve spent weeks by myself packing up boxes and arranging for everything to be shipped,” said Leigh. “One season we were in Houston, then San Francisco, then Seattle. I had nightmares about moving boxes and packing tape. I’d wake up and not know what city I was in.”
A sense of unease settled over Maggie. “That sounds like an emotional roller coaster,” she said, chewing at her thumbnail.
“Everyone thinks that dating a ball player is glamorous, but it’s really not,” said Hannah. Maggie nodded slowly. She hadn’t thought it was glamorous, but then again, she hadn’t really thought about this side of dating Dylan at all. She’d been so focused on the two of them, on their chemistry and reconnecting and untangling her snarled feelings for him. She hadn’t had room to consider everything else.
“Definitely not,” agreed Christina, who was at least six or seven months pregnant. Her hand lay on her stomach, rubbing small circles. “And it gets even more complicated when you bring kids into it. This is our second, and our first is old enough now that she understands that when Daddy leaves, he’s going away for several days, and it breaks her little heart every time. When he’s away, she wakes me up every morning and asks me if Daddy’s coming home today. It’s hard. She misses him, I miss him. We FaceTime when he’s on the road, but it’s obviously not the same.”
“Don’t get us wrong,” said Mackenzie, laying a hand on Maggie’s arm and smiling kindly. “The lifestyle that comes with dating a player is pretty great. But it can be tough sometimes. I guess we’re just trying to let you know what you’re in for.”
“And there’s good stuff, too. The lifestyle, like Mackenzie said, and being looked after. Being devoted to someone and something. The friendships,” said Keegan. Maggie smiled and nodded, not knowing what to say. She let her eyes drift to the field as the players warmed up, searching Dylan out. She found him tossing a ball back and forth with Hunter, and that usual melty feeling expanded right through the center of her chest. As she watched him, her mind spun, whirring and reeling as she tried to process everything the women had just told her.
A hundred what ifs bounced around her brain. What if Dylan got traded again? Would she pick up her life, quit her job and go with him? What if she couldn’t find a new job in that city? What if she was lonely? What if they ended up getting married and having kids and she was basically a single parent for half the year?
What if his life and his career completely swallowed her up? What if being with him eclipsed everything about who she was and what she wanted?
What if being with Dylan meant erasing part of herself?
An anxious panic started to well up inside her as worst-case scenario after worst-case scenario played through her mind. She took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the game in front of her as the first inning started. She was getting way ahead of herself. If and when she and Dylan got serious enough that all of that was a concern, she’d cross that bridge then. There was no sense in getting worked up over hypotheticals.
And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about what Keegan had said, about being looked after, about being devoted to the game. Her thoughts raced back to the Chanel gown and how it had made her feel—inadequate, and unequal. Like she could so easily disappear into the shadows cast by Dylan’s limelight.
What if she didn’t want to be looked after and married to the game? What would that mean for them?
She didn’t know.
