Winning With Him by Lauren Blakely

Prologue

Declan

Life has a way of sneaking up on you.

It’s happened to me a few times over the years—at the end of a championship game when I was younger, then again when I was seventeen. A little later in the minors too.

Before I even lock eyes with my unexpected visitor, I know this time is going to make those other surprises look like kittens.

This is a lion’s attack of ambushes.

I’ve been a New York Comet for one short hour. I’m heading to the field in Tampa, wearing my number eighteen uniform, my name already sewn onto it, when the hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

When my skin prickles with uneasy awareness.

I see that familiar set of shoulders, that thick head of hair, I hear that big, boisterous laugh, and my stomach twists.

My throat goes desert dry.

My legs turn into cinder blocks.

But I have a game to play.

A bat to swing.

A glove to pick up.

As I walk onto the field, I try to recall stanzas and verses—words and rhymes from the poets who helped me through the aftermath of days of upheaval when I was younger.

T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Yeats.

But they don’t come.

My mind is a blank slate.

There are no rhymes, no words to grab onto.

“Declan! How the hell are you, son?” my father calls out.

Once I hear the Jose Cuervo in his voice, my pulse spikes. My hands go clammy.

He opens his mouth again. “And do you already miss your boyfriend?”

That’s when my world swings upside down.