Between the Seams (14 page)

The anxiety had returned, but he forced himself to focus on Jo. She was more important right now than his stupid panicky brain. And even though he’d never told another woman he loved her, he was pretty sure this was one of those Really Big Moments that needed to be handled just right.

For the first time in a long time he wished he had a baseball in his hand and a pitcher’s mound under his feet. He knew what to do in that situation. But this? In this he felt a little clueless.

“You just scared me a bit. First time I tell a woman I love her and she bursts into tears. It’s great for the ego,” he teased.

She laughed and mopped at her eyes with a fresh tissue. “I don’t know why I started crying like that, it’s just…fuck, Chase, what are we going to do?”

God, she had no idea what she was asking, did she?

Chase wrapped an arm around her and drew her to his side, kissed the top of her head. “We’ll figure it out. We’re adults, not stupid teenagers anymore. We can figure it out.”

I hope we can
.

“I don’t want to lose you again.”

Oh, God, you’re killing me here.

“Me either, honey.”

~~*~~

Chapter Sixteen

Over the course of the next two weeks, Jo acted like a woman possessed. Her time was split pretty evenly between Gran and Chase.

During the day she stayed with Gran, keeping her company and helping as needed. Fortunately, Gran was mending quite nicely and didn’t really need Jo around anymore, and had actually encouraged her to spend more time with Chase.

Then there was Chase. Evenings and nights were spent with him. Sometimes they would meet Owen and Jenn somewhere for supper or drinks, but for the most part once they got home—weirdly, that’s how she was thinking of Chase’s house these days—they didn’t leave until the next morning when Chase had to go to work and Jo went to go see Gran. They talked, made each other laugh, and made love. Everywhere.

But when Matt walked in on them fooling around in the kitchen, Jo took it as a sign that maybe they should be a bit more discreet.

Or at the very least, maybe they should only make use of the big kitchen island when they knew for certain that Matt was not in the house.

“Jesus, you two, get a fucking room,” Matt muttered as he backed out of the room.

Chase rested his forehead against Jo’s and chuckled. “Well, that’s embarrassing.”

Jo could feel her cheeks turning pink. “To say the least.”

Chase backed away from the kitchen island and helped Jo down. She straightened her clothes and pulled her hair back into a ponytail as Chase turned to the stove and the pot of pasta that was dangerously close to boiling over.

“You need help with anything?” She asked as she wrapped her arms around his waist from behind.

Chase turned his head and pecked her on the lips before turning back to the pasta. “This is almost done.”

The sound of the front door slamming reverberated through the house, and Jo raised an eyebrow. “I guess Matt
is
done.”

Matt had finally been cleared to drive the Monday after the Fourth, but hadn’t seemed to be enjoying his newfound freedom as much as they’d expected. Instead of taking off and getting out of the house like everyone had figured he would, Matt had continued to stick to Chase’s, iPhone glued to his hand or his ear. The only time he really seemed to leave was in the evenings, when Jo was at the house, and they had no clue where he’d been going. They had, however, been grateful for the privacy.

Chase shrugged. “He needs to get out and stay off of Twitter. I even threatened to throw his phone and laptop in the pool the other day. He just laughed.”

“I take it the rumors aren’t getting any better?”

Over the past couple of weeks, rumors about the future of Matt’s career had been coming fast and furious. He’d tried to keep them to himself, but the team had had to address the news reports at some point. Matt hadn’t been told by the team that he’d been let go, but it had become obvious that someone was feeding information to national sports news outlets.

“Unfortunately, no. I think that’s partially why he’s stayed cooped up. Love him or hate him, Matt’s a proud guy and baseball is his life.”

Jo stepped away and grabbed plates from a cabinet. “He’s thirty-five, though. He has to realize his career’s almost over.”

Chase lifted the pot of pasta off the stove top and took it over to the sink. As he dumped it into a strainer he said, “You would think so. But I don’t know how much thought Matt’s given it.”

Jo heard the worry in Chase’s voice, and was worried herself. It was hard not to—she’d known Matt as long as she’d known Chase, and he
was
a proud man. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like, having your entire career and future dissected and discussed in such a public manner. “He has to have given it some thought. He’s not stupid.”

Jo watched as Chase dumped the drained pasta into a bowl, added homemade meat sauce and stirred.

“No, he’s not stupid.”

Chase grabbed a serving spoon from the crock beside the stove, and Jo could feel tension radiating off of him in waves. The sudden change was disconcerting. “You okay?”

Chase scooped pasta onto his plate and sighed. “I’m fine, Jo. Just frustrated. Matt’s future isn’t the only one up in the air. It feels like everything is up in the air.”

“Right. It feels like something else, though. You were fine until we started talking about Matt and his Twitter woes.”

Chase hesitated, and Jo’s counselor’s brain kicked into high gear. She knew Chase. Loved him. Was absolutely certain that something about all of the false—or at least false-for-now—reports about Matt was bothering him.

“I just…I know how tough it can be, having a bunch of false and negative crap out there about you. The internet’s a great thing, but lots of people will use it for evil, to spread lies, to make themselves feel better, with no regard to how their words and actions will impact the people they’re lying about.” He picked up his plate and moved to the back door and the patio, where they ate supper most evenings.

She scooped some pasta onto her own plate, grabbed her drink and followed him outside. “You sound like you have some personal experience with that.”

Chase snorted, wouldn’t meet her eyes. Suddenly, Jo remembered a conversation she and Jenn had had when she’d first gotten back to town. Jenn had suggested that Jo should Google Chase, but she’d never gotten around to it, hadn’t had the time nor the inclination.

“I do.”

“So if I were to Google you, Chase Roberts, what would I find?” she asked casually as she took her seat. Chase almost choked on the water he’d just swallowed.

Jo could see the internal debate in his eyes, knew he was deciding what to tell her and how. After a couple of minutes that felt more like an hour, he finally answered. “It would depend on how deep you dove, honestly. The first page or so of search results is the stuff I want people to see—my business website, professional and personal social media accounts, a couple of YouTube clips of me pitching in college, that sort of thing. The second page is good stuff, too. Old news articles, reviews, interviews, some stuff from when I pitched in college. Once you get to the third page, though, things start to get dicey.”

He grimaced, and Jo squeezed his knee, casually chewed and swallowed before asking, “What’s on page three?”

“It’s embarrassing, really. Do you know what a jersey chaser is?”

“Uh, no.”

Chase gave up all pretense of eating and set his fork down before continuing. “Well, a jersey chaser is someone who’s only interested in athletes. Kind of like groupies for baseball or football, soccer, lacrosse.”

“So like a buckle bunny?” Jo asked, referring to women who chased after bull riders.

“Yeah, like a buckle bunny. These women can be very forward, to put it mildly, and very vocal about their exploits. The infamous Brett Favre cell phone photos? Those are nothing compared to some of the details jersey chasers share with the world.

“At any rate, when you’re an athlete you get kind of used to chicks hanging around all the time. It starts in high school, really, and just gets worse from there, especially if you play a high-profile position.”

“Like a pitcher,” Jo said.

Chase nodded. “Like a pitcher. And if you happen to have a sibling who’s also a well-known athlete, the jersey chasers somehow seem to get even worse. I’d seen it with a couple of my friends in college, managed to stay away from it myself. When Matt made it to the Bigs, though, suddenly there was this spotlight on me for my entire senior year of college. Nevermind the fact that I knew I didn’t have a future in the majors, and had no desire to spend the next ten years in the minors barely getting by, the girls still chased after me.”

“I’m pretty sure they would have chased after you anyway, baseball or no. You’re kind of hot, babe.”

Chase laughed, tunneled his fingers through his hair in embarrassment. “Thanks, honey. So, yeah. I’ll admit that I made some not so great decisions in college.”

“Isn’t that what college is for?” she asked.

“Partially, yeah, I guess. I figured I should enjoy the ride while it lasted, y’know. I was in my early twenties and knew that the attention and women throwing themselves at me wouldn’t last. So I had fun while I could and figured that was that.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, y’know.”

“I know. The college stuff was…whatever. It was college. It’s the stuff that happened
after
college that’s been embarrassing.”

Jo raised an eyebrow. “Did they keep chasing after you?”

Chase leaned back in his chair, sighed. “Yes, especially while I was in Austin. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but Austinites—especially Texas fans—tend to love their former athletes. There’s definitely a bit of hero-worship going on, and to be honest, I’m not complaining since my name and my status as a former athlete helped me get my foot in the door. I worked my ass off and that helped me become successful, but I’m not stupid enough to think that my name had nothing to do with it. The problem is that a lot of women also love and hero worship former athletes. There’s a certain segment of women who don’t care what your status is—third string, retired, starting quarterback—while there’s another segment that will only date the elite guys.”

“I’m guessing you’re using the word ‘date’ loosely?”

“Absolutely. More like wham bam thank you mam, let me go post this all over the internet now.”

Jo winced. “So what happened after you graduated?”

“You know the important parts. There were the women, though, more right after I graduated, and then slowly dwindling in numbers as time went by. Every time Matt would make the news, though, there would be this weird surge in attention on me. It was strange, and it took me a while to put two and two together. Even after I moved back home, it continued. Thankfully, the attention wasn’t as bad, but after the World Series run a couple of years ago it was like I couldn’t chase them away. For months I had women hitting on me, stopping by the office, even had a couple show up here. Poor Kim kept opening mail and finding panties and suggestive notes. I didn’t respond at all, except to call the cops a few times to have women removed from work and here, but a couple of them decided to go ahead and blab online and claim they’d had sex with me. It was raunchy stuff, too. I’d been seeing someone at the time—for a while, off and on, nothing serious. She knew about the jersey chasers, didn’t seem to care. And then the pictures happened.”

“Oh, no.” She reached out and took Chase’s hand, twined their fingers together and squeezed. She had a bad feeling where this was going, if the tone of his voice and the grim set of his jaw were any indication.

He squeezed her hand back, sighed. “Yeah. She took some video with her cell one night. I didn’t know, didn’t see it and wouldn’t have ever suspected her of it. She’d also been taking pictures of me for a while, again, without me knowing, mostly because she would take them while I was asleep or in the shower. She went to one of the more popular blogs that sports groupies follow and gave them all the dirty details, video and pics included. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the story had stayed confined to that one website, but it didn’t. It got tweeted. A couple of the photos were posted to Instagram. The video was uploaded and shared. For some stupid reason
Deadspin
picked it up. I guess maybe because I’m Matt Roberts’ little brother, or maybe because their writers have a weird fascination with athlete’s dicks, but they picked it up and made the rounds again. After that, a handful of women started posting to message boards and blogs, claiming they’d also had sex with me—even though they hadn’t and I’d never even met them—and used the original pics to back their stories up. One of the pics had a good look at the scars, and a few of them really focused on that. One of them claimed to have been turned off by them, but said she fucked me anyway because she felt sorry for me. Another said they were a turn-on, and this one chick…God, she was a piece of work…she intimated that I’d gotten them while she and I had been participating in a particularly rough BDSM role-playing session.”

Chase shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose with his free fingers. “It was all so ridiculous. I hired an attorney, pressed charges. We were able to get the video and photos taken down, and some of the websites took the stories down after we threatened to sue. After some digging, we found out that the same women who were claiming to have slept with me had been trying to screw Matt and had been unsuccessful. Well, one of them had been successful, and apparently just wanted go for a double.”

“That’s disturbing and disgusting.”

“Tell me about it. The whole thing rattled me for a while. It took me almost a year to go on a date, and that was with someone Jenn set me up with who had no interest in sports, didn’t know who Matt was and had never watched a baseball game in her life.”

“So what happened to her?”

“One of her friends found out she’d gone on a couple of dates with me and decided to show her a couple of the websites that are still active. She ended it, said she couldn’t date an amateur porn star.”

Jo laughed, couldn’t help it, really. “Amateur porn star? Please. You were a victim, not a porn star.”

“I know. It wouldn’t have lasted with her, anyway. She was nice and all, but the…spark, I guess…just wasn’t there.”

She smiled and winked. “Well, I’m glad for that part at least. As for the other stuff? It sucks, but I know you’re not that guy. Maybe in college and in your younger and wilder days. But now? You’re not that guy.”

“It’s just embarrassing, more than anything. My mom saw some of those websites, for crying out loud.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. She had a Google alert set up so that any time there was news about Matt she got it—I’m still trying to decide if that’s weird or just a really loving mom who cares about her kid, by the way—so when the
Deadspin
article broke she opened it, never thinking I and my dick would somehow be involved.”

“That must have been quite the shock for your mom.”

“Oh yes. That was a particularly uncomfortable phone call.”

They sat in silence, neither of them moving to finish their now cool suppers. Jo thought about her students, how easy it would be for some girls to get caught up in chasing after the star quarterback or the hotshot basketball player, and how cell phones and social media have made public humiliation much easier.