Going All the Way (Knights of Passion Book 1) (31 page)

The guys all cheered and gathered around, hyping themselves up.

Jason saw Hammonds, Miranda, and Sam standing there, all nodding and smiling. He looked beyond them, hoping against all hope that another face was there, but the hallway was empty. He shouldn’t have been surprised. She swore she wasn’t using him, but if she wasn’t, she would have been here for the most important game of his life. Instead, she’d moved on without a backwards glance. He deserved it. He’d been a complete jerk, kicking her out without even listening to her. What did he expect? That she’d read his mind and be there? No, she has more self-respect than that.

He ignored the sinking feeling in his chest and followed the guys onto the field. He had a game to win and a girl to get back.

I
t was a
tight battle. The Tigers were a tough team, which is how they had scrambled their way up the wild card ladder to tie with the Knights on the last day of the season, forcing this one-game playoff. The Knights were playing at home, in front of their home crowd, but it may have been a mistake. The hype surrounding the game and the insanity in the stands only made the guys nervous, forcing stupid errors. But the ninth inning dawned and the teams were tied one to one. The Tigers had a runner on third and two out. Everybody was on their toes, tension and stress playing on all of their faces.

Jason called time and motioned in the infield into the mound.

“Okay, guys. We can do this. We’ve done it all season and even came back from the dead.” The whoops from the guys reinforced his words. He held up a hand. “Calm down, stay focused and don’t let anyone change it, okay? We can take these guys. Don’t try anything fancy. Go for the sure out, at first. Take your time, sure outs, no mistakes. Got it?”

They all nodded and slapped gloves then departed for their positions. Jason took a deep breath and got into position, crouched low, eyes on the batter, poised on the balls of his feet, glove ready. A movement above the Knights’ dugout caught his glance. A flash of auburn hair. Before he could focus, the pitcher delivered the pitch.

Crack!

Ground ball right between him and the pitcher’s mound but Cody was there to cut it off. Jason backed to the bag and got ready for the throw. The ball took a bad hop on Cody and he barely had time to glove it and throw to Jason, off target. The ball sailed into the first base line, directly in the runner’s lane. Jason barely had time to think. He gloved it and tagged the runner out. The runner’s path caused him to tear into Jason’s arm, jerking his shoulder back and out of joint, dislocating it immediately.

Jason immediately dropped and blacked out from the sudden yet familiar pain. When he woke, a few seconds or even minutes later, he was surrounded by the worried faces of his team, the coaches, and the trainer. The sharp pain almost took his breath away, throbbing and stabbing. The look on the trainer’s face said it all.

His season, and most likely his career, was over.

*

Jason lay back
on the athletic training table, the dull roar of the crowd in the stands above the locker room reminding him that life went on with or without him. Baseball will go on, the team will go on, while he drifted into limbo. He wasn’t stupid. He knew the shoulder was gone, shot, done. Nothing left for him. It was over the minute he chose to stick his arm out into the lane to tag the runner.

He could blame Cody Patterson for throwing the goddamn ball offline again. He could blame the team for not playing well enough sooner to avoid the one-game playoff. Hell, he could blame himself for even giving a damn about baseball and trying to come back.

It wouldn’t change the bottom line. His life was over. He had nothing left, no job, no career, and no Stacia. Maybe it was for the best that he had driven her away. He had nothing left to offer her.

The announcers on the television went crazy and the trainers began whooping. Jason glanced up, the sound piercing his brooding. “What happened?”

“Homerun. We won, Friar! We’re headed to the playoffs!”

Several minutes passed, with the announcers replaying the ending, while Jason closed his eyes, trying to block out the celebration. The team burst into the locker room celebrating their victory and ascent into the playoffs for the first time in franchise history and for all of these players. He heard the pop of champagne bottles, the rustle of the plastic and the shouts from the players.

“Close the door on your way out, Tommy, ’kay?”

The athletic trainer eyed him with sympathy but, inside of hollow platitudes, he left him to his brooding silence.

They had popped the shoulder back in and put some ice on it, numbing the shooting pain, bringing it to a dull but familiar pain. If only ice could dull his emotions, the pain at losing everything. If it could, he would immerse himself in a tankful of ice water until the pain went away. But life didn’t work that way. He’d made the fatal mistake of caring—about the team, about the playoffs, about Stacia. Like everything else in his life, it went down the crapper leaving him to wallow in this pain that was worse than any physical pain his shoulder injury provided.

The noise crescendoed as the training room door opened then it closed, shutting him out of the celebration.

“Hey, man, is it as bad as it looked?”

Jason cracked one eye open to see Cody Patterson standing at the foot of the table, concern and fear etched on his face. He closed his eyes again, shutting Cody out. “It wasn’t your fault, Patterson. This damn shoulder was a ticking time bomb. Bound to happen anytime.”

“If I hadn’t thrown off-line…”

Jason shot up and grabbed Cody’s champagne-soaked shirt with his good hand. “If it wasn’t this time, it would have been another. Big fucking deal. It’s done, okay? Now, go enjoy your celebration.” He shoved the younger man back a few steps and lay back down. “Leave me alone. I’m tired.”

Cody stood there for a few long moments, the weight of his gaze and guilt pressing on Jason. “You saved our season, man. Not just today but the last two months. We wouldn’t be here without you. Not sure how we’ll go forward without you.”

Jason didn’t move, not even to open an eye. The pain was too fresh and he wasn’t letting anyone off the hook. His instinct was to lash out, inflict the pain he was feeling, push everyone away. “Big fucking deal. Go win your damn games. Leave me the hell alone.”

After another long pause, the door opened, letting in noise, then muffling it. He should have regretted hurting the kid like that, but the pain subverted the regret, pushing it down deep. He leaned back against the wall, envisioning the ice spreading numbness through his body, willing away the pain that no amount of ice could ever numb. Several long moments passed when the door opened one more time.

“I said, get the fuck out of here!” He threw a pillow from the table in the direction of the door, making a soft thud against the wall.

A whiff of perfume wafted to his nose and the click of heels walking the few steps across the cement floor alerted him, flooding his senses with more emotions. His heart clenched and he resisted the urge to grab her with his free arm. He steeled his emotions, remembering he had nothing left for her.

“What do you want? I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again.” Guilt, regret, grief pounded in his veins, drowning out any last feeling of love, burying it deep inside.

“Tough.”

The thin, vinyl padding gave a little as Stacia sat on the table, her backside pressed against his leg. She touched his shoulder and he wrenched his arm away, sending fresh darts of pain down his arm and up his shoulder. He cursed loudly. “Get the fuck away.”

“No swearing will push me away, Jason. What can I do?”

The pain, the sadness in her voice tore at his heart, ripping it open anew. He opened his eyes, wincing inside at the sympathy in her eyes. “Not a goddamn thing. You can’t fix this, Stacia. No one can. My career is over. My life is over. I don’t need you anymore. I have nothing left to give.”

She reached out, tentatively, then pulled back before she could touch him, her heart reflected in the sheen of tears in her eyes. “I don’t believe that. We can find the best doctor. He can fix your shoulder. You’ll play again.”

He slid off the table, bracing the ice and bandage with his other hand, putting the table between the two of them. “You don’t get it. I was always one bad break away from a career-ending injury. I was on borrowed time. No doctor could perform this miracle.” The pain inside was a living, hot ball of magma looking for an outlet. Mount Vesuvius waiting for the right moment to erupt. The pain bubbled over and burst out.

“What do you care? We’re done. We had our fun, but you did what you had to. My image is wonderful. The world loves me now. They’ll be sad for a day or so and then move on. That’s the way of the world.” Bitterness and anger boiled over, seeking and finding a target. He turned his back on her, a deliberate exclusion. “Go running home to Daddy. Work on his campaign; whatever it is you do. Go back to your life and leave me to mine, because we had nothing, Stacia. This was just sex and business. We both got what we needed at the time. You scratched your little itch and rebelled against Daddy. I had a few more months of a career, a tease that will haunt me the rest of my life. It’s over. Everything is over.”

The pain had finally finished, the anger gone. He sagged against the other training table, suddenly so tired, bone-weary. He wiped his face with his good hand, surprised to see wetness on the hand. “Just leave me alone, okay? Just leave.”

He could feel the pain in her gaze, the hurt, the sadness. But he had nothing left for her, nothing to help her, nothing to offer her. It was better to make the final break. Better for both of them. She shouldn’t be saddled with an old baseball player who had nothing but memories and most of them fucked up at that. She needed to move on with her life. He would only hold her back.

“Jason, if you ever need anything, you just have to call.”

The soft catch in her voice made him wince, a pain that went far deeper than the shoulder, than the loss of his career. He steeled himself against it, waiting a few moments before opening his eyes, hoping that maybe she had ignored him. Maybe she had stayed.

It was too late. She was gone.

*

Jason sat on
the exam table, avoiding the x-rays on the machine. The door opened and the doctor walked in, reading his chart. He sat in the chair facing Jason and looked grim.

“I told you last year that your shoulder couldn’t take another injury. This injury, the dislocation, was beyond a regular one. It was catastrophic. We could try surgery again to tighten the muscles and tendons, rehab to strengthen it, but the bottom line is you’ll never play baseball at the pro level again.”

Jason nodded. The numbness he had lived with the past two days suppressed any emotion. “So, that’s that.” He hopped off the table. “Can I get dressed now?”

The doctor stared at him. “Jason, did you hear me?”

“Yeah, I’m never playing baseball again. My life is over. Anything else?” He struggled to put his button-down shirt on, clumsily fumbling the buttons with his left hand.

“Well, you should consider the surgery either way.”

“What for? It won’t make a bit of difference.”

“It will stabilize the joint and reduce the pain.”

“Fine. Schedule it. I’ll be there. I have nowhere else to be,” he replied, bitterness tinging his every word. He stalked out of the office and headed home, the numbness clouding his thoughts. What the hell was he going to do for the next forty or fifty years? Relive old memories? Drink his life away? Be trotted out for old-timers’ day?

No fucking way.

S
tacia weaved her
way around tables and diners, following the hostess to her table. The quiet elegance of the restaurant contrasted with her inner desire to find a small pizza place and gorge herself on her favorite comfort food, but she owed it to Michael to hear him out. He was her boss and controlled her future. The recent newspaper articles and attempted scandal may have died down fairly quickly, but the damage was done. How bad the damage would be to her career remained unknown.