1. Maggie

How could you not be romantic about baseball?

It's a game of failure and perseverance. A game that starts when the flowers first bloom and ends when the leaves fall from the trees. Fathers bond with their sons over their favorite teams, and those sons begin to form their own dreams of walking between those two white lines to a roaring crowd of fans. For several hours, you can forget about the world around you and lose yourself between three outs. There are heroes and villains, Davids and Goliaths. For non–sports lovers, it's a game you can fall asleep watching, wake up thirty minutes later, and not have missed a thing. The perfect pastime.

Years ago, I had been one of those kids with their dad. My father and I bonded over the game he grew up loving. From the moment I could walk, he had me at my very first Cougars game with a foam finger and a little souvenir baseball helmet full of ice cream. I had sat in this very stadium eating a corn dog and watching some of the greats run around the bases while fans screamed their support. Everything about it was magical. It was the first place where I imagined wanting to capture a moment forever with the camera my mother got me for my birthday when I first got into photography. The process of trying to get just the right shot that would encapsulate the memories and the feelings from a moment was exhilarating.

There had never been another feeling like a baseball game for me. The energy that danced through the air was unbeatable. It could make even the most unlikely sports fan cheer as the rookie hit a home run on his very first at bat of his career. Or when two brothers faced each other for the first time ever in the major leagues. It was a game that brought people together and could have the entire stadium sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting for the next big play or groaning when their favorite team lost.

I mean, how could you not love baseball? There truly is something in it for everybody.

Those moments at the baseball field with my dad felt like a foreshadowing to where I am now. That very first camera that I used to capture my first action shots helped me realize what I was good at. The days spent at the ballpark, just me and him, were the catalyst for my interest in working in the sports industry. It is a masculine industry where women are forced to work twice as hard to prove they deserve their place. Even in the jobs behind the scenes that women dominated, men still seemed to question our ability to showcase the magic of baseball. Those days spent in the stadium with my dad allowed me to understand what brought fans back to the field game after game.

The week prior to Opening Day always brought chaos, and to say that things were a little hectic around Renaissance Field would be an understatement. With Opening Day arriving in two short days, the grounds crew was working tirelessly to make sure the field was perfect, box office workers were getting ready for season ticket holders, the players were tweaking their form to prepare for the first pitch, and the media teams were rallying the fans with as much excitement as they could make around the big day.

Which was exactly why I was here bright and early for a practice at six in the morning, camera in tow. My boss, May, had called me an hour before to ask me to be at practice to grab some shots for the social media pages, much to my dismay. She had woken me up from a hot dream that included me and a popular actor on a romantic date in Mykonos. Those dream dates are the only sort of romance I've had in the past four years, and I consider those hours asleep with me and Mr. PeopleMagazine'sHottest Guy of the Year sacred.

However, even when I did get a call out of the blue to come shoot a practice I wasn't already on the schedule for, I still went. Not because I knew I had to, but because I knew I wanted to. I loved my job. It was like I had entered a fever dream the moment I signed my contract with the Cougars almost three years ago and I had yet to wake up.

Did it pay the bills? Sure.

Was I going to get rich off it? No.

But did I love coming to work every day and photographing a sport I was excited about with players that were easy on the eyes? Absolutely.

Did I want more? Yes.

What more was, I didn't know, but it had been itching some part of the back of my brain for some time now. Like something was missing.

I nodded at some of the grounds crew as I passed them in the tunnel that opened out onto the field. The second the world went from complete darkness to the seats rising around you with neon lights peppering the top concourse was easily my favorite view of the entire park. The sound of a bat hitting a ball cracked across the stadium, the empty seats amplifying it. Some of the media team was already set up in the stadium seats behind home plate, but that wasn't my destination.

"How do you always beat me here?" I asked my best friend and fellow photographer, who was already taking pictures of the team like she had been here for some time already.

"Because you always stop to get coffee, no matter how late you're already running, Maggie. And you always take the bus, which we know is not the most reliable." I glared at my friend as I pulled my camera out of its bag. She knew how cranky I could get if I didn't get my caffeine in the morning, and she knew why I refused to drive my car through the city anymore. But she still had to remind me of my faults every morning I was late, which was most mornings.

Olivia Thompson and I were complete opposites, which was probably why we had gone from just coworkers to best friends after only a week of knowing each other. Olivia's auburn hair was always perfectly tamed, while my brown curls were a frizzy, wild mess. She was never found without a full face of makeup, while I was lucky to remember to put on sunscreen at the end of my skin care routine. We fit together like two puzzle pieces, perfectly filling the gaps that the other one lacked. She was the Amy Poehler to my Tina Fey. The Thelma to my Louise. The Laverne to my Shirley.

We were both hired in the same season almost three years ago now. Together we have covered some of the biggest moments in the league. The two of us work together like a well-oiled machine, never needing to tell the other where to line up to get the second angle. We never corrected each other and always trusted one of us would get the shot in the end.

Outside of work, Olivia was like my Mr. Miyagi. Without her, I would be sitting on my couch every night eating ramen, drinking wine, and watching yet another rom-com. She was the life of the party, and quite literally she would drag me every weekend to said event.

"Anything interesting happened yet?" I asked as I started to walk toward the third-base dugout to get a closer shot of the guys taking practice swings at home plate. This was my favorite practice of the entire year. The nerves were high, but not as high as the excitement. Most of the players had found their place on the team and joked freely. Morale was normally at the highest point of the season and so was the hope of winning it all, last year's result forgotten. It was the promise of new beginnings and the potential for anything to happen this season. A fresh start.

"Actually, yes," Olivia replied as she carried her camera attached to the long monopod over her shoulder. I raised an eyebrow at her in surprise.

How could I have already missed something good? It was six in the freaking morning.

"Remember May telling us about the Cougars picking up that hotshot Tommy Mikals?"

"The one who has a different girl on his arm every night as he leaves the clubs after games?" I asked.

"That would be the one."

"What about him?"

"He's here." My eyes darted around the field, searching for the newcomer. There was our star pitcher, Adam; my favorite player, Jamil; and then my eyes landed on someone I didn't recognize playing shortstop. He was tall with broad shoulders and had a full sleeve of tattoos on perfectly muscular arms. He wore his hat low over his eyes, and his pants were stopped around his knees, which I've always thought was much better than long pants. He carried himself with a confidence that came from years of experience, years of always coming out on top. But even with the skill he showcased, his antics off the field tainted him for most of the league. When San Diego let him go, most of the other teams wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole, too afraid of the media scandals that would follow him. Chicago must have thought his cheap price and high skill level were worth the risk of a few scandalous photos splattered across the tabloids.

A GQ model wouldn't hold a candle to him. I turned to snap a few shots of him as he went to field a hard-hit ball up the middle to try to cover the fact that I was totally eyeing him through my camera.

There were a few perks to my job, I had to admit.

He's hot, I mouthed at Olivia. She nodded emphatically in response. The two of us couldn't deny that we definitely appreciated the eye candy we got to stare at every day at work. It would be a shame not to appreciate beauty when it was walking right past you in a pinstriped uniform with sweat glistening on its muscular body.

I kept my camera lens on him as the next player came up to take some practice swings. Tommy took off his hat to wipe at some sweat that had accumulated on his forehead, revealing a head of perfectly messy brown hair. It should be illegal for a man to look that good during physical exercise.

The crack of a wooden bat hitting a ball echoed again around the stadium, and I watched through my lens as Tommy turned to look in my direction. His eyes widened like he was watching a car crash in slow motion, and then I realized he was looking right at me.

"Maggie!" I heard Olivia yell. "Protect the camera!" I glanced up to see a foul ball sailing toward me, and I had barely enough time to dive out of the way, camera in hand. My shoulder took most of the fall; a bruise would most likely be there tomorrow. But I luckily kept my camera from hitting the ground and myself from being demolished by a baseball.

"You okay?"

Standing over me was Mr. GQ Model himself. Of course I had to notice that his eyes were the brightest blue I'd ever seen. It was like I was trapped in a trance, unable to look away from his face. His smile reached all the way up to his eyes, and it felt like if I looked directly at it, I'd be blinded. All of the air felt like it had been sucked from my lungs as I stared up at him. After a few seconds passed where I had yet to respond to his question, he raised a worried eyebrow.

As I realized that he was probably wondering if I had a serious head injury, I quickly fumbled around with my camera and reached up to place my hand in the one he had extended out toward me, letting him pull me to my feet. He yanked me upward as if I were as light as a feather, practically sending me flying face-first back into the ground.

"You okay?" he repeated, since I hadn't answered him the first time. This time, his voice had softened as if he realized I was struggling to form a coherent sentence. His eyes seemed to search my entire face, looking for any signs that I had been injured. If I had known I was going to lose all dignity today in front of one of the most attractive men I'd ever seen, I wouldn't have run from my apartment to avoid missing the bus. I nodded, not trusting that I would open my mouth only for no sound to come out. There was no need to embarrass myself any further. I'm not sure why I did it, but I found myself squeezing his hand to reassure him that I was fine and was surprised that he squeezed it back. The corners of his eyes squinted as he gave me a closed-lip smile. The moment had to have lasted a minute at most, but it felt like an eternity with the two of us standing there before he let go. Tommy started to walk backward, his eyes still on mine, before he turned to jog back to his position.

"Smooth," Olivia told me after Tommy was far enough away. I flipped her off behind the screen of my camera.

The head coach called the team to pick up the stray balls, which was Olivia's and my cue to walk onto the field to get some casual pictures of the guys. Most of the older players that knew us posed, hoping to get some new shots for their social media.

"Maggie!" Jamil waved at me as he tossed a few baseballs in from the outfield. I waved back at him, laughing as he struck a pose with one of the outfielders and motioned for me to take a picture. When I pulled my face back from the viewfinder, I noticed Tommy looking at me curiously. I ducked back behind my camera, not wanting to get stuck staring at him blatantly again.

"Why did it have to be him?" I whispered to Olivia.

"Because you have the worst luck," Olivia replied. She wasn't wrong. Life hadn't dealt me the greatest of hands these past few years.

"Hi, ladies." Jamil walked over to me and Olivia and slung his arms around our shoulders. I winced when his hand pressed into the spot on my shoulder I had just landed on. His smile was electric and much too enthusiastic for this early in the morning. He came to the club the same year that I did. We bonded one night over leftover concession-stand hot dogs, slushies, and a mutual feeling of struggling with a new chapter in our life. Jamil listened to me as I told him how my new job felt like I was starting over. It felt like as soon as I left college that door was completely shut, and I had taken a leading role in an entirely new story. Jamil shared his feelings of imposter syndrome, that season being his first year on the big stage, and that night he had gone zero-for-three at the plate. His golden retriever energy and the earnestness with which he listened to my sadness sealed Jamil's place at the top of my list of favorite players on the team.

"Jamil." I let him squeeze us into his sides before he took off running toward the team. He turned back around when he got halfway.

"You haven't drunk enough of your coffee yet, Canon." I rolled my eyes at his familiar nickname for me. He coined it after that night we first met, when he realized he never saw me anywhere without my camera. When he first gave the nickname to me, I remember thinking how corny it sounded, which I had voiced to him constantly at the beginning. After a while, it grew on me, but I would never admit that I secretly loved it or I'd never hear the end of it.

"What are you trying to say, Jamil?" I yelled back at him as I turned the camera to snap a few shots of him.

"He's trying to say you're always cranky at morning practices," Olivia jumped in. Part of me wanted to argue, but we both knew that if I did, she had a list of times on her phone when I had been less than pleasant to be around that was longer than a CVS receipt. She had started it halfway through our first season together after I failed to remember a single time I had acted like I'd woken up on the wrong side of the bed. From then on, she always had actual proof to prove me wrong.

The morning went by as it normally did. After Olivia and I took all of the pictures that May had requested, we scammed one of the grounds crew into getting us some of the doughnuts that they always had in their shed, and we relaxed in the stadium seats behind home plate to work on our tans as we waited for the practice to end.

The entire time my eyes followed Tommy. After a quick search, I found hundreds of articles about him and confirmed my earlier conversation with Olivia that he was, in fact, a ladies' man. There were whole Reddit pages dedicated to his escapades.

Even so, I couldn't help but watch the way he moved on the field. I glanced back down at my phone and found that it was evident the confidence he exuded on the field didn't stop once he walked off the dirt. I quickly scanned a few tabloid articles detailing wild nights at clubs that involved hookers, drugs, and lots of alcohol. Everything in those articles was screaming at me that he was exactly the type of player that I kept at arm's length. One of the last articles had pictures pulled straight from his personal social media account, and I made a mental note to remember the username for later.

"Maggie? Did you hear me?" I snapped out of whatever trance Tommy had me in for the second time today.

"What?" I asked, noticing that she was packing her stuff up.

"Were you daydreaming about Tommy Mikals?" Olivia wiggled her eyebrows mischievously at me.

I shook my head adamantly. "Absolutely not."

Olivia leaned over to whisper in my ear as we passed the media team on our way out of the stadium. "You've got to admit he's gorgeous."

I hated that I couldn't tell her that she was wrong. Because Tommy was drop-deadgorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that I was sure would have groupies fawning over him as he left the stadium after games. The kind of gorgeous that was far out of my league. But I knew that if I even admitted to her that I found him attractive, she would get her hopes up that I was finally coming around to dating again. Or at the very least, was open to talking about things like that.

"Hold on." I stopped in the middle of the tunnel. "I left one of my bags. I'll meet you at Burt's later."

Olivia rolled her eyes at me. It was typical that I forgot something at least once a week. I turned back down the tunnel and walked out onto the field, only to see Adam, Jamil, and Tommy walking toward me. My camera bag was slung over Adam's shoulder. He held it out like an offering when he saw me, a knowing look on his face. He had saved my camera more times than I wanted to admit. Before a couple of years ago, something like this never would have happened. But after college, it seemed like my mind was skipping around far too often, never reliable enough anymore. I used caffeine like a crutch to try to keep my mind sharp enough to remain in the present and not dive back into a hole where it felt like my thoughts couldn't reach.

"Mags, you forgot something," he called out. I hustled over to the three of them to grab it, ignoring the look on Jamil's face. It screamed I told you that you haven't drunk enough coffee yet.

"Thanks, Adam." I turned to try to make a quick escape. I didn't trust myself to my own devices around Tommy Mikals after our first encounter, and I especially didn't want to look like I was drooling over him in front of Adam and Jamil. I knew I'd never hear the end of it.

"Mags, have you met Tommy yet?" I cringed as I heard Adam call back out to me. "Tommy, this is one of our team photographers, Maggie Redford."

I spun back around, pasting a smile on my face as I made eye contact with the Chicago Cougars' new player. Just like before, it was like the air in my lungs evaporated on sight. My stomach swooped like I was a passenger on a roller-coaster ride as I struggled to regain my breath.

"It's nice to officially meet you. Glad you're okay." Tommy stuck his hand out to me after he realized that I wasn't going to be the first one to say something. I was beginning to wonder if I had seriously wronged someone recently and this was karma catching up to me.

"Nice to meet you officially, too. Good luck this season." I tried to use that as my opportunity to escape, but cursed as I heard Jamil call out to me again. Damn him and his chipper morning attitude. I only wanted to put space between myself and Tommy Mikals and his brilliant blue eyes and sexy smile.

"Canon, are you and Olivia going to go to the club tonight? We're celebrating Opening Day."

I looked at Jamil over my shoulder and gave him a small smile. "You know my answer to that, Jamil."

"I'm always hoping one time you'll surprise me." Jamil returned my smile before I turned to walk as fast and far away from Tommy Mikals as I could. I tried to ignore the fluttering that had started in my stomach from the moment I had looked up into his eyes after I'd nearly been annihilated by that baseball. I hadn't seen anyone look at me like that for a long time. Those butterflies felt like they were at war with the sadness that came to the forefront of my mind at the feeling.

It was the first day of college and as per usual, I was running late. I had even set five extra alarms to avoid this exact moment: me running across campus looking like a scared, lost first-year. Some senior was probably filming me from the window of their dorm, and I'd find the video later on some account online.

As I came running around the corner of the hallway my class was supposed to be in, I saw a guy with sandy-blond hair that curled around his ears. He was staring at a piece of paper that had been taped to the door, and he was startled when I came barreling closer. When I realized that he was standing in front of my classroom, I put on the brakes and pulled up right next to him.

"Here for English 111?" His voice was like butter. It was rich and made every other voice I'd ever heard seem dull. Whoever he was, he clearly wasn't from the Midwest. He had a thick East Coast accent.

"Yes," I told him, between sucking air into my lungs and trying to focus on the piece of paper he had been reading.

"The professor canceled class today. Said we'd start on Wednesday." Some of my worry at the thought of being late to my first college class lessened. "You okay?" The guy was looking at me with an amused expression on his face. Which was probably from the sweat that had started to accumulate on my forehead from the run across campus.

"Oh, yeah. Just a little morning exercise." I watched as his eyes crinkled before he let out a small laugh. When he looked at me again, it was like I could practically see the sparks shooting around in the air between us.

"I'm Luke." He stuck his hand out toward me.

"Maggie."