Chapter 19

Mackenzie

I'min a mood this morning.

It's not because I lost my Cooper Rock bobblehead at the game last night, which I never do, because bobblehead. It's not because I was up too late. It's not because my hand hurts. It's not even because the Fireballs lost last night.

It's because my heart hurts.

And when my heart hurts, there's only one thing to do.

"Lord have mercy, child, if this isn't an emergency, you're grounded," Papa says when he answers the phone.

I'm dancing into my Louboutins—a splurge two years ago at Christmas—and reaching for the new lipstick I grabbed over the weekend as I answer him. "I've been mean to someone, and I need an aura cleansing."

The look on Brooks's face last night the minute before that goat almost took him out of the game—god.

He looked like someone told him baseballs come to life and choke puppies to death every night.

And now I'm going to give myself nightmares too.

But I probably deserve it.

Brooks struck out every single at-bat. And Cooper texted to tell me that someone was with him all day, so it's not like he got laid, and also that if Brooks ever touches Tillie Jean again, Cooper's sorry, but the man will die.

So now I'm worried that Brooks and Tillie Jean, who's a lovely woman, might be a good match, which makes my heart hurt, and I've caused so much trauma that Cooper will interfere and no one will ever be happy again.

Yes, I'm neurotic.

I know. I know.

Hence, I need an aura cleansing. A fresh start. And to spread happiness instead of insanity.

"Oh, honey," Papa sighs.

I hear Dad saw a log, snort loudly, and then shout, "Dundersticks!" which basically means he's belatedly realized that he's awake.

"Get dressed, Billy. We're having ice cream for breakfast."

"I can wait until lunch," I assure my dad. "But I'm in meetings all morning and wasn't sure you'd check your text messages in time."

Dad yawns loudly. He scribbled over the phrase morning person in the dictionary when I was seven, tore the page out, and taped it to their bedroom door after I woke the house up by singing show tunes at six AM.

Papa reminded him where I learned the show tunes, and he apologized for snarling, but he kept the dictionary page taped to the door for months to remind everyone that he's not to be spoken to before his third mocha latte.

"Do you need us to sneak in Jack in a flask too, or is this the smaller kind of aura cleansing?" Papa asks.

I grimace while I grab my purse and dart for the door. Ice cream, Jack in a flask, a dousing in Kindness perfume, and a TED talk on the power of karma would probably all be appropriate. "The smaller kind."

And possibly a psychic medium who specializes in being able to see how black one's soul is after putting baseball and winning above all else.

The thought nearly makes me slap myself, because of course baseball and winning are most important.

Except logically, I know I'm being irrational.

I can't control if my team wins based on which hand I hold my spoon in while I'm eating my morning yogurt at work. No matter how connected I believe we are as a human species, which hand I eat my yogurt with doesn't determine how accurate Max Cole pitches or how well Cooper Rock connects with a ball.

Wow.

It feels like a part of my soul is dying now.

"Mackenzie, baby, are you sure you can make it until lunch?"

"I'm out of vacation days if I want to go to Dollywood with you two at Thanksgiving."

He sighs.

It's not a you shouldn't have wasted two vacation weeks at spring training sigh.

It's a you should get a job with more flexibility sigh. And I'd consider it—I would—except I like making enough money to continue chipping away at my student loans while I give the other half of my paycheck to Etsy stores that specialize in custom Fireballs gear.

Yes, yes, I also mostly like my job. I am decently good at it.

And with that reminder—that I'm good at something other than being a baseball fan—I throw my shoulders back, take one last look in the mirror to make sure I'm wearing my game face, and stride to my door like a freaking queen.

"I'm about to hit the elevator," I tell Papa as I swing open the door. "I'll see you at—aaah!"

I drop my phone, because there's a very large man poised to knock on my door, which means he's poised to knock on me now.

I'm a split second from throat-chopping him and following it with a knee to the nads when Coco Puff yips from inside the cross-body sling, his collar calls me something that makes my dad gasp, and I come to my senses.

Mostly.

"What in the name of Andre Luzeman are you doing here?" I shriek at Brooks.

"Oh, hells, no," Dad says distantly on the other end of the phone. "Who's tormenting my baby girl? He's gonna die. He's. Gonna. Die."

Brooks glances down at my phone, then back up to me. He takes two steps back before I realize he's holding a foil packet in his hand. "I'm trying a variation on the bacon. Brought you breakfast."

Coco Puff yips again. "Turd-sniffer!" his collar yells.

My pulse catches on to the fact that we're not in imminent danger, and the sudden plunge in heart rate makes me go momentarily light-headed.

I sag against the wall. "Stand down, Dad," I say to the floor. "I've got this."

"Billy, you can't drive without pants on," I hear Papa say. "Honey, you still have your?—"

There's an erp noise, and I sigh while I retrieve my phone and turn my back on Brooks to finish my conversation with my dads, because I know exactly what happened, because it happens at least once a week.

Dad says he can't fall asleep with Papa snoring, so he puts in earbuds attached to a meditation app on his tablet, and then he forgets, and he tries to get up wrong.

Every. Time.

"Papa, can we please get him wireless earbuds so he quits clotheslining himself in the morning?"

"Not as long as I get the show of watching him go down like this a few times a week."

I don't have to be there to know Dad's flipping off Papa right now, or to know that Papa's dry humor is hiding his utter frustration with Dad.

"If you didn't snore like a sailor, I wouldn't have to wear ear protection," Dad snaps.

"I'm hanging up," I tell Papa. I have video of both of them snoring, and I don't need to be a part of the argument brewing right now. "I'm fine. And I'm going to work."

"See you at lunch, baby girl."

I grab my door handle, because I need my keys, and?—

And I need my keys to get into my apartment to get my keys.

My head drops on its own against the door. Several times.

A fluffy brown puppy with curly fur and sweet baby eyes sneaks between my chest and the door, and a high-pitched voice attached to the arm holding the dog says, "Don't be sad, Mackenzie. Pet me. I make everything better."

I pull back enough to look down at Coco Puff.

He gives me the universal look of Yes, my dad embarrasses me too.

"Are you going to pee on me?" I whisper to him.

"There's an unfortunately high chance," the falsetto voice behind me replies.

I sneak a look at Brooks. "Do you always make him talk?"

His cheeks go ruddy. "No."

The big bad baseball player, brought to his knees by a little furball.

The man needs to stop being attractive.

"Here. Eat this. You need me to go get building management?" He shoves the foil packet at me again, looks at my hand, and winces. "How bad is it?"

I, too, look at the bandages on the hand I'm using to scratch Coco Puff behind the ears. "It'll be fine by the weekend. And no, thank you. My neighbor has a spare key."

His hooded hazel eyes study me like he's trying to decide something, and my brain leaps to a thousand conclusions.

There's poison in whatever he's brought for breakfast.

He has a secret identical twin brother who didn't get the memo that I'm done cock-blocking him, so he can stop coming over and pretending that he wants to have sex with me purely for the sake of torturing me with the knowledge that I'm the reason he'll have to retire imminently.

He's not actually a baseball player. He's a secret international assassin who's discovered a plot at Duggan Field to make ducks into radioactive soldiers for a shadow government made up of former bullied geeks who want to change all professional sports by making athletes wear shock collars during the games and be punished for poor play.

He likes me and wants to ask me on a date.

That last one is so ridiculous, I snort softly to myself.

Of all the women in the world, I'm the last one he'd want to date.

His gaze dips to my lips, and my stomach bottoms out.

Brooks Elliott wants to kiss me.

"How do you do it?" he asks.

"Do what?"

"Believe."

I don't have to ask believe in what?, because my thumping heart and that intense gaze are filling in the blanks.

Plus, there's only one thing I really believe in.

The Fireballs.

"I can't not believe. It would be like not breathing."

"But how?"

"I just…do. It's like hope on steroids. I hope. I hope so hard, and so long, it turns into belief, because there's no sense hoping for something you don't believe in. I can't be out on the field playing the game. For one, because I broke my collarbone the one time I tried to play softball, and for two, because if I were to get out there on the field for every game, I'd get arrested for trespassing since, well, see number one. Not a player."

He either wants to laugh, cringe, or he's suppressing a fart. Possibly all three, or at least the first two.

I can acknowledge I'm a little bit crazy. I don't even mind waving that crazy banner in public from time to time. But right now, I don't want Brooks to think I'm crazy.

A small part of me would die if he completely wrote me off as that nutso girl who only wanted to keep him from having sex.

"Since I can't play, I believe. We're all connected, you know. All of humanity. So I send positive vibes out into the world for my favorite team to win, because that's what I can do for them. I can't bat. I can't pitch. I can't coach. So I believe. It's my part. And I'll keep doing it as long as it takes. No matter what."

Yep.

He totally thinks I'm bananas.

I squeeze my eyes shut and open my mouth to tell him I need to go get my spare key, but thinking suddenly becomes impossible, because he thrusts his hands into my hair, and his lips connect with mine, and hello, good morning, yes, please.

Not what I expected.

But oh.

Oh, this kiss—it's tender and sweet and desperate and hungry at the same time. I gasp against his mouth, and he touches the tip of his tongue to mine, and more.

I need more.

Or maybe he needs more.

He needs all the belief I can give him.

Believe, Brooks. Believe.

I angle my mouth against his, using my lips and my tongue to infuse as much belief into him as I can. I don't care if he thinks this is simply another point—that I'll be the woman who breaks his game to punish me for stopping him in spring training.

Because I know that this is more.

And the way he's gripping my hair, lighting up the nerves on my scalp almost to the point of pain, and the way he's crowding me against the door, his body hard everywhere—I don't think he's trying to prove a point.

I think?—

I think he wants me.

The idea startles me so bad that I jerk out of the kiss, banging my head on the door and squeezing Coco Puff so hard that he squeaks.

Brooks's chest is heaving. His gaze flies to mine while he swipes his thumb over his lips, and gah, I want to bite it.

I want to bite his thumb and I want to leap into his arms and I want to kiss him so hard that he can't help but win tonight.

But that's not how this works.

Not for Brooks.

"Breakfast." He bends and grabs the foil pack from the ground. "Eat this. For luck. Please."

He takes Coco Puff, puts the puppy back in the sling one-handed, and shoves the package at me.

As soon as I take it, he turns and strides to the stairwell exit without a goodbye.

The door across the hall inches open, and one of my neighbors—this one a grad student in particle physics at Copper Valley University—pokes her head out. "Were you making out with Brooks Elliott?"

"It…looks like," I stammer.

She eyeballs the foil-wrapped food in my hand. "What's that?"

I peel it back, and inside, there's a sandwich.

A bacon sandwich, with pancakes for bread, and—I swipe a finger over the brown creamy stuff.

Nutella.

He made me a bacon-Nutella sandwich on pancakes.

Be still my beating heart, he made me a masterpiece.

My neighbor's still watching.

"Breakfast," I tell her. "It's breakfast."

But it feels like something more than breakfast.

It feels like a date.