Epilogue

Mackenzie

I never expectedI'd be a Fireballs girlfriend, but here I am, at a meeting for the Lady Fireballs, discussing the auctions we're starting up again during home series to raise money for the new children's outreach foundation Tripp and Lila are starting to bring more outdoor opportunities to kids across the metro area.

We're going to fund everything from upgraded playground equipment to baseball and softball teams.

And I know exactly how to do it.

"We need to auction off the mascots," I announce.

Lila's eyes cross.

Tanesha Greene cracks up and accidentally pulls her boob out of the baby's mouth, and he erupts in the cutest wail you've ever heard.

Sarah, who's an honorary Lady Fireball because she's awesome, ducks her head under the table because while Tanesha can laugh openly, Sarah's still trying to maintain an air of neutrality in the ongoing debate over the mascots.

We're almost at the All-Star break, and they still haven't canceled the mascot voting.

It's getting ridiculous.

"Fine, fine." I wave a hand magnanimously, which was a good word from Cooper's word-of-the-day calendar. "We can wait to auction them off until after they all lose to write-in votes for Fiery this fall."

The door swings open, and Tripp sticks his head in before Lila can beat me with a foam finger. "Mackenzie. Got a minute?"

"For the sake of my ability to keep breathing, yes."

Sarah laughs openly at that.

Tripp takes one look at Lila, grins, and then quickly sobers back to Mr. Serious Team Co-Owner. "Ah, carry on without Ms. Montana here," he tells the room.

"Fiery forever," I whisper with a side eye at Lila.

They love me.

They really do, even if they pretend they don't.

Out in the concrete hallway beneath the stands at Duggan Field, I smile brightly at Tripp. "What's up, boss?"

"For the last time, stop calling me that."

"I thought you liked to pretend that I work for the Fireballs."

He suppresses a smile, and you can't tell me that's not what his contorting facial muscles are doing. I refuse to believe anything other than a smile is going on there.

It helps that he mutters, "You and Elliott really are made for each other."

Highest. Compliment. Ever.

I turn so he can see my jersey. Brooks brought it home last night, and it has his number, along with Brooks Elliott's Girlfriend, #1 Fireballs Fan stitched on the back.

It's a little hard to read, because that's a lot of letters on the back of a jersey, but Brooks made it work.

Tripp really does smile now. "C'mon. We need you on the field."

"We—wait. What?"

The Lady Fireballs meeting was on the verge of wrapping up, because the game starts in like seven minutes, so I'm certain I misunderstood him.

But he guides me to the tunnel heading out onto the field, and huh.

So this is what it looks like.

It's been four months since Brooks and I started dating. He's brought me out to the field many, many times, but never when the stands were full and both teams were out getting ready, and oooh, there's that stupid umpire who doesn't know where Brooks's strike zone is.

I glance at the Fireballs dugout, find Brooks, and frown.

He ducks his head, but I saw the grin, and I know he knows why I'm frowning.

I'm possibly still ridiculously fanatical about expressing my anger with wrong calls.

"Do not talk to the umpire, Mackenzie," Tripp murmurs.

"Like I'd be the first person to offer to have my boyfriend pay for his glasses."

"I had no idea I'd prefer the days when you couldn't talk to the players at all, yet here we are…"

I grin at him.

He shakes his head, then grins back, because he adores me, and I'm the best luck the Fireballs have ever had.

Or so Brooks tells me every night after he hits a home run.

Which he does regularly, both on and off the field, because it turns out, he really did just need the right woman in his life.

Or so we surmise.

In any case, he tells me I'm definitely better luck than all those things he and the guys supposedly did in the name of luck at some "secret club" in spring training.

Also?

The Fireballs are only three games back from being in a position to make the play-offs.

"Here." Tripp hands me a baseball. "Try to aim this time."

I look at the ball. Then up at him. "I don't play baseball."

He's grinning. "The entire metropolitan area saw the highlights from that game. We know."

"So what?—"

"Ladies and gentlemen, please turn your attention to the field." The announcer's voice booms through the ballpark, and all the boys in Fireballs red pop out of the dugout.

I gasp as realization sinks in.

"No," I whisper.

"Half these people are here because of you, Mackenzie." Tripp gestures to the stands, which are nearly full. "Your Fiery Forever campaign has done almost as much good as everything else we've been doing."

"Almost?"

"That's what I said too." Brooks joins us, glove on, and would it be wrong to sniff his glove here?

It would, wouldn't it?

The announcer's voice booms again. "The Fireballs would like to welcome Ms. Mackenzie Montana, who'll be throwing the first pitch today."

Brooks slips his arm around my shoulder, and oh my god, I'm going to jump him right here, because he smells like grass and baseball and leather and sweat and it is such a turn-on. "I'm catching for you. Throw it hard like I showed you last weekend."

"You knew."

He grins, and I fall in love with him all over again.

"Out to the mound, Mackenzie." Tripp shoos me, and my home team erupts in cheers as I step over the third base line and head to the pitcher's mound.

It's not only the players either.

Sarah and my dads are up in the owners' suite, which is really easy to see since there's a camera trained on them and broadcasting their cheers on the video screen over center field.

And a huge, gigantic crowd-roar is circling all around me.

There are whistles. Clapping. Shouting.

Even cameramen following me like I'm some kind of celebrity.

My eyes sting, and while I'll never understand exactly how it feels to be a world-class baseball player like my boyfriend, I now totally get the thrill of being cheered on by forty thousand screaming fans.

I step up onto the mound where so many of my heroes have played, turn, and look at the man I love, who squats down and snaps his glove at me, his warm grin lighting me up from the inside.

"C'mon, Kenz," he calls. "Let 'er rip."

Well.

He asked for it.

I grip the ball.

Pull my arm back.

And then I fling it forward with all my might, letting go at the exact right moment…

To send it flying off toward the visitor's dugout, where Spike the Echidna drops to the ground as my baseball bounces off his spikey head.

"He's out!" the announcer crows.

The crowd goes wild.

I'm talking yelling, screaming, we just won the game of the century, hog-wild, won't have-anything-left-to-cheer-with-during-the-game, full-body celebrating.

Tripp's on the sidelines, shaking his head. Lopez and Rossi and Stafford are all rolling.

Brooks leaps to his feet, jogs over to retrieve the ball and help Spike to his feet while I take a curtsey.

I know what I'm supposed to do, because I've seen this play out a million times before. I'm supposed to head to home plate, and meet the player who caught my ball. We'll take pictures, he'll sign the ball—like he didn't bring me that home run ball he hit in New York the morning that I told him that I loved him—and then I'll disappear into the crowd and someone new will throw out the pitch tomorrow.

I glance at Brooks, and yep, here he comes.

And there's the camera crew.

He's grinning broadly. "That's my girl," he says as he sweeps me up in a hug.

"I threw it exactly like you showed me."

"That you did."

He sets me back on the ground, and when he's supposed to turn for my souvenir photo, instead, he drops to one knee.

Right there.

On the baseball diamond.

In front of forty thousand screaming fans, who are now whooping and hollering even louder.

My eyeballs fall out of my face.

I swallow my tongue.

But my heart—my heart is leaping for joy as he pulls a small box from his back pocket.

"Mackenzie, my love, my joy, the match to my crazy, and the light of my entire world, will you marry me?"

He pops the ring box, and he did not.

Except he did.

He got me a baseball diamond ring.

I can't talk.

Can't think.

Can't breathe.

But oh my god, I can love this man.

I'm nodding so hard my vision wobbles. "Yes. Yes!"

The whole team swarms the infield.

Brooks slips the ring onto my finger, rises to his feet, and I tackle him with a kiss that's probably not fit to be shown on that big video screen over center field while a mass of big, sweaty baseball players converge on us, making one big happy family.

"I love you," I tell Brooks through the happy tears streaming down my cheeks. "Baseball or no baseball, winning or losing, I love you."

He hugs me tight, kisses me hard, and then lets me go, because he has a job to do.

And when he hits a grand slam in the bottom of the eighth, I don't care that everyone in the entire ballpark knows he hit it for me.

I only care that he's happy.

And that smile as he rounds third and points to me in my seat four rows up down the third-base line—yeah.

That man's happy.

And the two of us are going to be happy forever.

We'll have our losses. And we might steal a few mascots together along the way.

But whatever the universe throws at us, we'll handle it. Together.