1. Cobb

CHAPTER 1

COBB

S weat ran down my neck because it was hot as fuck outside today. Fucking day games where we had to play under the heat lamp of a sun without an ounce of shade.

I wasn't complaining really. The team paid me a lot of money to play a damn game.

My catcher gave me a sign and I shook it off. I knew exactly what I wanted to throw this guy. If I was right, the game would be over. The catcher threw another and I shook that one off. He sighed then gave me the one that I wanted and I nodded.

I did my normal windup and released the ball.

It was the sweet sound of the last ball I pitched hitting the catcher's glove that I loved the most. The call of a strike right after was the second-best thing. That was always true, but especially today when I'd pitched a complete game and we won.

Being on top felt amazing.

My catcher came out and patted me on the back as we fell into our after-win ritual with lots of congratulations and talk of how fucking amazing we were.

Sure, we had big egos but we were amazing. There was no point in denying it.

"You coming tonight?" the catcher, Peters, asked once we were in the clubhouse.

"Yup." Not that I wanted to.

I loved being on this team, loved living in New York. I wasn't necessarily into the going out portion, but most of the single guys on the team were going, so it felt required. I was at the top of my game. At twenty-three years old, I was one of the best pitchers in baseball right now. I was supposed to be living life to the fullest.

But I was the relationship guy. Of all my brothers, I tended to like to be in relationships more than being with random women. Though somehow I was single right now and two of my brothers had found their endgames. Surprised the hell out of me that Silas and Urban were in committed relationships. Don't get me wrong. I'd had my share of random hookups. Just not the rest of the world's share, like my brothers had. I wasn't desperate to be with someone, but I liked the comfort that came from it.

Since I didn't currently have a girlfriend, there wasn't an excuse that I deemed good enough to get out of tonight.

I'd go. Have a drink. Then head home at the earliest possible time. That was the plan. If I had a girl, maybe we would've stayed longer, but my last relationship had ended six months ago and no one had grabbed my interest since. I had a woman I slept with sometimes, when it worked out for both of us, kind of a friends with benefits situation, but I wouldn't take her to a party in this capacity and she wouldn't have wanted to go.

And that was how I found myself at this party, annoyed that I was there in the first place. I'd had my drink but was biding my time until it was acceptable for me to leave.

It wasn't exactly a work thing but close enough. I was a team player through and through, so I'd stay… as long as I had to.

"Hey, Cobb." This tall brunette who looked familiar but I couldn't place slid up to me, standing so that her breasts brushed against my chest.

"Hey." I gave her a head nod then grabbed a second beer. I wouldn't drink it, but I'd hold it, maybe take a few sips. It gave me something to do with my hands.

"Great party, right?" She looked up at me as she twirled a lock of hair around her finger.

"Sure." I knew this woman, but damn, I knew I'd seen her somewhere before.

"It's a little loud in here," she called out and that was an understatement. "Want to go somewhere… quieter?" She trailed the finger that she'd had her shiny hair wrapped around down my chest.

"I'm good," I called out to her.

She furrowed her brows. "I wasn't really saying to talk. I've wanted to get close to you for a while now."

Yeah, no shit. She wasn't being cryptic at all.

"I know what you meant." I took a step back. "I'm good here."

Her eyes narrowed. "Most guys don't turn me down."

Something about the way she'd said it didn't sit well in my stomach. "Then you should go find one of them." Then I walked away from her, thinking that this was the best time for me to make my exit.

On my way through the crowd, I'd just gotten outside when Peters stopped me. His first name was Lucian and he would much rather go by his last name. He was tall and built like a brick house. Reminded me of my brother Brooks. He was massive even compared to the rest of us and we were pretty big guys in our own rights.

"You know who that was, right?" he asked, bringing me to a stop.

"Who?" I asked. He jerked his head in the direction I'd just come from. "Oh. No. No idea. But I'm heading out."

"That's Hannah." When the name didn't register with me he added, "Johnson. Doug Johnson's daughter."

Now that… I recognized.

Doug Johnson was the team owner and one rich son of a bitch. "OK. Well, I didn't do anything, so we're good." Because fucking with the team owner's daughter could get a guy in a lot of trouble. I couldn't imagine what would happen to a player if he fucked with my sister, Camden, and not just because my grandpa owned the team. She had four older brothers who were all currently playing this game professionally. We knew ballplayers and sure as hell didn't want one around our sister.

"Yeah… see…" He scratched at his jaw. "She's got a bit of a reputation." I folded my arms over my chest and waited. Peters didn't come off as the kind of guy who'd judge a woman for doing the same shit men did, so I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt. "That she's vindictive. Doesn't take well to rejection."

I let my arms fall. Was that all? "I don't care if she takes it well or not. I wasn't an asshole, so…"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure that matters. Just… wanted you to know."

"Yeah. Thanks." Leaving the party was all I wanted to do right now and I wasn't going to give the owner's daughter another thought.

I'd been there, people had seen me, now it was time to retreat into the solitude of my own apartment.

A month later, I was stomping down the hallway near the clubhouse then burst through the door, letting the thing hit the wall behind it.

"What the fuck?" Peters called out. "You're going to hurt yourself on your starting day."

"I'm not starting," I spat as I tossed my bag into my locker.

"What? It's your day. You start every five days and we need you to start today. We're playing Los Angeles."

"I know. Talk to your skipper." That was the manager, also known as the coach, but in professional baseball, we didn't call him ‘the coach.'

"What's going on?"

"Apparently, I have muscle strain."

He leaned back in his chair and looked me over. "You look fine to me. You're not limping, nursing an arm. What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I was just informed that I'm on the disabled list for muscle strain." He narrowed his eyes. "I'm benched, Peters. The only thing is, I don't know why." I slammed my fist into the back of my locker.

He hopped to his feet. "Don't do that. Your hands are valuable. Do you know what happens if you break one of them?"

I snorted. "I'll be benched on the DL?" Because that was exactly what had happened.

"Well, fuck." He sighed.

There wasn't anything else to say about it. I was benched, but no one had sacked up to tell me why. Since I wasn't hurt, this was a punishment for something, but who the fuck knew what.

That game, I had to be in the dugout in uniform and watch my team lose. The pitcher they replaced me with was great, but he was moved up a day in his rotation, so his arms hadn't gotten the rest they normally did. The other guys looked at me with questions in their eyes. Questions that I didn't have any answers to and thankfully, they didn't ask or I would've lost my shit where cameras were watching.

It wasn't just my reputation I was protecting but my family's. Playing this game when your family owned a team wasn't the easy nepo baby way into baseball that some thought it was. I had to work harder. Be better. Just to prove I should be there at all.

It wasn't until the next morning that anyone bothered to talk to me.

I was called up to the general manager's office. Waiting for me there was the GM and the owner of the team and no one else. Johnson, the owner, didn't interact with the players too much, but when I'd met him, he'd been a self-inflated asshole.

This wasn't a good sign.

"Thanks for coming up," the GM, Walter, said as soon as I was through the door. Like I had a choice.

"Yeah, of course." This was the business side of things and I had to act accordingly.

"You can have a seat," Doug said as he pointed to the chair. He was tall and thin with hair that was mostly gray and cut short. He looked exactly how you'd picture someone who'd worked in an office his whole life. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but he looked like an accountant.

So, I took the seat, though I thought that I'd rather have kept standing.

"You're out," Doug told me without even trying to finesse it.

I raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"You're out."

Walter sighed. "The decision has been made to cut you from the team." He shifted uncomfortably. "It was asked that Jason let us break the news to you."

So my agent knew and didn't tell me. Of course he did, but this was going to mean a conversation between the two of us. He worked for me and my best interest. Not this team and I didn't give a fuck about him building relationships for other clients, present or future.

This had just fucking happened to my brother Urban. He'd been traded and his agent hadn't gotten the chance to tell him that it was even possible. That was how he'd ended up on my mom's team in Kalamazoo. Grandpa still owned the team, but Mom ran it so it was effectively hers.

"What?" Because it still wasn't clear.

"I don't want you on my fucking team," Doug said through clenched teeth.

"You don't like winning?" Because it was undeniable that I was one of the best in the league right now. Only getting better by the day.

Doug Johnson scowled. "I like my players to have a certain character and you don't have it."

Walt sighed again. "This is about his daughter Hannah." When nothing about her registered for me, Walt rubbed his hand over his forehead. He was clearly uncomfortable with what was happening, but I didn't even understand what it was yet.

"She's pregnant," Doug said like an accusation.

I raised my hands then lowered them. "Congratulations." What else was I supposed to say?

"Don't take that tone with me." Doug Johnson seemed ready to come across the desk at me. "I don't want deadbeats on my team. You're out. You're just lucky that your mommy owns a team so you have somewhere to go. No one else would take you."

I found that hard to believe and that wasn't me being full of myself. There was no denying my game right now. My ERA was low and ticking lower by the game—I was getting better every game. Hell, when we played the National League, I could even bat, which was unusual for a pitcher since in the American League, we never batted. We used the designated hitter instead.

"Do you think I had something to do with your daughter being pregnant?" I finally asked.

"We know you did," he countered. "And when she told you, you said some awful things. I'm not going to pay some asshole to ignore my daughter and their child."

I pushed to my feet but wasn't aggressive in any way. That wasn't the way out of this. The decision was made. "I've never met your daughter."

"There are pictures of the two of you at a party."

Now I furrowed my brows in confusion. How the fuck could that be? At least, that was what I thought until it clicked. "Wait a minute. I did meet her at a party. Like a month ago."

Johnson got an all too-satisfied look on his face.

"I didn't take any pictures with her and I sure as hell didn't get her pregnant."

"She says differently."

"Well, she's a liar, then," I countered and it probably wasn't smart, but what did I have to lose? "Oh, she was definitely trying to get me to take her for a ride, but I said no . She said she'd wanted me for a while, which… yeah. Look at me, but no. I didn't fuck her, so she's someone else's problem."

"Get out," Johnson spat.

I shook my head. "You're going to trade me because of your daughter, who I don't even know? You don't want a paternity test to prove it or anything? Because I'm happy to take it. I know what it'll show."

His face reddened. "How dare you speak about my daughter that way? Get out. You're done. Get your shit out of the clubhouse immediately."

There was no arguing this. He'd made up his mind and there wasn't anything I could do about it. In the end, it'd be his loss. Someone else would pick me up… Wait. He'd said I was lucky my mother owned a team…

Shit.

None of us wanted to be on my mom's team. Brooks had been drafted there and stayed. Silas had gotten traded to the team two seasons ago and seemed to like it. Especially after he'd hooked up with Amity Kincaid, the woman he'd wanted since he was a teenager but had gotten too much in his own way about it. Then Urban had been traded there this year. He hated the idea. Probably still does, but he was with his girl, Everly, now and I didn't think wild horses could drag him out of Kalamazoo—at least not willingly.

I was the only one of us not on the Knights and fuck… This meant that Grandpa's dream of having all of us on the same team was going to come true.

But I'd sworn to never be on the Knights. I'd take a pay cut if I had to.

As I stormed down the hallway of the office to head back down to the clubhouse to clean out my locker, I pulled my phone out from my pocket and selected my mother's contact.

"Hey, Cobb," she answered, as if she wouldn't have known why I was calling.

"Mother." It was all I said and it was all I needed to say.

"Don't take that tone with me, Cobb," she said gently. "I didn't do this. I didn't reach out to them. They reached out to me . What was I supposed to say? No ?"

"I have a right to refuse in my contract," I reminded her. That meant that I could refuse to be traded to any team I didn't want to go to. It didn't mean that New York would have to play me. They could release me and still pay my contract if I refused all the other teams.

"I know that," she countered. "And you can refuse. Doug Johnson can kick you off their team—you can't refuse that. Sure, they'd still have to pay you, but you wouldn't be playing and I think you'd go crazy not playing."

"There are a bunch of other teams," I said, as if she didn't know that.

"There are," she agreed. I stopped walking because I didn't want to be having this conversation with my mother in the clubhouse, where the rest of the team could come and go. "And you can get Jason to work them. But that will mean a new contract. You'd have to agree to dissolve your current one. And no one knows why Johnson booted you, so there're going to be questions and there's a bit of a black cloud hanging over you." She paused then groaned. "Well, fuck."

It wasn't too often that I heard my mother swear in general, but that word was the rarest. That couldn't mean anything good.

"Well, they didn't know. I just got an email saying that Johnson's daughter is threatening to do and interview about you and her pregnancy." I pulled the phone away from my ear, fighting the urge to throw it against the wall, then took a deep breath and returned it. "You really shouldn't shit where you eat." No idea what else she'd said before that.

"I didn't, Mother. She's lying. I didn't fuck her. I didn't get her pregnant. I did, however, turn her down." And Peters said that she didn't take rejection well and was vindictive.

So… had she really gotten pregnant and was blaming it on me or was she lying about all of it? Actually, I didn't care.

"Now," Mom said with a calm voice. "I will honor your current contract and salary. I don't care about the rumors and as a bonus, you'll be with your family to weather this storm." She paused like she had when we'd been kids. "But it's up to you."

I groaned. There was no real choice here. I had to play. If I stopped now, what the fuck would I do with my life? "When would I pitch next?"

"With our schedule, I talked to the manager and it'd be in six days."

"Fine," I said through gritted teeth. "I'm driving myself back, then." At least I'd get a few days to myself.

"I think that's a great idea." She cleared her throat. "I'll also set you up a meeting with our lawyers." Before I could protest, she continued. "You need to talk to them to see what can be done about this situation, Cobb. She's dragging your name and as much as you might want to just let it slide, if she's what you said she is, she'll keep ramping it up. We have to deal with it."

"Fine," I said, but this time, it wasn't as harsh. My mom was just trying to help me out and I should've been more grateful.

"All right. I'll see you in a few days. Do you want to stay at home until you find a place?"

Fuck no, but it made the most sense. "Yeah. I'll stay there, but I'm not in the mood for Dad. And I'll get Camden to help me find a place after I get there." She'd just done that for my brother and as much as my sister liked to bitch about us brothers, she loved us and would do anything for us, as we would've her.

Mom chuckled. "She's going to love this."

Then we ended the call.

Now I had six days—less than, really— to get my ass back to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I'd grown up. Before today, returning to had seemed like the worst thing that could happen.

Now, I needed to have a word with my agent because there was no fucking way he should've let me walk into that bullshit without warning.