at home, because they have no place on this field. The team roster will be up Friday, until then, go home, relax and try not to worry,” Coach Dilmore said, gesturing for them to leave.
Sighing in relief, Mikey turned to follow everyone off the field when the coach said those magical words that had her stopping and turning around.
“Campbell, can I talk to you for a moment?”
“Of course,” Mikey said, somehow resisting the urge to rub her shoulder.
God, it hurt. She’d never had to throw that hard for that long before without breaks, but maybe that was a good thing, Mikey told herself as she stood there, waiting for the coach to say something. He waited until everyone was off the field before he finally turned his attention to her.
“Why aren’t you trying out for softball?” he asked, which wasn’t exactly a surprise.
Every time she tried out for a team, the coaches always took her aside to make sure that she wasn’t making a mistake. They wanted to make sure that she was comfortable playing with the boys, and while she appreciated it, it got kind of annoying after a while, but she didn’t say anything, mostly because she wanted to make sure that he gave her a chance.
“I love playing baseball and I’m not really a big fan of softball,” she admitted with a shrug.
“Why?” he asked, looking like he was trying to decide something.
“I’m not a big fan of the way the ball is thrown and the game goes too slow.”
Nodding, he glanced back down at his iPad with a heavy sigh. “Look, right now I’m not really sure about you, Mikey. You have a decent fastball, but I’m concerned about you being able to throw under pressure. Your arm got tired quickly. You’re small for your age, which has its advantages at bat, but when you were running drills you had problems keeping up with everyone else. You don’t have enough upper body strength to handle pitching at this level and I’m not really sure that this is a good idea,” he finished with a heavy sigh before reluctantly adding, “If you really want to play, I could probably use you in right field.”
For a moment, Mikey could only stand there, struggling to wrap her mind around everything he’d said, but the one thing that grabbed her attention had her weakly mumbling, “But I’m a pitcher.”
“No, you’re not.”
*-*-*-*
“Mikey!” Sebastian yelled as he ran after Mikey only to curse when he saw where she was going.
Damn it!
He didn’t know what happened to set her off, but he knew that whatever it was, that it was bad. While he normally liked to spend time on his roof to clear his head and get his mind off everything for a while, Mikey only did it when she was upset about something. A few years ago, Uncle Reese built a treehouse for her, hoping that it would help, but it was never enough. When Mikey was upset, she needed space so that she could lose it without anyone seeing, which meant…
Damn it!
Sebastian watched helplessly as Mikey climbed onto the pile of old pallets stacked by her garage and pulled herself up onto the roof before disappearing around the back. He moved his ass faster, jumped on the pallets, grabbed onto the edge of the roof and pulled himself up. Once he was on the roof, he moved faster, heading toward the back, climbed onto the flat part of the next roof and–
Felt his stomach drop when he spotted Mikey sitting beneath her bedroom window, hugging her knees tightly against her chest as she cried. God, she was killing him, Sebastian thought hollowly as he walked over to her and sat down next to her. He reached over and picked her up, placing her between his legs so that her back was against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly as she continued to cry.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Sebastian whispered softly as he pressed a kiss against the top of her head.
They sat like that for a long time, long past when the sun finally went down and he should have gone home. Nothing else mattered but her. He kept his arms around Mikey, holding her while whispering that everything would be okay. When she was finally done crying, he leaned around her as he reached up and gently wiped away her tears.
“Feel better?” Sebastian asked softly as he wiped away the last tear.
With a sniffle and the