The Ninth Inning (The Boys of Baseball #1) - J. Sterling Page 0,29
backed away. “I gotta go pack up.”
“All right. Thanks, man. Good to see you. I’ll come to your next show,” I said as Jason headed back toward the stage, his eyes looking somewhere over my shoulder.
“Unless we have a game. Then, we’ll both miss it.” Logan’s voice hit my ears, and I saw red.
I turned slowly to face him, trying my best to keep my temper in check.
“What do you want?” I bit out, and he grinned.
“Surprised it took you this long to show up, Anders,” he taunted before shooting a glare at Mac. He obviously knew that he was the one who had ratted out his location. “Were you hoping to catch Christina?” he asked, his tone like a barb straight to my fucking guts, but I tried my best to pull myself together and appear unaffected. I couldn’t let him know he had me. “You just missed her. But don’t worry. She’s in good hands.”
“Yeah, her own since she’s not here,” Mac said.
I let out a hollow laugh, hoping my detached act would have its desired effect and Logan would back off, thinking I couldn’t care less that he was pursuing her.
But I cared too much, and Logan fucking sensed it. He was about to contradict what Mac had said, and I couldn’t stomach the idea of hearing it. I bailed before he could say another word about her or him or them. I heard Mac shouting my name from behind me, but I was too far gone to care.
I practically sprinted outside and exhaled, watching my breath fan out like smoke before it floated away. The night air was freezing, but I had my anger to keep me warm as I reached for my phone and fired off a single text message to Christina that read:
Please don’t go out with him.
Screw Cole
Christina
I stared at the unexpected text message, my heart lodged in my throat and my fingers hovering over the keypad on my phone. After seven months, this was the first text Cole had sent. No text had come after the slap at the party. No text after that awful evening in August when he’d destroyed whatever we had. Not a word until tonight.
I heard Lauren on the phone, her high-pitched responses reverberating through the thin walls of our apartment. I knew she was talking to Jason, the drummer, and I didn’t want to interrupt, so I couldn’t ask her for advice. Although I was pretty sure what she’d tell me to text Cole back. And it wouldn’t be pretty. Not that Cole deserved pretty.
He’d given Logan his blessing. His blessing! And now, he wanted to take it back? He wanted to tell me not to go out with him after he told Logan he didn’t care?
I wanted to respond to him in a hundred different ways. I wanted to tell him to fuck off, to ask him why he cared, tell him it was none of his business what I did, or say if it bothered him so much, then why weren’t we together? I wanted to remind him he couldn’t have his cake and eat it, too, although that was exactly what I’d been giving him the last three years. But mostly, I wanted him to leave me alone. Since we were not going to be together, I needed him to go away.
More thoughts raced. Like how had he even found out so fast? Mac, the other baseball player’s face, came to my mind. I remembered seeing him oscillate between watching me and Logan and typing on his phone. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Mac had texted Cole. But it did take one to figure out why Cole cared.
He had no right to ask me not to go. He had no say in my personal life after he decided that he didn’t want to be a part of it. I promised myself that when the time came and Logan decided to ask me out on a real date, I would definitely say yes. I deserved to move on.
Lauren’s bedroom door opened, and she walked out with an empty glass, surprised to see me still working at the kitchen table. “Oh. I’m glad you’re still up. I got some interesting news,” she said through a yawn.
“I got an annoying text”—I held up my phone—“but you first.”
“Apparently, Cole showed up at the bar. And he was looking for you,” she said as she filled her glass up with water.