The Ninth Inning (The Boys of Baseball #1) - J. Sterling Page 0,3

Mac and his latest conquest. Her face twisted as she shot him a look of disgust before her eyes searched the yard for the keg. Or maybe they were searching for me. No. Of course, she would be looking for the keg and not me. I was probably the last person she wanted to see, but then again, she was at a party for my team, at my house.

Still, had to be the keg. Christina only drank beer. I remembered her telling me once that hard alcohol made you do stupid things but beer made you lazy. She’d said she preferred being lazy to stupid. That it gave people less things to talk about. The last thing Christina wanted was to be the topic of gossip. I always knew there was more to that story, but she never told me, and I never pushed. I should have pushed.

The soft blue eyes that I knew by heart locked on to my own, and I sat there like an idiot, watching her. I hadn’t seen her face in seven months, and every part of me realized it all at once. My breath caught in my throat, but I shoved it down, acting like I was unaffected by the way her long, tanned legs stepped carefully through our lopsided yard. Her bare stomach peeked out from underneath her tube top, showcasing her hourglass figure. One that my hands were all too familiar with touching.

Christina Travers. The one girl who had been my constant since I started going here. At least, she had been until I finally cut her loose one hot night last August after a disastrous summer ball performance. It was Cole Anders’s self-preservation at its finest. I was sure someone somewhere would have been proud, although I had no idea who.

Seven months. Seven torturous months since I’d laid eyes on her. At least in person. Attempted online stalking definitely didn’t count. After that night last summer, she’d unfriended me on all social media and made her profiles private. I’d asked Christina to disappear from my life, and she’d given me exactly what I’d asked for. And I fucking hated it.

I tried in vain to find pictures of her online whenever I missed her, which was more often than I was willing to admit, but she’d made it impossible. She’d even gone so far as to block all of my friends and teammates, so I couldn’t get to her through them. She’d always been smart. Except when it came to me.

I watched as she made her way toward the keg, which Chance and I still stood next to like we were its bodyguards. Her light-brown hair spilled around her shoulders, and I stopped myself from reaching out and grabbing her like she belonged to me. She didn’t. And I’d told her that more times than I cared to remember.

“Hey, Chance. Hey, Cole.” She gave us both a small smile before reaching for a plastic cup and pulling the black nozzle toward it.

I didn’t think I’d even responded. She seemed so composed, so … unaffected by my presence, and here I was, coming undone from the inside out.

“Here, I’ll get that for you,” Chance said before taking her cup and filling it up.

The only thing that stopped me from raging at him, even though I had no right to, was the fact that I knew he wasn’t flirting with her or trying to get in her pants. Chance was just being nice.

“Thanks.” She looked at me once more and hesitated, those blue eyes saying something I couldn’t quite decipher, but her friends screamed her name from inside the house, and the spell broke.

Her eyes tore away from mine, and I stood there like some kind of love-struck fool as she walked away without another word. I watched her hips move from side to side with each step she took, silently berating myself for letting her go.

I convinced myself it was for the best. Baseball came first. It had to. End of story.

Of Course He’s Here

Christina

I had known that coming to the party tonight was a mistake. But that was all I seemed to do when it came to Cole Anders—make mistake after mistake. He was my own personal dark-haired, five-eleven kryptonite. I couldn’t resist him if I tried. And dammit, I’d tried.

I’d been trying since freshman year. I was a senior now, so clearly, it hadn’t worked. Although I’d been really good the past seven months at avoiding him, making sure I wasn’t