The Ninth Inning (The Boys of Baseball #1) - J. Sterling Page 0,82

still couldn’t help but wonder, Why am I not worth fighting for? Why does every female in my life walk out of it and never look back?

I drove on autopilot toward the liquor store, picking up a case of beer before heading back to the baseball house; it was the worst possible place for me to be right now, but unfortunately, it was where I lived, so I couldn’t really avoid it.

I was thankful when I didn’t see any extra cars parked in the driveway and hoped that I’d be able to get into my room without anyone seeing me. I turned my phone off and decided not to turn it back on until the morning. The idea of what waited for me or how many of my teammates knew about her and Logan was enough to make me never want to turn it back on again.

I was so embarrassed.

Walking into the house, I visibly tensed, but it was unnecessary. No one was in the living room or anywhere near my room. Closing my door behind me, I tossed the twelve-pack on my bed and flung my body on top of my comforter. My plan for the night was to either drink myself into oblivion or fall the fuck asleep … whichever one came first.

Christina and thoughts of my mom kept mixing together in my head. I didn’t have time for that kind of pain. All I wanted to do was bury it, bury them together. I needed to stop thinking, stop feeling, stop … fucking … hurting, so I popped open my first beer and started drinking.

Thankfully, one beer was all I’d gotten down before I passed out, fully dressed. Traveling on a road trip was physically exhausting on its own, but throw in all the emotional chaos from the past twenty-four hours, and I was dead to the world.

I woke up seconds before my alarm went off, thankful that I hadn’t slept through it or hit Dismiss instead of Snooze. The last thing I needed was to miss class. I craved all the distractions that I could get right now. Anything that would keep me from thinking about her and missing her and wishing that I were the kind of man who could get past this and just forgive her.

If I had any hopes of forgetting about my situation in my Communications class, I was sorely mistaken. How was I supposed to know that we’d not only be studying word interpretation and how it was used in the press, but that I’d also get assigned the word cheating as my paper’s focus? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Class couldn’t end quickly enough.

Pulling my hat down low across my eyes, I made my way through campus without looking at anyone. If Christina was in the vicinity, I wouldn’t know, and that was how it had to be. I wasn’t sure that I could handle seeing her without getting choked up. And the very last fucking thing I wanted to do on this campus, in front of the whole damn school, was tear up.

Girls grabbed me as I walked by and said lewd shit, but I continued toward the parking lot, doing my best to ignore them as I pried their fingertips from my shirtsleeve without so much as a glance. I had no idea if they knew that I was technically single again, but I didn’t care. I was tired of my personal life being public business. It would be fall semester all over again—baseball only, females not welcome.

Once I reached the parking lot, I tossed my shit in the passenger seat and drove over to the sports facilities complex for an early workout before practice. Putting my truck in park, I hopped out before noticing Logan two cars over. He had his keys in his hand and was watching me like a hawk.

“See something you like, LeDouche?” I tried to play it cool, like I wasn’t fazed by the knife he’d taken to my relationship as he sliced it apart and then jammed it in my back.

He continued to stare at me like a fucking weirdo. “Not really. Just surprised to see you here, is all.”

Did Logan really think it would be that easy to get rid of me? That when he ripped apart my heart, I’d fall with it?

“Why? Because you’re so desperate for my spot on the field that you messed with my girl?”

“Wasn’t that hard. She was willing enough,” he said before smirking,