Warning Track (Callahan Family #1) - Carrie Aarons Page 0,5
get ugly out there today.” He shrugs, still looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows of the sky lounge. “Never had baseball be about anything other than baseball, even with the petty shit that’s been thrown at me or the club in the past. But this? It’s going to be gruesome, Col. For a while, it’s going to be utter hell.”
Walker runs a hand through his short brown buzz cut.
My heart sinks, because I know he’s right. I chew on my thumbnail, a bad habit, but one I can’t seem to break, even in my newfound executive position. I barely slept last night, knowing how difficult today will be. On one hand, I’m glad to be getting back to the core of things, to the game I and my family love so much. The last six months have been, like Walker said, utter hell. Media statements and trials and speculation and investigations … it’s all left a permanent churning feeling of nausea in my stomach.
But on the other hand, I know that playing some innings won’t make this go away. This stain will stay with us, possibly forever.
The word stain makes me think of Hayes Swindell in that hallway near the weight room two nights ago. He’d been so furious, dismantled so thoroughly me and all I wanted to accomplish. God, the man is intimidating as hell. I’ve grown up around baseball players, been friendly with them my entire life. Yet the three-time World Series champ seems impossibly large to me. It could be his dominating, muscular, six-five frame, but that isn’t quite it. It’s the way Hayes carries himself, as if he’s been standing on a moral high ground his entire life.
Which he kind of has. I’ve never read a bad thing about him as a player, as a person, and he keeps his life extremely private. And my, could he have gotten into a lot of trouble looking like that if he wanted to. Dirty blond hair down to his shoulders that he sometimes tied up in a ponytail, clover-green eyes that sparkle like the rarest of emeralds, biceps that could swing a bat lethally, a big body that tapered into a waist and thick, bulging thigh muscles …
I have to gulp even sitting at this table at nine in the morning. Yes, Hayes Swindell could have had his pick of the litter out there in Los Angeles, and yet, the media could never grab one morsel on his dating life.
But it’s not like the man is silent. No, he donates and participates in several charities, started his own foundation, has won the league’s most charitable award two years running, and advocated for the player’s union on numerous occasions.
Hayes Swindell beats to his own drum, acting like some kind of baseball superhero, and right now, it seems me and my family are the villains in his story.
“He’ll be here soon, darling.” Aunt Gina pats her husband on the hand, breaking me out of my Hayes reverie.
Our family has a tradition dating back all the way to when my grandfather was owner of the Pistons; we eat a big breakfast together in the stadium sky lounge on opening day. Right now, there are approximately twenty Callahan’s scarfing down the continental breakfast the stadium chefs prepared. We range in age from Uncle Daniel, all the way down to my cousin Jaclyn’s one-year-old daughter.
No one has spoken about Dad today. Uncle Daniel has all but banned his name from family gatherings and the stadium alike, so it wasn’t a surprise. There is still a letter sitting in a drawer in my kitchen at home, one I can’t bring myself to open that has a returnee address for a prison in Florida.
Throughout the season, the number of people will taper off. The breakfast attendees will dwindle until it’s just Walker and me, sitting here before games shooting the breeze. But it’s part of my ritual always, so I follow it to a tee.
This morning, I left my simple ranch home on one of the side streets on the outskirts of town. My house is nice, but it isn’t the mansion my father used to occupy or the one Uncle Daniel has with his live-in staff and around the clock maintenance. I’ve never needed any of that. Not to say I don’t like my stainless steel fridge, or the heated tile floors I had installed in my bathroom last year—I realize just how privileged I am.