Page 1 of All Bats are Off (Rose City Roasters)

Tucker

Roasters 60–31

“F uck, Chandler peed on me.”

Warm liquid trickled down my left thigh, pooling on the yoga mat beneath me. I sat back on my haunches, careful not to crush the ball of apricot-colored fluff cowering behind my bruised knees.

The All-Star break couldn’t have come at a better time. My body had taken one hell of a beating during our last road series and needed time to recover. Six days were barely a “drop in the bucket,” as my teammate, Matty Miller, would say—the Roasters’ resident Southern boy had an arsenal of hilarious colloquialisms—but it was better than nothing. I looked more like a bruised banana than a ball player these days.

I reached around my back, scooping the pint-sized terrier up and off the mat.

Holy cuteness, Batman. It’s the Piddler.

It was impossible to be mad at anything that adorable. Thank fuck I didn’t have any pets or children of my own—I would spoil them rotten. Even now, covered in puppy piss, I was willing to sacrifice my entire net worth for the dog in my palms.

“What did I say about peeing on me, little dude?” I asked him, nuzzling our noses together.

“You know,” Roman interjected from the mat next to mine. “Some people pay good money for that kind of thing.”

I recoiled. “Dude, gross.”

The puppy in Roman’s lap—a hound mix named Hamburger—grumbled when he stopped petting her to whip me across the chest with a Roasters rally towel. “We don’t kink shame here, Tuck.”

I snatched the towel out of his hands, swiped it through the puddle on my mat, and hurled it back at his head.

“Okay, do I need to separate the two of you?” Matty asked, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the spotted pit bull snoring next to his feet.

Matty had a puppy of his own waiting for him back at his studio apartment, an adorable basset hound named Mo, whose derpy face had won Matty over within seconds. The two of them had been practically inseparable ever since. Coach Ward had nearly blown a fuse when he’d found out that our freckle-faced shortstop had smuggled Mo onto the team bus during our road trip to Salt Lake City.

“Y’all fight like me and my brothers.”

Roman’s smirk matched my own. Brothers? Not quite, but we had been roommates for going on six months now, which was one of my longest cohabitation stints to date, not to mention longer than any romantic relationship either of us had been in.

Unlike most of my childhood friends, my parents had been well into their mid-forties by the time they’d had me—the result of one too many Chardonnays during their annual anniversary cruise to Bermuda, or so the story went—and neither of them had been willing to press their luck with a second “geriatric pregnancy,” so that was that.

Only child club, party of one.

The fact was, aside from trips to summer camp and the occasional overnight tournament during my high school career, I had never split a bedroom with somebody else until after I’d been drafted. The novelty had worn off before I’d finished unpacking my vinyl collection.

Sharing a bathroom sucked ass.

Six teams, seven years, and one original 1967 pressing of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band signed by three of the four Beatles later— fucking Ringo —and I had finally landed a spot as the starting second baseman for the Rose City Roasters, the American League West’s newest team.

And I was fucking crushing it.

We all were. We had a real shot at making the playoffs, in our freshman season no less—practically unheard of.

“Do you realize that right about now, Pink and Bennett are sitting in a dugout, sweating their balls off, and we’re playing with puppies?”

Laughter shook my chest. “Sucks to suck.”

“Speaking of sucking , I’ve got plans with the blonde from ticketing after this.” Roman wagged his brows. “And her roommate.”

I snorted.

“Of course you do,” Matty mumbled under his breath.

The whole team knew that Roman’s sexual appetite was insatiable and varied. He hardly ever ate the same meal twice, so to speak. Men, women, couples, orgies—my roommate didn’t discriminate when it came to his play partners. That was something we had in common, only I was more of a one woman—or man—at a time kind of guy.

That hadn’t stopped me from helping him double-stuff our neighbor’s pussy on more than one occasion. Or sucking off Chicago’s rookie catcher while Roman had fucked his ass after last month’s matchup in the Windy City.

“You’re welcome to join us,” he hedged.

I shook my head. The occasional threesome with my roommate was fun, but that was more Roman’s thing. Besides, tonight I had something more sinful in mind.

“I appreciate the invitation, but this is our one week off in months, and I’m going to spend it face-first in deep-fried heaven.”

Roman shrugged. “Your loss. You could’ve spent it face-first in Hillary.”

Matty’s laugh woke the pittie resting on his shoe and earned us a few harsh glares from our fellow yogis. We probably should’ve saved the fucking and funnel cake talk until after the class.

It was our second day at the Columbia County Fair, and I, for one, was ready to curl up with a corndog and call it a night. Playing a doubleheader in ninety-degree heat, in front of forty-thousand screaming fans was nothing compared to the mental and emotional exhaustion that came from autographing mitts and tits for hours on end.

Thousands of people had turned out for the annual event held halfway between Portland and Rose City, just west of the Columbia River. For two days, while our pitcher and catcher represented the Roasters at this year’s All-Star game, and the rest of our teammates caught up on their beauty rest, Matty, Roman, and I had schmoozed the crowd, posed for pictures with baseball fans from across the Pacific Northwest, and judged the marionberry pie bakeoff. Oregon’s obsession with the marionberry was borderline psychotic, if you asked me, but I never turned down a piece—or nine—of pie.

The three of us had been voluntold to represent the Roasters’ franchise by Dani, the team’s social media director, though most days she felt more like the team’s mom. The last thing any of us wanted was to disappoint her, a fate worse than death.

Officially, Dani had tasked us—three social, eligible, and slightly oversexed bachelors—with representing the team and their partnership with the Rose City Dog Rescue. Hence this afternoon’s yoga class with adoptable puppies, our final event for the weekend. Unofficially, I came to cuddle dogs and deepthroat pickles on a stick.

What could I say? I was a simple man.

It didn’t take much to make me happy. Bread, baseball, blow jobs and The Beatles . . . preferably in that order.

Carbs were my love language, and nobody did carbs quite like the county fair. I had never met a funnel cake or Cheeto-dusted hot dog or honey-fried chicken sandwich—with donuts for buns—that was anything less than orgasmic. So what if it led to late-night indigestion or heartburn? That was a problem for future me.

Besides, great love meant enduring great pain. That was what my Great Aunt Helga said, at least.

I might not be able to stomach fried dough like I had in my early twenties, but pancake-battered pickles deep fried in oil seemed like a good compromise. Practically a salad, if you asked me, especially when paired with a mango mule slushie.

Fruits and vegetables. Mom would be so proud.

We buried our noses in our mats for the final few minutes of “stretch and fetch,” until at last, the instructor bowed her head and dismissed the class. After that, we spent another twenty minutes or so fielding the questions—and phone numbers—hurled in our direction. Based on Matty’s sappy smile, it looked like I was the only one going home without a threesome tonight. Fine by me. I was just as happy with my hand, so long as the other one had a potato swirl.

You hear that, Mom? That’s two vegetables.

Just as we finished gathering up the last of the mats and foam blocks, my eyes landed on a familiar face at the back of the dissipating crowd. One head stood above the rest. More specifically, the dirty blond locks piled into a messy bun atop that head.

“Huh.”

“What?” Matty asked.

“I thought it was hot out, but I guess it was just Hell.”

He glanced over his shoulder, smiling when his attention landed on the man walking toward us across the small, grassy field.

Brock Heller.

Better known amongst the locker room as Hell, Heller Skelter, or, my personal favorite, Hades’s lost hellhound.

The man should come with a warning. One that read: “Don’t let the freckles and swagger fool you—I’m a menace.”

It was widely known that the illustrious sports journalist could make or break any athlete’s career with the power of his pen. He also hosted High Cheese , one of the most downloaded baseball podcasts on Spotify. That meant there were two ways he could ruin my life—print and audio.

That hadn’t stopped me from eye-fucking him every chance I’d gotten these past few months.

“Gentlemen,” he said, nodding in our direction.

“Heller,” Matty greeted, extending his hand. Ever the Southern gentleman. “Good to see you again.”

“You too.” He pointed toward Matty’s mop of reddish-orange curls. Whereas Matty wore his hair pulled back with a headband, I let my shaggy mullet fly free. For all I knew, Brock Heller slept in his signature man bun. “Millie did a good job.”

Roman arched a brow. “What, you two share a stylist?”

“ Curl specialist ,” Matty emphasized. “You wouldn’t get it.”

It wasn’t an insult. Roman had kept his hair clipped down to the follicles for as long as we’d known him. That applied to the rest of his body hair, too—the dude’s balls were smoother than dolphin skin.

“I know you’re all probably itching to get back to the city, but could you spare a few minutes for your favorite podcaster?”

“Sure,” I said, earning me an icy glare. “Is she here?”

I regretted the words the second they left my mouth. Not because they weren’t true— High Cheese was in my regular rotation, but it didn’t hold a candle to My Worst Date or Scam Goddess —but because they had seemingly no effect on Brock. He didn’t laugh or smile. Hell, the guy barely blinked. Somebody might want to check his factory settings . . .

“If you want to be on the show, Johnny , all you have to do is ask.”

My heart panged when he practically growled my name. Nobody called me Johnny, not even my parents. For as long as I could remember, I had always been Tuck or Tucker, and I preferred it that way. And yet, there was something about the way he said it that made me feel like I was starring in a 70s porno about a naughty schoolboy and his professor.

Minus the Tom Selleck mustache.

By all metrics, Brock Heller was a good-looking guy. Mid-thirties, well-groomed beard, slender build with broad shoulders—he looked like a goddamn Ken doll. Surfer boys with tousled hair and jewelry had never done it for me before, and yet an image of his fingers—gold rings and all—wrapped around my cock flashed across my brain.

“It’s just a few questions.”

“Shouldn’t you be in Philadelphia?” Roman asked, crossing his arms over his chest. The move accentuated his thick, tattooed biceps. I might have thought he was flirting if it were anybody else, but Roman knew better than to hit on the enemy. And Brock Heller was, without a doubt, the enemy.

Which made my attraction to him even more inconvenient.

“Ashton’s covering the All-Star game,” he answered, referencing Portlandia Press’s junior sportswriter. “I took the week off from the paper.”

“And you decided to spend it sampling the eats and treats of the Columbia County Fair?”

“Nah, I’m not much for sugar,” Brock said flatly. “I came for the poultry show.”

And because I couldn’t help myself, I said, “Got a thing for cock, Brock?”

A muscle in his jaw flickered like a candle. It wasn’t much, but it was a reaction, nonetheless.

“Sorry, man,” Roman said. “You’ll have to count me out. I’ve got a hot date at eight, which means I only have three hours to shower, manscape, and put fresh sheets on the bed.”

Brock scoffed. Little did he know that Roman wasn’t exaggerating. In fact, as his roommate, I had it on good authority that it would take him the full three hours to get ready. The man had a rigorous grooming ritual, and we had the water bill to prove it.

“Same here.” Matty’s attention skated over a curvy brunette waiting next to the water station. “I just made plans. Sorry.”

His rosy cheeks were a clear indicator that he was anything but.

It looked like my friends were booked for the rest of the evening, which meant there was only one other option.

“Guess you’re stuck with me, Hell .”

His lips flattened into a thin line. Clearly, Brock Heller wasn’t used to being challenged, and damn if that didn’t make me feel all warm and tingly—and more than a little turned on, too. There was a sick satisfaction that came from making the confident, hot shit reporter squirm.

“Fine,” he grumbled under his breath.

“On one condition.”

My agent was already going to give me crap for doing an interview without his preapproval, so I might as well have fun with it.

Brock arched a brow. “Name it.”