Page 10

LOGAN

W e’d been through three days of brutal practice since the torturous canoe trip, and every one of them had ended up in fights. There was no stopping them once they started. One wrong move and they were on me like moths to a flame. It wasn’t fair, the way they were treating me.

I was doing my best—trying to be the pitcher I knew I could be.

And every step of the way was blocked by one of them asking for more from me.

Asking me questions about my past, my friends, my family.

I didn’t have the time or the patience to entertain their constant need for connection. I’d come to camp under the impression that it was early training for the season, but was shell-shocked to find out it was more team building exercises and campfire sing-alongs. If I had to listen to Cael sing any more Dua Lipa, I would find a cliff to throw him off. There had to be one around here.

Routine became my only saving grace. Get out of bed and shower before anyone else, take a run, eat breakfast with the psychotic Brady Bunch, practice, lunch, practice, dinner. Run. I would run until the sky got too dark to see the ground I was stepping on and the flames from their nightly fires raged in the sky and I would slink into bed unnoticed. And then do it all again the next day.

I stood at the edge of the path and watched the flames dance in the night air.

All I wanted was a moment of peace, but the calm silence was harshly sawed in half by the sound of laughter and happiness. It made me sick to my stomach. I started to walk the shadowed trail against the cabins back to my own when Dean came out of nowhere and stopped me.

“Tonight you sit with us.” He pointed to the fire.

“Just let me go to bed, Tuck,” I grumbled. “Today was long, and listening to you guys sing makes my ears bleed.”

“They aren’t singing tonight, listen,” he instructed, and I reluctantly turned my head toward the bonfire.

Their voices softly floated through the air; they were talking about baseball.

“For once don’t argue with me just… go sit,” Dean said again. “ Please .”

It was the gentle tone in the please that got me, because despite the constant beatings that Dean was taking in the form of angry kickback from the team, he was still trying. And he wasn’t angry or frustrated, he was just that infuriatingly positive teddy bear he always was.

It was driving me insane.

“Fine.” I turned away from him and wandered over to the fire, looking around for a place to sit, but there was none until Van nodded to the space beside him, moving over on the log.

A peace offering .

One I didn’t want.

I sank down on the log, resting on my elbows with my hat pulled down over my eyes, and listened. The second baseman, Louis, was telling a story in broken English about a botched play Arlo had made two seasons before. He was from Montreal, from what I could remember about his sheet, a young kid with so much potential. If he wasn’t pulled up to the MLB next year it would be a surprise. He had been playing with the Hornets since he turned eighteen.

He recounted the play in so much detail I would have sworn he had been the one to catch the ball and make the out, but he hadn’t been drafted to the team yet, he wouldn’t have been until six months later.

Van cleared his throat quietly. “Lou spent the entirety of last season with headphones in between practices, hell, between plays, learning English so he could communicate with the guys better.”

I wanted to snarl at the way he emphasized communicate with his judgemental tone. I wasn’t an idiot, I understood the importance of communication with the team. On the field it was easy to do call outs, emotion didn’t matter out there. What they were doing off the field was a different story; it was emotional connection and it was bullshit. It didn’t make them better players, it just wasted time between practices and games.

It had screwed them out of winning when Arlo took over.

He was too emotional, they all were, and it had fucked them over.

“Arlo was an asshole for a week after that game.” Dean sank down against the log at Cael’s feet and looked up at him with an endearing look on his face.

“That wasn’t even the worst day.” Cael shook his head with a smile that was highlighted by the warm tones of the fire. “Do you remember when Arlo found out Nicholas was taking over the pitching coach position?”

“Nuclear,” Van huffed, and looked at Arlo in his beanie and hoodie. “You made us run sprints the next day until Todd projectile vomited in the dugout.”

“And then made us clean the dugout until our hands were raw,” Todd added, tipping a beer back into his throat. He crushed the can and threw it into the fire, causing it to spark up in little embers.

“In my defense, it was the anniversary of Mom dying and Nick didn’t actually tell anyone he was coming back, so I walked into the stadium to his ugly face,” Arlo grumbled, and his brother sighed across the fire from him. Fire danced in Ella’s eyes as she watched my every move from her spot behind Arlo, her hands wrapped around his neck and her body curled into his back where he sat in the grass between her legs.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hit me that day,” Nicholas confessed, taking a swig of beer.

“I should have, but there was a lot of press around and Coach… It wasn’t worth it.” Arlo shrugged.

A nauseous feeling overwhelmed me at the sight of them. How easily they were able to dance around each other even in turmoil so thick they might as well have been wading through corn syrup. If it had been me, and I had a brother that so blatantly disregarded me and disrespected me, I wouldn’t be anywhere near him. But I didn’t have a brother; I barely had a mother to be angry about at the best of times.

It’s not that I even wanted those things, it was just that I didn’t want them shoved down my throat by the Hornets. It was like being water boarded with family affection that I never fucking asked for.

“None of it mattered. We still beat the shit out of the Lorettes.” Arlo grinned at me.

“I was pitching with an injury.” I arched my eyebrow at him.

“You came back too soon against the advice of your medical staff and blew it for your team,” Jensen added, and I turned my sour look on him.

Dean put his hand up to stop Jensen from saying anything else.

“I could out-pitch Arlo with my eyes closed, Jensen. Which is more than you can say. Any drunk idiot can play back catcher.” I looked away from him to Arlo, who was scowling.

Jensen lunged but Dean was faster, shooting from the ground and forcing him back to his seat. “Enough,” he barked. This isn’t a trial,” he added.

“The malice, Logan, shit… ” Van laughed. “Man, you hate this team more than Ella hates Miles Teller.”

Arlo barked a loud, unbridled laugh, and everyone joined in. “Now you’ve done it,” he said, when he finally settled down. I had never seen Arlo King so animated.

“That’s a lot of hatred,” Ella said, so seriously that her brown eyes unfocused with discontent.

“What?” I asked, confused. “Like the Top Gun guy?”

“Don’t…” Cael tried to stop what was coming with a quick word, but Ella was already raring to go.

“Tom Cruise? Are you talking about Tom because he’s the Top Gun guy!” She threw up her hands. It was like a switch had been flipped; her cheeks were flushed and she was ready to go to war. “Miles Teller is not the guy. He should never be the guy! He looks like he smells moldy!”

Everyone laughed at her as she rambled on about it and Cael stared at me with a shake of his head.

“You see what you started? This will last hours.” He smiled.

“She’ll be muttering insults in her sleep,” Arlo said with a grin, and it only made her talk louder, arguing with no one but herself.

I smiled back at Cael, and for a split second I wasn’t angry at the world, I wasn’t angry at the Hornets for being effortlessly welcoming, I just was. A calm passed over me as Ella’s voice finally died out and Dean cleared his throat.

“My favorite memory from the last few years was the Thanksgiving game two years ago. My brother refused to play because Cael was taunting him and then sat in the bleachers harassing him.”

Cael snorted preemptively before the story was over, and Dean nodded down at him with a smile as he went back to where he was sitting.

“Cael caught a rogue liner from Silas’s bat.” He laughed and did the motions with his hands, turning his body to look at Van. “Pocketed it, pulled off his glove, and hurled both the glove and the ball at Harvey’s face. He didn’t know what to stop and ended up getting hit by both in succession.”

“He had a bruise the size of an apple and his eye was practically swollen shut,” Silas said. I hadn’t even noticed him join the fire, but he was standing behind Arlo with his arms crossed staring into the flames.

“And had to skip his office photos the next week because he looked like a criminal.” Dean leaned back against the log in a fit of laughter, gripping his chest as Cael followed suit.

“I can up that,” Van interrupted the laughter with a loud voice and leaned forward. “Bailing Arlo, Cael, and Cosy out of campus lock up for smashing her ex-boyfriend’s car with baseball bats.”

”They couldn’t prove it was us,” Arlo said.

“The paint on his car had residue of Harbor blue and yellow from the logos on the bats…” Van reminded them.

“He earned it, and we weren’t going to let her do it alone,” Cael said loudly.

They had helped Van’s sister destroy her ex’s car out of sheer loyalty to Van? I swallowed the bile that rose. Did they always protect each other so fiercely…with such reckless abandon for the rules?

“Besides, Cosy loves community service.” Cael shrugged. “She felt better and we got to destroy some asshole’s lifted truck.”

“I’m sure the truck is fine, Cody swings like a girl,” I added in a gruff teasing tone that made the entire fire go quiet.

“Do I swing like a girl?” Ella's voice cut through the silence like a knife.

I wiggled my nose, it was as if the healed break stung as a reminder of how much weight she’d put behind her punch that day. A faded memory of how much I had deserved it and how little that sentiment mattered to me.

My eyes found her, and for a moment I thought she might be upset, but she was smiling at me with all her teeth and light in her eyes. I didn’t know why, but the sheer fact that she wasn’t angry at the joke just infuriated me.

“Apparently, Logan can take a joke like the rest of us.” Van laughed and nudged me with his knee.

I inhaled slowly, pushing down the thoughts of rage as I lifted off the log and left the fire behind. The response was a mixture of cheers and boos as I got further away from the warmth of the burning logs and closer to the dark cabin and my bed.

“Hey,” Dean jogged up behind me, “she was joking around, Logan.”

“It wasn’t Miele. I’m just tired. I did as you asked, I sat around your stupid fire and listened to your fucking fake ass stories, and now I’m going to bed.” I waved him off.

“No,” Dean snapped and veered around to block my path. “Stop.” He put his hands up but kept space between them and my chest. “You’re going to tell me why that made you so upset.”

“No.” I returned his blunt command with a smile on my face. “See, I can use that word too and I don’t owe you a story, golden boy. In fact, no one does, and yet you continue to force everyone to sit around your campfires and sing kumbaya.”

“I don’t even know the words to Kumbaya…whatever, listen.” Dean ran his hands through his hair with a small huff. “That’s not the real reason you left. You weren’t mad…” His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip, causing it to shine in the moonlight. “You were uncomfortable.”

Uncomfortable.

Is that what that feeling was?

Was I uncomfortable that they had a support system? Most of them came from good homes, with good parents and siblings. Cosy loves community service. He had said it like she enjoyed being selfless, and it bubbled up inside of me in a vicious way. People like that didn’t exist; not true, pure people. Everyone was broken, some with minor cracks but most were barely walking around, chunks of themselves rotting and festering into resentment and depression.

But they didn’t care…

They saw each other for their flaws and their strengths and it was fucking infuriating. It was the blind leading the blind but… was it anger that I felt…? Or was Dean right?

Was I uncomfortable that they were a family, chosen and patched together with different threads and fabrics, but a family nonetheless? And it extended down and out. They not only protected and cared for each other; everyone who touched the Hornets was brought under the umbrella.

But being under the umbrella meant being close to people, the space too cramped and tight for anyone to survive. My chest rumbled with panic again and I stepped back from Dean, just trying to catch my breath. The claustrophobia clawed at me like a rabid animal, ripping my conscious thoughts to shreds and leaving nothing but carnage behind.

It hadn’t happened in a while; the violent panic attacks, the ones I couldn’t control, but I could feel it coming on and there was little I could do to stop it once it started. The nightmares of my life seeped into the cracks and snuffed out whatever lights I had turned on to keep myself company in the darkness.

The worst place to be was inside my own head when it got dark–that’s when the memories of what happened played on repeat like bad movies, unable to stop the tape and forced to relive every horrible touch. Every scar on my body itched and stung like they were fresh, and I did everything I could to hide the pain as it surfaced and filled my eyes with water.

“You don’t know me, Tuck,” I snapped. “Don’t pretend like you want to. I’m not like you or your friends. I’m not here to be a part of your little family. I’m here to play baseball and finish my degree.”

I stepped around him, not giving him the time to argue as I marched up the steps to our cabin on stiff legs and slammed the door behind me. I sucked in a strangled breath as I collapsed against the door and slid to the floor just trying to breathe.