Page 22

LOGAN

I stared at the donation box and cursed Dean Tucker under my breath. The large crates were positioned by each gate into the stadium, with signs asking for food donations. After spotting the first one, I walked the whole damn stadium loop until I was back at the start. I should have known that he would take what I said about being a spoiled rich kid to heart and try to rewrite the situation with kindness.

God, I hated how soft and unaware he was.

I hated that it made me want to be protective .

I chewed the inside of my lip, desperate to feel anything other than the possessive warmth that simmered just beneath my skin.

“You should be in the locker room,” Dean’s voice sounded from behind me. “People are going to start flooding in here and the team may have come around…”

“But the crowd hasn’t.” I inhaled slowly, swallowing the rest of my complaints as I looked over my shoulder at him.

“You’re still a Lorette to them; at least until after today.”

He looked good– too good . His blond curls had been cut a little shorter and his cheeks were flushed with color. He was in a dark purple dress shirt that barely fit the rolling curves of his strong arms and a pair of matching dress pants that hugged tightly to his generous thighs.

It was a stark contrast to the white dress shirt and jeans I wore at every game. I felt stupid and underdressed.

“You look good,” he said, as if he could read my mind. “Your knot is horrible, though.” He pointed to my black tie and stepped forward. “Can I?” He checked before touching me.

I watched the muscles in his forearms tighten as he raised his hands and tried to push down the feelings of panic as he approached. I nodded and turned my face away to focus on the running length of the hallway to my left.

His hands worked at the tie, undoing it and straightening it out before retying it and pushing it up against my throat.

“Too tight?” He asked, his warm breath fanning over my jaw.

I turned slowly to look down at the tie, his hands still on the fabric and so close to my skin, and I swallowed. I tilted my chin up and our eyes met in a strangled, silent moment as he waited for a verbal answer I was too distracted to give.

Flecks of dark green danced around in the lighter shades of his eyes beneath his stupidly long eyelashes, and the panic in my chest dissipated.

“It’s fine,” I gritted out, and he took the cue to step back. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, shifting on his feet.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” I pointed to the donation bin.

“I didn’t.” He shrugged. "It was Susanna. S he wanted to give back to the community; help the people struggling in Harbor.”

The secretary?

“This about Mark? Because I said he wasn’t your charity case—that he didn’t need your magnets? “How about you just own up to the guilt when you say something privileged. You can’t fix everything, Dean. You’re acting like an idiot.” I growled. Of course, he had taken that argument and flipped it on its head to give back in a way that mattered. I hated him.

“It was Susanna,” he repeated. I could see that he was lying; his stupid smile gave him away at all times, but I let it go. Why did I let it go?

“Come on,” he said quickly as the sounds of people laughing and talking echoed through the open doors of the stadium.

I followed him down the tunnel to the inner staff entrance, holding my breath the entire time, until we were safely behind the big blue doors. The tunnels were quiet as we took the stairs down to the locker rooms. I had walked these halls as the enemy before, but never as a Hornet, and it was instantly a different atmosphere.

The grey bricks looked warmer; the Hornets logos were brighter, and the concrete floors didn’t echo in the same way they had when we were stomping down them in angry silence.

“You okay?” Dean stopped outside the Hornets’ locker room. The massive hornet painted perfectly on the side-by-side navy doors mocked me.

“Yeah, Tuck,” I snapped, unable to hold back. “Stop babying me.” I shoved past him into the locker room and immediately wished I hadn’t. Every player in the room stopped what they were doing and went quiet. “Right, who’s ready to get their asses kicked?” I joked.

“Go get changed before they decide to eat you in a pre-game ritual,” Cael said as he wandered up from his locker with his jersey undone and his ballpants hanging loose over his hips.

He stayed and said something to Dean as I walked over to my new locker. Reality hit me seeing the Hornets’ jersey hanging there with new navy cleats and clean pressed ball pants. Reading Logan across the jersey in bright yellow lettering was weird. I reached out and brushed my fingers against it as I set my bag at my feet. The chaos of the locker room returned, the excitement of my entrance wearing off and leaving me in a buzzing hive of unintelligible noise.

I didn’t know if it was on purpose or not, but Dean’s locker was right beside mine, and the sound of his bag hitting the wood made me flinch.

“Sorry,” he apologized, stripping his shirt without a second thought.

“Was this you?” I pointed to the cleats and he shook his head.

“El said your old cleats were bad luck. She found a pair of extras in the equipment locker; they should fit.” Dean continued to get ready, taking off his pants before glancing quickly at me.

I looked around at the crowded room and cursed myself for not wearing a T-shirt beneath my dress shirt.

“There’s a bathroom,” Dean said quietly, “off the showers, to your left.”

I looked up at him, his eyes burning my skin with concern and care.

“Cool. Thanks for the tip,” I muttered. I didn’t need him looking out for me. I didn’t need him to be worrying about changing in front of all the guys. The scars I carried weren’t his problem.

“Whatever, Logan.” He turned back to his locker and shuffled into his uniform. Once he was dressed, he wandered away and left me where I stood, still staring at my own, paralyzed with fear. He flipped his hat over his head and climbed up on the bench in the middle of the locker room.

“Hornets!” He whistled, and the majority settled down immediately. “We’ve worked hard to get ourselves to this point, and it shows. You're more of a team than you were two weeks ago, and we can only get better as the season progresses.”

With everyone's eyes on Dean, it gave me a split second to strip from my dress shirt. I unbuttoned it as he talked, and his eyes flickered to me with a small smirk of accomplishment that infuriated me.

He had won again .

“Today won’t be easy, even for a pre-season game. We’re going out there to win against the odds and despite the expectations. Remember what Arlo always says, ‘don’t play for anyone but yourself and the man next to you’. I’m not buying you a keg though, I’m broke…” He curled into a ball to protect himself as clothing flew at him in an uproar of boos and yelling. “Ow! Who threw a fucking shoe?!” He burst into laughter and chucked it back from where it came.

“Two steps at a time, Hornets.”

The entire room tapped their two fingers to their hearts.

Cult.

I finished buttoning up my jersey and quickly slid into my pants as the room went back to its typical chaos. I could feel Silas’s eyes on me from the main door where he stood talking to Coach, but his attention was on me.

It drove me nuts how much of myself I could see in him at that moment. The same hardened jaw, both dusted with a dark scruff. If his hair were longer, it would be wavy and messy, just like mine, but he kept it short and pushed back off his face.

I had spent all my life staring at the scowl in the mirror; I knew it intimately and it pissed me off that Silas did too. When he excused himself to come over to me, I grabbed my shoes and turned my back to him, using the locker to tie them up tight.

My toes wiggled freely in the cleats; it was either Ella or Dean that had noticed I was wearing a size too small at camp and I felt ashamed.

“Are you ready for today?” Silas asked me over my shoulder.

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you to fuck off.” I turned my head to look at him and glared.

“Josh,” Silas started, but I cut him off.

“Just leave me the hell alone, Silas.”

“You need to know something—”

The room erupted in the sound of cheers and cleats as the guys started to flood from the locker room and into the hallway. I shrugged and backed away from Silas, not giving a damn what he had to say in that moment. I joined the team, keeping my distance and waiting in the tunnel for the announcement.

The Harbor stadium had always been twice as loud as Lorette. We only had a thousand or so more seats to fill, but the fans in Harbor were insane. More insane then they had the right to be over a college baseball team. The entire stadium was vibrating as the announcer fought over the volume of the screaming crowd.

One by one, the starting lineup was announced, with me being the last of the starters to be welcomed onto the field. As predicted, and honestly warranted, the crowd swelled and the sound of hatred rolled down from the stands onto the diamond.

“Go home, Logan” , they chanted—a pulsing, hateful chorus of voices as I made my way to the middle of the lineup, sandwiched between Dean and Cael.

“They could have at least come up with something clever,” I growled, and Cael started to laugh to my right.

“You have two first names as a name, give them a week,” Cael said in their defense, and to ease the tension between my shoulders.

The sound of screamed insults was only silenced by the announcer introducing the game’s opening host.

“Please welcome your most generous sponsor and Hornets alum, Charles Shore.”

My heart felt like it was clawing out of my chest at the sight of him. Why had no one warned me that he was going to be here today? As far as I knew, he had been all but cut out of the family’s dealings with the baseball team.

You need to know something…

Silas had tried.

“Good afternoon, Harbor!” His cracked voice boomed through the microphone, and the stadium cheered for him. The sound of their adoration only made me more sick to my stomach. They had no idea who he really was; it was hidden beneath walls of smiles and donations that satiated the masses. The ones who never did their research past a simple newsletter or article in the paper.

Charles Shore was a slimy asshole with darker secrets than anyone on this field outside Silas and myself knew. His bullshit speech was drowned out by the hatred that was coursing through my veins. This was the closest we had ever been.

Even after I found out who I was, I had never confronted him.

I had, on many occasions, stood outside the hospital he worked at and stared up at the shiny glass windows just wanting to fucking kill him but never finding the courage to go inside. I smashed the shit out of his car one time; spent three days hiding from the cops when they came looking for a kid with my description.

I gave up trying to make him see me after that. It wasn’t worth the heat from the cops, and he had replaced the car with something newer before I could even blink. People like him—money didn’t matter, and neither did their mistakes.

He was the reason my mother started using drugs.

He was the reason she started selling my body for money.

For all the scars and nightmares.

The reason I couldn’t breathe when someone stood too close.

And he didn’t give a shit.

I stared at the back of his head in disgust, just praying it would end soon so we could play baseball.

“Our new captain, Dean Tucker, and our new starting pitcher, Joshua Logan.”

He had no idea.

I almost vomited hearing my name roll off his lips so casually.

My eyes immediately locked onto Silas, standing on the stairs in the dugout, worry straining over his features as Dean started forward to stand with Charles Shore, but I remained frozen.

“You have to do it”— that’s what he was saying without words, waiting for me to cause a scene, but I was so rooted in the ground I couldn’t move to try.

“Josh,” Cael mumbled under his breath. "He wants you to throw the first pitch… move, man.”

I cleared my throat and stepped forward to where Dean stood next to him, my jaw clenched so tightly I could feel the muscles that ached down through my shoulders and spine. I came shoulder to shoulder with the man who’d thrown me out like trash and stared straight ahead.

Silas’ hands were wrapped tightly around the bannister, watching and waiting to intervene, but frozen just the same.

I flinched when a hand came down on my shoulder and dug into my skin. "Logan will lead us to another win, so let’s start treating him like family!”

I gagged, bile rising, and I choked on it in my throat.

“You alright, son?” Charles turned to me and squeezed my shoulder tighter.

Son.

He hadn’t meant it in the way I took it, but it churned viciously in my stomach nonetheless. I glared at him and nodded slowly and carefully. Each small movement felt like my skin was peeling and pulling.

“Let’s throw that pitch,” I gritted out, forcing a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.