Page 14 of Reality With You (Arden Beach #1)

“Y ou running from something, bro?”

The question posed by his trainer pulled Dylan back to the Tidebreakers’ gym—to the whir of the treadmill, his feet pounding the belt, and the empty stadium beyond the glass wall. His heart pumped vigorously in his chest, but running was only partially to blame.

He’d been distracted all afternoon.

“Sorry, what?” Dylan asked, breathless.

“I told you to stop at twenty minutes and meet me outside,” Marcos answered, his long, black hair tied in a bun at the nape of his neck.

“You’re flirting with half an hour like something’s chasing you.

” He leaned an arm on the machine beside Dylan’s, crossing one ankle over the other.

“I was waiting to see how long you’d keep going, but I got bored. ”

Dylan lowered the speed to a jog, then a walk, and finally hopped off the machine.

Grabbing the towel he’d set off to the side, Dylan plopped down on a weight bench and wiped the sweat from his brow.

He sat there for a moment, catching his breath, his thoughts running on a different treadmill over the same topic they’d been stuck on for hours.

Her.

“You wanna talk about what’s got you in your head today?”

“What do you mean?” Dylan hedged as he hung his head, elbows braced on his slick knees while the towel hung from his hands.

“You know what I mean. You were late to our session. You forgot parts of the warm-up you do every day. You’ve barely said two words when I usually can’t get you to shut the hell up and focus on your reps.”

“I was only a few minutes late, and that’s because I was picking up lunch for us, asshole.”

And unexpectedly ran into the love of my life in the process , Dylan didn’t add .

“The lunch they forgot your stupid sauces for, and you didn’t even notice?”

Dylan stilled, the realization soaking in like the sweat through his muscle tank.

They had left out the sauce—and he hadn’t noticed.

He’d never eaten his gyros without it before.

Not by choice. Once, he’d driven back to the restaurant across town to get them when they were left out of his takeout order.

He made a point to check the bag now before he left.

Usually.

On the days when his ex-wife didn’t consume his thoughts.

Dylan glanced over his shoulder at Marcos, who was still leaning against the other machine, patiently watching him.

After years of training together, they’d developed a friendship, particularly since Marcos and Erin had been helping him rehabilitate after the accident.

His teammates had been busy on the road—some had flat-out distanced themselves from him amid the controversy—and he hadn’t been in a very social mood, regardless.

Some weeks, Marcos was one of the only human beings he saw besides his father and sister, thanks to their rigorous training schedule to get him back in shape for the next baseball season.

And because he’d become somewhat of a hermit.

“You planning to add ‘therapist’ to your job description?” Dylan shot back dryly, dragging the towel around his neck as he faced forward.

“Depends. Do I get a raise?”

The corner of Dylan’s mouth nudged into a smile, but his thoughts flowed back to his distraction like water in a trough. “I ran into my ex this morning.”

“Shit. Which one?”

The only one that mattered. “My wi—ex-wife.”

It had started as any normal Tuesday, and just like that, after simply walking through the door of a restaurant he’d happened to get a craving for, his world shifted on its axis.

Or maybe it was put back on its axis. The fact that Dylan felt more normal in those few minutes talking to her on the phone and standing in that restaurant with her brought up a landslide of questions he wasn’t prepared to answer.

“I thought she lived in New York?”

“She did. She just moved back to Arden Beach.”

“ Ay, Dios mío ,” Marcos mumbled. “How’d she look?”

Dylan dropped his head, unable to fight the smile at the memory of her that afternoon.

The loose hair framing her face. The small tattoos scattered across her body.

Those mesmerizing green eyes and the way her little black dress with flowers on it had swished around her long, smooth legs.

His heart pounded like he was still in a sprint. “Beautiful,” Dylan said quietly.

He could practically hear Marcos’s eye roll. “I meant, did she seem happy to see you or like she wanted to kill you?”

At that, his chest compressed.

Lennon looked like she’d wanted the floor to swallow her up when those people she was with started asking about their relationship.

Being connected with him put an immediate target on anyone’s back.

She hadn’t signed up for that. He wanted to do absolutely anything but walk away from her, but he could tell she wanted an out, so he gave her one.

It was hard enough not to think about her when she was a thousand miles away. Knowing she was right there, in the same city, would make it damn near impossible.

Dylan shook his head, drawing a sharp breath as he swiped his hand across his nose.

“She was busy. We didn’t talk long. But I don’t think my life was in danger, so that’s a plus, I guess.

” He dropped the towel beside him and rose from the bench.

He crossed the gym to the mini fridge tucked into a wet bar and removed a water bottle.

“We talked on the phone about a week ago.” Dylan held up the cold bottle and offered it to Marcos.

“Oh yeah?” Marcos asked as he nodded. He caught the bottle that came sailing toward him with smooth, athletic ease.

Dylan grabbed another bottle for himself and cracked it open, leaning back against the bar. “She meant to call my sister but accidentally called me instead.”

A thick, dark eyebrow quirked up as Marcos raised his hands, making quotation marks with his fingers around the bottle. “ Accidentally ?”

“Definitely accidentally. She sounded like a ghost had answered the phone.” The pressure in his ribs doubled as he recalled how reluctant she’d been both times to talk to him, at her eagerness to get away from him.

He drowned the thought with a long, burning gulp of ice-cold water.

He’d almost completely drained the bottle when he came up for air.

Marcos leveled a non-judgmental gaze on him. “You need to talk to your therapist?”

Dylan considered it for a moment as he spun the cap back on the bottle. He felt the pull to counterbalance the growing knot in his chest with a distraction intense enough to numb it, but his grip remained strong enough not to give in. For now, at least. “I’m good. Appreciate the check-in, though.”

“Let’s head to the bullpen, then. Or would you rather sit here pining after your ex for the rest of the day?”

Dylan sent the near-empty water bottle soaring across the room with deadly precision, the lightweight plastic narrowly missing the center of his trainer’s chest thanks to a quick sidestep.

Marcos laughed as Dylan rolled his shoulder above his pitching arm, his fading surgical scar twisting with the movement.

It was still a little stiff and gave a light twinge, but nothing like the searing pain that had plagued him directly after the accident.

“At least your aim’s pretty good, even if your game isn’t,” Marcos chided with a wink as he turned toward the exit.

“We can’t all be as smooth as you, Marc.”

As Dylan followed him, his gaze fell to the simple gold band around his friend’s ring finger as it glinted under the lights. Dylan unconsciously flexed his left hand.

After their bullpen session, Marcos left Dylan to do the rest of his workout alone in the gym so he could meet up with his wife at a Lamaze class.

The physical exertion had helped Dylan burn off some of his restless energy.

With the team on the road, the stadium was uncomfortably quiet.

He could go home and finish his workout there, but it would be just as silent.

He’d spent enough of the last four months holed up there.

At least at the stadium, he felt somewhat connected to the team. Not like the outsider he’d become.

To fill the silence, Dylan flicked on the flat-screen television near the weight-lifting machines. He grabbed plates and loaded up the barbell.

“—unfortunate consequence of a string of bad deals and decisions. If Carmichael’s making those kinds of mistakes with his companies, that doesn’t bode well for the Tidebreakers.”

Dylan paused, the man’s familiar drawl raking over his nerves.

He turned to the television where Nolan Pierce spoke to the anchor of the popular sports newscast Hour on Sports with Yousef Hajjar .

Nolan wore his typical smug expression, his misplaced arrogance as overbearing as his three-piece suit. Desperate as ever to prove himself.

“And while he’s focused on trying to save his sinking ship of a conglomerate,” Nolan continued, “who’s looking out for the team?”

“With all due respect, you’re—what, twenty-five years old?” Yousef asked.

“Twenty-six,” Nolan corrected, the corner of his mouth vaguely curving in a smirk.

“What makes you think you know better than Eddie Carmichael, who’s been in the business for decades?”