“Good.” She took a deep breath. “Because I can’t hold back on the Ty thing. I won’t hold back. Thing three—he’s using, Pace. And it’s wrong.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“I talked to him. I also talked to Red.”

“I heard. Tried to kill him, did you?”

“That old stinker is too stubborn to die. You remember Tucker’s bag, the one he dropped on the floor right there?” She pointed to the corner of the foyer where there were still a stack of duffel bags, minus the one she was talking about. “The one I got the packet from?”

“What about it?”

“It was Red’s. I don’t know why Tucker had it,” she said, watching his face carefully. “I’m guessing he was bringing it to his dad.”

“Actually, yeah,” he remembered. “The next morning.”

“I told you that I think Tucker’s vitamin company also sells natural stimulants. I think Tucker is supplying Red, who is supplying Ty. I still don’t know how you accidentally got some, but—”

Pace put a hand to his suddenly throbbing temple and backed to the wooden bench in the foyer, sitting heavily. “I know how.”

“You do?”

“If I hadn’t been so out of it from the surgery, I’d have remembered sooner . . .” He was quiet a moment. “I drank Ty’s water.” He lifted his head and met her gaze. “The day before my surgery, at the team meeting, right before my pre-op work. We’re always grabbing each other’s drinks, and Wade had said . . .” Wade had told him to go for Holly, to let her into his life to give him something more than just baseball. “I was unnerved about it,” he said now, softly. “And I downed Ty’s entire water bottle.”

“He didn’t tell you what he had in it?”

“He made a crack that it was a good thing we’d already been drug tested earlier in the season. He didn’t know I was to be tested again. Hell, I didn’t know then either, not until after the meeting.”

“He joked about it?”

Pace let out a heavy breath. “Yeah.” He looked at Holly, who was clearly thinking that Ty should have told him the truth, or at the very least, warned him. If not then, then certainly when Pace had tested positive.

Tucker could have said something, too.

Or Red.

She remained silent, not saying that if they’d all been so close, then what they’d done had been a huge betrayal. She didn’t say any of it, but it was there in her eyes, along with a soft compassion and worried affection.

For him.

He closed his eyes. “So what you’re saying is that you’re going to write about this.”

“I did write about this.”

Well, hell.