“Nah. But you guys go ahead. Aubs is going to take the helm for me. She’ll get better tips that way anyway, and I know she’s saving up for a new car.” I wipe my hands on the towel, ball it up, and toss it in the basket behind the bar.

“It’s okay to say celebrating this, seeing Jenny, fucks you up. It does me too. We don’t want to forget, but it sure as hell hurts to remember.”

“Thanks for getting me, Nix.”

“Aye.” He nods and takes a sip of his beer. “Tell Grainger my apologies to his hand.”

“Christ, Gunny,” Grainger says as he shakes his gloved hand. “That fucking hurt.”

I don’t speak, just lift my gloved hand out to indicate that another fastball is coming. And then another. And another.

Grainger is wise not to speak. The catcher from the community college a few towns over always welcomes the chance to get more time in behind the plate—and luckily, he doesn’t mind doing it at all hours of the night.

What he doesn’t understand is that what is extra practice for him, is therapy for me.

It’s how I work through the shit in my head. The hurt in my heart. The guilt that still weighs heavy in my soul.

It has been since the day I kissed the sport I loved with all my heart goodbye only to realize it provided me with so much more than I thought.

Pitching, getting lost in the motions and the mechanics, had become my therapy. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but it’s what I turned to when my dad came home beneath a flag-draped coffin. It’s what I lost myself in when Sal was drunk and his fists were itching to fly. Staying at the field a few extra hours was so much easier than going home to deal with him.

When I was on deployment, it’s how I managed the fear and boredom. The guys would take turns catching for me, guessing where I’d pitch it next. We’d make a game of it. Anything for a piece of normalcy in that godforsaken place.

And now, it’s how I cope with the horrors of war, and the guilt over the ones I failed.

Fucking Dickman.

I shake my head and lob an off-speed pitch at Grainger. He falls forward on his knees as he anticipates the fastball, but is caught off guard when it’s twenty miles per hour slower.

“That was wicked,” he laughs out. “Tell me again why you never played in the majors.”

“I wasn’t good enough.”

“Bullshit. If you’re this good after all this time, you must have been nasty when you were my age.”

I chuckle before flopping my glove to tell him another one’s coming.

Because I was good.