His chuckle cuts me off. “Baseball’s dead. You have a ton of talent but you lack everything else to be successful. Everyone knows it and that’s why no calls have come your way. Do you really think any coach in their right mind is going to sign an asshole law-breaker? A kid with no morals who steals from the hand that feeds and houses him? There are a dozen more pitchers just like you with a clean record and halo sitting atop their head. You did this to yourself, Ryan. All you. Blame yourself.”

I stare at him and hate him with every fiber of my being. Tears well and it takes everything I have to fight them back.

“Jail or army. You pick.”

Anything is better than being here with you.

And isn’t that the fucking kicker? I was stuck here going to a junior college, playing for one because we didn’t have the money—that and I feared what would happen to my mom if I left—and miraculously, only two years later, the money was found to send Marcus to a four-year school.

I should have left.

I shouldn’t have cared about protecting my mom when it’s clear she’s so conditioned it doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do to her, because she’ll never leave.

She’ll never pick her son over her abusive spouse.

Anything is better than being here with you.

And that’s what I keep saying as I stand before the recruitment officer trying not to vomit.

“You sure you’re here on of own free will?” the officer asks as he eyes my black eye and the bruises on my skin.

I feel like I’m breathing through water as I stare at him, blinking, silently begging for him to see that I’m not here of my own free will. I think he knows anyway. That this is being forced upon me. That I hate every fucking second of this moment. That the sadist next to me is killing the dream I’ve had since I was a little boy.

That this is where dreams die.

Because of him.

Fuck you, Sal.

And I repeat those words every few seconds and after every single step of the process.

The signing on the dotted line.

The swearing in.

The fucking everything.

Fuck you, Sal.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Chase

“EASTON WYLDER? IS THAT YOU?” I say into my cell, my smile automatic.

“Sadly it isn’t anyone more exciting.” His deep baritone comes through the line, and I’m transported back to late-night bar trips with his team, the Austin Aces, after big wins. The man is a sweetheart and then some.

“Someone more exciting, says the man who is always the life of the party.”

“Hardly.” He snorts.