He didn’t answer, and I could see more of him now, my eyes getting used to the dark. He was in workout pants and a long-sleeved shirt, it fitting snug across his chest, his shoulders, his arms. A glove on one hand, no cap. He lifted his chin and met my eyes. God, those eyes. I saw in them a hundred secret moments, moments out of jerseys and away from spotlights, moments where he had just been Chase and not The Chase Stern. Moments where he had been all mine.
I love you because when I see you, I can’t stop staring at you.
I blinked away the memory. “Did you?” I swallowed. “Did you know I’d be here?”
“I hoped.” He shrugged, reaching down, the eye contact broken, his hand grabbing a ball from the bucket by his feet. “You didn’t show the other nights.”
“We’ve been out of town.” The words shouldn’t have been said. He didn’t deserve an explanation. I wished I could take them back. I wished I could take this night back, put myself at home, before I realized that I was done for, that my world was over, that my heart was still his. I wished I could take it all back, yet I didn’t wish that at all. The other nights, he’d said. He’d been waiting for me.
He tossed the ball toward me, and I caught it. He stepped back. “Got a glove, Little League?”
“You can’t call me that anymore.”
He punched the glove. “Do you?”
I dropped my bag on the ground. “Maybe.”
“Still got that arm on you?”
I reached down, slowly pulling out my glove and working it on. It slid easily over my bare hand, my ring at home, in the safe. I flexed the leather and looked up at him. “Are you wanting to find out?”
He grinned at me, holding up his glove and asking for the ball. I tossed it toward him, and then, despite my better judgment, jogged out onto the field, Titan breaking into a run beside me, my heart beating louder than it had in years.
I love you because right now, there’s nothing more tempting in life than to pull you on top of me and push inside of you.
We said little for the next hour, falling into an easy rhythm of catching, the ball arching through the air between us, lost in the night, then found again when it connected with the leather of a glove. I caught grounders for the first time in years, my movements rusty at first, then smoothing out, the flex of an old muscle enjoyable.
It was, out of all of my nights on that field, the most painful of them all.
“It was crazy, with the whole city involved—picketers at the game, media crowding the press box, every fan demanding Chase Stern’s return—there were only two people, in that entire city who really knew what was happening.
And only one who could fix it.”
Dan Velacruz, New York Times
78
When we got the call about Julie Gavin, her body left at the East Gate, Tobey vomited. I remember standing at the bathroom door, my hand on its surface, and feeling heartless. He was the man, the strong one. He was the one who climbed mountains and stayed dry-eyed during The Green Mile. Yet he was puking into the toilet and I was calm, uncaring. I remember analyzing my feelings, trying to find the root of my problem.
“Babe.” I jiggled the handle, frowning when I discovered it locked, the sound of retching causing my brow to furrow. “Talk to me.”
“What the fuck is there to say?” he snapped, the words almost drowned out by the toilet flushing.
“It’s not our fault.” I leaned into the door, putting my mouth by the crack, hoping my words would carry. “We did everything we could. The security—”
“It’s a pattern, Ty.” He interrupted. “That’s what Harold said. She isn’t the first.”
Yes, our head of security had been clear on that. This girl, the one that showed up dead outside our gates, a detective had linked her with two other girls. Both also stabbed, and also on the last day of the season. The detective thought it was a World Series freak, someone pissed at the trade of Chase, and punishing the city every year we fell short of winning it all. “They might be wrong,” I said. “Who would kill girls over that? It’s—” I stopped short of saying crazy. Because of course this guy, whoever he is, was crazy. Sane people didn’t murder. And sane people certainly didn’t base murders on a baseball schedule.
“I don’t think they’re wrong.” He had moved, to a different part of the bathroom, his voice echoing off the tiles, and I jiggled the handle, wishing he would just open the damn door already.
I hadn’t argued with him, but I hadn’t taken it seriously. I hadn’t felt guilt. Or pressure. Not until 2014. Not until Tiffany Wharton.