In It to Win It Book 2

Mikey

“This is a shit show,” West mutters.

“You can hear them from the elevator,” Cin says, shaking his head.

It’s been less than a week since AC Guthrie, Oakland’s shit reliever, sent me to the hospital with a fractured wrist.

I’ve been on the injured list for five days now and the state of Atlanta has descended into chaos. Like, Howard homecoming-level bullshit.

“You should be used to it by now. People have been talking about her since she got here,” I say, grabbing a water bottle from the hideaway compartment in my locker.

Ever since it was first announced that Noah Allen, the second baseman we picked up from the Triple A rule five draft back in December, would be moving up in place of me, people have been losing their minds, globally.

For the first time ever, a woman is going to start in a Major League Baseball game this weekend, and everyone from Stephen A. Smith to the chick on YouTube that does instructional videos on deepthroating bananas has an opinion on it.

I’d remained tight-lipped this afternoon as I passed men and women in business casual, sticking their recorders in my face, asking me questions I didn’t want to answer.

Personally, I don’t believe any woman has a chance in the majors, and not because they can’t possibly be good at baseball—if that were the case, we wouldn’t have female batting coaches and Olympic-level softball players.

However, the truth of the matter is . . . this sport is brutal.

I’ve seen men twice her size get on steroids just to try to stay ahead of the curve.

I’m not so behind the times I can’t recognize that women are doing incredible things like joining special forces teams and becoming football coaches, but this is obviously different.

There’s a reason most female athletes don’t play their respective sports into their thirties unless they’re Olympic champions or something. And that’s something that sports organizations look at.

From a longevity standpoint, it doesn’t make sense to invest millions of dollars into an athlete who peaked at sixteen and is most likely going to deteriorate each year rather than progress.

“I have to admit, I never expected to see her here,” Parker, our teammate and first baseman, says.

He’s not being an asshole or anything, but it’s the truth. Baseball is difficult to succeed in no matter the age, gender, or size.

A small percentage of players who sign with minor affiliates are actually given contracts in the majors, and even fewer get there from a rule five draft. It’s quite literally a miracle she’s made it this far.

You can cut the tension in the air with butcher’s cleaver as we all watch one of the clubhouse staff clear out the locker next to mine and insert Noah’s nameplate.

You’d think they’d build a locker room just for her or something considering we’re already sold out for the rest of the month. Our owner is probably nutting himself with the money he’s made in the last ten hours.

“I understand equal opportunity and all that, but she knows the shower stalls don’t have doors, right?” Zachary Springer, one of our relievers, asks.

“Springer, stop being the kid that reminds the teacher we had homework last night,” Holland Woods, one of our starting pitchers, says. Some of the guys laugh. I shake my head.

I might not want her here anymore than he does, but at least I’m not a pig about it. I think she’s a distraction at best, a mediocre player at worst.

I don’t want her being here to affect the chemistry of our team, but that’s all it is for me. I have a teenage little sister, so I’d never make some sexist remark about any woman for a laugh.

You’d think they’d have gotten it all out of their systems in spring training, but expecting couth out of some of these guys is a big ask.

It hadn’t helped that she’d basically ignored everyone the entire time. We hadn’t played together much, but from what I remember, she was so damn intense. Every single second.

It didn’t matter if she was at a scrimmage, game, or workouts, or just eating. She didn’t crack one smile. One smirk. And those big, olive-gold eyes of hers might as well have been vacant pools of lead.

Her rigid, robotic behavior had unnerved me for no reason. Though I guess if I had someone calling me ‘our sugar in the grapefruit’ for seven weeks, I probably wouldn’t be in the friend-making mood either.

“You know Noelle asked me to get her autograph? Do you know how embarrassing it is when your wife fangirls over another player?” Cin asks, pulling me from my thoughts.

I roll my eyes at him. His wedding was almost five months ago in the Bahamas and this heart-eyed bastard won’t let us forget it for a single second.

He’s been all ‘my wife’ this and ‘my wife’ that, as if I haven’t known the girl for years now.

I’d played for Atlanta for five years before Cincinnati Barker was called up, but we became fast friends his rookie season.

By default, I’ve known Noelle almost as long as I’ve known him, and it was obvious from the first time I saw her that her obsession was a one-sided sentiment.

I figured he knew the whole time and just didn’t feel the same way so I never said anything—wasn’t my business. Turns out his dumb ass had no clue. It all worked out in the end though.

If only he’d stop trying to show me his wedding pictures every ten minutes. I mean I get it, Noelle’s hot and all, but damn. He’s like those old ladies that whip out the Polaroids of their grandkids in the grocery store line.

Annoying as fuck.

“Do you know how embarrassing it is when your teammate finds a way to use the word ‘wife’ in every sentence?” I grumble. Cin flips me off.

“You know, Mikey, maybe if you had a woman, you wouldn’t be so high strung,” he says.

“Oh come on, Cin. We all know the only woman in Mikey’s life is the one coming for his job,” West says, slapping me on the back. I glare at him.

As if I needed the fucking reminder.

You’re the idiot who took the bet.

“Alright, fellas, GM says Eleby and little birdie are on the move! Cover your ugly dicks!” Garrison Yonkers, our center fielder, calls out.

“Cheer up, guys. We’re making history,” Holland says, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.

I sigh. It’s only been a few days, but I can already tell having Noah here isn’t going to go well.

So long as she’s in our locker room, our team is going to be more focused on her than on winning, and that’s what irritates me the most. Maybe it isn’t fair, but by just existing, she’s going to make it that much harder for us to make it into the postseason.

I’m thirty-one, and while I’d like to play for ten more years, that’s probably not going to happen. I want the chance to retire with at least one World Series Championship under my belt.

I nearly laugh at all of the guys pretending to be engrossed in anything but the front door. I, personally, couldn’t care less. I plan to treat her just like any other player.

While that selfish loner attitude of hers might have worked for her back in spring training, it’s not going to fly here. Now that she’s on the team, she’ll have to start acting like a teammate and not a spoiled princess.

An old high school coach always told me that being an asset to your team is more important than being the best player on the field, and I never forgot that. There’s more to being a teammate than playing. Teams win games, not individuals.

I know the exact moment Noah enters the locker room because the hushed chatter and the sounds of everyone getting ready cease abruptly. The silence is deafening and I swear no one’s breathing.

I don’t even turn to look as our manager, GM, and owner talk to her in hushed tones, but I can feel all the hairs on the back of my neck stand when the soft click of her heels against the carpet grow louder until she reaches her locker.

Ten full minutes pass and not a single person has introduced themselves to her. I want to chuckle at the silent game of ‘nose goes.’

Fuck all of you.

I turn, afraid to look at her after this morning.

Not because I don’t want to talk to her. But because I do.

Fuck, I do.

I’d just finished meeting with my PT specialist about my schedule and was heading back to the clubhouse to change for a run when I’d caught her shamelessly bent over in my locker in a dress she should probably burn before coming back here.

As if she were just fucking waiting to ruin my day.

Thanks to a semi-drunken bet I’d made with Parker at Cin’s bachelor party, I’d condemned myself to celibacy for eight months, and when I nearly came face to face with the best ass I’d ever seen, I was fully prepared to cave.

It would’ve been the most expensive fuck of my life.

But the second she turned around, her face was even better, and I was figuring out what I could say to convince her that going home with me at seven in the morning would be in her best interest.

Then I made an even dumber mistake than taking that bet and insulted my backup on her first fucking day.

Deciding my suffering balls isn’t her problem, I look at her.

Still in the skintight black dress and stilettos—probably dressed for press photos—with her jersey over her shoulder, her expression is one of irritation as she pulls her heels off one by one and throws them in the locker.

I still have yet to find my words as I study her.

She really is gorgeous. Deep, caramel brown skin almost as dark as my own, long hair that reaches her lower back, and, as I unfortunately noticed this morning, a perfect body.

“You staring ’cause you think I’m a stalker now or are you just looking for my panty line?” she asks into her locker. When I don’t respond, she turns to me with a bored expression, and I avert my gaze from her ass.

“Well, you aren’t going to find it. You can thank my agent’s assistant for that. Apparently if you can’t breathe in a dress, you can’t wear drawers with it either.”

I feel like an idiot for not speaking, but I don’t know what to say to that. The unsettled feeling from Florida returns, but what I hadn’t counted on was my reaction to her voice.

When I caught her looking through my shit this morning, I’d expected a deep, severe tone to accompany her frigid personality, not the soft, pretty hint of an East Coast accent. My jaw ticks. I clear my throat.

“You shouldn’t say stuff like that in here.” I don’t know why it irritates the hell out of me that she’s so attractive, but it does.

“Why? Because you guys are the poster children for Vacation Bible School?” she retorts, yanking her hair into a ponytail. She grabs her uniform out of her locker and faces me again.

“A thousand dollars says at least one of you made a joke about seeing me shower in the last ten minutes.”

Before I can even begin to think of a response, Noah shakes her head.

“Man, y’all are a tough crowd. At least in Gwinnett, they put a snake in my locker on the first day. As far as icebreakers go, that was pretty top notch. I’m deathly afraid of snakes. The scream was priceless.”

Nothing. I say nothing. All I can do is take in the fruity scent permeating my space. Like mangoes. Mangoes and honey.

“Look, if you don’t say anything, I’m just going to keep talking because I’m fucking nervous so could you like, put me out of my misery, dude?” she stage-whispers to me.

“Also, I realize this is like high school or whatever and I’m the dorky, freshman backup talking to QB1, so I’m probably breaking all sorts of unspoken protocols here, but where’s the bathroom? Or maybe a storage closet? I’m not picky.

“In rookie ball, I changed behind a janitor cart once.”

I’m not sure why it’s this question that snaps me out of my idiocracy, but it does. “There’s a private bathroom by the Skipper’s office. I wouldn’t change in the other one. You might see something you don’t want to.”

Noah smiles and her entire face changes. The difference is night and fucking day. Without her perma-scowl and don’t-fuck-with-me vibe, she looks younger, softer.

“You know what, Michael Foster Jr.?”

“Just Mikey,” I say, automatically.

“Mikey,” she corrects. “If I do nothing good today, I’m going to consider this a win.”

“Uh, finding the bathroom?”

She laughs, the sound like bells. The tinny kind that hang in clusters and ring when you open the door to one of those mom-and-pop shops. She snorts softly and I hate that it doesn’t annoy me like it would if she were literally anyone else.

As if horrified by her own laugh, she flushes, turning back toward her locker.

“Not throwing up on you,” she corrects, turning on her bare feet toward the direction of the bathroom, leaving me looking after her.