In It to Win It Book 2

Noah

Holy hell in a cast iron skillet.

More gift baskets than hotel space. Armored SUVs. A sold-out ballpark. The fanciest fucking clubhouse I’ve ever stepped foot in.

And I’m drooling—literally drooling—over a man.

And not even a regular man. A solid-framed, six-foot-four, two-hundred-twenty-pound, switch-hitting, thirty-one-year-old, four-hundred-million-dollar machine. Who also happens to be my teammate.

I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. Not after I basically tripped over both feet to run away from him at check-in back in February when he introduced himself to me and this morning.

But my nerves have me bouncing like a crack fiend on a trampoline, and once the word vomit started, it kept coming. And coming. And not stopping.

I splash cold water on my face to calm the heat in my cheeks. Get your shit together, Allen. Now!

I look down at the front of my sliders. “Now you choose to make a reappearance, you traitorous whore?” I whisper-scold the place between my legs. “On the biggest day of our life?”

Been awhile is a gross understatement. I haven’t been laid since the Obama administration.

Senior prom to be exact. Just a month before my boyfriend of two years dumped me after graduating without an offer to a single school and was butthurt that I’d already signed to ‘Bama State.

The first and last time I dated another baseball player.

Me and my hoohah? We have rules. And at the very top of that list—absolutely zero ballplayers. In fact, I’ve managed to steer clear of athletes of every kind. My hormones too.

Until spring training.

I mean, sure. Objectively speaking, from a 4K television, there’s no denying Michael Foster Jr. is sexy in all caps.

Brown skin, dark curly hair, a gloriously muscular body, and tawny brown eyes that have probably made more than a few pairs of panties drop for him on the spot.

And that smile? Jesus. I don’t know if Colgate does sponsorships, but they should give him one—their stock would skyrocket.

Nonetheless, I’ve never been a looks kind of girl. I’ve seen plenty of pretty in my lifetime when it comes to men. But it’s usually accompanied by its uglier step-sister, stupidity.

One thing about being the only girl on a sports team: I’ve learned guys are like a McDonald’s pick two.

If he’s not a misogynist ass, his hygiene sucks.

If he’s hot, his IQ is lower than his body count.

If he’s a nice guy, he’s probably a cheater.

A man with three or more acceptable attributes as a contributing member of society might as well be a unicorn because I sure have never met one.

Nor have I ever in my twenty-four-year history caught myself slipping for one of these testoster-drones.

But five seconds in front of my favorite—active—player of all time and suddenly my lady parts are wondering, Hey? What if we maybe, like, ignored rule one? Like one time? For the sake of an orgasm?

“No. No way,” I tell the mirror version of myself in the bathroom before the thought can even fully form. “You are a professional. You’re one of them. You just have a vagina. But now is not the time for the vagina. Now is the time for baseball. You hear me?”

Mirror me doesn’t respond. My smug inner consciousness does.

Sure. Keep telling yourself that.

An abrupt knock on the door nearly makes me jump. “Er, occupied!” My voice cracks with nerves.

“Noah, it’s Trevor Vancaretti. Are you decent?”

“Oh, hey, Skip,” I say, after pulling up and fastening my pants and wrenching open the door.

My sixty-plus manager stands in the hall. For an ex-infielder from the seventies, he’s in pretty great shape for his age. He offers me a polite smile.

“Sorry about the accommodations. The, uh, MLB doesn’t really have a protocol for this sorta thing yet, but I got a clubbie clearing out an old office for you. You’re welcome to it.”

“Oh. That sounds fine, thank you.” I don’t tell him I’d change in a dumpster if it meant I didn’t have to see any swinging dicks, or worse, go back out there and talk to Mikey.

“Alright, well I’ll, uh, leave you to it.”

“Hey, Skip?” I stop him, unsure if I should, but asking anyway. “You were a second baseman, right?”

He tilts his chin and I know he must’ve been incredibly handsome back in his day. Even if he did play for New York.

“Got any advice?”

He snorts. “Yeah. If you’re gonna hurl, do it now.”

I nod, feeling my stomach turn over for the umpteenth time today. It’s almost as familiar as bourbon and cedarwood, and ironically enough, I’d choose these butterflies over the kind I was battling mere minutes ago, shooting off at the mouth again.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Mikey—I’m going to have to remember to call him that in my head—is less than impressed with me. And why shouldn’t he be?

I’m a babbling idiot with a brain that puts numbers in complex patterns faster than it comprehends social cues. How am I supposed to survive five minutes out there, let alone the few months I’m “guaranteed”—God willing I don’t suck, that is.

I suck in a breath, noticing Skip’s already left me alone. I close the bathroom door, gripping the edge of the sink.

I am playing in a major league game today.

I’m not sure how I do it, or if I’ve just gotten really good at pretending. But I wall off everything tied to emotion, breaking my momentary respite from anything less than supreme focus.

The facts stand no matter how I feel about them or how many times I lie to myself.

Competition is an insulting word to a man with a career WAR in the double digits, five times as many home runs last season alone, and a defensive instinct I would commit literal, actual murder for.

I’m not Mikey’s fucking competition. I’m a social placeholder to the face of a billion-dollar ball club.

And even still, I don’t care. Because I’m here. That’s what matters.

Today is the only thing that matters.