“Perfect. Finally, this thing with April. . . is it serious?”

“Why do you need to know?”

She sighed in exasperation. “Because I need to know how excited to be on a scale of one to ten that you actually might, for once in your life, have an honest-to-goodness adult relationship.” She clutched her heart. “A—gasp—girlfriend.”

I rolled my eyes, but I thought about it. “Seven.”

“Seven?”

“Maybe eight. I might even go as high as nine, but remember, it’s only been a week.”

“Romeo and Juliet met on a Sunday, got married on a Monday.”

“And weren’t they dead by Tuesday or something?”

“No,” she said, as if she were offended. Then she quietly added, “It was Thursday.”

Laughing, I shook my head. “We will not be getting married—or dying, I hope—anytime soon. But yes. I might have a girlfriend.”

She swooned, tipping back on her cement porch and shouting at the sky. “You hear that, Dad? It’s a miracle!”

Later, I took April out for dinner, and we talked more about everything—when I’d move, where I might look for houses, how much I’d miss Anna, what else I might do once I was back for good.

“What about owning a business?” she suggested. “A sporting goods store? A sports bar? Batting cages?”

“I don’t know anything about running a business.”

“Well, you could hire people to run it. You could be the silent investor. Or the loud investor, whatever you prefer. You could be as involved or as uninvolved as you chose.”

“I’ll give it some thought.” I took a bite of my New York Strip. “I talked to the lefty about his scholarship.”

“Did you get through to him?”

“Maybe? Hard to say for sure, but—”

“Excuse me for interrupting.”

Even before I saw who was standing there, I recognized the smooth feminine voice dripping insincerity—it was that fucking reporter, Bethany Bloomstar. “I told you before,” I said without looking up from my New York Strip. “No comment.”

“I was hoping maybe you’d changed your mind,” she said. “The piece is running tomorrow, and there’s still time for changes. Are you aware that some local parents have a problem with you coaching their children?”

“Fuck off.”

“And hello, April. We meet again,” she said.

I looked up. Again? What the hell?

“Yes. Hello.” April cleared her throat and met my eyes.

“You two have met?” I asked.

“Bethany and I had a meeting earlier in the week about having her wedding at Cloverleigh,” April said, her face flushed. “I didn’t realize you knew each other.”

“We don’t.” I glared at Bethany, knowing a game player when I saw one. “Are you even planning a wedding? Or were you just digging around for dirt on me?”

Bethany laughed and tossed her hair. “I’m practically engaged. And a woman needs to be prepared, right?”

“I’m sorry, I’m confused.” April shook her head. “You’re not really getting married? That meeting was just an excuse to talk to me?”

“Let’s just say I was killing two birds with one stone.”

“Let’s just say you get the fuck away from us right now,” I told her, keeping my tone under control. The last thing I wanted was a scene.

“Are you threatening me?” she asked loudly.

A murmur rippled through the crowd, and I knew without even looking around, there were now phone cameras aimed at us.

“Of course not,” April said, rising to her feet. “Why don’t we just—”

“Because I’m only trying to do my job!” Bethany whined. “And I don’t appreciate being threatened by a man!”

“Bethany, he’s not threatening you. He’s only—”

“Forget it, April.” I stood up, grabbed my wallet from my pocket, and threw more than enough cash to cover the meal on the table. “Let’s just go.”

Without another word, we grabbed our jackets and headed for the door, and just as I suspected, plenty of people took a video of us moving through the dining room toward the exit.

In the car on the ride home, April took my hand. “I’m sorry, Tyler.”

“Don’t be. Not your fault.”

“It really stinks that people are so rude to you. They don’t respect your privacy at all.”

I shrugged. “I can take it. I’m sorry your dinner was ruined.”

She was quiet for a minute. “I feel so stupid about that meeting. I honestly thought she was getting married and wanted her wedding at Cloverleigh. But she asked me to please be discreet because she didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Of course she didn’t.”

“God, I’m so gullible. She went on and on about all the good things she’d heard about me, how incredible the place was, how it was exactly what she wanted.”

I harrumphed. “What she wanted was dirt on me.”

She slapped her hands over her face. “She asked about Sadie’s wedding and said she was a huge fan of yours, so I answered all her questions. I’m so sorry, Tyler.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t. I should have known something was off when she kept trying to bring you up. But I swear, I never said anything personal.”

“She’s not worth getting upset over,” I said, even though I was upset too. When would people leave me the fuck alone? Now April was being dragged into this—and the last thing she needed was a reporter digging around in her life.

“Do you think she’ll try to make it sound like you threatened her in there?”

“Yeah. And she’ll have video to prove it,” I said sarcastically.

“How? You didn’t do anything except ask her to leave!”

“Doesn’t matter. People will see and hear what they want to.”

She took my hand again. “I’m sorry. People suck.”

I lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “Told you so. But let’s forget about her, okay? I’m still hungry, so what do you say we go back to my hotel room, order room service, and shut out the rest of the world tonight?”

“Perfect.”

Eighteen

April

I woke up in the middle of the night in an empty bed. The room was so dark I could hardly tell whether my eyes were open or shut. I heard a noise and sat up. “Tyler?”

“Go back to sleep.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

I reached over and switched on the bedside lamp. Blinking in the light, I saw Tyler standing as far back as possible from the full-length mirror, sideways, eyeing himself in the glass. He wore a pair of sweatpants, and his hands were balled at his chest, as if he were on the mound, about to throw a pitch.

And then he did it—went through his entire motion, from windup to release, and I gasped, expecting the mirror to shatter when the ball struck it.