Home Plate (Easton U Pirates 2)

I’d never been affected like that by anyone, not even the women I’d dated. To get hard just thinking about them? Nope. Not that I didn’t have good sex once I got in the mood, but nobody had really set my blood boiling in my veins like Maclain. The guy Gemma thought was cute had nothing on him, and that was the problem. I couldn’t shake the Pirates’ star pitcher, especially since I was the team’s first-string catcher.

It was probably good that I hadn’t laid eyes on Maclain in weeks, but it only amped up the tension to our inevitable meeting at the official start of the season, which was right around the corner.

“Okay, how about you?” Gemma asked, eyeing a couple of women choosing their balls on the racks. Ever since I’d broken up with my girlfriend, she had been laying it on thick, thinking I was moping about being single again. Little did she know, I was moping about something else altogether. “Eyes or hair?”

“I haven’t noticed.” I wasn’t lying. My girlfriend and I had been growing apart since last summer, but my feelings were getting so confusing that I’d decided to officially call it quits over the holidays. It wasn’t fair to her that I was constantly thinking about somebody else.

Gemma pouted as she adjusted her ponytail. “You’re no fun.”

“Maybe you’re just not asking the right questions.”

“Yeah?” She quirked an eyebrow, but before she could read too much into it, Mom called her over to assist with the soft-pretzels machine that had been mysteriously shutting off. She needed Gemma to crawl under the counter and adjust the cord. Like I said, this place needed sprucing up.

As I watched her skip off to help, I wondered what my family would think about my strange fascination with Maclain. We were tight, and got along well for the most part, but we were also a large Catholic family. Mom had less time nowadays to attend church, but she still clutched her cross necklace and sometimes referred to Jesus when stressed. I knew what she believed in her heart—that everyone deserved the same kindness and compassion—but would that extend to her own child if he told her he might be harboring sexual feelings toward his teammate? I thought the answer was yes, but you never know. I might’ve been way off base.

Maybe I should talk to Donovan about it. He’d apparently never been into guys before Kellan. Go figure. Now he was so into Kellan, and it seemed completely natural between them. Not that I ever thought it wasn’t, just never considered it for myself before.

Besides, I wasn’t into Maclain. He was a dick. I simply didn’t understand my body’s reaction to him. And since he hooked up all the time with different women—at one point I thought he might be dating Kellan’s roommate, Jasmine—I was banking on him not understanding the weirdness swirling around us either. Also, I could’ve been reading into it, in which case it might come back to bite me in the ass.

My phone buzzed with a text from Fischer, one of our team’s outfielders.

Get the text about the team meeting?

Yeah. Guess that means I’ll be seeing your ugly mug soon.

Not if I see yours first.

Fischer and I hung out sometimes, outside of baseball, and we always roomed together at away games. Sometimes I’d spout off to him about my frustration with Maclain, especially when we weren’t connecting well on the field.

“What the hell is that guy’s problem? Daddy issues?” Fischer would sometimes ask, making me cringe, not only because Maclain would be pissed if he heard us, but because I felt this strange protectiveness toward him, like only I was allowed to push his buttons. Ridiculous, I know.

I didn’t like it when the guys joked behind his back about his family—not so much because it wasn’t true, but because of how it affected his moods, or seemed to. What else would explain it? Honestly, it was fucking sad, and sometimes I thought he was just blowing off steam because he was suffering inside, but it wasn’t any of our business.

Then the shower incident happened and, Christ, that still haunted me. I had never in my life stood and watched another guy jerk off. It had made me so fucking hard, and then when he’d said my name? Mind. Blown. And whether he’d said it by accident or intentionally—or hell, I could’ve just been delusional that day—it still wasn’t something I could easily shake.

Every time I saw him afterward, he would either avert his eyes or be an absolute prick. And sometimes it would come to a head, like that time when he tried to wrestle me in the locker room after a hard loss, or near the end of the season when he’d given me a bloody nose at the bowling fundraiser. I was getting frustrated all over again just thinking about it. How…unreasonable he was. Here I was, trying to find some common ground, and he was all arrogant and irrational. What the fuck was his problem? Even Mom had started giving him the side-eye after that bowling stunt, though everyone knew it was an accident.