Listen, Pitch (There's No Crying in Baseball 3)

Chapter 10If you’re going to get into trouble for hitting someone, you might as well hit them hard!

Rhys

“I can’t believe you walked out of the hospital!” my sister cried out. “How stupid can you be?”

I looked over at the woman who was driving me away from the hospital—of which I’d checked out AMA—against medical advice. She was mad, very mad. She also, I could tell, agreed with my sister.

“Renata,” I sighed. “I’m not doing this right now.”

She started to tear into me again, but I stopped her by saying, “And why aren’t you at the hospital right now?”

She shut up instantly.

“Exactly,” I said. “We’re both traumatized. How about you just thank your lucky stars that I’m alive and able to speak to you right now.”

I heard her sniffle, and immediately I felt terrible for saying anything at all.

“Ren,” I groaned. “I’m sorry.”

The first sob hitched her voice, and I closed my eyes as the pain from my sister’s tears washed over me.

“I thought you were d-dead,” she cried. “I’ve been crying for two weeks straight. I think I’m actually thankful that Mom wasn’t able to get there because she had to stop for stupid filming on the way.”

I winced.

Wouldn’t it be hilarious for everyone to know the only reason that I wasn’t dead two weeks ago was because my mother was a porn star and was still, at the age of fifty-four, making porn videos?

“That’s kind of disgusting to think she was doing that while I was in a coma,” I told her. “I had no clue that was what took her so long to get there with the DNR, though. I’m not sure what to say.”

That was when the woman at my side started to crack up.

I found myself smiling despite the fact that my mother was such a self-centered person.

“I gotta go.” I smiled and closed my eyes. “Oh, hey!” I blurted out before hanging up as a thought occurred to me.

“What?” She sniffled.

“You remember that favor I called you for in the middle of the night for a couple weeks back?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She sniffled again. “What about her?”

I grinned as I looked over at my new fake fiancée. “She’s the girl that’s been answering my phone while I’ve been in my…unconscious state.”

The sheer luck of her finding me where she volunteered…

She gasped. “You’re lying!”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am, I’m not.”

Renata squealed. “What did I tell you?”

I rolled my eyes.

Renata was a hopeless romantic. She felt that everyone had someone out there waiting just for them. Her husband and she had met much the same way, as if by fate.

They’d both been going to New York, and both of them had been kicked off their flights due to overbooking. They’d spent over eighteen hours in a tiny little airport in Texas as they waited for the next flight to arrive. During those eighteen hours, they’d fallen in love.

However, when the time came to leave for New York, they’d both went their separate ways. Only, two days later, they met each other again at the CI conference. Renata being the director, and the man being the person that was funding not only the conference but about eighteen scholarships for those with hearing disabilities. In fact, five years before, Renata had been a recipient of one of those scholarships.

And now I was showing my own signs of having my own fateful meeting with a woman. Twice.

Yeah, I was never going to hear the end of it.

“Love you, Ren-Ren.”

I didn’t usually use that nickname anymore and hadn’t since I was around eighteen.

However, it wasn’t every day that a man woke from a coma that he wasn’t supposed to wake from.

Tomorrow, I’d be the hardass everyone knew me as.

Today, I’d be the man that I’d always wanted to be but couldn’t.

Thanks, Dad.

“Love you, too, Rhy Rhy.”

With that, she hung up, and the car was left with a thick silence.

“Fiancée?” I asked, barely containing the laughter.

She winced. “You heard that?”

I huffed out a small laugh. “Sure did. Actually, I remember quite a bit from when I was asleep.”

Her brows rose.

“How much?”

I grinned and rolled my head to look at her. “All of it.”

“All of it?” she squeaked.

I nodded again. “Yep, all of it.”

She bit her lip. “You’re kidding, right?”

I cleared my throat. “I know that you have a niece that’s young, and your sister lives with you. I know that your sister thinks you’re stupid for going to see a dead man every day. I know that you volunteer three times a week, but over the past two weeks you’ve spent more time on my floor, and in my room, than you probably should have. I also heard my teammates calling you my fiancée, and you not correcting them.”

She blushed profusely, but I was nowhere near finished.

“I heard that you don’t like your boss because he likes to ‘accidentally’ grab your ass when you have heavy boxes in your hands. I also think you should look into quitting your job if you hate it as much as you do,” I continued. “Oh, and since you visit hospitals so much, I agree that you need a therapy dog to come with you.”