“You’re Coltrane Broussard, right?”
I eye him suspiciously. “Yeah.”
A grin breaks across his face. He reaches into his pocket. We all tense. He laughs. “Don’t worry. No cuffs. No gun.” He shows us a small notebook and a pen. “Be a good guy and give me your signature.”
Another agent ambles up. “Really, Connor?”
Agent Connor shrugs. “He’s going to be a Cy Young winner someday. This will be worth money.”
I scrawl my signature across the notebook while my friends snicker behind me. Agent Connor tucks the signature away and then pats my shoulder. “I’ve got high hopes for you, so that’s why I couldn’t let you take the swing at Jerima’s head. You can’t pitch from prison.”
Epilogue
Georgia
A few months later
It’s nice to have a camera on me and no one asking me about Jerima. I try not to fidget, not wanting Colt to know I’m both nervous and excited. This is a big freaking day for him. He decided not to go to college but to enter the draft now instead. He told me if he gets signed as a rookie to one of the teams that he’ll play in the minors for at least a year before they bring him up to the majors. But I’m thinking with the way that he’s been performing, it will be a lot sooner than that.
It’s so crazy how your fate as to where you’re going to live the next few years of your life is all up in the air. Not that it matters to me. I’ll go wherever Colt goes. That’s all that matters to me at this point. This man is my world. I still get so choked up about the team forfeiting a game so they could try to find me. I learned that day that while Colt loves baseball, he loves me more. He had been willing to give it all up for me, even though it would have cost him his career. I will forever be grateful for the day he came into my life.
“Hey, Booker. Is your dad going to hire a stripper if Colt gets picked in the first round?” Dean wiggles his eyebrows. Colt shakes his head.
“You just fucking had one after we won the championship game,” Booker responds back.
“What’s wrong with having another one? There is plenty of me to go around. Shelly is just trying to make a decent living.” I snort a laugh.
“It’s pointless. Colt doesn’t even stay to watch the strippers dance, so what’s the point?” Booker throws his hands up.
“That’s not true,” I butt in. “He always stays to watch me.” Even as I say the words, I know my cheeks are warming. Having hung out with all of them over the past few months I’ve gotten used to all of the sex talk that gets tossed around.
“Ohhhh!”
“Damn!”
“The hell?” Colt grunts from beside me. He lifts me out of my seat, putting me right into his lap.
“That's gross. I do not want to picture that. GG is like a sister to me.” Tucker’s face scrunches up.
“None of you fuckers better be trying to picture that shit.” He starts to stand, but I purposely wiggle in his lap, so he stays put. “You’re going to get it later,” he says low for only my ears to hear before he kisses me a couple times on the neck.
To think back on how much my life has changed from a year ago still blows my mind. I’ve grown and changed so much. After the FBI made their arrest, the news went wild with wanting to know the whole story. Thankfully, I don’t have to testify.
Between my journals and the information they received from my mother after she turned against Jerima, my testimony wasn’t needed. I wish I could say she changed and finally did something because she was trying to protect me, but I’d be lying to myself. She sold Jerima out to save herself. The good news is that they have more than enough to lock him away for the rest of his life.
My mom hasn't tried to reach out to me, and I hope that doesn't change. At least for now. She needs to get herself some serious help with how messed up her mind is. I decided to seek out the help of a therapist. I didn’t want this stuff to come back to haunt me later in life. I wanted to do as much as I could now to heal so that I could lead somewhat of a normal life. It was Grams’ idea for me to go, and of course she was right. It felt good to unload things that I didn’t know I’d pushed so far down.
A ding sounds, grabbing everyone’s attention to let us know that the cameras are all now live. You never know when they might pan to you. We just have to wait and hope his name gets called fairly early. I try to wiggle out of his lap, but he doesn’t let me go anywhere.