The Rookie's Obsession

Port Harbor spread out below the airplane window like a postcard someone had forgotten to mail — grey water, grey sky, green so dark it looked black in the overcast. Three hours ago Cole Maddox had been in Arizona, where the sun has teeth. Now he is in Washington, where the air smells of diesel and salt and something piney he cannot name, carrying a duffel with a duct-taped strap he keeps meaning to replace, walking out to an arrivals pickup zone where the silver sedan he was promised is not waiting. He is a draft pick with one season left to prove he did not peak in college. He has three messages from his mother and one from a nursing home number he does not recognise, and neither of those is the problem that is going to define his spring. Lena Hartwell is standing in the terminal in a Panthers hoodie, which means she is either a fan or front office, and either way Cole is not in the mood to make conversation. He should be. She is the person the organisation has put between him and everything that happens next, and she has a reason for being in Port Harbor that has nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with a name she has spent two years trying not to hear said out loud. What follows: a name that cannot be shaken, a face that has to be fixed, a dinner that was not a date, a review that lands personally, a defence nobody planned, a file that will not open, a bus ride that breaks two people open, and a screenshot that was never meant to be sent. *Jace Kostic has already targeted you once.* *I lied by omission. I let you think I was just someone with a past, not someone with —* Contemporary sports romance with a dark thread running under it: a minor-league pitcher fighting for one last roster spot, a woman whose past has followed her across a state line, a man neither of them can get the police to take seriously, explicit scenes, and a happy ending that both of them have to fight for.