The Rookie's Mistake

Cole Weathers is supposed to be a September call-up. A cup of coffee. A name the fans learn next year. Then the regular starter gets scratched with a tight oblique, and Cole is standing in the tunnel at the home opener with forty-seven thousand people above him, rubbing the manufacturer's label on his glove until there is nothing left to fray. The first pitch sails high and inside and puts the batter in the dirt. The hitter gets up, dusts off his jersey, and gives Cole a look that says he doesn't belong here. In the clubhouse afterward he expects the manager. He gets Ruby Calderon instead: compact, dark curls escaping a ponytail that gave up hours ago, a scar above one eyebrow. She says one thing on her way out. *"Run with me tomorrow at dawn. No excuses."* Ruby runs the conditioning. She talks about energy plans and protein ratios and three weeks of adjustment, and Cole tells her he doesn't have three weeks. He has four weeks before they decide whether he goes back to Triple-A. So they run the Willamette at dawn, and she asks questions, and neither of them is especially good at answering. Ruby had a brother named Mateo who played shortstop and had a partial scholarship to Oregon State, and she has never told anybody the whole story about the car keys and the crash. Cole made a promise about seeing Dr. Chen. What he is not saying is how long it has been since he actually went. Then Ruby watches a courier she does not recognise walk a padded envelope down the players' hallway, follows him from behind a stack of pallets, and hears Ethan Slater's voice at the bullpen junction. Somebody has been moving equipment that should not move, and a vial of testosterone cypionate has ended up on team premises. Whatever is going on, Cole is standing close enough to it to be destroyed by it, and the only person he trusts to find out who wants him hurt is the woman who drags him out of bed before sunrise. A baseball romance about a blown start, a conditioning coach who does not say please, a therapy appointment somebody skipped, and a story that has to come out before somebody's career does. The romance is closed-door.