No.

  I just wanted to fucking sulk and feel sorry for myself. And be jealous of everyone else who had already gotten what I was still trying to get. I couldn’t help it. I compared myself to other players, feeling like I was just as good as they were, if not better. If they had gotten drafted in their junior year, then why hadn’t I?

  But baseball wasn’t that easy, and I knew it. It wasn’t a black-and-white situation. There were unspoken rules and metrics and so much that went on behind the scenes that none of us could even fathom from the outside. We all knew that Major League scouts ranked us on five things—our running speed, arm strength, fielding and footwork, hitting, and hitting for power—even though no player ever had all five things going for him. The typical player excelled in three of the five categories ... sometimes only in two.

  I hated when I got this way, all stuck in my head and bitter. And although I knew that the negative thoughts would eventually fade, while I was in the thick of it, it was really hard to pull myself out of it. See, when you found something that made you feel valuable, the last thing you wanted to do was give it up without a fight.

  My phone rang, and I saw Hayley’s name flash on the screen. I debated on not answering it, but I was in such a fucked up mood anyway, I figured, Why not? And I instantly regretted it.

  She mentioned my friend from last night, and I knew immediately that she was talking about Sunny. My sweet fucking angel of stardust and light. Hayley sounded vindictive over the phone, and my protective instincts flared to life. Sunny needed to get the hell away from her.

  I had no idea what Hayley was truly capable of, but I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her. Maybe even less. So, when she basically threatened Sunny, I freaked out and sent her a text, telling her to get away from Hayley and leave her alone. It was the first thing that had come to my mind, and I’d sent it without a second thought. Sunny didn’t respond, but I saw that she’d read it and hoped like hell she’d listen to me.

  “Davies!” A loud knock on my bedroom door irritated me.

  “What?” I grumbled, refusing to move out of bed.

  “I’m coming in,” Dayton said before opening my door and hitting the light switch.

  Groaning, I covered my eyes with my hat, willing the light to turn itself back off.

  “You haven’t come out of your room in hours. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.”

  Slowly removing the hat, I gave him a head nod. “I’m not dead. Just a little tired.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, man. I saw you talking to Coach Carter. You’ve been in a bad mood ever since. What happened?”

  I pushed to a sitting position, pressing my back against the wall. “Nothing. I just asked him a few questions, and he gave me the answers.”

  Dayton’s face pulled together, and his eyes narrowed. “I know you’re stressed because it’s our senior year. Cole was the same way, remember? And look what happened for him.”

  I’d thought about Cole Anders a thousand times since I’d landed at the airport for my last year here. I remembered how shaken up he had been about having to come back to the field as a senior. At the time, I’d thought he was overreacting ... making a mountain out of a molehill, so to speak, but now, I completely understood how he’d felt.

  “You think I’m not worried?” Dayton asked, his expression as sour as this conversation was turning.

  A sick laugh ripped from my throat. “You’re a pitcher. You’ll be fine.”

  Major League teams drafted guys like him the most because they needed a lot of pitching on their staff at every level. My being a corner infielder made my chances even slimmer. Maybe a team only had an opening for one first baseman. Or maybe they thought someone who played second base would be a better fit at first instead because he had a stronger, more powerful bat. I had a different set of rules to abide by in order to be deemed “good enough for scouts to watch and follow,” all because I played first base.

  “Dude, come on,” Dayton disagreed, knowing that his getting drafted wasn’t a guarantee the way I was acting like it was.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I shot him a look. “I’m just freaking out and feeling bad for myself.”

  “I get it. Trust me, I do.” He looked around the room like he was seeing it for the first time. “But you’re a good player, Mac. And you keep getting better every season.”

  I perked up a little, gripping his words and holding on to them like a life preserver. “You really think so?”

  “Yes! Every year, you get stronger, faster, and more confident on the field, and it shows.”

  He hadn’t mentioned my batting. And if we were being honest, the plate was where I tended to struggle the most—and not because I wasn’t a great hitter. I just wasn’t the guy who was going to slap out ten home runs a season. Or any home runs, honestly. I got on base a lot, rarely struck out, walked often, but if you needed me to hit for power, it wasn’t going to happen. And that wasn’t necessarily a good thing even though my stats looked great on paper.

  Swallowing hard, I gave him a smile. “Thanks, Dayton. I needed that.”

  Waving his fingers toward himself, he closed his eyes and grinned. “Now, give me some.”

  “You’re going to be our Friday night starter this year. You don’t need shit. You’re gonna kill it,” I said, and I meant it.

  Dayton had been working with Coach Carter to hit his spots and be as accurate as possible with his pitches. He was hard as hell to hit when he was on, and I knew that once he got drafted, he would just keep getting better.

  “Thanks. Now, get out here and eat dinner with your boys. Matt made some mac-and-cheese thing that’s actually pretty good.” He gave his stomach a pat. “Kinda nice that he can cook.”

  My stomach growled in response. “No shit? I’ll be right out.” Dayton turned to leave but not before I stopped him. “Thanks for coming in and checking on me.”

  “You’d do the same for me,” he said.

  And I knew that; of course I would. Always. We were teammates, brothers, two seniors fighting for our last chance to get it right, knowing that all we could continue doing was give baseball our hearts and hope like hell she didn’t break them.

  I woke up the next morning, feeling a hundred times better. Sometimes, a good sleep was all I needed to get out of a shit mood. As I stretched, I reached for my phone, realizing that Sunny had never texted or called me last night and I’d completely forgotten to call her, like I’d promised. I’d been too busy wallowing in my own self-induced misery to think about anything other than myself. She was probably pissed. I planned on finding her today, hearing exactly what had happened between her and Hayley, and then apologizing to her ... again. I had a feeling that I was going to find myself fluent in groveling whenever it came to this girl.

  After a hearty breakfast, the guys and I all piled into one car and drove toward campus. I hustled toward my building up in the distance. I still had ten minutes before class started, but I knew that wasn’t always enough time when you were a baseball player at Fullton. We got pulled in all different directions, and what should be a quick walk across campus never was. It could turn into a fifteen-minute flirting and picture-taking session without warning.

  With my head down, I yanked open the door to the four-story building and walked inside. Taking the stairs two at a time, I ignored the girls grabbing my arms and calling my name as I walked toward the right classroom number on the third floor. Spotting it up ahead, I slowed my pace and waltzed through the open double doors. Fullton didn’t have a lot of theater-type lecture classes, but this was one of them. There were about two hundred seats that framed a small curved stage up front. An actual real-life stage. I’d never been in a classroom like this in all my years here.

  As I looked around, I noticed a few girls staring in my direction, smiling and smacking their lips together; some were even pointing their phones at me. Not wanting to give anyone the wrong idea by sitting next to them, listening to them flirt the entire time, I’d been changing my seat each time I came to class. I breathed out a sigh of relief when I noticed one of the guys from the basketball team sitting in the far corner of the room. I made my way toward him, and he tossed his hand in the air when he noticed me approaching.

  “Mac, my man. Thank God. How are you?” he asked, and I slapped his hand before giving him a knuckle bump and sitting down next to him.

  “I’m good. How are you, Harvey?” I asked, calling him by his last name.

  “I was worried no one I knew would be in this class. You see the size of this thing?” He sounded overwhelmed and a little nervous.

  “Did you just transfer in?” I asked because he hadn’t been in here until now. Or at least, I hadn’t seen him before.

  “Yeah. Today’s the last day to drop and add. Another class of mine was not going to work if I wanted to play this season,” he explained, and I nodded along in complete understanding.

  “Glad you’re in here. Let me know if you need any help,” I offered, and he actually looked a little relieved.

  “Thanks. How does the professor teach in this thing?” he asked, still clearly bewildered by the size of the class. “Do they shout the entire time?”

  “She wears a mic,” I explained.

  Harvey leaned his head back and blew out a breath toward the tiled ceiling. “Ohh, that makes sense.”

  “Excuse me.”

  The familiar voice hit my ear like a two-by-four to the face, and I turned to see Hayley the devil standing there, staring down at the two of us.

  You have got to be shitting me.

  “Can I sit there?” She pointed at the open seat next to me, and before I could tell Harvey that I’d kill him if he said yes, he was standing up and letting her pass, staring at her ass as she walked by.

  “Sure you don’t want to sit here?” He patted his lap, and she gave him the world’s fakest grin.

  “I’m sure, basketball player. Baseball’s more my thing anyway.” She bit her lip, and Harvey clutched his heart like he was in pain.

  “You wound me with your words,” he said.

  I shot him a look that should have killed him on the spot but didn’t. He obviously didn’t know my and Hayley’s history, or he wouldn’t have gotten up for her.

  “There are, like, a hundred other seats in this class. Why can’t you sit in one of them?” I snarled toward her as she sat down. Shifting my body away from hers, I practically leaned on Harvey’s shoulder like a love-struck teenage girl.

  “Damn, bro.” Harvey laughed under his breath and gave me a slight shove.

  “I want to sit near you.” She tried to sound sexy, but she was fucking annoying. A point I’d thought I’d made clear the night of the party.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” I said rudely. “I want nothing to do with you.”

  Everything I’d told her the other night wasn’t because I was drunk or for any other reason she might have concocted in her head. I’d meant every word I said.

  “Come on, Mac,” she said before putting her hand on my shoulder, and I glared at it. “Don’t be like that. I just got into this class, and imagine my surprise, seeing you here. It’s fate.”

  “It’s fucked,” I spat. “Sorry, man.” I sat up straight and looked at Harvey before rising to my feet. “I gotta move since Satan here won’t.” I thumbed toward Hayley, who sat there with a shocked look on her face as I gathered my shit.

  I refused to sit next to her for a single minute, let alone an entire sixty-minute class.

  “Wait up,” Harvey said as he grabbed his backpack and followed me down to the middle of the auditorium, leaving Hayley alone in the back, where she could drown in her own misery for all I cared. “What was that all about? She’s hot as fuck.”

  “So’s the Devil, and I’m pretty sure they’re related,” I said.

  He busted out laughing right as our professor entered the lecture hall.

  “What’s so funny? Anything you’d care to share with the class?” the professor asked through the microphone on her jacket, her voice booming throughout the theater.

  Harvey started choking, smacking his chest, while I sat there, mortified that the teacher had called him out like that.

  “Okay then, let’s get to it,” the professor said, moving on, and Harvey and I were quiet through the rest of the class.

  Ex from Hell

  Sunny

  Mac never called me last night, like he’d promised. And when I never responded to his shitty text, demanding I stay away from Hayley, he never sent another. I’d spent the whole night trying not to be mad at him, but I was. I felt stupid for falling for his bullshit again.

  And now, here I was, standing twenty feet away from Mac and Hayley, watching them with equal parts interest and fire-breathing jealousy. And I wasn’t the only one. The two of them together had created a bit of a scene. I noticed quite a few people paying attention to their interaction, watching their every move like they were afraid to miss something good.

  I had been walking from class toward the commissary for some coffee when Mac’s figure caught my eye. I knew it was him from just a glance, and I planned on continuing my quest for caffeine, but when I saw Hayley with him, I stopped walking and started watching. For such a big campus, it felt like some sort of sick sign for me to run into them like this. Almost like the universe had wanted me to see them together. I fought the urge to leave but felt rooted in place even though the scene was making me sick.

  When her hands gripped his arms, I wanted to run over there and rip them off. My breath caught in my throat when Mac did it for me. He pulled out of her grasp and looked down at his arms like they were on fire. He flailed around like an animated figure, pointing and shaking his head at her. And each time she took a step toward him, he took a step back.

  “Told you she had a plan.” Rocky suddenly appeared at my side, eating a banana and watching my nightmare unfold before our eyes.

  “She makes me ragey,” I said, balling my hands into fists, wondering how Rocky had found me in the first place. This morning, I seemed to be running into everyone I normally never saw.

  “She has that effect,” she said before finishing off the fruit and holding the peel with two fingers. “You should go over there.”

  I whipped my head in her direction. “What? No way. Why would I do that?”

  Rocky shrugged. “ ’Cause it would be fun to watch you put her in her place.”

  After giving her a playful shove, I second-guessed myself the second she turned toward me with an unsure look in her eyes. I threw both hands in the air. “Sorry. I was just playing. Don’t shove me back,” I said, thinking that she might send me into the next zip code.

  She laughed and was about to speak when a loud bang echoed out of nowhere, quickly followed by another. Rocky instantly fell to the ground, her hands covering the back of her head.

  What the hell?

  I frantically looked around, noticing everyone else in various states of alarm. Some people had started running, and others were searching for the location of the sound, seemingly frozen in place.

  I was one of them. Frozen yet searching.

  “Rocky?” I looked down at her and realized that she was shaking like crazy. “Rocky, are you okay?” I got nervous, wondering if she had gotten hurt somehow and I just hadn’t seen it.

  She looked up at me, her eyes glossed over with unshed tears as she extended her hand. “What was that?”

  Checking around once more, I saw that someone had kicked over a metal construction barricade. It was lying on its side, still reverberating from the impact. Reaching for her hand, I pointed in the direction of the downed piece of equipment just as two guys ran up to it and tried to get it to stand back upright.

  She wiped at her eyes and tried to control her erratic breathing. “I thought it was a gun,” she said.

  I realized in that moment that it had actually sounded like one. We unfortunately lived during a time when someone bringing a gun to school was an absolute possibility even if you never thought it would happen to you.

  “Sunny? Rocky?” It was Mac. He yelled our names as he jogged across the pavement toward us. “That scared the shit out of me. Are you two all right?”

  “It was just a barricade,” I said, trying to sound like it was no big deal. “You can go back to your ex-girlfriend.” I waved a hand toward Hayley, who was staring intently in our direction, looking like someone had pissed in her Cheerios.

  “Fuck Hayley,” Mac said sharply. “Rocky, you good?”

  He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to her feet. She was unsteady, and he instinctively held her tightly against his body, basically holding her up as she continued to tremble uncontrollably against him.

  She shook her head, her breaths catching. “Do you think one of you could take me home?” She started crying, clearly shaken up.

  Before this moment, I wouldn’t have believed that Rocky was scared of anything.

  “I don’t have a car,” Mac said before I could respond.

  “You ... can drive ... mine,” Rocky offered in between sobs.

  “I’ve got her,” I interrupted. “Go back to whatever it was you were doing, Mac. I can handle this,” I snapped at him even though he had shown everyone watching that he didn’t want Hayley. Apparently, I was angry anyway.

  I pulled Rocky out of his grip and took her in mine. Before I could lead her away, a hand was on my shoulder, stopping me.

  “Sunny, there’s nothing going on between me and Satan,” he said, and I would have laughed if I wasn’t so worried about Rocky’s emotional state.

  “I need to go,” I insisted, gripping Rocky tighter than I meant to, and she whispered, “Ow,” under her breath.

  “I’m coming with you,” Mac said, and before I could argue, he had Rocky in his arms again. “Which way’s your car, beautiful?” He was trying to distract her, and I thought it was working until she pointed her finger toward the parking lot and I noticed how violently her hand was shaking.

  We walked together, the three of us in relative silence. Mac and I shared confused looks as the tears fell from Rocky’s eyes without stopping. We searched for her car. She pressed the key fob, and we listened for the sound of her horn.