Out of His League. Cathryn Parry

      CHAPTER FIVE

      SHE WAS DEAD wrong about him.

      His pulse throbbing in his neck, Jon yanked open his SUV door and fumbled with his key in the darkness in an attempt to start his engine. He had the key lined up, but damn it, he couldn’t turn it in the ignition easily with his right finger in a splint.

      White-knight complex? Give me a break. At the moment, he couldn’t even help himself out of a paper bag.

      Jon laid his head against the seat back and let the motor quietly run. Condensation covered the windows. It was a cool night after a warm day. Lizzy could probably explain the scientific reasoning behind the fog that blocked him from seeing where the hell he was. In so many ways—education-wise, her doctor status, her aloofness to sports teams—she was out of his league. Made him feel inadequate. Tossed him around like nobody else did.

      He blew out a breath. He wasn’t an idiot. He was a self-aware person, smart enough to know that he’d been thrown for a loop over his cancer scare. That, and then the euphoria over learning he was cancer-free had sent him spinning, all in the course of a few hours.

      He’d wanted somebody to share his excitement and relief with, somebody genuine, a person who didn’t have any skin in the game with his career, and somebody who understood what he’d been going through. He’d thought that person had been her.

      Wrong. Lizzy wanted nothing to do with him, and she’d told him so from the moment he’d rung her doorbell. Maybe, for a brief time, he’d managed to change her mind. When Martinez had thrown his ninety-eight-mile-per-hour four-fingered fastball, low and in the corner, and had psyched out Bates into swinging too late, she had been hooked, and Jon had felt hope.

      But then...somehow her prejudices against him had kicked in, and the moment had gone to hell. He hadn’t managed the situation right at all. He’d blown it; he’d been the one to walk out in anger.

      No highs, no lows. The best fielding coach Jon had ever known had taught him that, early on during his rookie year in the minor leagues. Don’t get too far emotionally up, and don’t get too far emotionally down, the mantra meant, or you’ll ruin the game plan. If you wanted to win—at baseball and at life—then it was necessary to take everything as it came, with an even temper.

      He knew what he had to do. He felt calmer now. The windows were getting clearer.

      His stomach growled. He should have taken the pizza when he had the chance. Pride be damned, he was starving. Still, it wasn’t wise to go back up to Lizzy’s apartment to have her psychoanalyze him again, even if—in her defense—she was probably terrified over having him and Brandon inside her normally ordered, doctor world, and was making up theories in order to push him away.

      He was not drawn to helpless women. He never had been, and everyone knew it.

      He dug his phone from his pocket and scrolled the contact list to call up the number for Brooke. He would stay cool. His plan of action was clear: get your baseball life back on track.

      “Patch me through to Max,” Jon said to Brooke when she answered the phone. “I want a three-way call with all of us on board.”

      “What’s going on?” Max asked, his voice faint. “You’ve left me a few messages this evening.”

      “Yes, I have.” Jon’s SUV windows were clear now, so he pulled the Expedition out of the lot. “I need my contract signed for next season, and I need to get going on that as soon as possible.”

      “That’s...good. Brooke is sitting with me.” Max did sound weak. Why was that? “She was just about to send you a text message. Are you listening to radio sports talk?”

      “Ah...no. I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

      “Jon...turn on the radio...and listen...”

      “Now,” Brooke said insistently. Jon could hear the radio playing in the background. “Turn it to SPK FM.”

      “Call us back in a few minutes.” Max disconnected the call.

      This was not good. But Max had never steered him wrong. Jon eased up on the accelerator and slowed for a traffic light.

      While the light was red, Jon took a swig of water from the bottle in his cup holder and then fumbled with the radio dial to find SPK. He would subject himself to the negativity for just one minute, and then he’d turn it off.

      “...he’s a local guy. What are you ragging on the local guy for, the only pitcher who won his last two games?”

      Jon almost spit out his water. That was Francis! His brother had called into the radio show. On top of everything else, this had to happen?

      Jon turned the volume louder.

      “...come on,” the radio host was saying. “Local or not, you can’t argue with his numbers. They’re terrible.”

      Great, Jon thought. The host’s gravelly voice made him sound like a tough guy, but Jon had met him in person. He was short, overweight and wore thick glasses. In high school gym class, he likely would have been picked last, every time. Maybe Lizzy would know if there was psychology that drew guys like him to working on these sports-team criticism shows.

      “Farell just did not have a good season,” the second sports host said. “I’m sorry, but you can’t spin the numbers. Overall, he was a disappointment to Boston fans this year.”

      That particular host had played in the big leagues. Jon actually respected his opinion, and that comment hurt.

      “But he won his last two games! You guys aren’t even considering that. It shows you don’t know anything. You don’t know what’s happening in that clubhouse,” Francis said again, spouting off, and Jon knew he had to do something, because this would not end well.

      When the light turned green, he hooked a left turn and drove the mile out of his way through thickly settled neighborhoods to his father’s house—Jon’s boyhood home—where Francis still lived in a bottom-floor apartment. Jon had even helped build and convert it for him. And when Jon got there, he would physically hang up the phone on his well-meaning but hotheaded younger brother, before he could do any real damage to Jon’s name.

      Fortunately, the show cut Francis off. Fuel added to their fire, the two hosts segued to a discussion about how they would like to dump the entire Captains starting-pitching rotation, front to back, and start over with new recruiting, because they thought that the existing attitudes were poisonous to the rest of the clubhouse.

      Jon switched off the radio. Talk like this could spark a revolution. The cries and calls from fans and press—especially in a big-market team like Boston—did affect management’s personnel strategy, as much as everyone liked to think it didn’t.

      This was worse for him than his evening’s troubles with Lizzy. He fumbled with his phone and dialed Francis’s number. “Don’t you ever do that again,” he said when Francis picked up.

      “I hate those jerks,” Francis sputtered.

      “Then why do you listen to them?”

      “How can you not listen to them?” Francis shouted.

      “Because