I eked out a win in Boston, but barely.

It came two days after my night in the backseat of the car with Evie, and it took every ounce of my focus to refrain from thinking about her. I had a precise physical regimen in the four days leading up to a start, and that wasn’t hard to follow.

But the mental game this week was a different story.

It was harder, more work to keep my mind on task, and I blamed it on the ritual. There were a ton of official rules in baseball, but a million more if you factored in all our pre-game rituals and superstitions. Some made more sense than others, but there was no questioning anyone’s routine. We all had our rules, which meant we respected everyone else’s.

For instance, Ty took the same route to work every day, even if it meant traffic up the ass. Watt had to have exactly twelve broccoli florets in his daily pregame meal. Brewer listened to the same Kendrick song at the same volume at the same time before every game, and Diaz tapped his heart twice with his right hand before every at-bat.

Everyone had their one rule and I was no different. In fact, I shared the same one as most pitchers on the team, and that was no sex on game day.

No jerking off either.

And while the no sex part was clearly no issue of late, the lack of the latter had me hurting today. I’d relied heavily on that relief the past few days. I needed it to get her off my mind. I hadn’t talked to her since that night in the back of my car, but that sure as shit didn’t mean I wasn’t thinking of her.

I was. Constantly.

And it wasn’t just the fact that I got to watch her come, it was the fact that she tested me. She tried my patience, got the better of me and she looked good doing it. I didn’t know if I loved it or hated it. All I knew was that it brought me right back to the cycle of doubting the contract, fighting the Nike brain, and reminding myself why I was doing this in the first place.

The game, this team, and a championship – my first one in a ten-year career.

I managed to get her out of my head the second my cleats hit the mound, and though I only pitched six innings, I got the win. So what little focus I had still managed to work.

But the case would definitely change once we touched down in Florida.

* * *

Contrary to what a few of my teammates liked to think, not every female baseball fan was a groupie. But the ones who hung in the lobby of our hotel after our games, when it was close to midnight?

Definitely groupies.

They had their tits pushed most of the way out of their kid sized Empires shirts, which were always cut down the middle, damned near to the navel, and on a regular basis, they didn’t tempt me. Aside from the fact that they were the type to prick holes in condoms, they had about a minute to make an impression on any one of us as we made our ways to the elevators, and the frantic desperation wasn’t exactly a turn-on.

It was usually the rookies who succumbed to their temptation. Even Ty didn’t go for these girls.

But just looking at that amount of skin had me feeling tight as I rode up to my room, and it only got worse when I got in and checked my texts.

A link from some gossip site followed. I texted him back in a heat before even clicking.

I left the conversation at that and clicked on the link.

And shortly after, I was on my bed, dick out of my sweats and jerking off to the pictures of Evie walking around Manhattan in a black V-neck T-shirt and ripped denim shorts.

There was a particularly scummy shot of her through the window of a store, innocently bending over in those shorts to pick up a shopping bag. It made my blood fucking boil and at the same goddamned time, I was jacking my cock even harder because just the slightest glimpse of her denim-covered pussy was enough to send me reeling back to that car. It brought me right back to my fingers rubbing over her clit. My cock twitching at all those sexy, breathy moans escaping her lips.

And I fucking hated myself for it.

Not because I was getting off to the sight of Evie, but because I was using paparazzi photos to do it.

Considering what cocksuckers they were to me, I hated supporting them in any way. For four straight years now, I’d avoided all sports and entertainment media. Instagram was the plague. Twitter was straight up ebola. I didn’t read headlines let alone articles about myself, and I never Googled my own name. I used to read the New York Times sports section every morning, but now I didn’t do even that.

I was staunchly against media consumption of any kind because all the lies and misconceptions I saw out there generally made me feel fucking homicidal. Though of course, I contributed to a ton of these mistruths. I didn’t clear up certain controversial aspects of my past because I didn’t even fucking want to touch it. I didn’t want to open up my personal life to even more scrutiny and questions, so I kept my mouth shut, let them write their bullshit and pretty much avoided the Internet.

I was on a four-year streak of that.

But I broke it in Tampa by Googling Evie’s name for the rest of the trip, just to see if new pictures came up. When none did, I Googled both her name and mine. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to see just how close the paparazzi dared to get to her, or if I just wanted more material to jerk to. I told myself it wasn’t the latter but it didn’t matter either way – this was a risky game for me, and it really wasn’t surprising when I eventually stumbled over the exact kind of headline I lived to avoid.

EVEN AFTER FALLOUT, LILLARDS STILL CHEER FOR THEIR HOMETOWN KID.

Fucking hell.

I didn’t have to click to know what that article was about.

Tim and his family still cheered for me. I knew that much. He decked his son out in Maddox gear just to watch the game at home. He’d dared to send me pictures once before I deleted my old email address and made a new one.

Long story short, I’d fucked myself for my start against Baltimore at home.

A day later, I was still thinking of the headline, and I was pissed at myself – at my lack of self-control during that Googling spree. I was focused more on how much I’d already fucked up than how I could fix it, and I had a feeling that was why I was paying so much attention to stupid shit like the sound of Watt’s teeth hitting his fork with every damned bite of his food, or the smell of Brewer’s stupid fucking chicken.

It reminded me of the Lillard house.

Specifically, it reminded me of the day Mom found out about Dad and the neighbor, Carly. Or Carrie. I remembered her perfume, but not her name. Mom found out, left the house, but didn’t tell me – she was just a no-show to pick me up from practice.

That particular day, I remembered staying awhile at the ballpark and talking to the older kid who worked the snack bar. He was nice, and I wanted to wait till after dinner to call the Lillards. The last time Mom didn’t pick me up, I called them and they drove back to get me in the middle of dinner. Up and left everything. I remembered going back to their house and watching Tim and his little sister bring an extra chair over while Pattie fixed me a plate of that amazing buttermilk fried chicken she was famous for – that Tim had been going on and on about even before the game.

It was his favorite and I felt like shit when I excitedly bit in and it was cold. It was a big day in the Lillard house when Pattie made the chicken. It wasn’t the same reheated, and I was the reason it went cold.

The worst part was how Tim and Pattie just smiled and talked about my great game while eating their cold chicken. They didn’t try to make me feel bad, and that made me feel worse.

So I waited till after dinner to call and when the Lillards brought me back to their house, Pattie reheated some leftovers while I played Nintendo with Tim in the den. Like she would so many more times in the future, she dragged the extra twin mattress up from the basement and made it up all nice with fresh sheets and a memory foam pillow from her own bed. “Don’t worry, I have two nice pillows and only one head!” she reassured me.

Neither she nor Tim ever acted like I was a pain or a burden, and it was such a stark difference from Dad, who never let me forget how much Little League fees were. I memorized all the lower range prices for bats, gloves and cleats by the time I was nine.

So the Lillards were a breath of fresh air. They were my only sense of comfort.

I wound up staying with them a lot over the years. Definitely that week that my mom moved out, and any other time she threatened to move out for good. I bounced back and forth between the Lillards and my house so much it was confusing, and by the time I was in high school, I just lived there some weeks, whether Mom was home or not.

Baseball was becoming a bigger responsibility in my life – I was getting enough serious attention now that Dad came to all my games and bragged about the cars he’d buy with my first paycheck – and I needed a break from the craziness. Dad could get intense about my career, even when I was just trying to relax at home, and I needed a quiet place I liked being at with people I enjoyed being around when I wasn’t playing or practicing.

And that was the Lillard house with its fresh buttermilk fried chicken every Thursday.

“Hey. You good?” Diaz frowned when I got up abruptly to leave the room. I gave him a thumbs on my way to the lounge, where I could hopefully get away from the smell of Brewer’s food. I did, but at this point, I couldn’t get out of my head.

Something had tipped the scale, and I’d gone from focused to overwhelmed in just a matter of seconds. I was thinking about things I didn’t normally think about. I had a constant barrier up to keep these particular memories out, but now they were seeping through, and the idea that there were actual cracks in my mental game drove me fucking nuts.

I wasn’t myself right now, and I blamed it all on Evie.

Irrational, probably, but oh well. I needed to blame someone and she made it easy, especially with the text she’d just sent after successfully leaving me alone for almost a full week.

I clenched my jaw as I read it then tossed my phone aside.

Jesus.

This was becoming much more of an effort than I’d imagined, and if I had my choice, I would’ve already gotten rid of Evie by now. She was too much of a distraction. But I couldn’t just ghost her. She was throwing me off my game, yet she was apparently necessary for my career.

She was both my problem and my solution, and I was pretty sure I hated her for it.

I was also sure that I was either going to pitch a great game today or a fucking disaster – I wasn’t sure which. All I knew was that no matter what happened, I’d be going home livid because I could already feel that I needed to be alone tonight.

But tonight was the night she was moving in.