IT’S FUNNY WHAT YOU LEARN at two in the morning when you’re bored, sober, and a little uneasy. It’s a trifecta I’m just getting acquainted with. I might be sober a lot during the season, but boredom and anxiety aren’t familiar. Or fun.

Around. Around. Around.

I’ve tried to watch one blade of the ceiling fan, focusing on it and trying to block out the other four as they whiz above me. Over the last thirty minutes, I’ve learned it’s impossible to count the number of rotations in a minute when it’s set at medium speed. I’ve also learned that Skittles make violent projectiles when launched into the blades of the fan, regardless of the setting.

I already knew that though. That was a painful lesson learned at a party a few years back.

Rubbing my shoulder, I see the slight purple indent of the candy against the white paint of my bedroom. It will be gone tomorrow. Rita, the housekeeper, is thorough like that.

I snatch the remote off the bedside table and flip the fan off. It slows, shuddering just a bit before the spinning comes to a halt. Immediately, I remember why I turned it on in the first place: it’s the silence that kills me. It’s the quiet that allows all of the worries to wage a sneak attack against me. It slams into me from every direction since my meeting with the Arrows’ General Manager after my therapy appointment today.

“It’s still too early to know anything, Lincoln. All I can tell you is that we want you back in an Arrows uniform next season,” Billy Marshall, the GM, says.

“I want that too. This is my city,” I gulp, purposefully not looking at the report on the table between us.

“Let’s work through the rehab and see how it goes. You know it’s not up to me. It’s up to the owners. I’ll have a say, and you know I’m pulling for you. Hell, we all are. You’re a franchise player, Landry. But you know, at the end of the day, this is business.”

“Ugh.” I lift myself off the bed. My back muscles strain from the stress of the day, little sleep, and more than a little pain. Glancing in the mirror, my voice cackles across the room at my reflection. “You’re a mess, Linc. But your abs look awesome.”

Inch by inch, a smile slides across my face as I envision other awesome-looking things. Namely, Danielle Ashley in her pale pink dress.

“Fuck me,” I mutter, thinking back to the sweet bow of her hip. It’s amazing that I have it memorized without touching her. Just like that, I’m hard. Again.

I can’t with this girl. She’s gorgeous with her olive skin and dark, exotic eyes. Full lips that nearly reach her high cheekbones when she kills me with that smile. Her black hair was piled on top of her head with curls falling out of the haphazard mass. Sexy. As. Fuck.

Then she goes and banters with me . . . and doesn’t offer her number. I mean, she wants me. Of course she does. She saw me and she knows who I am—let’s be real. It’s nagged at me all day that she didn’t slip me her business card or offer the availability of when she’ll be in the office so I can “accidentally” stop by again. All I can figure is that the call coming in was important. Super important. Earth-shatteringly important.

Scratching my head, my own hair sticking up in every direction, I try to remember if this has ever happened to me. I go through the list of women I’ve encountered recently: the redhead that gave me the coffee in the drive-thru, the chick that keeps sending me naked selfies that I met in a bar on South Padre Island the week after our season ended, and Blondie today. I could’ve had her number. Hell, I could’ve had her in the fucking elevator. So why not Dani?

Why do I care?

Moseying down the hallway towards the kitchen, I take in the pictures hanging on the walls of the hallway. Pictures of me in different stadiums, with my brothers, my parents, pictures with friends that I can’t even remember the last time I talked to. By all indications, I should feel at home here. This is my house, after all. But . . . I don’t.

I have no idea who hung those pictures. I don’t know what happened to the guys in the pictures I’m with from Savannah. As I peek into a bedroom as I exit the hallway, I sure as hell don’t know what’s in all the boxes stacked against the wall.

Flicking on the kitchen light, the marble countertops sparkle, the bowl of fruit on the island looks perfect. It’s all so . . . odd, like it’s some kind of photoshoot and I’m just wandering around on stage, waiting for someone to whip out a camera and ask me to smile. It’s been this way since I threw the ball to home plate in the last game of the season and heard the rip in my shoulder. The thing is, I don’t know what it is I’m feeling, exactly.

A general unease sits atop me now and I can’t relax. Not like I used to. There’s a dread, maybe a fog, that sort of lingers in the back of my mind. I guess that part of me used to be filled with activity. Usually I’d be on someone’s boat right now, partying and living up the offseason. Now I’m home, for lack of a better word, watching home remodeling shows because my shoulder is fucked. There are no getaways, no quick trips to Mexico, no social events to speak of. Just me and the quiet.

The worst part of it is that I don’t really have a desire to be with the guys. For the first time, it’s unappealing. So unappealing, in fact, that I turned off my work phone, as I call it, and am unreachable to anyone but team management, doctors, and my family. Why take calls from my friends when I know what they want: booze. Boobs. Banal conversation. I’ve been there and done it. Hell, I wrote a few damn chapters in the book on how to do it. But it just feels like those chapters need nothing added to them, and that’s scary as fuck.

Maybe I’m just depressed.

Pulling a box of pizza out of the refrigerator from a couple of days ago, I remove a piece and bring it to my lips. As soon as it hits, my stomach rolls and I toss the slice back in, making the box bounce on the counter. I glance at the clock. It’s late. Really late. There’s only one person awake at this hour that’s acceptable to call. I head into the living room, grab my phone, and listen to it ring.

“Hey, Linc,” Graham answers, his voice as clear as it would’ve been if it was two in the afternoon.

“Do you ever sleep?”

“Good thing I don’t or your ass would’ve just woken me up.”

“Good point,” I chuckle, flopping back on the sofa. “What’s happening in Savannah?”

He blows out a long, deep breath. “Behind at work, actually. My secretary decided that now’s the time to go find love or whatever she’s calling it and now I’m suffering the consequences of her lack of overtime.”

“So she’s getting laid and that pisses you off ?”

“No. She’s getting laid and not doing her work and that pisses me off.”

“Fire her,” I offer, putting my feet on the coffee table.

“Yeah, easier said than done,” he mumbles. “She’s worked for me for ten years, and I’m happy she’s . . . happy. No, you know what, I really don’t fucking care,” he laughs. “I just need her to show up and be productive.”

Laughing, I run a hand through my hair. “Tell me how you really feel.”

“I will,” he chuckles. “So, what’s keeping you up? A girl just take off ?”

“Do you think that’s all I do? Fuck girls and then fuck off ?”

“No,” he says, a hint of hesitancy in his tone. “But I was trying to avoid asking you how the meeting went today. You didn’t call me, and Mom wasn’t completely sold on your story . . .”

His voice trails off and a lump sits at the base of my throat. Even though this is why I called him, to try to work through some of this shit on my mind, it still pokes a hole in that little fucking bubble containing my nerves.

I don’t even know what to tell him without sounding like a pussy. I can go through what the management said, but that’s not the problem. Not the real problem of why I can’t sleep or eat or get myself off the fucking couch unless I have therapy. The real problem is that I feel like I did when I was fifteen years old and broke my leg in the biggest game of the summer league tournament. While my friends played on, then celebrated, I sat in my room and wondered if I’d ever play again.

That’s how I feel. Like a fucking kid. And I’m not about to admit that to Graham.

“What happened, Linc?”

Massaging my temple with my eyes squeezed shut, I feel the muscle in my jaw flex again. “I don’t have a lot of time to pull some magic out of the air before we start discussing my contract. They’re waiting to see how therapy goes, but it’s so fucking unnerving, G.”

“You expected that. You told me while you were here for Barrett’s election.”

“Speaking of Barrett, what’s he been up to?” I say, happy to change the subject.

“What’s he been up to? Up Alison’s ass,” Graham chuckles.

“Just saying—I’d be up every part of her she’d let me.”

Graham snorts, amused by my statement but too politically correct to admit it. He’s uptight and serious most of the time, but hidden back in the depths of his cold, calculated, black heart is a funny, easygoing guy that is a lot like me, although he’d probably fight you before he’d agree.

“Just saying,” he repeats back to me, “that’s probably going to be your sister-in-law. You should practice choosing your words wisely.”

“That takes the fun out of it.”

A long pause extends between us before Graham breaks it with one of his dumbass questions. “Have you given any thought to what you might do if this doesn’t go your way?”

I look at the ceiling and bite my tongue. I know what he’s thinking: baseball is all I have. It’s true. I don’t have some inherent trait that makes me valuable to anyone or anything besides the game. I’m not Barrett, with his political bravado. I’m not Graham and his business skills or Ford and his hero military shit. I’m the youngest brother, trying to follow along. One with no skill but throwing a ball, if I still have that.

“Do you have a plan, Lincoln?”

“I just want to plan on not being out of a fucking job,” I mutter. Graham chuckles. “Whatever. Even if the Arrows let you go, someone will pick you up.”

“You don’t know how this works.”

“I know business, Lincoln. And I know you bring in millions of dollars with your talent, your looks, and because little kids buy your jerseys in the Pro Shop. They aren’t letting you go as long as you’re making them bank. Business 101, little brother.”

Smirking, I say, “My looks do sell a lot of tickets, huh?”

“Shut up,” he laughs.

Even though he offered me no assurances and said nothing that I didn’t know ten minutes ago, my stomach settles just a bit and that fucking bubble scabs over for the meantime.

“I’ll tell you what I want to plan for,” I breathe. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”

“I met this girl today.”

“And that’s different from any other day how?” he jokes.

“Dude,” I say, hopping up on the counter and getting comfortable. “You should see her.”

“Let me guess: big tits. Great ass. At least one nipple pierced, probably the right one, if I’m guessing.”

“Fuck off.”

“So it was the left one?”

The kitchen is filled with my laughter. “No, asshole. I haven’t even seen them. Yet.”

He whistles through his teeth. “Okay. Color me intrigued. How did you manage to remember a girl that hasn’t bared her chest for you?”

“She’s . . .” I think back to her sexy smile, her confident retorts to what I said. Her coolness about whether she sees me again, not offering her name up first. “She’s different.”

“So maybe both are pierced?”

“You’re an asshole.”

He chuckles, the sound giving way to a yawn. “I do think this injury thing has started to affect your head. Better watch that, little brother.”

It’s a joke, but one that hits a little too close to home. “I’ll let you go. I’m sure you need to get back to whatever the fuck it is you do, and I need to get my beauty sleep,” I yawn, stretching my good arm overhead.

“Yeah. I’m going to go work so your inheritance grows while you sleep. You’re welcome.”

“Go make us some money.”

“Night.”

I end the call and drop my phone on the couch, heading down the hallway, past two rooms that sit completely empty, and into my bedroom.

“I’m gonna be fine,” I mutter, climbing back into bed and pulling the grey sheets over me. “It’s all gonna be fine.”