***
Sterling
“Can’t believe how far you’ve come when me and dad found you eating out of those trashcans,” Sebastian said, pounding me on the back.
“I’ve told you a million times, I wasn’t eating out of the trashcans, I only made it look like that so y’all would leave me alone,” I grumbled darkly.
Sebastian’s eyes sparkled with mirth.
“And how’d that work out for you?” He asked, punching me in the shoulder.
I immediately returned the punch with just as much force, if not more.
“It didn’t,” I laughed.
Sebastian had been my sponsor into The Dixie Wardens MC.
He’d changed my life.
And I could never thank him enough.
That night, I’d been trying to break into a veterinarian’s office to try to get some medication for Garrison, who’d been sicker than a dog.
Which was apt, I thought, since I’d been breaking into a vet’s office.
It still amazed me, how far I’d come.
The Dixie Wardens had changed my life.
They’d been the reason Garrison, Cormac, and I had gotten out of that helacious life.
They’d helped send Garrison to college.
They’d helped get Cormac a job.
And they’d helped me get into the Navy, and watched over my brothers while I’d been gone.
If you’d asked me ten years ago, I would never have thought I’d be in this position, with the opportunity of a lifetime sitting in my lap.
“So, are you going to take it?” Sebastian finally asked, offering me a beer.
I’d been offered a place on the minor league team for the Shreveport Spark’s, with a chance to move up to the Major League’s if I had enough drive.
Something I knew I could accomplish.
But being on a major league team had never been my dream.
It’d been Cormac’s.
I’d never thought that I’d make it.
I’d thought I’d get here, try out, and be sent home.
Never in a million years would I have thought this day would’ve gone this way.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I need to talk to my girl.”
Sebastian pounded me lightly on the shoulder, and I watched as my wife to be walked to me from across the room.
We were at Halligan’s and Handcuffs.
She wasn’t working today since we’d taken the day so she could come to the tryouts.
Now we were at the bar, celebrating the fact that the Spark’s actually wanted me. A man that was nearly twenty-seven and hadn’t played baseball competitively in a very long time.
Well, I was drinking.
Ruthie wasn’t.
That was because Ruthie was pregnant.
Even though she was still in denial with the news.
We’d thrown out her birth control pills nearly six weeks ago.
Well I had, Ruthie had just gone with the flow.
She had to have known it’d happen.
“You okay?” She asked me, wrapping her hands around me.
I shrugged.
“I always thought it’d be me who died first. I was the one with the dangerous job. I was the one who put my life on the line. Not him. He was only playing baseball. How could this happen to him and not me?” I asked her.
Ruthie’s eyes filled with tears, and they slipped over as she leaned forward and placed her lips against mine.
“I don’t know. Life is unpredictable. You never know what you’re going to get. We can’t see into the future and we can’t change the past. You’ll just have to learn to live with it, and hope you have someone like me and your friends, your brothers, to see you through,” she said softly.
I groaned.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted.
I was so torn.
On one hand I knew what kind of opportunity this was.
Knew that if I did this, this could mean huge things for Ruthie and me.
We could have so many things that my job as a Navy SEAL wouldn’t offer us.
But I loved being a SEAL.
Loved my team.
“This is completely up to you,” she whispered. “And I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“As will we, my man,” Sebastian said.
I hadn’t realized he was still there.
But he was.
And I was okay with him hearing all that was just said.
“So you’re saying I can still be a Dixie Warden if I’m a professional baseball player?” I teased. “There’s not some secret code against that?”
He snorted. “There’s not a rule book on how to be a biker. No one said you can’t do what you want to do. And if baseball is what you want to do, then fuckin’ do it.”
“Yeah,” Kettle said, plopping down on the bar stool beside us. “’Cause you know how I like good seats.”
“You don’t even like baseball,” Adeline said, wrapping her hands around her husband’s neck from behind.
Kettle shrugged. “I do when there’s beer involved. I can handle anything when there’s beer.”
We laughed.
And we were happy.
The woman I loved was at my side.
We had a child on the way.
And I knew that, somewhere in heaven, Cormac was smiling down at me.
Silently urging me closer and closer to the life I was meant to live.
As a husband.
A father.
A member of The Dixie Wardens MC.
And a motherfucking professional baseball player.