Page 3 of Caught Offside

He set his alarm for five, plugged in his phone, and got into bed. The sheets were cold against his skin. The other side of the mattress stayed that way.

The expansion draft was seven months away. He had half a season of hockey before worrying about where he’d be next season. He could play the best stretch of his career and still wake up in a city he’d never chosen, on a team that didn’t exist yet. Or Chicago could stay true to their word, and he’d renew his lease here for another year.

He closed his eyes and made himself stop.

The wind off the lake pressed at the window as the building settled around him, pipes contracting, the heat droning low.

CHAPTER TWO

The thing about being raised by two retired professional baseball players was that there was no such thing as a private slump. Asher Tucker had a hitting coach, a strength coach, a catching coordinator, and two dads in Milwaukee who could read his swing off a six-second clip and would do so, unprompted and at length, in a group text his pops had named Family Business. Most sons got to fail quietly. Asher got notes.

He caught the rubber ball at the bottom of its arc, barehanded, and fired it into the concrete before the cold could finish registering. It came off the wall low—tailing left, the way it always did off that one dead spot—and he snagged it on the short hop with a pivot his knees filed a formal complaint about. He’d been running this drill since he was twelve. He could do it in his sleep, and some mornings, he was fairly sure he had.

This was the part nobody got to see. Not the guy who walked into a clubhouse and had the whole room laughing before he reached his locker—that guy was a professional, polished and reliable and on. This was the other one, the six-a.m. version in an unlocked warehouse on the edge of Appleton, throwing a ball at a wall because the alternative was lying in bed with his own thoughts running a loop he didn’t much care for.

Last season had ended in September on a routine ground ball to second. Two outs to go and a runner he never got the chance to throw out, and then four months of offseason and counting. He’d been close enough to taste the next level, but nowhere near close enough to reach it.

The Fireflies called this place a training complex, which was generous for a retrofitted warehouse with a batting cage, a weight room that smelled like iron and old carpet, and a back-lot bullpen that wouldn’t thaw until March. Asher loved it a little pathetically, the way you love the one place that asks nothing of you. The cage didn’t care that one of his dads was a three-time All-Star and the other had a byline at Sports News Weekly. It threw the pitch, he hit it, or he didn’t, and nobody wrote four hundred words about his ceiling afterward.

The most recent article had been fair, which was somehow worse than harsh. Strong arm. Good instincts behind the plate. Advanced game-calling for his age. Needs to be more consistent at the plate. Has the tools. Hasn’t put them together for a full season yet.

Potential. The word had trailed him since he was eighteen, a dog he couldn’t shake. Every evaluation, every write-up, every hitting coach who opened with “You’ve got all the talent in the world” and closed on a “but.” He was twenty-three now, and potential had started to sound less like a promise and more like a diagnosis with an unspoken footnote. Good, but not living up to what the world expected of someone raised by Mason Atley and Sean Tucker.

He threw the ball, caught the return, threw it again. The rhythm was the only thing keeping him from driving to Milwaukee to sit in his parents’ kitchen and eat whatever his pops had stress-baked that week. Mason Atley ran an offseason the same way Asher did, with idle hands and an oven timer.

His phone buzzed in the pocket of his sweats. He caught the ball one more time, pocketed it, and pulled out his phone.

Dad.

Asher leaned against the concrete wall, the surface cold through his shirt. He let it ring twice, not avoidance, just a breath, and then picked up.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” His dad’s voice carried the same measured cadence Asher had spent his childhood trying to decode. Sean Tucker didn’t waste words. Every sentence was measured, allocated, built to land. “You at the warehouse?”

“Where else would I be?”

“I can think of several places. Most of them with heat.”

“The warehouse has heat.”

“The warehouse has a space heater and a draft. That’s not heat.” He acted like he hadn’t been at the facility just as early back when he was starting out. “I got an offer overnight, and I wanted to chat with you about it. I’ve been invited to give the keynote at a gala in Chicago at the end of the month.”

Asher shifted his weight against the wall. This wasn’t uncommon. Ever since he’d retired, his dad had been working to ensure no one else went through the hell he and Pops had when they came out. He also spoke to college athletes about the importance of having a plan for after ball ended and would stand in front of whatever group invited him. “What kind of gala?”

“Level Playing Field Foundation. They work with LGBTQ+ youth in sports. Scholarships, mentorship programs, accessing funding. They asked me to speak about my experience. Being out in the league, what’s changed since I played, what hasn’t.”

“That’s a big deal, Dad.”

“It’s a dinner and a speech.”

“Right. Because you’re famously casual about public speaking.”

His dad let the comment land without engaging with it, which was its own kind of response. “I’d like you to be there. Your pops is coming. It’s in Chicago, so it’s not far. You could drive down, stay the night, drive back.”

“You’re inviting me to a black-tie event.” Even though he was genetically related to his dad, most people assumed Pops was the one he shared DNA with. They were two peas in a pod, right down to their lack of filter that made Dad groan on a regular basis.

“I’m inviting you to come support something that matters.” He sighed. “Listen, it’s one thing for a couple of old farts to talk to potential donors about why their money matters, but it’d help to have someone younger, someone who can show that while things are better, there’s still plenty of work to be done.”