Page 15 of Off the Mark
6
ROWAN
Charlie Maddox stood in my office, looking like she hadn’t changed one bit.
Like she was still working behind the bar at Jolene’s, ignoring my attempts at flirtation with a cool confidence that poked at my own.
A lot of things came easily to me. Not her.
Neverher.
I perched on the edge of Elaine’s desk while Charlie stayed by the door. The knuckles on her right hand were slightly bruised, and she winced when she stretched her neck. She was tall and wore black boots with a killer heel, worn-looking jeans and a white tank top that showed off her strong shoulders and colorful tattoos.
Her thick, dirty-blond hair swung from a ponytail and her skin was tan from the sun, the freckles darker across the bridge of her nose.
The very first time I’d laid eyes on her, she’d spun around from the register and asked, “What can I get you?” in her sexy, raspy voice.
I’d replied, “Your phone number. Obviously.”
Charlie had burst out laughing, then ignored me.
I hadn’t been joking.
“Luckily that shoulder of yours doesn’t prevent you from rescuing kittens,” she said with a sly grin.
I rolled it back and forth on instinct, felt the taut pinch of strained tendons. The bizarre sense that something, somewhere, no longer fit quite right. “It’ll let me climb a tree every now and then, but I’ll probably pay for it by waking up later, shrieking in pain.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Ouch.”
I nodded at her hands. “I could say the same to you.”
She pushed her thick bangs away from her light green eyes. “My back tire hit a rock during a race a couple days ago, and I tumbled off this jump all wrong. Ended up bailing on an extremely unwelcoming patch of rocky dirt.”
“Sometimes you just gotta bail.”
“That you do.”
I curled my fingers around the edge of the desk. “What’s the bad girl of motocross doing at my rec center? It’s been a minute since I saw you. Four years, give or take.”
She lifted her chin at me, teasing. “Do you follow all the hot dirt bike gossip, O’Callaghan?”
“A guy can’t have a Google alert set for the name of an old friend? Besides, after I retired, it was nice to see one of us making our careers work.”
Her gaze fell to the ground. “Yeah. I’m making it work. Riding bikes, causing mayhem, the usual. I’m with Bettencourt now, so the money’s great.”
I whistled. “The energy drink people? That’s fancy.”
“Sure is.” She smacked her lips together. “Anyway, how are you? How’s Alice?”
“I’m real good. Living easy. My grandmother is still causing a fair amount of mayhem herself.”
I felt her focus shift to the left side of my body. “And how’s your shoulder really?”
“Better than the last time we saw each other,” I said with a sigh. “We did try for a surgery about six months after the double tears. The good news was that most of my joint mobility healed back to what doctors would call ‘normal.’ The bad news was, well, I’ll never pitch again.”
Shoulders were tricky, delicate things—and nothing about pitching was considered a natural movement. The repetitive combination of the windup with the overextension made it so that we all knew there was an expiration date on our dreams. Like most professional athletes, I started playing young. Probably too young. And for every coach I had who cared about overuse, I had plenty who didn’t.
By the time I was in the minors, I had a host of rotator cuff and elbow issues. Already spent nights grimacing through ice baths and shots and physical therapy that hurt like hell. It wasn’t rare for a pitcher to have a severe labral tear on top of a sudden dislocation.
