Don’t know, since I don’t read them or follow them.
But I do make it my mission to keep my romantic escapades off my social media. They don’t belong there.
No matter who I date, I’m not going to post selfies of us the morning after at some too-cool-for-school sidewalk café eating avocado toast and sipping soy chai lattes.
First, I don’t drink soy chai lattes.
Second, I’m a private guy.
Finally.
I’ve wanted that more than almost anything—beautiful, blissful, calm. For the longest time, I craved privacy more than breath.
No one gets to know me, what makes me tick, or what twists my heart unless I choose to share that information.
Too many people knew too many things about my family when I was growing up. My life is different now, and I live it on my terms.
This approach has served me well for the last four years in the Major Leagues.
Well, for the most part.
My penchant for serial monogamy doesn’t always end well.
But it always ends, and that’s a damn good thing because, come February, when the calendar flips to the most glorious time of the year—the return of baseball—my focus narrows to one thing and one thing only.
The unconditional love of my life.
The sport that got me through my worst years.
Come baseball season, I put dating, men, and romance behind me, and no matter what, I always followed one ironclad rule.
Don’t date a baseball player.
At all. And it goes without saying, don’t screw one on your own team.
There aren’t that many options on pro sports rosters anyway.
So, I figure it’ll be easy this year to renew my vows for solo love after a hellacious winter when everything went south with that certain TV star.
I’ll be so goddamn single-minded with baseball I’ll be a racehorse with blinders. One-Track Steele will be my new nickname because I’m all about the game and only the game.
That strategy works until one hotshot rookie walks into my locker room.
The rising star.
The man you want behind the plate.
The guy with a smile for days, a laugh that wins over anyone, and blue eyes that see everything.
Including me.
Well, doesn’t that just make a hard situation even harder?
I’m iron.
I won’t bend.
I won’t give in.
I will resist.
Until the night he tells me his greatest secret . . .
1
Declan
Shortly before spring training
* * *
As good as new.
That’s how Benji describes my sleek i-8 when I arrive to pick up the BMW on a Saturday morning at his body shop in San Rafael, just past the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Check it out, Declan. You can’t even tell that the butterfly door was smashed,” he says, sweeping an arm out to show off his handiwork.
I wince at the reminder of how terrible those beautiful doors looked a few weeks ago and how much it’s cost to fix them.
I’m not talking about money.
I’m talking about the ugly scene in front of my home in Pacific Heights when I saw what my ex had done to this hot tamale of a sports car.
“You, sir, are a master at covering up all the mistakes of my past,” I say, pointing to the man in coveralls.
Benji laughs. “We’ve all been there,” he says, then opens the gorgeous car door. There’s not a single nick in the paint, much less a gargantuan crack down the middle.
“Let’s hope none of us go there again. Promise you’ll never date a jerk who thinks knocking back a bottle of merlot and taking your new car out for a joy ride is a good idea.” The words are bitter, but nothing compared to the acrid memory of the damage the TV star had done that night.
Not just to the car.
To my trust.
Benji holds up a fist for knocking. “I’ll do my best to avoid it. But I have dated jerks. Happens to all of us. So don’t be so hard on yourself.”
But that’s what I do.
If I don’t stay disciplined, if I’m not obsessed with doing my best . . . I’ll do my worst.
I thank Benji and pay him, adding a fat tip, then I slide into the black beauty and pat the dash.
“Missed you, babe,” I say, even though I’m not a car person.
It wasn’t the car I missed while it was under the knife with Benji.
It was the control.
As I turn the engine on and cruise onto the highway, that sense of order starts to return. It floats through the air in the vehicle, wafts around like a new cologne. Scent of Sensibility.
I laugh at that, but sensibility is precisely what I need, along with discipline and order.
With the car fixed and the relationship kiboshed, I’m getting my life in order. I despise messes like this—Nathan getting loaded while I was recording a radio spot in a studio on this side of the bay, then grabbing my keys and speeding across the Golden Gate Bridge in this baby. I hated how his Ari Gold-esque agent showed up to triage the debacle and spin it into something less damning for his A-list client than getting drunk on merlot and wrecking his boyfriend’s car.
Oh, I mean, ahem, getting a ride home from Ari’s assistant who was totally sober when they took out the hapless hydrant. Which didn’t even make sense.
After the tow truck arrived, I said good riddance, but Nathan showed up at my place after midnight, swore he wouldn’t do it again, and made a public scene on the front steps until his agent arrived (again) and carted him off to a “spa” for a month-long rest.
As for me, I erased Nathan’s number from my phone.
Clean break is the best way to go.
My jaw clenches as I rewind past that night to too many nights when I was younger, too many lies from people I trusted. But as I hit the bridge, the Pacific Ocean spreading out to the west, the bay to the east, I leave those lies behind—those from men, those from family.
Once I reach the city, I cruise over to Russian Hill, snag a sweet spot on the street, and meet my mom and her husband for lunch at one of our favorite cafés.
Inside, I drop a kiss to Mom’s cheek—we have the same dark brown hair and the same color eyes—then hug Tyler and ruffle his sleek black hair. The dude has locks like a K-Pop star in his fifties. “Ty, I know Mom likes you for you, but it’s hard to believe the hair didn’t factor into her saying I do.”
Mom brings her finger to her lips. “Shhh. He doesn’t know I married him for his hair,” she whispers. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“I get it. There’s nothing like a full head of hair on a man,” I say.
Tyler flicks his hair around like a shampoo model. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
I love that these two are so into each other eight years after tying the knot. My mom deserves it after the shit she went through with my dad.
Scanning the table, I spot a glass of water with my name on it, and I lift it and toast, “I’ll drink to the two of you and the start of baseball.”
“Let’s all drink to that,” she says, and both of them raise their glasses.
Just a few more days till Arizona, and that means it’s nearly time for blinders.
Family, friends, and baseball.
I’m seeing family now, and then tomorrow I’ll head to New York to visit some friends before spring training begins.