Cole: Red, Hot & Blue, Book 5 Read Online Free Page A

Three
    Present Day
    The knot in Cole’s stomach grew tighter the closer he neared Pigeon Hollow. He honestly never thought he’d be back here. Sure, maybe for a visit, but not to live. But his rotator-cuff injury had seen to it that he was back for good. Nothing like losing twenty percent of the range of motion in your pitching arm to end a major league ballplayer’s career.
    He shook his head. Perhaps if he had admitted to the pain earlier on, gotten the surgery sooner, it would have been more successful and he could have gotten back to one hundred percent.
    Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and he’d beaten himself up about it every day since the doctor and the physical therapist both told him this was as good as it was going to get. And then the team had released him from his contract.
    So here he was driving back to his parents’ house and the town he’d left behind in the same old convertible he’d left in ten years before. He’d been sentimental and kept the car so long that it had gone from just plain old to classic.
    As it turned out, it was a good thing he hadn’t blown all of his savings on overpriced sports cars, because the million dollar contracts were gone, along with his career. He laughed bitterly at the reason why he’d kept the car. It was still hard to admit to himself it was because this car was where he’d made love to Lizzie.
    Lizzie, his sweet little girlfriend who had written him literally daily for about a month, then wrote him her last and final email saying goodbye. Broken up with over email. Real sweet.
    Not taking that rejection real well, he’d gone out and gotten stinking drunk. Then he’d called her house in the middle of the night and demanded to know why she’d broken up with him. He badgered her until she was hysterical and Bobby had taken the phone away from her and hung up on him.
    Cole had vowed then and there, while holding the handset of the payphone attached to the wall in the back of the bar, to forget about Lizzie Barton. Besides, women were constantly throwing themselves at ballplayers. He’d been fending them off well when he’d assumed he and Lizzie were a couple. That they had a future together.
    Once she’d squashed that idea, he’d given in to the temptation. The next time a girl had thrown herself at him, he’d taken her up on her offer. That hadn’t worked out so well. The entire time he’d pounded himself into the stranger, he’d pictured Lizzie.
    Afterwards he’d gotten a cab home. Once alone he’d cried like a baby, vomited all over the bathroom and then passed out in his clothes.
    There’d been women over the years, but nothing too serious. He’d thought he’d succeeded in getting Lizzie out of his mind. He’d been dead wrong on that. Ten years later, coming home to the town full of memories of her, he’d thought of nothing else but Lizzie the whole drive.
    Well, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. Something else had crossed his mind. As the Welcome to Pigeon Hollow sign came into view, he did have one other thought besides Lizzie, and that was the realization that although he’d left this town a star, he was returning a big old loser.
     
    Lizzie sat on the hard wooden bench and squinted into the sun, trying to distinguish the players on the field. The expected crowd was here, mostly parents cheering their kids on. In front of her were those one or two fathers who insisted on standing along the sidelines yelling advice to the players even though it often contradicted that of the coaches.
    The usual twinge of guilt twisted in Lizzie’s gut that her son, Mikey, didn’t have a father here for him. But then Lizzie reminded herself, as she so often did, who was cheering for Mikey. He had his Uncle Bobby and his Grandma and Grandpa Barton and of course his mother, who loved him enough for two parents. So all in all, Mikey was probably the luckiest kid on the team.
    She watched him step off the pitcher’s mound, take off his cap and wipe the sweat from