Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 75248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Seeing him doing that was nearly breathtaking as I recalled a vision of his father doing much the same thing.
Nathan took a couple of practice swings.
“Swing for the fence, Nate!” Raven yelled.
I didn’t have any doubt in my mind that the kid would—he was his father’s son, after all.
My head tilted back as I let my eyes drift up to the painted white sign on the fence.
There were names of each and every kid that ever hit a homerun, and on the very top was Nathan’s biological father, Darren Cox.
“What are you looking at?” Raven asked curiously.
I pointed up.
“That’s Darren, Nathan’s dad,” I told her. “He was the first kid to hit an out-of-the park, over-the-fence home run.”
“Seriously?” she asked. “That’s pretty awesome.”
It was. I’d worked my ass off endlessly to try to get my name up there, and never accomplished it, not even when I was older.
Darren, though, had his name on each and every field from little league all the way up to his high school baseball team.
“Catcher, you ready?” the umpire asked Reggie.
“Yes, Sir,” Reggie answered cutely.
Hannah snickered at my back.
“What?” I asked her.
“Your manners are coming out in her,” she answered. “Raven, has he gotten on to you yet about eating?”
Raven leaned forward, practically laying across my lap, so she could see Hannah.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered as if I couldn’t hear her. “He’s terrible. Elbows, Raven. Don’t you know how to use a fork, Raven? Close your mouth, Raven, nobody wants to see your food.”
So, poor table manners were a pet peeve of mine, sue me.
Hannah and Raven took turns trading lines that I apparently said but couldn’t remember saying, so I placed my hand on the hem of Raven’s shorts and started to slide them upwards.
She instantly stopped what she was doing and sat back down again.
Hannah, none the wiser, pointed.
“Ball!” the umpire yelled.
Nathan looked back at me, and I nodded my head at him before I glared at the coach.
This was becoming an every game occurrence between the coach and my kid.
The coach, Jobert Clay, graduated with me.
He hated my guts, and apparently, that hate not only still burned all these years later, it apparently crossed over generations and translated to my kid.
The coach caught my glare and returned it full force before tossing the ball once more at my kid, narrowly missing his body with the ball.
The ball wasn’t one of the soft ones like last year. No, this one was a fucking hard ball, and that mother fucker was throwing it at my kid’s body.
I stood up, dislodging my hands from Raven’s body, and started down the bleachers until my hands curled around the chain link fence.
Jobert, the stupid fucker, sneered at me before rearing back to throw it, and I knew he was about to hit my kid.
“Back up, Kid,” I said to Nathan.
He obeyed immediately and stepped out of the batter box just as the ball sailed by his head.
“You fucker,” I said, shaking the chain link fence in front of me. “I’m going to kill you.”
With just one look on Jobert’s part, I started walking around the fence and turned into the Rocker’s dugout.
Once I made it out onto the field, Jobert stood up from his knee and glared.
“You can’t be on the field,” he informed me haughtily.
I looked over at the umpire. “You have any problem with me pitching to my kid?”
The umpire’s face went to the tattoo on my forearm, then raised his arm to show me his Marine Corps. “None at all.”
I grinned and held my hand out for the ball that the umpire picked up.
“Excuse me,” I shouldered Jobert to the side.
He moved, but just barely and was still crowding me on the mound.
“You’ll have to move out of the way, Coach. Can’t have two pitchers on the field,” the umpire urged Jobert to move with a sweep of his hand.
Jobert, the loser, growled under his breath and jogged to the dugout where he took a seat with a harrumph.
I grinned and turned back to my kid.
“You ready, boy?” I asked him.
He nodded enthusiastically and squared his shoulders before stepping back into the batter’s box.
“Ready, Dad.”
Pride filled my throat as I tossed the ball to him like I did any other time we practiced.
It wasn’t a bitch throw, either.
It was a real one.
Sure, I didn’t put as much heat on it as I could have, but it wasn’t a pitch any other kid could hit.
Nathan swung and missed, and little Miss Reggie caught the ball like a pro and threw it back.
Uncle Wolf didn’t raise no slackers.
Nathan looked at me, grinned as he took his place once again, and then nodded his head.
I threw the next one, and knew instantly that he’d hit it.
What I didn’t expect was for my nearly six-year-old son to hit a home fucking run.