Read Online Thrown by a Curve by Jaci Burton - Free Book Online Page A

played so well. Don’t let this injury define you when it’s nothing more than a bump in the road.”
    Garrett stared at Alicia. She gave a good speech, but he wasn’t sure if he believed her. He wanted to, but she just didn’t know how it was in sports. One day you were on top of the world—the next you were out the door. You were only as good as the last pitch you threw, and he hadn’t thrown one since August of last year. Not only did his team measure his success that way, so would the media. And the fans.
    And his friends.
    Okay, his friends wouldn’t judge him on his success or lack of it. That’s why they were still his friends. But he judged himself, and that was enough. He just didn’t want to have to . . . explain.
    “When’s your get-together?”
    “I don’t know. Sometime this month. It’s not a big deal.”
    She blew out a breath. “So, when is it?”
    “Geez, I don’t know. The date’s in an email Gray—one of my roommates—sent me.”
    Alicia rolled her eyes. “Oh, my God, Garrett. Do you have it handy where you could look it up?”
    “It’s on my phone.”
    “Go get it. Find out when it is.”
    “Why are you so interested?”
    She gave him a smile. “Just consider it therapy. Will you go get it?”
    She was pretty when she smiled. Really pretty. Like not making him think of her as his Attila the Hun therapist kind of pretty. He got up and went down the hall, came back with his phone, which he’d scanned for Gray’s email while he’d made his way back to the sofa. “It’s this weekend, actually. Too late now. We have to head to Florida.”
    He handed her his phone so she could read the email. She looked at it then lifted her head to look at him. “It’s not too late at all. It would only delay the trip to Florida by a couple of days. You should definitely go. Are all your friends baseball players?”
    “No. We had guys from every sport holed up together in the athletic dorm.”
    “That’s so interesting. How many of them have gone on to play professional sports?”
    He smiled. He hadn’t thought about the guys in a long time, hadn’t seen them in a while. It would be good to catch up. “From my core group—all of them.”
    She arched a brow. “Really? That’s amazing. And now my curiosity is high. I want to know who these guys are.”
    He thought about it for a minute. Ridiculous idea. He wasn’t even going. But if he was . . . “You could come with me.”
    She looked as surprised by his comment as he was when the thought popped into his head.
    “What?”
    But now that he’d said it, it made sense. “Sure. Come with me. I’ll introduce you.”
    “Oh, I don’t think so. I mean you should totally go. You’ll have a good time. And you really should reconnect with your friends.”
    “This was your idea.”
    “I know. It was my idea for
you
to go.”
    He liked that she looked so uncomfortable, with her deer-in-the-headlights, wide-eyed expression. Since she made him so damned uncomfortable all the time, it was nice to turn the tables on her.
    “Hey, you’re supposed to be with me all the time anyway. You wouldn’t let me blow off one day of therapy. You’d let me be away for a three-day weekend to go to this reunion?”
    She opened her mouth, then shut it.
    Perfect. He had her now.
    “Okay, you might have a point there.”
    He never made an argument without one.
    “Uh, where would we be going exactly?”
    “Not that far. Central Oklahoma. Just a short drive down the highway. And we could work out at the lodge facility. There’s state-of-the-art equipment there.”
    She cocked her head to the side, mulling it over. “Okay.”
    The doorbell rang, and Garrett went to grab the pizza from the delivery boy. They ate while planning logistics for both the weekend coming up and for the subsequent trip to Florida.
    “I’ll need to order certain equipment for your workouts. And I’d really like to have access to a pool.”
    “There’s one at the beach house