FIRE SEASON

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST ROMANCE BOOK OF 2022

"Subtle and spectacular...every page serves up a stunner."
—The New York Times

Casey... crafts characters to root for and handles issues of recovery and anxiety with sensitivity. This is another winner.
— Publishers Weekly

Charlie Braxton has it all: a wicked curveball, a beautiful wife, and the kind of money and attention that's attached to a professional baseball contract. Except his famous curveball comes with intense social anxiety, his wife is actually his soon-to-be ex-wife, and the money… Well, suffice it to say, he knows what it’s like to be treated like an ATM. But at least he’s better off than the new guy.

Relief pitcher Reid Giordano is struggling to maintain his sobriety—and his roster spot. The press, along with a heck of a lot of his new Oakland teammates, seem to think his best baseball days are behind him. Only Charlie Braxton gives him the benefit of the doubt—and a place to stay when Reid finds himself short on cash…and friends.

When their growing friendship turns into an unexpected attraction, and that ignites a romance, both Charlie and Reid must grapple with what it means to be more than teammates. And as their season winds down, they’ll need to walk away…or go out there and give it everything they’ve got.

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Excerpt

The text alert comes in the unsleeping hours before dawn, the plastic-on-plastic buzz of Reid’s phone against the milk crate he’s using for a nightstand. Good news for once: a trade. His agent sends a link to an article and a directive to get his ass on a plane. Reid doesn’t warrant his own headline, just a paragraph on a trade-rumor account listing minor-league transactions. Crowns Minor-League Reliever to Oakland for Prospects. Under that, a barrage of tweets he’s tagged in on the account he never uses, replies and replies to replies.

Interesting pickup for Oakland.

Seems like a reclamation project.

Heard there were some off-field concerns. Then more bluntly, You mean he partied his way out of the majors.

And of course, that video. Because there’s always that video.

He spends an hour stumbling in the half dark, worried he’s going to leave something crucial. Wondering why Oakland wants him of all people, especially for their big-league club. He double-checks that his keys are in his pocket, his bracelet tucked in the interior zip of his suitcase. He dilutes his nervousness with coffee he doses only with milk.

At least it’s a familiar process, the get-up-and-go of a sudden trade, though easier when it wasn’t just him. When Letitia, his ex, stayed behind to deal with all the logistical stuff. When he could proceed on with a suitcase and the hope that this team would be better than the last. He considers calling her, like she wouldn’t just tell him to fuck off. He could call his parents. If they were answering his calls.

So he calls his grandma. She picks up on the second ring, panic in her voice. “Michael”—because she’s the only person on Earth who still calls him that—“are you okay?”

Eight hours and two dehydrating flights later, lost in the maze of the Oakland clubhouse looking for a meeting he was supposed to be at twenty minutes ago, he’s not sure how to answer that.

Sweat sprouts on the back of his neck and at his upper lip, accompanied by a stuttering heartbeat, by the sinking realization that he’s about to walk into his first meeting as an Elephants pitcher flushed and out of breath. His eyes are red from flying, from glugging back a cup of coffee, from burning his vision on his phone screen trying to learn everything there is to know about his new team.

Voices come from behind the door. He presses an ear against the wood like a low-rent spy. Inside, their pitching staff is in the midst of a discussion. Someone—probably D’Spara, the team’s pitching coach, from his well-known bellow—gives a booming retort.

Reid raises his hand to knock but stills. Maybe it’s better not to show up than to be so obviously late. Maybe he should have stayed in the minors, playing for less than two grand a month, or gone back to his grandma’s apartment in New Jersey. He probably can’t hack it at the big-league level anymore; it’s foolish to even try. He could slink off down the hallway and claim he didn’t know he was supposed to be at the meeting. Lie, avoid. Old habits. Bad ones.

But he’s gotten this far. What’s a few steps farther? He assembles enough courage to open the door. Every eye in the room turns toward him. D’Spara’s prodigious mustache twitches its disapproval.

The room itself is small and cramped, a video monitor tacked to one wall. He’s spent years dreaming of the pristine newness of a major-league clubhouse. But everything in Oakland is a little ragged, including the banged-up table and mismatched chairs holding their catchers and starting rotation.

Everything diminished—except Charlie Braxton: Oakland’s ace pitcher, the subject of every praising headline. Who’s sitting there, iPad in hand, a vacant chair next to him. The only vacant chair in the room. Of course. Reid’s heart rate, already going hard, kicks up. A hum of excitement like a big-eyed fan meeting a heralded player. Except Reid is thirty-four, a baseball veteran—it still counts if he’s spent most of his career in the minors, he’s sure of it—and, oh yeah, late.

“Meeting started almost half an hour ago.” D’Spara’s voice conveys his frown, half-hidden below his mustache.

Excuses rise up. That Reid’s late because his flight was delayed. Because there was a line at the rental counter to pick up a truck. Late because traffic was bad, because traffic here is perpetually bad. There are always reasons, but never good ones. “Sorry.” It comes out louder than he intends, echoing in the confines of the windowless room.

He drops into the chair next to Braxton, inching over to avoid brushing against him. Even though Reid knows Braxton’s listed height, he’s larger than Reid expected. Big all over, like the terrain of an unexplored country: mountainous shoulders, a continent of a chest, hands that make the tablet he’s holding look like an oversized phone.

Braxton doesn’t introduce himself. Probably because everyone in baseball knows who he is. Maybe the rumors about him are true: that he’s kind of a quiet guy, though quiet for a pitcher means one step up from a block of wood, personality-wise.

Maybe Reid’s just below his notice. If he was the reigning winner of the Cy Young Award, he might treat fringe players with polite disinterest too. “Reid Giordano. No one ever recognizes relief pitchers when we’re not in uniform.” He extends a hand.

Braxton glances at it for a second like he’s unsure what to do. Then Braxton’s hand envelops his as he gives a perfunctory shake. He has pitcher hands, nails trimmed, palm lined in calluses. He doesn’t return the greeting but offers a half smile.

“I got traded from the Crowns double-A team this morning,” Reid continues. “I guess you all needed some help in the bullpen, even from me.” He laughs, words tripping out of his mouth before he can stop them. “Figured they were gonna send me to the minors. Not that I don’t love the possibility of sweating my balls off in Midland, Texas, in June. But it’s better here already.”

Braxton’s eyes go a little wide. Reid prepares himself to be ignored or to be given a cold shoulder that, on Braxton, would probably be closer to a tectonic shift.

Instead Braxton just says, “Oh.”

An actual response. Feeling gutsy, Reid tries for another. “Is it true I gotta sit on the foul grounds?” Because the Coliseum is notorious: For its plumbing problems, for its lack of bullpen. For showing its age. Reid sympathizes. Starters sit in the dugout; relief pitchers bake in folding chairs in a makeshift bullpen until someone yells their name to go pitch.

A nod. A quiet yeah. At least Braxton doesn’t look annoyed. Curious, maybe, or just unused to people audacious enough to speak to him.

Reid kind of can’t believe it either, even if his grandma likes to say he enters every situation with an open mouth. “Man, I thought I escaped playing in some busted-ass minor-league stadium. Now I don’t even get a real bullpen.”

Braxton glances around at the room, at the yellowing paint and the threadbare carpet. “Welcome to the Oakland Elephants.” He’s got the faint flavor of a drawl, each word carefully chosen.

“Oh, a whole sentence. Is that my one for the day?”

“Yeah.” Braxton’s tone is flat, but it’s a purposeful flatness. Possibly even a joke at his own expense.

Reid laughs, loud enough to draw looks from a few other guys. He helps himself to one of the tablets sitting in the center of the table, flicking through it. All the visuals—the heat maps and data displays—blur at the edges.

He needs to settle. To stop the excited beat of his heart from overtaking his common sense. He’s not supposed to get too high or too low. That’s probably better advice for someone who didn’t wake up in Nebraska and find themselves in the big leagues. He shakes his wrist, a habit he’s picked up from wearing his bracelet, its clinking glass beads meant to dissuade the evil eye. Of course, he slid that into the pocket of his carry-on since guys make him feel weird about it. So now he’s the weirdo shaking his bare wrist in front of Charlie Braxton. He resists the urge to bury his head in his hands.

A drink would soothe his jangling nerves. He wants one, diffusely, distantly, a background hum of want he ignores. But he can’t resist pressing his luck. “Man, I guess those rumors were true.”

“Rumors?” Braxton asks.

“That you got the best curveball in the whole damn league and nothing to say about it.”

A shrug from Braxton. “What’s there to say?”

“Or maybe they weren’t, because that’s two entire sentences.”

Braxton’s still holding his tablet—or more accurately shielding his tablet. He can’t entirely conceal what’s on-screen: an image of Reid with what looks like a scouting report.

“You checking up on me?” Reid expects a denial, a veteran-player blow-off. Instead Braxton’s face goes vaguely pink in the area between his out-of-control beard and his eyes. “You were.” Which comes out teasing. Whoops.

Braxton, for his part, goes even pinker. So not politely disinterested. Shy. And, worse, handsome. He surrenders the tablet, looking slightly guilty, leaving Reid to the black-and-white of how Oakland sees him.

Michael Reid Giordano.

Birthplace: New Jersey. Drafted in the 10th round. 6ꞌ2"—though that’s an exaggeration by an inch. A muscular lower half, trim waist, and excellent body control.

A damning set of sentences, especially sitting next to Charlie Goddamn Braxton, who everyone knows was drafted out of Stanford’s vaunted baseball program. Who has a curveball so good it makes grown men weep, most of them opposing batters. Who is probably his actual listed height and whose body seems too big to be contained by the paltry language of scouting reports.

The report details Reid’s journey through various bottom-scraping teams, neatly skipping over his missed season. There’s video, though thankfully not that video, the one that comes up first when you google his name. He still looks bad in this one: face scarlet from effort and sunburn and possibly—given when it’s from—a hangover.

The iPad is muted. He double-checks before pressing the play button. And watches himself hurl absolute fire. His listed velocity approaches triple digits. The pitch goes where he wants it and when, the opposing batter swinging through it helplessly. An objectively pretty pitch. His gut sours.

And of course, Braxton is watching over his shoulder and pretending not to, the broad plains of his hands resting on the tabletop. Still, except for the small movement he’s making periodically, thumb swiping against the bare knuckle of his fourth finger.

Reid prepares himself for the kinds of questions he’ll probably get during his first go-round with Bay-area media: What he was doing rattling around the basement of the Crowns minor-league system. If he still has that fastball. Or if he’s the bust that Twitter, his agent, and possibly his grandma think he is.

Braxton nods in approval toward the tablet. “That’s a pretty good pitch.”

Reid can’t stop his grin. Because even if he’s bounced out of the majors, that’ll be a story. Did you know Charlie Braxton once said I was pretty good? “That’s three.”

“Three?”

“Sentences.”

Braxton flushes again. Which Reid shouldn’t be thinking about. Not in a room with the rest of their pitching staff, all of whom are actively discussing whatever it is they’re actually supposed to be doing.

D’Spara clears his throat like he’s asking Reid something for the second time. “I don’t know how things were done in…” D’Spara pauses, clearly trying to remember where Reid was before. “Wherever you last pitched. Here, on time is on time.”

“Understood,” Reid says, adding a belated, “sir.” He focuses on the tablet, face heating, not looking to see whatever’s playing on Braxton’s face: judgment or secondhand embarrassment or, worst of all, pity. “Won’t happen again.”

D’Spara grunts skeptically. Like he’s heard about Reid. He nods meaningfully to the iPad, an unspoken Quit screwing around and put in some work that Reid doesn’t need to hear to understand. He’s on borrowed time, late, unprepared, and, in D’Spara’s estimation, lazy. An off-field concern.

Reid hands the tablet back to Braxton just as he’s getting up to leave, meeting adjourned for everyone but Reid.

“See you around,” Braxton says.

“Yeah, see you.” And Reid hopes like hell that that’s the truth.