A veteran player on a new team. The rookie who hero-worshiped him growing up. The unwritten rule they're about to break.

Everyone knows you don't fall for a teammate. Especially the rookie you're supposed to mentor. Tell that to Matt “Big Mack” Mackenzie though. Now at the tail end of his career, the one-time superstar takes an offer from the only team willing to give him a shot. 

The hook? The job includes extra practice sessions with the team’s rookie catcher. The tempting, smart-mouthed Jamie DeLuca, who Mack really shouldn’t think about that way. And he definitely shouldn’t agree to after-hours video review sessions with.

The sky’s the limit for Jamie, if only he can keep his spot in the lineup. But the rookie’s on the verge of being cut. If he wants to stay on a big league roster that’ll mean extra work—and extra time with Big Mack. The guy he fantasized about playing like growing up. And then just fantasized about.

Mack’s nothing like Jamie’s fantasies. He’s better. If only Jamie could keep his attraction to the charming, generous veteran under wraps. Easier said than done, especially when the heat between them ignites. 

But nothing in baseball comes with a guarantee—and the only outcome they can be certain of is the one they make for themselves.

Here’s what folks are saying about ONE TRUE OUTCOME:

This book has been living rent free in my head since I finished it... I can't recommend it enough if you like low angst stories about adult humans who use their words and assume the best of one another. —Cat Sebastian

"KD Casey's sexy, dreamy, poignant baseball romances hit a homerun every time!" — Lauren Blakely, #1 NYT Bestselling author of Scoring With Him

If you're wanting a book to hit you in your feelings and make you soft and gooey this is your book. Especially if you like baseball. — Eleanor Lynn Reads

One of the softest sports romance stories I have read. I **loved** these two characters. —Escape In A Book


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Excerpt

Mack flies to Florida on a tiny pill of a charter plane. Their flight path makes a wide swoop over the blue expanse of the Florida ocean before depositing him on the tarmac at Miami-Dade International. It’s hot, hotter even than the worst days in Baltimore, a kind of humid airlessness that makes him understand snowbirds who only come to the city when it’s not baseball season. 

A handler from the team greets him, ushering him into a town car that lurches through Miami traffic. She apologizes for the road congestion like it’s her fault, and he wonders about the kinds of assholes she’s responsible for ferrying around if that’s her reaction. Or the sort of asshole she expects him to be. 

“I thought I was gonna have to take an Uber,” he says, “and I always end up in a two-door. So this is better.”

She gives him an amused look like she’s trying to imagine him fitting into a normal-sized car—which is admittedly difficult with his height and bulk—then offers him champagne hidden in one of the side compartments. 

At the stadium, he cycles through a series of meetings. Myra, who lays out the contract terms they’ll offer. PR, who ask questions that fall into two categories: If he’s willing to do charity events, which he is, and if he has anything embarrassing about his personal life. “Just that it doesn’t exist.” He hopes it sounds like a joke.

The coaching staff discusses his potential role as a tandem first baseman and occasional pinch hitter. And, of course, they welcome his expertise at the plate and whatever wisdom he’s willing to impart to young hitters. 

Don’t end up like me, kids. 

They parade him into the clubhouse changing area that’s lined with expensive wooden stalls, each with a padded leather rolling chair parked in front of it. 

“We hope you don't mind.” Myra gestures to a stall with his name on a placard above it, a set of Swordfish gear that will either be his or the world’s least valuable collectibles. “I’ll leave you to get acquainted with some of our players.”

And there’s a guy hovering near his stall, shifting his weight between his feet like he doesn’t want Mack to know he’s hovering.

Mack doesn’t recognize him, but he’s built like a catcher, stocky, especially in his lower half. Short for a ballplayer—certainly shorter than Mack at 6’5”—and at least a decade younger. He has olive skin, sandy brown hair that glints under the clubhouse lighting and an open expression, like the game hasn’t yet worn him down. They haven’t even said anything to one another, and Mack gets the urge to tell him to hold onto that while he can. 

He’s also looking at Mack with the wide-eyed recognition that fans get at events where Mack has to do most of the talking or, alternatively, just politely nods when they tell him about that time they saw him way back when. 

“Hi,” Mack says. Because otherwise, this is will just be in a staring contest. He nods to the stall the team created for him, which feels slightly like a grade-school diorama, something made to be disassembled. “This is a pretty nice setup. Which one’s yours?” 

The guy glances over his shoulder like Mack is addressing someone behind him. He points to a nearby stall with jerseys reading “DeLuca” hung up neatly. 

“Nice to meet you, DeLuca,” Mack says. 

“Um, James is fine. Or DeLuca. Or Jamie. Or ‘Luke.’” 

“Which is it?” 

DeLuca cuts a smile at him that would be sarcastic if not accompanied by a slight flush to his cheeks. “‘Jamie’ is fine. If you want.” 

Another player comes over, Anderson, who Mack played with in the World Baseball Classic. Anderson throws an arm around Jamie’s shoulders—though he has to duck since Anderson’s tall and pale, even for a pitcher—and gives him an honest-to-god noogie that Jamie squirms at. 

“What DeLuca is trying to say is that he had your poster on his wall growing up,” Anderson says. “And he’s trying to ask for your autograph.” 

Jamie’s cheeks go an even brighter red. “Hey, stop it.”

Anderson, to his credit, does stop. Other players start drifting over, sensing both an opportunity to razz a teammate and avoid anything resembling work. 

And Mack was in a clubhouse all of five days ago, but he’s overwhelmed by the nostalgia at being back in one. Another pitcher, Womack—“Call me Justin or else this will get confusing”—claps him on the arm and asks him if he’s gonna sign with Miami. He doesn’t get that flicker of worry when Mack says he’s considering it. Like it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have him play there. Maybe it wouldn’t be. 

He gets lost in the swirl of conversation, players cycling in and out before they grudgingly go to lifting sessions or to get worked on by trainers. Jamie doesn’t move from where he’s standing next to him. He’s older than Mack first guessed, probably in his mid-twenties, but with the air of everyone’s kid brother. Other players rib him, poking him in the sides or dragging their fingers through his hair. If he’s a catcher, Mack has no idea how he’s managing the pitching staff.

He also occasionally looks at Mack like he really does want that autograph. Or, more probably, he wants Mack to be the player he was supposed to be, the perpetual superstar whose career instead dimmed. 

The novelty of his visit eventually wears off, and guys start saying their goodbyes. Mack issues hugs to players he knows, a few awkward waves to ones he doesn’t, and then it’s him and Jamie left there. 

“I’m, uh, supposed to give you a tour,” Jamie says. 

“You draw the short straw?” 

“Not exactly.” Another flush, this one accompanied by a slightly bitten lip and a promise to show Mack the wonders of Miami’s ballpark. 

They tour the clubhouse, Jamie showing him its various features. Mack’s been in enough clubhouses over the years that he could probably navigate this one in the dark. Laminated signs hang from the walls delineating rules for players. Uniform policies. Anti-gambling reminders. One labeled Player Conduct specifies that inappropriate comments in the workplace, on social media, or in casual conversation will be met with a club fine. Jamie doesn’t say anything about them, either because they’re self-explanatory or, like in Baltimore, largely ignored. 

They go down the hallway to the weight room, which Jamie introduces with a little flick of a gesture, a ta-da like a magician at a child’s birthday party. “These are, um, the weights,” he says,  then immediately seems to realize what he’s done, scrubbing his palm over his face. 

It’s charming, in part because most other players have been so distinctly unimpressed by Mack for so long. And in part, because Jamie looks like he’s torn between wanting to finish the tour and wanting the tiled floor to open and swallow him whole.

Mack decides to rescue him. “How long did you say you’d been with the Swordfish?” Though Jamie didn’t say one way or another. 

He gives Mack a flash of gratitude for the subject change. “This’ll be my first full year in the bigs.” He looks like he might append the answer with a sir. Mack is grateful he doesn’t, and he tells himself that it’s because it’d make him feel older than dirt. Especially when Jamie wets his lips, which are full and slightly chapped in the over-air-conditioned clubhouse. 

“I was in the minors for a few years,” Jamie adds. 

“Catcher development takes time. I don’t know if folks remember, but I got drafted as a catcher.” 

“I know,” Jamie says quickly. “Anderson wasn’t, um, actually joking. About the poster thing. Sorry, I know that’s probably weird. This is hard ‘cause I’m used to you being…” He trails off. 

“On TV?” 

“Something like that.” Jamie’s shoulders ease from where they’re up by his ears. “C’mon, I’ll show you the field. It has grass and bases and everything.” 

Mack laughs. “I’m sure I’ll love it.” 

* * *

Mack watches the game that night from the owners’ box, separated from the field by floor-to-ceiling windows. Attendance is sparse, especially for a Saturday night. Fans file in and go through the rituals of getting settled, sliding beers into cupholders, pulling out scorebooks or their phones as if bored by a game that hasn’t even started.  

The stadium’s dome roof is already closed against the pinging early evening rain. The infield grass looks as sparse as the attendance. A miserable place to play baseball. No other teams have called, though Mack glanced at his phone a dozen times during the tour, feeling the phantom sensation of being sought after and finding only his lock screen. 

After the anthem is sung and the ceremonial opening pitch tossed, Miami takes their positions on the field. Jamie starts, squatting behind home plate to receive Anderson’s warmup pitches. The first hitter approaches the batter’s box. Jamie flashes a set of signs, telling Anderson what to throw. Anderson inclines his head, once, slightly, as if not quite shaking him off.

Normally, a catcher would put down a set of signs for another pitch type. But Jamie just squats there waiting until Anderson nods and gives the go-ahead, then delivers a strike right where Jamie’s set up. 

Mack resists the urge to smack his hand against a tabletop in satisfaction. The only people who would judge him are the Miami handlers scrolling through their phones. 

He doesn’t watch the rest of the game so much as he watches Jamie, who wrangles the pitching staff like he’s been in the league for ten years instead of one. Miller, a relief pitcher, gets snarled in the fifth inning. Jamie jogs out to the mound, and for a second, Mack thinks he’s going to try to lay a hand on the guy’s shoulder, something he’d need to strain on his toes to do. But Miller leans over, practically folded in half, listening and nodding, even if his face is flushed from exertion and the evening heat. 

And Mack gets a feeling, a tug in his gut, that maybe there’s more to the Miami team than their position in the standings would suggest. Like maybe inviting him down isn’t the baseball equivalent of a pity screw. 

That feeling shifts when Jamie comes to the plate at the bottom of the inning. Catchers don’t need to be great hitters. Mack got moved to the outfield, then to first base to “focus on his offense,” which was a baseball way of saying he wasn’t smart enough to be a catcher, then too big, then just too old. 

Jamie’s first two at-bats were serviceable if not particularly special. This one is, well, bad. He takes an amateurish hack at the first pitch, a breaking ball well outside the strike zone, then another at a ball the catcher retrieves from the dirt. He lays off the third pitch as if in correction—a fastball right down the middle that any big leaguer should be able to hit. 

Instead, he’s out on three strikes. The TV cameras zoom in on his slight flash of disbelief when he strikes out. At himself, perhaps, that he’s not being yanked and sent back to the minors after that showing at the plate.

Mack fumbles for the remote that’s sitting on an end table, rewinding and replaying the at-bat. Supposedly, the hardest thing in professional sports is hitting a baseball thrown by a big-league pitcher. There are, as Mack has discovered in his years of playing, almost an infinite number of ways to do it wrong. 

Good hitting is less about the particular path a swing takes—though it’s about that too—and more about timing. A high-school physics problem big leaguers perform nightly: If a ball leaves a pitcher’s hand and a bat unseats itself from a player’s shoulder, etc. 

Jamie’s calculations look off. He loads his bat on his shoulder like he wants to shrug it away, then commits too late, putting his foot down as part of an elaborate leg kick any decent hitting coach should have trained out of him years ago. 

It should depress Mack. The only team that’s giving him any interest has a starting lineup that can’t hit, including a catcher who, by the stats they put up for him, is barely hanging onto a roster spot. And, worse, who looked at Mack like Mack could fix the team when he can’t even fix himself. 

That hope is a bad reason to make a decision. But it’s either that or an early retirement, which holds about as much appeal as an early grave. When a team handler says Myra wants to speak with Mack after the game—a loss—Mack agrees to see her. 

Then agrees to sign.

“Welcome to the Miami Swordfish,” she says. “We’re thrilled to have you.” 

“I’m thrilled to be here.” And he finds that he means it, at least a little.