Winter Ball — Bonus Chapter

The Bullpen Experiment
by Chase Power

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This bonus chapter takes place after the epilogue of The Bullpen Experiment. It contains major spoilers. Read the book first.

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Winter Ball

Brooks

The Flores family played wiffle ball the way they did everything — loudly, competitively, and with a running commentary that made professional sports broadcasting sound restrained.

We were in the backyard of Dante’s grandmother’s house in Humacao, Puerto Rico — a sprawling concrete-and-tile place perched on a hillside with a view of the Caribbean that would have been worth a fortune if anyone in the family had any interest in selling, which they emphatically did not. The yard was terraced, uneven, and absolutely not designed for baseball of any kind, which hadn’t stopped nine of Dante’s cousins — ages six through fourteen — from organizing a tournament bracket on a whiteboard they’d stolen from the kitchen.

I was pitching. To children. And losing.

“Strike zone is from here to here, Tío Brooks,” announced Valentina, who was nine and had apparently been appointed commissioner. She held her hand at her knees and then above her head. “And no curveballs.”

“I’m a catcher. I don’t throw curveballs.”

“You threw one to Marco.”

“That was a changeup.”

“Marco is six.”

Dante was sitting in a lawn chair on the porch with his mother, laughing so hard his shoulders shook. He’d been no help at all — he’d pitched two innings, struck out every child with effortless precision, and then retired to the porch claiming his arm needed rest, which was a lie told by a man who wanted to watch his boyfriend get humiliated by elementary schoolers in tropical heat.

Marco stepped up to the plate — a plastic bat nearly as tall as he was, his tongue sticking out in concentration, his tiny batting stance an eerily accurate imitation of Dante’s. Six years old. A prodigy or a terror depending on which cousin you asked.

I lobbed an easy pitch. Marco lined it over my head, past the mango tree, and into the neighbor’s yard. His cousins erupted. Marco rounded the bases — a garden hose, a bucket, Valentina’s backpack, and a ceramic frog — with his arms raised, and I stood on the mound — a slightly elevated patch of grass — and accepted my defeat with the dignity of a man who’d been professionally humiliated by a first-grader.

Grand slam. Final score: eleven to three.

“You’re a natural with kids,” Marisol told me later, while the cousins devoured alcapurrias and I nursed a cold Medalla on the porch steps.

“They beat me eleven to three.”

“That’s what makes you a natural. You let them win.”

“I didn’t let them win. Marco hit a grand slam. He’s six and he hit a grand slam off me.”

She smiled. The Flores smile. “Luis watched from the window. He said your pitching motion is technically sound for a catcher.”

“High praise.”

“For Luis? That’s a standing ovation.”

At the door, as we’d left for the airport, Luis had gripped my shoulder — brief, awkward. “Take care of him. He takes care of everyone else and forgets himself.”

The growth was calibrated small. That made it real.

The beach house was a rental on the eastern coast — small, clean, whitewashed walls and terra-cotta tile, with a bedroom that opened onto a wooden deck and the sound of the Caribbean through the open louvers.

Dante stood in the doorway in board shorts and nothing else. His skin was dark from three days of sun, the ink on his forearms vivid against the brown. His body was still damp from the outdoor shower — water tracking down his chest, pooling in the ridge of his hip bones, disappearing into the waistband.

“I want to take care of you tonight,” he said. His hand found my jaw. Tilted my face up. “The way you’ve taken care of me all year. Every session, every save, every night I showed up at your door needing something I couldn’t name. Tonight I’m naming it.”

“Tonight I’m naming what you deserve to hear.” His thumb moved to my lower lip. Pressed. “That you’re beautiful. That you’re brave. That the man underneath the composure is the man I fell in love with, and I’m going to say it with my hands and my mouth and every part of me until you believe it the way I believe good pitch.”

“Let me coach you tonight,” he said against my mouth.

“Okay,” I said.

He undressed me slowly. Mouth following his hands down my chest. He paused at every scar — the shoulder surgery, the rib line, the constellation on my forearms. He kissed each one with the focused attention of a man reading text he’d memorized and still wanted to hear again.

“These are evidence,” he said, his lips on the surgery scar. “Of twelve years of doing the hardest job in baseball. Every one of these is a pitch you caught.”

He sank to his knees. He pulled my shorts down. His hands were steady — not the trembling, uncertain hands of the first time. The hands of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

He pressed his mouth to the inside of my thigh. Then higher. The crease of my hip. The sensitive strip of skin below my navel. His mouth was warm and wet and he was taking his time with a patience I recognized because I’d taught it to him.

“You smell like the ocean,” he said. His lips moved against my skin. “Salt and cedar and you. I could find you blind in a room of a thousand men just from the way your skin smells after the sun.”

He took me in his mouth. The sound I made was loud in the quiet bedroom. I’d spent decades being quiet — controlling my responses, managing my composure. Dante’s mouth destroyed that in about four seconds.

He knew the pressure I responded to. He knew the angle that made my hands grip the sheets. He knew to use his tongue on the underside and his hand at the base and the specific, maddening rhythm that built me to the edge and held me there.

“Don’t be quiet,” he said, pulling off, his lips wet, his voice rough. “Tonight I want the loud ones. The ones you think are too much. Give me all of them.”

He took me back in and I stopped being quiet. The sounds filled the room — low, rough, unfiltered. My hand found his hair and gripped. He groaned around me and the vibration traveled through my entire body and my hips moved forward and he took it, took all of it, his hands on my hips guiding me, setting a rhythm that was mine to take.

He pulled me back from the edge. Pushed me onto the bed. Climbed over me.

“I want to be inside you,” he said against my throat. “I want you to feel what I feel when you’re inside me — the fullness, the trust, the way everything goes quiet when you’re there.”

He slicked his fingers. Pinned my wrist above my head with his other hand — the casual strength of a man whose pitching arm could generate forces that bent physics.

He opened me with his fingers. Slowly, carefully, talking the whole time. “You’re so tight around my fingers. So hot. Do you know how long I’ve been thinking about this? Since the night you let me do this the first time. Since I watched your face and you looked like I’d unlocked something.”

He curled his fingers. Found the angle. My spine arched off the mattress and the sound I made was guttural, broken — the kind of sound a man produced when the last wall came down.

“There. That’s the one. I’m going to spend a very long time on that.”

He did. He worked me until I was incoherent — sweating, shaking, gripping the sheets, my body open and desperate in a way I’d never allowed myself to be. The restraint I’d carried for forty-two years was gone. Stripped by a man who understood exactly how to dismantle it because I’d taught him the technique and he’d turned it back on me with devastating precision.

“Please,” I said. The word I’d spent a year teaching him to say.

He pushed inside me. Slowly. Inch by inch. Eyes locked on mine. I breathed the way I’d taught him. And on the exhale, my body opened for him, and the fullness was everything he’d described. Not just physical. Complete.

“I’ve got you,” he said. My words. “I’ve got you, Brooks. Let go.”

He moved. His hips rolling into mine with a rhythm that was steady and relentless and devastating. His hand found me between us. Stroked in time with his thrusts. The dual sensation was more than my nervous system could process. I stopped trying.

“You’re so good,” Dante said, his voice wrecked. “You’re so fucking good, Brooks. The way you feel — the sounds you’re making — I want to hear them forever. I want to be the only man who ever hears them.”

“You are,” I said. “You are.”

“Good. That’s good. You’re good. My good man. That’s what you are. Not my coach. Not my routine. My good man.”

“Come for me,” he said. The instruction I’d given him. Returned. “I want to feel it. I want to know I did that.”

I came. Hard, long, devastating — with his name torn out of me, my body arching against his, his hand working me through every second while he drove into me with the focused intensity of a man who was watching his partner come apart and wanted to remember every detail.

He followed me. Deep inside me, his rhythm breaking, his face buried in my neck, his whole body shuddering as he came with my name on his lips. Brooks. Just Brooks.

“I’m thinking about rings,” he said. Into my chest. Quietly. The way you’d mention thinking about dinner.

“Not yet. Not — I’m not proposing in a beach house in Puerto Rico thirty minutes after sex. I’m just saying. The concept. In general.”

“Dante Flores. The man who wrote a list of reasons his attraction didn’t count is thinking about rings.”

“The experiment is concluded. The results were peer-reviewed. The data supports long-term investment.” He lifted his head. His eyes were wet and bright and the smile was the real one. “Is that a terrible way to discuss marriage?”

“It’s the most Dante Flores way possible to discuss marriage. Which makes it perfect.”

“Simple band,” I said. “Tungsten or titanium. Nothing flashy.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

“I’ve been thinking about this since the wildcard game.”

“I’m a catcher. We plan ahead.”

He touched the gold chain at his throat. “The chain stays. But I want yours to match.”

The Caribbean wind moved through the room. The coquís sang. The gold chain was warm between us.

Good. Everything was good.

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