Out of My League

Trigger Warning: contains graphic scenes and depictions of child abuse.

Izzy hasn't had an easy twenty, almost twenty-one, years. In fact, for the first seventeen years of her life, she was physically and emotionally abused by her alcoholic mother, never able to escape the terrible life she'd been thrown in to. At eighteen, she escaped the beatings and moved into an apartment with her best friend, Reagan, but she's far from fixed. Her mother still haunts her nightmares, still lives in her head, causing her severe anxiety, depression, and PTSD. She can't win, can't escape, can't just be happy .. and all because of the woman who gave birth to her. But, despite all of that, she allows herself to finally find some hope when she's hired as her favorite baseball team's new manager - a true dream come true. More than becoming the manager, getting to hang around baseball for the majority of her days and get paid for it, she has the opportunity to work with her favorite player and celebrity crush, Noah Parker.

Noah Parker, baseball prodigy, total heartthrob, has a past - a past that nobody can know about - and has secrets that nobody will ever find out. If people find out, if his well-kept secrets escape his clutches, things will never be the same. Instead, he puts on a show for the cameras, acts like a total jerk, somebody who cares about nobody and nothing - it's the only way to keep him safe. If nobody likes him, after all, they can't break his heart, or worse, leave.

Until the two meet, neither believe in the possibility of finding somebody that could love them - having deemed themselves unlovable - but once they do, there's no taking back the cascade of events that cause them both to fall, hurtle, headlong into devotion for each other.