New Blood

The kid is twenty-two, throws a hundred miles an hour, and just called Ethan Cole and Nate Reyes dinosaurs on national television.Javi Santos is the most hyped rookie in a decade—fast, fearless, and completely uninterested in respecting the veterans whose records he's about to break. The sports media is already calling him the future of the franchise. Ethan and Nate are the past tense they use for comparison.Eight years ago, Ethan and Nate were the young firebrands who set the league on fire. Now they're the old guard watching the game change around them, fielding questions about retirement timelines instead of MVP races. Their bodies ache in new places. The recovery takes longer. And the rookie who's supposed to be learning from them keeps reminding everyone that legends expire.But when Javi's arrogance puts him on a collision course with the entire clubhouse, Ethan and Nate find themselves doing something they never expected: defending each other publicly, mentoring a kid who doesn't want their help, and realizing that the rivalry the world built around them has quietly become an unbreakable partnership.They're not done yet. Not with baseball. And not with each other.