My stomach did something weird.
I barely had time to process it before his teammates found us. I stepped back, letting them greet him, but Brooks reached for my hand, tugging me against his side like he wasn’t ready to let me go just yet.
“This is my lovely date, Michelle.” He grinned, squeezing my fingers like it was second nature.
Tate O’Donahue, a veteran on the team, raised a brow. “Lovely, huh?”
“She had no choice,” Brooks said, smirking at me like we had a shared secret. “I forced her to take me.”
“You did,” I teased, trying not to think about how much I liked standing this close to him. His arm stayed firmly around me, his touch solid, warm, steady. I wanted to lean onto him, but like every time before, I panicked and stood on my tip toes to whisper in his ear. “Remember our rules, please. Just tonight.”
He tensed.
And for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pull away.
12
Brooks
"Remember our rules, please."
Michelle and her fucking rules. I had hated them since the second she laid them out.
But back then, they made perfect sense. Two years ago, I needed an escape.
The night I got the call about my mom, I had been on the road, two games deep into an away series, exhausted but feeling normal—or as normal as I ever felt. I almost didn’t pick up when my brother called. I was sitting at the hotel bar, laughing at something dumb one of my teammates said, sipping a whiskey I didn’t need, waiting for my food to come out.
Then Logan’s name flashed across my screen and everything in my life split into before and after. Before, my mom had just been a little forgetful. Before, she was busy—too distracted to return texts right away, too scattered to remember little things, like where she put her car keys or what time our games started. It was normal.
Then Logan said the words. Early-onset dementia. Rapid progression. I stopped hearing anything else.
I hung up, my stomach in knots, my skin too tight, my pulse hammering in my ears. I didn’t touch my food when it arrived. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t think past the choking, horrible thought of losing her—slowly, painfully, while she was still right in front of me.
I grabbed my coat and walked the city for hours, ignoring calls, ignoring everything. And then I found a bar and Michelle.
I didn’t go looking for her, but somehow, I ended up in her space, watching her nurse a glass of beer in the same half-distracted, half-bored way she always did, like nothing in the world could have surprised her. She smirked when she saw me. Said something cocky, teasing, ridiculous. Probably about how I looked like hell.
And I fucking laughed. For the first time all night, I laughed. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t push. She shared she had a shit night and wanted a distraction, something I also wanted myself. It was easy after that. She leaned into me, pressed her body against mine, whispered something in my ear that made me forget how fucking broken I felt inside.
And I let her.
I let her pull me into something reckless and easy and uncomplicated, let myself lose every thought in her body, in the way she didn’t care about anything beyond that moment. I let her be my escape.
And the next morning, when I woke up with her beside me, she laid out the rules.
Nothing more than first names.
No more than twice a week.
No questions or promises.
No dates.
A literal goddamn dream. I needed no strings. No expectations. No woman who wanted to ask about my family, who would try to fix what couldn’t be fixed. No woman who would try to slide into my life for the fame or money
Michelle didn’t care about baseball. She didn’t give a shit about who I was on the field, what I made, what people thought of me.
She just wanted an escape— guaranteed escape—for both of us.
