“Look at me,” I say.
Her eyes find mine with visible effort.
I hold her gaze while I push her back over the edge, watching the exact moment she loses it, watching pleasure move through her features in a wave I put there, watching her completely unguarded, completely present, and completely mine in the only way that matters.
It breaks something open in my chest. I follow Ava over without any attempt at control, driving deep one final time and holding there as release tears through me, fierce, consuming,and obliterating every thought I’ve had in the last four hours that wasn’t her name.
My forehead drops to her shoulder.
The world shrinks to breath.
The weight of her arms comes around me and pulls me close.
When the edges return, I don’t move. I stay inside Ava, one hand splayed flat against her back, breathing her in, feeling her chest rise and fall against mine in a gradual slowing rhythm.
“You’re not a secret,” I say into the curve of her neck, low, but steady.
Her hand cups the back of my head. Her thumb traces a slow arc.
“Good,” she says.
That one word lands everywhere at once.
Afterward, we stay tangled together on the kitchen floor, which is not how I expected the evening to end up geographically, but neither of us has had any interest in moving, and the floor is hardwood and warm, and Ava’s head is on my chest, so I have no complaints.
Her legs are hooked over mine. Her heartbeat is slowing steadily against my ribs, matching mine beat by beat, settling toward something comfortable and easy.
The speaker is still going in the background. She never turned it off.
“I take it the game went well,” she says eventually. Her voice is soft and slightly rough, the way it gets when she’s been quiet for a while.
“We won.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She props herself up on one elbow and looks at me with the particular expression she gets when she’s choosing her words deliberately. “I mean the other game. The one you’ve been pitching for the past three months.”
I look at her. The kitchen light is dim from here, casting everything in warm amber. Her hair is loose around her face, she has ink on her forearm, and she’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
“I found it again,” I say.
“I know. I watched the whole thing.” Her eyes search mine. “The first pitch was off.”
“Yes.”
“You stepped off the mound.”
“Yes.”
“And then you looked up,” she says it quietly, like she’s still processing what it meant to be the thing someone looked for.
“You were there.” I brush a strand of hair from her face. “You were in the seat, sure you had your cap on but no disguise, no contingency plan. You put your name on the list, Ava.”
She holds my gaze. “I did.”
“That was the loudest thing anyone has ever said to me from the stands. And I’ve had fifty-two thousand people chanting my name.”
The corner of her mouth curves. Not the polished, controlled smile she uses in public. The real one. “You’re saying I outperformed fifty-two thousand fans?”
“By a significant margin.”
