“Andres—”
He comes hard, leaning in to bite my shoulder and muffle his moans. I hold him through it, murmuring in Spanish, soft and low, like prayer.
“Eso es, mi sol. Así.”My own release follows a second later, and I collapse onto him, breathing hard, forehead against his.
For a few brief seconds, we just exist.
No crowd. No cameras. No baseball.
Just us.I roll to the side, tug him with me, keep him close, reach for the water bottle on the bedside table and hand it to him. He drinks, then passes it back, still watching me like he’s trying to keep me in his sightline.
“How’s your blood sugar?” I ask, brushing my knuckles over his cheek.
He flicks his wrist over and checks his watch. “One-forty. Steady.”
Relief loosens my chest. “Depending on how much of an asshole your body wants to be, that could go up or down,” I murmur, then kiss his forehead. “Food sounds like a good idea either way.”
Jackson’s smile is sleepy and wrecked and real. “That sounds good to me, baby.”
We don’t go out.Not that we couldn’t. The other guys will hit up a bar, laugh too loud, flirt with the locals, and pretend the season isn’t chewing them up. But Jackson is still vibrating fromeverything today, and I’m not letting him spend his first away game night pretending he’s fine.
So I do what any loving boyfriend would do for his significant other: order DoorDash.
Jackson, butt-ass naked, sprawls across the bed like a cat in human form, scrolling through movie options while I pick food that won’t mess with him too badly.
“You want sushi?” I ask.
“Carbs,” he pleads. “I want carbs. I want bread. I want… those little cinnamon bites you like.”
Chain pizza… Why does he have to be so easy to please?
I smirk. “You mean the ones you steal.”
He grins. “Sharing is caring.”
I order pizza, wings, and the cinnamon bites. I add on some zero-sugar lemon-lime soda and hit submit.
“Okay, ETA is forty-five minutes, so how about a shower?” I smack his right ass cheek and grin as the red handprint blooms across his skin.
“Ouch,” he giggles. “Only if you promise to wash my hair.”
“Deal.”
Let’s be for real: these showers are tiny. Granted, team management probably wasn’t anticipating their over-six-foot first and second basemen to be showering together… but damn.
This is not sexy in the way people imagine showering with your partner to be sexy. It’s just warm water and hands and the intimacy of being allowed to be soft together. Jackson stands under the spray, eyes closed, and I wash his hair like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
He opens his eyes, looking at me through wet lashes. “You’re too good to me,” he sighs, the words somehow softer this time.
I cup his jaw. “Basta.Stop trying to bargain with happiness,” I tell him. “You don’t have to earn me.”
Jackson’s throat bobs and he nods, but it’s small. He’s still learning to believe that he’s lovable, that a future is something we can have with each other.
And I’ll wait however long it takes, say everything a million-plus times, and give him exactly what he needs until he understands it.
After the shower, we eat in bed like degenerates, pizza boxes on the comforter, wings dripping sauce on the flimsy paper plates, and cinnamon bites disappearing fast.
The cinnamon bites taste so good that Jackson moans.
