The outfield filters in, and I offer mild, unhelpful words of encouragement that get shrugged off. Asher takes his glove and whips it at the wall before taking his helmet and stalking aside to calm down. The silence is jarring when Finn takes a seat between my two defeated relievers and tries to offer them some sort of confidence-boosting speech. Whatever he’s saying isn’t helping in the slightest.
“There’s two more innings,” Jett reminds the players closest to him. “Don’t settle into the loss yet.”
A few of the other coaches agree with him, but I turn back to the field and rake a hand through my hair. Coaching was my way of staying close to baseball after my injury, but it was never my goal. I still remember Evie’s surprise when I told her that I’d been offered the job.
I’m not someone who can go with the flow. I keep a schedule for all things and find it hard to sway from the plans I’ve laid out for myself. Being early is still late, and unpredictability makes my skin crawl. This job is the opposite of everything I need to keep a focused mind.
Add Brielle Hayes into the mix, and I’m barely hanging on.
Where did that thought come from?
Asher steps up to home plate and swings his bat a few times. This isn’t the time for my thoughts to wander to that woman. Not after I’ve spent the last week fantasizing about her and replaying everything we did in my hotel room with the hopethat maybe—just maybe—once I thought about her enough, the scratch would disappear.
It hasn’t.
Instead of cutting the cord when I should have, I offered it more room to curl inside of me. Now, she’s got a gifted jersey in her possession that I purposefully left nameless, and a text conversation that she hasn’t hesitated to fill with messages I haven’t responded to.
Asher’s bat connects with the ball, a loud clap screaming through the stadium. My eyes bug out as I watch it sail through the air. The seconds pass without it dropping. Then, it does.
Into the far stands.
A home run.
He tosses the bat over his shoulder and jogs to first base before passing the rest of them. It’s a flicker of momentum in a seemingly endless bleakness that the team clings to with sweaty hands.
There’s still a game to be won.
The last person I expect to be leaning against the hood of my car is the same one brave enough to do it.
With her ankles crossed and palms pressed flat to the glimmering black paint, she perks up at the sight of me. The chunky straps of her heels are the same colour as the frills at the hems of her shorts and sleeves of her cardigan. I bite back a scolding when I get close enough to notice the raised skin on her legs.
She’s pulled her hair back today in some sort of updo that I can’t begin to understand. The few stray pieces she’s left out fallto frame her round cheeks. Those Icancomprehend because I want to twirl them around my finger and use them to tug her close.
“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to spend all night in your office,” she says, eyes dipping to watch my approaching steps. My sneakers scuff the pavement when I briefly lose my balance.
“How long have you been standing out here waiting?”
“Long enough to know that you were watching game film again.”
I roll my jaw and stop abruptly when our toes nearly touch. “You can’t be out here, let alone lingering in the cold.”
“It’s not cold, Roman. It’s nearly June,” she says, lifting her chin.
“Yet here you are with goosebumps all over your legs.”
“Like I said, it’s not cold.”
The words settle heavily between us as realization dawns. My breath freezes in my chest as all the heat in my body falls between my legs.
“Get in the car,” I rasp.
“Aren’t you going to ask if I want a ride first?”
My laugh is so rough it almost hurts. “We both know that’s exactly what you want, but we need to get out of here first before someone sees you.”
Her eye roll is as annoying as it is alluring. The oversized cardigan she’s wearing slips down her shoulder as she leans further back, never letting her eyes slip from mine, even as I lean closer. Bare, blushed skin flashing, she leans to the side and lifts a foot to touch my shin.
“I’m sorry about the game.”
