Page 105 of Serving Bunt

Bella held up a hand, halting the conversation.

“Shh!” she scolded without taking he eyes off the screen. “They’re about to do the judging and I want to hear what Jin Kato has to say.”

The diamond on her left hand caught the firelight as she gestured, the one Bennett had given her the same night we’d won the World Series.

That was right. We’d won it all.

I was still floating on cloud nine—more like cloud twelve—and I wasn’t the only one.

Hours after the last fans had filtered out of the stadium and the confetti had been swept into neat little piles, Bennett had driven Bella back to the ballpark. Not for some big public spectacle or a viral Jumbotron moment—if there was one thing everyone who loved Bella knew, it was that she hated being the center of attention.

So, he’d waited.

Until the stands were empty and the lights had dimmed to their soft, after-hours glow. Until it was just the two of them.

Then, he’d taken her down to home plate. And there, with nobody watching except a couple of exhausted grounds crew members who pretended very hard not to notice, he’d gotten down on one knee.

I had never seen Bennett look prouder than he had carrying her back to the clubhouse afterward, her face buried in his neck while she’d kept flashing the ring at anyone unlucky enough to make eye contact.

Now, every time Bella gestured with that hand, she still looked a little surprised to find the ring there.

And I couldn’t blame her. It was one hell of a rock.

I should know—I helped pick it out.

She caught me staring and wiggled her fingers.

“Still shiny,” she announced.

Bennett, who was seated beside her, reached over and took her hand without even looking away from the television. “You’ve said that at least six times tonight, baby.”

“Because it’s still true.”

A smile tugged at his mouth.

I felt Matty’s chest shake with a laugh behind me. His fingers continued their lazy path along the back of my neck, occasionally scratching lightly at my scalp in a way that was becoming dangerously addictive.

Dios mío! The things that man could do with his fingers . . . .

“Don’t encourage her,” Tucker said around a mouthful of pie. “We’ll be eighty years old and she’ll still be shoving that thing in our faces.”

“She better,” Bennett said simply.

Bella, entirely unbothered, shushed him with another flick of her hand and kept her eyes glued to the television.

“Quiet! The judges are tasting the Lane Cake.”

Our annual Friendsgiving tradition had turned into a full-on Sleigh the Bake screening party, complete with a drinking game, thanks to Dani. She and Coach Ward had shown up with their kids and a stack of freshly printed rule sheets like it was a team-building exercise. She had even posted the rules to the Roasters’ social media accounts earlier that morning, determined to use the episode to raise awareness for the Junior Roasters and, in her words, show the world that professional athletes could, in fact, “wield a whisk.”

The engagement numbers were phenomenal.

My dignity, less so.

The rules were simple but deadly: take a sip every time a judge used the word “texture,” two sips whenever someone licked their fingers, and a full shot when any of the contestants made some kind of baking innuendo. As an added treat—pun intended—the team was offering free tickets to next season’s opening weekend to anyone who replicated one of our recipes.

By the time we made it to the final challenge, half the room was already pleasantly buzzed, me included.

Hm, Matty and I haven’t had drunk sex before.