Page 13 of Saving The Shortstop

A sudden knock at the door has us all shooting straight up. The three of us stare at the door, and I gulp down my last bite of ice cream, eyes wide.

“What if it’s Tabor?” Gigi whispers.

He tried to call me twice after I left the café, and then, a few minutes later, Dallas called me too. It’s not unheard of for me and Dallas to need to get ahold of each other, but it’s not so common over the past year or so.

Well, really ever since we kissed. Before that, we called each other all the time.

I assumed he was trying to butt into my business again, so I ignored it before finally turning my phone off. The point is, if Tabor has been going crazy trying to reach me? I wouldn’t know.

“I’ll peek through the side window,” Harley whispers before she walks around the couch to take a look. Before she gets there, she grabs a softball bat from her bag, tossing it over her shoulder.

For as many home runs as that girl has hit, I’d hate to be the person on the other side of our door if she decided to swing.

Damn. There’d be no coming back from that.

Peeking through the curtain, she sighs and drops her bat lower on her shoulder, relaxed now.

“It’s just Dallas,” she grumbles, and before I can tell her not to, she opens the door at the same time as I fling myself onto the couch and pull a blanket over my body. It’s a weak attempt to hide, but hopefully it works. I don’t want to see his smug expression when he finds out he was right and that Tabor was as weird and creepy as he warned me.

“Hey, Harley,” his deep voice says. He always sounds so nice to anyone who isn’t me. To me, he’s just a dick most of the time.

“Hi, Dallas,” she answers nervously, and I guarantee it’s because she saw my stunt and now knows she messed up by answering the door. “Can I … help you?”

“Yep, I need to talk to Haven.” He says the words, and I can hear the amusement in his tone. My heart beats faster, worried he knows I’m here. “She around?”

“Uhh, no,” Harley says, and in my brain, I can see the image of her nervously fidgeting and shaking her head quickly. “She’s not. She’s … out. Somewhere.”

For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. Then finally, his douchey voice speaks.

“Hey, Gigi.” He pauses. “Oh, and hi, Haven. You know I saw you dive onto the couch, right?” he calls loudly, and now I’m sweating. “Thanks for ignoring my phone calls, by the way.”

Footsteps walk toward me, and I groan under the blanket, knowing I’m about to have to deal with him. Call me a baby, but sometimes, I just like to run away from situations like this one.

One where I may have to admit that I was wrong and he was right. Ew.

The blanket is flipped off my body, landing by my feet, and there he stands, smirking down at me. His hair looks wet, like he just took a shower, and even with him standing over me, I get a whiff of that damn intoxicating smell of his body wash.

“How do you think your mom and dad would feel if they knew you were avoiding me,” he drawls, tsking me. “Seeing as we’re like family, I don’t think they’d be very happy with you, Short.”

I roll my eyes. “What do you want, Dallas?”

Suddenly, he’s uncomfortable. His gaze shifts from Gigi to Harley before falling back to mine.

“Can I … uh, talk to you alone for a second?” he murmurs, and suddenly, there is no smugness on his face, but instead, shame. For what, I have no idea.

I may not have wanted to see him right now, fearing he’d make me feel worse about the Tabor situation than I already do, but it all goes away when he looks at me like that. Because I know, with everything that I am, he needs me. Maybe that makes me pathetic, yet here I am, slowly standing up.

“Sure.” I nod, walking past him and toward the hallway. “We can go to my room.” As he starts to tag along behind me, I look over my shoulder at the girls. “You can finish this episode without me, bitches, but don’t you dare start a new one!”

“Fine,” they both say before settling onto the couch again.

Once we’re in the hallway, I stop in front of my door and glance back, eying him over a bit. Inhaling a deep breath, I push the door open and walk inside.

Dallas closes the door behind him, making me more nervous. My mind shouldn’t, but it travels right back to the night we kissed. I hate that my heart flutters at being alone with him.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I watch him pace back and forth in front of me. I don’t have a clue what he’s about to tell me or ask. Back before he went and made everything weird with the kiss, we spent a lot of time together, just the two of us. Noah may have been his best friend, but Dallas and I had our own friendship. Even if that friendship meant me stuffing my feelings down for the sake of keeping it.

“There’s no easy way for me to say this,” he finally blurts out. “This is the last thing I want to be doing, Haven. Before I ask you what I’m going to, please know that this was your dad’s idea.”