Page 66 of Stealing Home

“Just while you ate?”

“I may have left it on while I cleaned up.”

Dom smiled, and some of the tightness in his shoulders released. “So you watched.”

“You went two for four,” Gavin said.

Dom could hear him shifting, and he wondered if Gavin was in bed. “That doesn’t answer the question.”

“And you stole second in the eighth inning.”

Dom’s smile widened. “So you watched the whole game.”

“Am I going to regret admitting it?” Gavin sounded resigned, but Dom could swear he heard a smile in his voice.

“Probably,” Dom said. “But I’ll let it slide tonight.”

Gavin laughed quietly, and for one moment, Dom let himself listen instead of focusing on the running list he’d been making of things he might say wrong. He’d missed that sound. He’d missed having someone who asked about both baseball and the pieces of his life that happened between games and bottles and everything else that demanded an answer right away.

The silence that followed felt different, less awkward and loaded, and Dom could feel the shape of the real conversation waiting on the other side of it. Some part of him wanted to keep talking about baseball instead of walking into it.

“So,” Gavin said slowly. “What made you decide to reach out now?”

Dom rubbed his thumb along the edge of the counter. He’d known the question was coming and he still didn’t know how to answer. He’d rehearsed half a dozen answers in the shower at the stadium and discarded every one on the drive home. Now, with Gavin actually waiting on the other end of the line, every version of the truth sounded flimsy, like something Gavin would dismantle the second he said it aloud.

Say it anyway, he told himself. Worse things had happened to him this year than being honest on the phone.

“At first, I thought you would call me first,” Dom admitted. “Then I thought waiting would make it easier to call you.”

“Did it?”

“No.” He studied the tile between his feet. “It made me angry.”

Gavin was quiet. “At me?”

“At first.”

“For leaving?”