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If I’m not careful, this date is going to turn into something riskier. But I know better than to believe one fantastic night means anything more than that. Still, she made herself vulnerable to me. She opened up, so I give her something more than she could learn online about my far too short stint in the majors. “And yes, I was drafted right after college. Played in the minors for one season. Then I played for the Los Angeles Bandits. It was a decade ago. I blew out my elbow after eighteen wins in one season and it was…devastating,” I say, and I leave it at that. Don’t need to get into what it did to me. How it affected my head and my heart. The hell I experienced after.
“I’m sorry, Gage. That must have been so hard,” she says with genuine sympathy.
Hard doesn’t begin to cover the death of my dreams. “It sure was,” I say evenly, but it wasn’t even the hardest thing to happen that year. “But life happens, and you move on.”
“I hear you,” she says, and there’s soul-deep understanding in her voice. I want to ask what she’s grappling with in the life happens department. But I don’t want this date to get too heavy. Even though Zane warned me, I go against his advice because we need some levity, and we need it, stat. “My daughter said I should show you my rookie card,” I say, like I’m dangling a carrot.
Elodie brightens, her smile spreading to her eyes as she beckons with her fingers. I grab my phone, and find the pic in my texts from Eliza. I spin the phone around to show Elodie.
She takes a beat to check it out. The serious game face I’m wearing. The uniform I didn’t get to wear nearly enough. And, of course, the pitcher’s scowl, designed to terrify batters. It worked. My cut fastball was a thing of legend. When I was on, it was nearly impossible to hit.
After she studies the picture of the faded card, she declares, “You were hot.”
I arch a brow, then ask in a stern tone, “Were?”
She leans closer and lowers her voice. But again, she doesn’t answer directly. “I have a secret.”
And I’m hanging on her every word. “Tell me,” I say and it’s a demand.
“I thought of you when I ordered The Command Performance.”
I’d wanted to believe the timing of the order meant something. But hearing her say it, sends the temperature in me soaring. I get up, move around the table, and sit next to her in the booth where I wrap an arm around her shoulder. “Want to hear a secret?”
“I do.”
“I wanted to ask for your number every time you came into the bar.”
“What stopped you?”
“Life. It’s busy. The whole kid thing. I don’t go out much,” I admit.
Her eyes sparkle with some relief, telling me she’s on the same page. “I hear you. Same here. This was my only free night in ages. Amanda happened to have a sleepover so it worked out,” she says, a little pensive, but understanding too.
“Same. Eliza’s with Zane, that is. My brother.”
She pauses, then asks, “So why now?”
“Couldn’t get you out of my head,” I tell her, because fuck the rules of dating. Fuck holding back. We both have busy lives. No time for bullshit. “That’s why I bought all those chocolates. I wanted to impress you.”
“Mission accomplished,” she says.
Pride floods my chest. Then I slide my hand down her back, resting it right above the swell of her sweet ass. “Now, I believe you said earlier you had a theory about men who put their hands on the small of women’s backs.”
“I do,” she says, as I spread my fingers over the thin fabric of her shirt.
“Tell me.”
“That they kiss in my favorite way.”
My chest is a furnace as I run my knuckles along her jawline. “And what way is that?”
She takes her time, holding the cards, holding my gaze, holding all my desire in the palm of her hand as she studies my face, my mouth, my eyes. “Hard and passionate. Just like how they fuck.”
That word.
On her lips.
I’m on fire. It’s blazing in me as I thread my fingers through her lush locks. “Want to get out of here?”
