Her eyes widened. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Remember I told you about my big game? Practice starts at seven a.m. sharp, the day after tomorrow.”
“Oh.” The disappointment was clear in her voice and it tore at my chest.
“I…um…I should get dressed.” I gestured lamely at my clothes where they lay on the floor near her feet. She looked down and took a quick step back.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“No, no. I just…” What? What the fuck was I trying to say? I had no idea. I fumbled with my clothes, pulling briefs and shorts on with a single jerk.
She watched me dress, her eyes wide and her expression carefully blank. I recognized a girl struggling to keep her emotions hidden, and I respected her enough to let her do that in quiet. That, plus I didn’t have a clue what to say. I wasn’t even sure why I was rushing out the door.
“So, are you driving alone then? All the way back to Nebraska?”
“Yeah, but not by myself. There are four of us. All on the team. All…you know, have to get back.”
“Yeah, yeah. Of course.”
“It’s a really important game. I’ve worked for years to play in front of these scouts. One of them is for the Indigos and they feed into the Bobcats.”
“That’s important.” She nodded again. “I understand.”
I pulled on my T-shirt and toed into my sandals. I felt like the biggest heel, but what else was I supposed to do? I had to go back to school. “I want to stay,” I abruptly said. “I mean, I’d really love to—”
She shook her head. “No, it’s late. You should sleep now, so you don’t crash on the way back.”
“And the first practice back is really brutal.” God, I was babbling. What the fuck did she care about practice? But I cared. Coach believed in working triple hard after a break, and he was merciless. But so were her eyes and the way she just kept looking at me. Dark brown eyes that had a tangible pull on me. All I had to do was look in them and I got sucked in. No sense of time or place or anything, except those eyes and her beauty.
I had to get out. If I didn’t leave now, I’d never get to practice. To school. To my real life.
Nothing but baseball.
“I, uh, should probably go.”
She nodded and stepped back. I reached for the door. I didn’t want to. Hell, it was taking everything in me to walk away from her. But she wasn’t baseball. And in my real life—my not-spring-break life—I lived and breathed baseball.
With a sudden jerk of my wrist, I pulled open the door. She was still standing there in that towel, but I couldn’t look. If I did, I wouldn’t make it out.
“Hey!” she suddenly cried. “Don’t you want my phone number?”
What? Shit! Jesus, of course I wanted—
Except, did I? She was going to Butler University in Indianapolis. That was a far cry from Nebraska. What if I started spending long weekends visiting her? What would that do to my career? And Iowa, where the Indigos played, wasn’t much better.
But I still wanted her. I still wanted everything about—
Too late.
While I dithered over girl versus baseball, her expression shuttered, then closed down completely. I could see what she was thinking, and it wasn’t wrong. I’d gone to her because she’d danced in a wet T-shirt contest. I’d fingered her to orgasm on the beach and then we’d done it hot and heavy in her hotel room. I hadn’t been thinking long-term. It was spring break, for God’s sake.
But she had. Or at least, she had been thinking beyond one night. I could see it in her eyes and felt like a shit for not being able to reassure her. I tried anyway, and it felt flat.
“Um, yeah. I mean, of course I do.” I fumbled to pull my phone out of my shorts, but it was too late. Her expression had tightened down and I could see she wasn’t buying a word I said.
“No, it’s okay,” she said, but her tone of voice told me it really wasn’t. “We had a good time.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
“It was a good time. It was the best!” Just how low could I go? I sounded like the biggest jerk on the planet, but everything I tried just dug me in deeper. “It was phenomenal. I mean you’re the greatest girl—”
