“And sometimes it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Especially if he’s only a little buzzed.”
She set her head down on my shoulder, and I curled her tight against my body. I held her there, trying to think of something else—of her heat against my side, the silky caress of her skin, and the sweet way she smelled. But then she kept pushing.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Mom left when I was fifteen. She said she couldn’t take it anymore.”
“You didn’t go with her?”
I shook my head. “She asked, but…” I swallowed. “I still had hope he’d get better. Besides, I was already doing my own walk on the wild side.”
She pressed a kiss to my jaw. “How far did you go?”
“Far enough to nearly kill some kids on their bikes. Far enough that I risked my baseball career every night.” I choked off my words. I didn’t want to revisit my idiotic youth. But even as I tried to clamp my jaw shut, I let words slip through. Good words. Important words. “My high school coach was an alcoholic, three years sober. He became my sponsor.”
“You were in AA?”
“Yeah.” Having started, I couldn’t stop confessing. “It didn’t take.”
She lifted her head off my chest, so I pulled her more fully on top of me. “I don’t understand. How did you get sober?” Then before she finished speaking, her expression lightened. “The naltrexone. I saw it in your bathroom. When did you start with it?”
God, she was so observant. “In college. I don’t know that it saved my life, but it certainly saved my baseball career.” The thing about naltrexone is that it prevented the brain from becoming addicted to alcohol. As long as I took a pill before drinking, I barely felt the effects and I never had the urge to binge. In truth, I rarely drank now, and I never had the craving for alcohol. Not like I’d had in high school.
“How often do you drink?”
I shrugged. “Almost never now. And only after taking the naltrexone. It took a year on the pills, but eventually I just didn’t want it anymore.”
“I didn’t see you take any of the beer people were offering you.”
I snorted. “Itookall of them. I just didn’t drink any.”
She grinned. “Yeah. That I saw.”
Of course she did. “I’d forgotten to take the medicine, so I didn’t risk it.” I doubted I would go on a binge from one drink, but with my family history, I wasn’t taking any chances. No way would I risk my career just for a single beer.
“But you can’t get Pops to stop drinking. Or Larry, either. And you’re worried all the time. About them. About who they’ll hurt. I get it.” She paused, then said in a lower voice, “And then he followed you here.”
“He always drinks at the All-Star Game. But we usually have fun, too. It was always our best time together, even better than Christmas. And he loves that I’m a baseball player. He loves everything about it.”
How did I explain about the good times? How did I tell her that as much as I hated him, I loved him, too? There wasn’t a hint of jealousy in my father—about my life, about my career. Only pride and joy. Except he always mixed it with booze. And that always led to the rest. As charming as he could be, I couldn’t risk him saying something wild that might get caught on camera. I hated the way he flirted with women of all ages, and knew he often crossed the line between being a funny old guy and a creepy perv. When we were together, I watched him constantly and couldn’t relax. And when I wasn’t with him, I lived in fear of getting a phone call telling me he’d not only destroyed his life, but someone else’s as well.
It was killing me, and I couldn’t think of any way out. I didn’t have the words to express the exhaustion that came with the constant sense of dread I felt. I just had her, pressed against me, idly threading her fingers through my hair as she listened.
“Ellie…” I said, though I didn’t know what I was going to say.
“I’ll help,” she responded. “I can help.”
Of course she could, but I didn’t want that. The last thing I wanted was to rope her into my nightmare.
“Don’t you shake your head at me. I’m your girlfriend, at least until the season ends. This is what girlfriends do. They help with the hard stuff. And as a nurse, I know a few things about this, too. ”
My cauldron of emotions boiled over. Right there. Too many things pissed me off about what she’d just said. About the temporary nature of our relationship, about the fact that she felt obligated to help because she was a nurse. Fuck that. I didn’t want someone simply doing their job around me.
I wanted a woman who cared, one who could really “see” me, even when I was doing my best not to show what was going on in my head. One who pushed me when I didn’t want to talk and held me through it all. But most of all, I wanted Ellie beneath me, her legs spread while I thrust into her.
It was the only emotion inside me that was simple. There was no confusion—I wanted her. Now.
