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“I thought we could sit in the stands like the regular folk.”
“Sounds fun.”
His tone is soft, unsure, hopeful. “Yeah?”
Mine is firm, comforting, certain. “Yeah.”
34
CASS
The last timeI was in a baseball stadium, I was on the field.
I was playing with the same people I’m watching now. Not just playing; leading. That was my team. Now, it’s someone else's. Ezra Gataki’s, it looks like, which makes sense. He’s been with the Wolves as long as I have, and he’s a damn good player. He deserves it; I can acknowledge that.
Because I’m an excellent multitasker, I can be bitter as fuck about it.
This is awful. Hunched over in a too-small plastic seat with my chin propped against my knuckles and my knees bouncing a mile a minute, I feel awful. I knew it was gonna suck, watching my team play without me, but fuck, it’s so much worse than I anticipated. Especially—and this makes me a real asshole—because they’ve gotten over that slump they experienced at the start of the season. For the past couple weeks, they’ve been playing like the team everyone knows and loves again. They have their shit together and they’re on a winning streak like they should be, on track for the playoffs in October.
They figured out how to carry on without me and I fucking hate it.
The commentators narrating the game don’t mention me anymore and I hate it.
No one has recognized me and I hate that I hate that too.
I know I’m being childish but I can’t help it. I just feel so… cheated. Unreasonably so, maybe, since my career has been longer, more prosperous, than the average. But I earned it. I deserved it. And I deserve for it to end when I want it to end, on my terms.
A warm palm lands on my bouncing knee. Another settles between my shoulder blades, soothing the phantom pain nagging one of them. Both move in slow circles as the body occupying the seat beside me shifts closer, leaning forward the same way I am.
Sunday doesn’t say anything as she props her chin on my shoulder. When I tilt my head towards her, she offers a wary, comforting smile. I force one of my own, force myself to sit back too, take her small hand in my much larger one and unashamedly cling to it.
She makes this more bearable. Her and August, the latter utterly engrossed in the game while his mother finds the stadium’s food options far more interesting. They remind me that while all might not be well with my career, I haven’t lost everything. I’ve gained a whole lot.
Last weekend, I gained a little more.
I didn’t follow her into the garage with the intention of doing what we did. I was actually going to apologize for getting a little too handsy. For letting the warm weight of her in my lap, the softness of her skin beneath my fingertips, get to me in a way I’m usually able to keep under control.
Obviously, my control failed me.
Several times, actually. Because while I hid in my bathroom, willing my cock to calm the fuck down and washing the smell of pussy off my fingers—I couldn’t do anything about the taste of it on my tongue, and I didn’t want to—I made the smart, mature choice. I decided we wouldn’t be doing that again, no matter how much I wanted to, for all the reasons she, less than an hour later, brought up. I told myself to play it cool, go join my family, let Sunday worry herself into never touching me again.
Thirty seconds later, I was kicking everyone out.
Another half hour or so and a half-naked Sunday was in my lap, and I was all but begging her for more.
A little after that, my hand clamped over her mouth to stifle her moans while she rode my fingers.
Every concern she raised was,is, valid. This is complicated, this isn’t just harmless fun, this is as terrifying to me as wide, sage eyes told me it was to her. But… fuck. I’m already pretending with everyone else in my life. I didn’t wanna do that with her too, act like I want her less than I do. It’s too hard. Too complicated in its own way.
“This time next year that’ll be you, right?”
I hum a yes. For some reason, the idea doesn’t fill me with nearly as much joy as it should. Fuck me, it’s tiring, being so desperate to get back to work yet so unhappy with what that actually means, with the distance that’ll require.
If Sunday feels the same, she doesn’t let on. “Maybe you can get me, August and little Wolf Lane one of those fancy box seats.”
My head drops, the brim of my cap knocking the brim of hers. “You sure you don’t wanna call them Sal? Devil, maybe?”
“We could call them Angel out of spite. Team Morgan, right?”
