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One of the guys from the group flipped her off, and I furrowed my brow, stepping that direction on pure instinct.
“Fuck you too!” She flipped him off in return, and the guy rolled his eyes before waving her off. “Ethan,” she called my name, snapping me out of my internal debate to stomp over there and educate the man on who not to speak to like that—which included my girl.
Shit, not my girl.
“Ethan,” she said again, and I let out a breath and headed toward her, taking my seat as she settled in hers again. “Tell me what you were thinking just now,” she said. “When that guy flipped me off.”
I swallowed hard.
“Be honest,” she said. “There is no judgment from me, you know that.”
“I was thinking he needed to be educated.”
Her eyebrows raised. “On?”
“On how to treat my—” I stopped short, shifting in my seat. “On how to treat to people.”
“Anything else?” she asked. “Any physical urges?”
I uncurled my fingers, which were balled in a fist. She tracked the move, her eyes flashing from me to my hand and back again. “Maybe,” I finally admitted.
My knuckles ached from clenching a fist so hard.
“Maybe,” she said, reaching down and smoothing her fingers along my palm until she reached the spot between my thumb and forefinger, gently massaging the aching muscle there.
Fuck, it felt good. Her touch wasn’t hesitant or fearful, it was confident and assuring.
“Yes,” I confessed. “I may have thought about breaking that finger he held up at you.” God, I sounded like such a possessive asshole.
But she didn’t look at me like I was one. She just kept massaging my aching hand, and nodding like she understood everything I was saying, that everything made sense.
“Do you still feel like doing that?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, my answers short, clipped as I tried to get my adrenaline in check.
“But you didn’t when those first two guys called you a prick?”
I shook my head, and she nodded, reaching across me for my other hand and repeating the soothing action. Jesus, if she kept it up, I was going to draw her across the seat and put her in my lap and kiss the breath from her lungs. Show her with my mouth and tongue how much I appreciated her lack of judgment and careful understanding.
Her blue eyes flitted across my face, the line of my jaw, all calculating and likely easily reading how worked up I still was. How her hands on mine were what was keeping me in this seat when I could still hear the rowdy group across the way, talking shit and running their mouths like the drunken bastards they were.
“You know what I love most about baseball?” Alexandra asked, continuing with my hands. “It’s not just about the game. There are so many things that go into baseball that make it the iconic sport it is. The smell of freshly popped popcorn from the concession stand,” she continued, her touch altering from soft and hard, depending on what muscle in my hand she was working on. “The smell of fresh condensation on the green field. The white, fluffy clouds, floating slowly across a crisp, blue sky. The sound of cleats on concrete as the players walk toward the field, the sound of a bat cracking against a ball or the smell of a leather glove. The sound of cheers as players race around the bases.” She grinned at me. “Baseball brings people together. Family, friends, people who wouldn’t normally get along but come together under the same flag of the team they fly for.” She nodded toward the loud group. “They’ll be high fiving me when Taylor knocks it out of the park,” she explained, naming one of our best hitters. “Baseball isn’t just a sport, isn’t just something to watch on TV, it’s a relationship builder. It’s a sense of camaraderie that can’t be found anywhere else.”
My heart rate slowed as I listened to her list all the reasons that she loved the game as much as I did.
“Better?” she asked after I’d just stared at her, awestruck, for a few seconds. She released my hands, and I took a deep breath, checking myself.
The urge to walk across the aisle and teach that guy a lesson was completely gone. I could still feel the irritation toward the stranger, but I no longer felt the undeniable need to rip his head off.
“Better,” I said, shaking my head. “Did you use some kind of Jedi mind trick on me?”
She laughed, the addictive sound only helping ease the lingering tension in my muscles. “I wish,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be cool?” she nodded toward my hands. “I grounded you.”
I furrowed my brow. “Like a punishment?”
She chuckled again. “Grounding is one of the many tools you can use to gain control over your emotions,” she explained. “Friends can help you do it too,” she continued. “People who are close to you who can catch the signs. Basically, you use your surroundings to focus your mind. You could catalogue the seats in front of us—how many there are, the color, the writing on the back. You could note all the smells you can make out in the air or search the crowd for anyone in a yellow shirt. Things like that.”
