Page 37 of No Easy Catch
“Are you sure? I feel like such an ass right now.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and really did look like he felt bad.
“I’m sure.” I patted the bed next to me and waited. He struggled with his decision because he looked at the door, then my face, then my bed before he moved to join me. His body weight shifted me so I fell into him but neither one of us made a move to readjust our position. “What aspects of the experience did you like?”
He hummed for a second before saying, “The coaches had a different approach to offense than I was used to playing. It taught me a lot about pitch selection and being aggressive. My hitting has been the best in off-season since I’ve gotten back.”
“That’s good. Definitely going to help you in a month when you guys start your season. What else did you like?”
“I got to try new food.”
“That’s always exciting,” I teased, earning a small smile from him. But it seemed off and I reached out to touch his arm to offer some form of comfort, but I paused. We weren’t there. We didn’t offer each other comfort.
But he gave you a hug when you needed it.I touched his arm with my hand and kept it there when he continued talking.
“I imagined playing in the majors being like how it is now, like a brotherhood. A family. It hit me when I was abroad that my heart isn’t in it, like my roommates. It could take years before making it. Years of living with host-families, struggling, traveling on busses, not knowing if the call will ever come.” He exhaled and slowly tilted his head to look at me and the amount of turmoil and uncertainty in his eyes had me suck in a breath.
“You don’t want that life,” I said, nodding as his words pieced together. “That’s what has you feeling so guilty.”
“I don’t have the guts to tell my teammates or my parents. It’s shameful.” He leaned his head back against the wall, producing a loud thud. “I’ve given almost seventeen years of my life to baseball and now I’m not sure I want it. How fucked up am I?”
I waved my hands in the air, making big circles as I talked, hoping that would somehow help my get my point across. “The amount of time you spend on something shouldn’t determine if you walk away from it or not. We have our whole lives ahead of us to work. It drives me insane when I think that we have to have our shit figured out at twenty years old. We’re still growing up, making mistakes, learning, all of that.” I brushed my hair out of my face and took a deep breath, filling my lungs with air since I didn’t pause in my rant. “I have no idea what I want to do after graduation and it terrifies me. Everyone else has a plan or a career path to guide them.”
He let out something of a chuckle. “Well, I don’t really have a plan either. A goal, yeah, but nothing concrete.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Law school.”
“Damn.” I took my time studying his facial expression and felt the pang of jealousy at the determination there. Even with his uncertainty of his future, he still had options and the talent to back up the aspirations. My voice came out more strangled thannormal, but I still meant it when I said, “Good for you. I can see it.”
He brushed off my comment and tilted his head slightly to the side. “What about you? You graduate in May. What’s next?”
I made a helpless face at him, moving my mouth without anything coming out for a couple of seconds before making a raspberry sound with my lips. “Psh, uh, I’ve been kind of hoping something pops up this semester, because I have no idea. I’m not skilled at anything particularly but I enjoyed blogging at one point until it became forced. The posts became trivial and?—”
“Not skilled?” he asked in an incredulous tone. “Amber, you’ve been incredible during this investigation. Your ability to get people talking, the way you ask questions. Are you kidding me? You’d make a hell of an investigative journalist.” He laughed and nudged my shoulder with his. “You wouldn’t believe how much I was stressing and trying to figure out how to get Dillon to talk. I was a fucking mess and wanted to ask you the entire time. But you, you think on your feet.”
His words were like a warm embrace, wrapping around me and filling me with something I wasn’t used to, my pride. My height grew two inches as my posture straightened. Just a flicker of confidence transformed my mind and it was almost embarrassing.Incredible. A hell of an investigator. Me!
Both my cheeks burned at the declarations he threw out without realizing how much they meant to me. I had to look away from him, toward the direction of the small window, and it took a good ten seconds to collect myself.If he sees me cry…My nose made a whistling sound when I sucked in a deep breath and the awkward noise was the perfect distraction to knock me out of my emotional moment. I cleared my throat and hoped my voice sounded normal. “Thanks for saying that.”
“Well, I meant it. Took me a bit to learn that about you but it’s pretty obvious.” He shrugged and reached out, puttinghis hand on my knee, patting it twice. “You know…I do recall reading one of your posts ranting about eighteen-year-olds having to make decisions that can affect the rest of their lives. I scoffed when I read it because I was one of those over-confident kids who thought he knew everything about his future. You were right.”
“You read my post?”
His face flushed just enough for me to notice and he took his time before replying, “Well, yeah. I had to read all your shit to see if you were writing subliminal messages hiding the truth of what was going on.”
“Yeah, that’s plausible,” I deadpanned, earning a smile from him. Seeing him so relaxed sitting less than six inches away from me, in my bedroom caused a swooping sensation to form in the pit of my stomach. My gaze dropped to the curve of his lips and lingered longer than appropriate. He smiled and I glanced up to see him staring at my mouth with something like hunger on his handsome face. The air shifted as the spark between us grew. My pulse sped up the longer I stared at his mouth and I had to squeeze my thighs together as my attraction to him burned. I wanted to make a move, to press my mouth against his and confirm the last two times hadn’t just been my imagination, but I couldn’t.What if he rejects me?
“Amber…you’re looking at me and giving me certain signs. I need you to say what you want right now.” His voice was gruff and restrained, as if his control held on by only a thread. It thrilled me and I replayed the words I’d said at the party.
“I was admiring your smile.”
He closed his eyes and groaned. “We still haven’t talked about what happened that night.”
“Do we need to?”
He took his time shifting his weight on the bed, moving closer to me and causing me to lie on my back with his largeframe leaning over me. I was beneath Jeff Maddow. I couldn’t believe it and I didn’t want it to stop. His breath came out fast and it thrilled me to see his chest heaving. “You tell me. If I kiss you again, are you going to go shy on me after?”
He dipped his head low enough to run his nose along the length of my jaw, teasing my earlobe with his teeth and biting down. “We can do this all night if you want.”
