Page 25 of Off Limits: The Firsts

He darts his tongue out to wet his bottom lip. “That’s not all you were thinking about.”

His laugh fills the truck before he shuts the door and leaves me with the echo of it through the open window.

I follow his very fine backside as he jogs across the grass field toward a small crowd of people. There are tables dotting the playground, with bunches of green balloons at every other one. There looks to be a group of kids seated in rows on the grass and some kind of costumed character in front of them holding up an oversize book.

I’m more than fascinated with what is going on and just what Easton is doing here. Especially after he reaches the crowd of people and shakes hands with several of them, while hugging a few of the others.

After observing for a few minutes, I conclude that this is some kind of school function, and somehow Easton is a part of it. I’m distracted momentarily from watching him when the teddy bear character throws his hands (or is it paws?) up in the air. Despite the distance, I can hear the roar as the kids shout out loud in response.

Their enthusiasm brings a smile to my lips. And when I see Easton walk up before the rows of kids, their cheers grow even wilder. Some of them jump from their seats and run to give him a hug. Despite the distance, I can see the wide smile on his face and the sincerity in his expression as he hugs them back, ruffles their hair, and then does some kind of silly routine with the bear.

The kids shift to the next activity, the next station, and yet I’m left staring into space once again, acknowledging that Easton Wylder is getting to me. That hard heart my father taught me was a necessity to get through life is slowly softening.

And I’m not quite sure how to feel or what to even do about it.

My thoughts are too loud in the confines of this truck when all I crave is some peace and quiet. I don’t want to think about my dad, the stress of the contract, or how I’ll be letting both Easton and my dad down if I don’t succeed. Instead I just want to sit parked on the side of the road in the hometown I feel like I barely know. As a kid we were always moving on to the next city, the next injured ball player, so much so that tutors became our teachers and our beds at home felt unfamiliar.

I’ve missed Austin—the sights and sounds and beauty that I haven’t really gotten to enjoy as an adult—and being back for this short amount of time has only reinforced the thought.

The desire to make a life here is suddenly strong. To win the contract, find a place of my own, and grow roots. I need something of my own, somewhere I can belong.

Because pretty soon . . . I’ll be all alone.

The pang of grief is crippling, the swell of emotions inescapable.

Desperate to stop thinking, to stop feeling, I turn the key in the ignition and push the radio on. Music is what I need. Music will let me close my eyes, lean my head back, and get lost in the beat.

Except when the radio comes on, I’m startled when a man’s voice starts talking to me. Or not me, rather, but the reader, because it sounds like he is narrating an audio book.

An audio book?

I know it’s shallow, but an audio book is the last thing I ever expected to hear coming through Easton’s speakers. The man keeps throwing me for loops every time I think I have him pegged.

I should turn it off so he doesn’t lose his place, but there is something so soothing about the narrator’s voice that I snuggle into the seat with a soft smile on my face and just lose myself in the words he speaks.

A little more than a chapter later, I’m jolted from the story when the truck door opens. Feeling like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar, I look over to Easton with wide eyes and cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

He doesn’t say a word but just stares at me from behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses for a moment before climbing into the truck, turning the radio off, and then pulling away from the curb.

We drive in the silence that has seemed to plague us today, and I’m left to wonder why he seems embarrassed when there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

He listens to books. How can he think I’d judge him poorly for that?

And yet I sense his discomfort, so I try to ease it the only way I know how. “Stephen King, huh? I kind of figured you more for a romance novel kind of guy.”

“Bullshit.” His laughter breaks the awkward silence in the cab.

“What’s wrong with romance?”

“You seriously have to ask me that?”

“What?” I mirror the posture that got me into trouble earlier: body shifted, knees angled, eyes on him. “You don’t like a feel-good story? Or is it that you don’t believe in true love? Maybe you just haven’t found a good baseball romance to pull you in and steal your heart.”

“See! That’s just it. Those books give women unrealistic expectations about what a relationship is supposed to be like.”

It’s my laugh that fills the truck now. “Maybe our expectations are spot on, and it’s the men who are unreliable.” I purse my lips as he looks at me from over the frames of his sunglasses.

“That’s such a crock.”