Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 24270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 121(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 24270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 121(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
I decide to wind up the press even further. “Wouldn’t know what he said. It’s not like we spend all our time sending videos to each other.” Which is technically true. We spend some time doing that. But I also have to sleep and play baseball.
One of the reporters for The Sports Network hands me her phone. On it, a video plays of Josh. He’s standing in front of a similar crowd of reporters, probably a few minutes ago. I throw the group around me a smile. “There’s no chance I can watch this without an audience?”
I watch the clip as a reporter off-camera asks Josh why he slid into third tonight.
“Just trying to hustle out a triple,” he says, scrubbing a hand over that beard I’m going to feel against my face in a few more minutes. “I got pretty winded rounding second, so it made sense to come in feet first.”
“But you weren’t happy when Garnett did something similar last October,” the reporter prompts.
“I wasn’t,” Josh says, looking contrite. “Losing the World Series sucks. But I shouldn’t have made it about Garnett either. Sometimes, you just get beat, fair and square. That’s what happened in October. And I told Garnett as much in the off-season. But that was on me for letting it go on as long as it did . . .” He takes a beat, looks straight at the camera, maybe even at me in a way, then adds, “I guess . . . he’s a nice guy.”
The video ends, and I’m met with interrogating media eyes.
“So no more bad blood between you?” a thirtysomething print reporter asks.
I smile. That’s one way to put it. “Yeah, everything’s good between Spencer and me. We made sure to kiss and make up.”
And with that, I bid the reporters good night.
Epilogue
Josh
One month is a long time.
So I arranged for a town car.
With a partition.
The second the sleek black vehicle pulls away from the ballpark, I pounce on Chris. I’m pent up, coiled with need, and I unleash it.
I claim Chris’s mouth, kissing him deep and hot. Our teeth click, and I can barely keep track of where his hands are, where mine are.
Except . . . all over each other. I tug at his shirt, yank at the waistband. My hands slide up his strong chest, and I break the kiss to drag my nose along his neck. He smells so good, tastes even better. My brain goes hazy, already intoxicated by that clean, post-game, showered smell, and by my own ravenous need to reconnect.
I break the kiss to murmur across his lips. “Four goddamn weeks,” I say, then drag his lower lip between my teeth, sucking, then skating my tongue into his mouth.
Chris lets out a feral groan, chased with a laugh.
A delicious laugh that I missed. Along with everything else about him. As he coasts his lips over mine, he whispers back at me, “Missed you so fucking much.”
With my head in a fog, I half wonder how this has happened. How we went from that golf tournament nearly a year ago, to all those games, to the series, to the photoshoot, to spring training, to now.
Making out with abandon, after midnight, in the backseat of a car.
Then I stop wondering because the answer is in my arms.
The answer is instinct, connection, trust.
Eventually, I figured out how to trust my own instincts with Chris Garnett.
They tell me that I want him tonight, tomorrow, and for a long, long time. That settles my rocketing pulse, knowing this is the start of us coming together, again and again.
I downshift, running my thumb over his late-night stubble, kissing him slowly. He chases my lips. A brand-new sensation pulses through my body—a buzzy, giddy feeling borne from the desire to have him and to keep him.
Maybe we both feel it at the same time since we settle into a new rhythm, luxuriating in each other’s kisses along the I-87.
When we near my neighborhood, he breaks the kiss. “I like what you said tonight,” he tells me.
“Good. I wanted you to see it,” I say.
“I told them we kissed and made up,” Chris says, with a sly grin.
“Truer words,” I say. “Maybe when we do the golf tournament in a few weeks, you’ll kiss me on the course.”
“You’re right. I probably will.”