Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Instead of feeling like the leftovers, I’m part of the main event. Meg ropes me into helping make more cookies than I’ve ever seen in my life, and when she confesses that she won’t be able to look at a flour bag without puking for at least six months after her annual cookie extravaganza, I laugh so hard at her grimace that I almost pull something in my shoulder.
And then I apologize for laughing at her with my tongue between her thighs.
When she adds a terribly-wrapped present under our terribly-decorated tree with my name on it, I reciprocate with an even worse-wrapped present that doesn’t fit under our tree.
Don’t tell her, but it’s a bent bicycle tire, and it’s in honor of a story she told me about an incident with a bike when she was thirteen, and I’m looking forward to watching her laugh until she cries when she opens it.
We go to bed about six times a day.
Sometimes she sleeps after I challenge myself to give her an even better orgasm than the last one.
Most of the time I do.
Getting old sucks, but having Meg help me with my physical therapy and reward me for a job well-done with kisses and blow jobs does not.
I don’t know how I never noticed what a refined sense of humor she has.
Or how she can be deadly with her aim when it comes to well-placed and well-deserved zingers.
Turns out we have a lot more in common when it comes to ideology and worldview than I thought.
And my best friend’s little sister is pretty fucking brilliant when it comes to making me think about things in a new light when we disagree.
When I told her I didn’t know what I wanted to do once I’m healed and officially off the payroll from the Fireballs—I don’t want to go into coaching because it’s easy, and I want to make sure what I’m doing is actually the right fit for me—she patted my leg, said, “Don’t worry, I’ll support you on my nanny salary,” and we both cracked up.
She knows even relief pitchers get paid enough that I can take a few years off, but I don’t think she was talking about financially supporting me.
I think she was talking about helping me find my purpose. Whether it’s coaching or something else.
“You got me my dream job,” she said another time. About forty minutes ago, in fact. “Why not let me help you find your next dream job?”
And that’s how we ended up here, again, on a picnic blanket beneath the tree with a fire roaring in my fireplace, both of us naked, and both of us very, very satisfied now.
“Are you sure?” I ask her as I stroke a hand down her bare hip. “You’re sure you don’t need another?”
She laughs and kisses me. “I think another would kill me.”
“Just to be sure, another chocolate-covered pretzel, or another orgasm?”
“Both.”
“Your belly hurts? Does it need kisses?”
Her eyes are dancing with what I’ve come to think of as her joy face. “This is the you I missed when I first got here,” she whispers.
“What me?”
“The happy you. You used to be so happy, but then—”
I cut her off with a finger pressed to her lips. “And you used to be so sad, and I keep trying to make you sad, but—”
“Trevor.” She shrieks with laughter and rolls on top of me.
I’m cracking up too.
Meg was never sad.
But teasing her about it always gets me more kisses.
And despite the fact that my dick should basically be dead after how much sex we’ve had the past few days, having her straddle me is making me hard again.
Already.
This.
This is what I want to do with retirement.
Meg.
Every day.
“Just for that, I’m going to make you help me cook fudge,” she informs me.
“Not the fudge,” I gasp in mock horror.
“While we’re drinking hot chocolate. After we make homemade Christmas ornaments.”
“No. No more torture.”
“And then we’re having a snowball fight where you’ll knock me down, and I’ll pretend I’m hurt, and you’ll come running and realize that the way your heart stopped means that you care about me so much that this can’t just be a holiday fling.”
Okay, that one’s not funny.
I grip her by the chin and hold one of her hands right where it was, over my heart. “This is not a holiday fling.”
She blinks twice, chasing away the brief shine that, even before she moved in here with me, I could’ve identified.
She doesn’t like to let people see her vulnerable.
And who does?
“I knew that,” she says quietly.
“The first time I saw you, I didn’t know you were Jude’s sister. I was standing next to him in the dugout, and I looked out in the crowd and saw you, and everything stopped. Right up until he punched me in the arm and told me if I was drooling over his sister, he’d kill me.”