Page 23

FRANCESCA

“You say retired like you mean dead,” I say, shaking my head at him as I leave my luggage next to the couch and toeing off my sneakers. If I just make sure to fall asleep there, I’ll win without having to fight him on it more.

“Felt like it at the time,” he admits, turning into his kitchen. “I . . . there was nothing after baseball.”

Opening the fridge, there’s an extremely organized selection of beverages lined up on the glass shelves. He grabs himself a beer and then turns to me, a question in his eyes. I nod and he grabs one for me too, a Modelo, like he was drinking at the restaurant.

“So you came back, for the ring, like you said,” I continue, as he pops the tops off both of them and settles on one side of the long peninsula in the kitchen, dark quartz a contrast against the shiny white cabinets.

“Yeah, for the ring, but what you asked me, about whether that was the only reason? No, it wasn’t. This is where I’ve always belonged. Ring or not, I’m in it for the long haul.”

“You haven’t even managed one game. Maybe see how you like it first,” I caution. “It’s different. The first time I watched a game I’d analyzed and I couldn’t be out there to do it myself, it was hard.”

“Oh, I’m sure that part will drive me nuts,” he admits, taking a quick sip.

“But kids like that? And a talent like Nakamura and, hell, even an ego-driven dick like Ethan Quicke. I love that shit, getting your chess pieces together and figuring out the best way to deploy them, getting the best out of them. I’m excited, for the first time in a long time. ”

“About baseball?”

“About anything,” he says, with a half a shrug and a self-deprecating grin, not entirely unlike the smile Cole Davis wore today when we were singing his praises.

“That’s . . .” I trail off.

“Sad?” he finishes for me.

“No,” I insist, but when he sends me a disbelieving look, I change my mind. “Well, maybe, but I was going to say familiar.”

“Really?” he asks, in clear surprise.

“Do you know why I was, what did you call it, jacking your ride when we ran into each other at the airport?”

“No,” he says simply, waiting for me to elaborate, but it’s not that easy.

Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly, wondering if I’m really going to share this with him. I barely talked about it with Bianca and she knew the whole sordid story. Finally, I give in, just a little bit. “I’d given up my ride to a family I knew.”

“That was nice of you,” he says, though it’s clear he’s confused.

“No, it wasn’t, it was . . . I don’t know exactly what it was, but it wasn’t nice. The family, it was my ex-husband’s family, his new wife, their baby, and I saw them and I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.”

“I take it it wasn’t an amicable divorce?” he asks, probably already knowing the answer.

“It was not. He cheated on me. With her. They got married like a couple of weeks after our divorce was finalized, and she was already pregnant. He quit his job in finance, the job he claimed to love, and they’re, I don’t know exactly what to call it, but influencers, I guess?

I don’t know exactly what they do, as my best friend blocked all their accounts for me. ”

“That’s a good friend. I unfollowed my ex, but we grew up together, same small town, same childhood friends, so people think it’s fun to tag us in the same stuff.

Sometimes I see her on a friend’s post, and she remarried Vaughn Keegan, you know the linebacker from the Rams?

And fans will randomly post about her too. ”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Price of fame.”

“No, that’s ridiculous,” I argue. “People are the worst.”

“It’s fine. I barely go on that stuff anyway.”

“Still, you shouldn’t have to see that,” I say, reaching out and covering Charlie’s hand with mine, and his eyes flicker down to stare at how we’re now touching.

Suddenly an air of tension simmers between us, settling gently where my pale fingers lay over the perpetually tan back of his hand.

I try to break it with a question. “It was an amicable split?”

“It was, as much as it could be. She wanted to start a family and I knew that I couldn’t do that while I was playing.

I was too selfish, too focused. I don’t know how some guys did it.

They made it look easy too. Javy just always had his family around and Maria had her own company and that seemed impossible to me. ”

“I’m sorry,” I say, though I don’t know why I’m apologizing.

“Nah, I’m sorry your ex was such a shithead. And who the hell would cheat on you? Fucking idiot.”

“I don’t think it was about me, really.”

“It wasn’t, but still,” he insists. “You don’t cheat. That’s just rule number one. You want out? You say something, you don’t cheat. Ever.”

“A pro athlete who thinks cheating isn’t okay: are you some kind of unicorn?”

“There are more of us than you’d think,” he says, and his hand shifts beneath mine, a shiver sliding through me when his calloused fingertips brush against the inside of my wrist, just like he did back at the ballpark.

“You . . .” I start and then stop when he does it again. “Fuck.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” I whisper, and his touch disappears and I nearly whimper at the loss of contact.

“No, you don’t want me to stop or . . . just no?” he asks.

“Don’t stop,” I clarify, finding my voice, trying desperately to ignore just how good his touch is making me feel, how incredibly aroused I am by the briefest contact, by the tenor of his voice, “but this . . . it can’t . . . we can’t really do this. It wouldn’t work. We’re . . . we . . .”

“What happened in LA stayed in LA ,” he says. “What happens in Arizona can stay right here.”

“Yeah?” I ask, cringing inwardly at how desperate and breathy the word sounded.

“If that’s what you want. That’s what we’ll do.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, yes? I need to hear you say it, no confusion, no misinterpretation. Do you want this, Francesca?”

Fuck.

“You called me that before,” I say, avoiding the question, buying time, trying to let the rational side of my brain, whatever’s left of it, talk me out of this.

“Did I?” he asks, setting aside his beer and mine before coming around the counter to stand in front of me, his hands reaching out as he steps ever closer.

My hands find his and he takes them, before lifting one to his mouth, his lips caressing the skin his fingers found just a moment ago and a jolt goes through me, a heady surge of pure lust.

“On the plane to Bozeman,” I manage to say, as one of his hands lifts to cup my cheek, his body close enough now to brush against mine, like when we danced in that ridiculous bar in Montana. “You fell asleep and I heard you say it.”

“That makes sense,” he admits. “I’ve only ever called you that in my head.”

“You’ve thought about me?” I ask, as his head bends toward where he’d buried his face while we were on the plane.

“I have.”

“Since we kissed.”

“Since the first time I saw you.”

It breaks the mood, just ever so slightly.

I pull back to look up into his eyes. “That’s . . . you never . . .”

“We worked together,” he explains, lifting one shoulder.

“We work together now.”

“Not like this. Not like . . .” he trails off, one hand leaving me to run through his hair.

“I was the captain of the team, a perennial All Star, future Hall of Fame. I was in the middle of a ten-year contract worth nearly three hundred million dollars. You worked in the analytics department. If things went bad, who do you think would have taken the fall?”

“So you didn’t . . .” I trail off, not sure how that question would have ended. He didn’t make a move? Seduce me? Make my place of work wildly uncomfortable? I was married at the time. So was he. An absolute recipe for disaster. Chivalry isn’t dead. Its name is Charlie Avery.

“I didn’t,” he confirms.

“And now?”

“Now you outrank me,” he says, and I open my mouth, my head full of comebacks, but he keeps going, “technically, and just barely, and I’m still a future Hall of Famer. All things considered, I’d call us relatively equal.”

“Is that what you’d call us?”

“Equally desperate maybe.”

“Desperate?”

“I told you, I’ve wanted you since that first day. What was that? Five years ago? Six? That’s a long time to want someone.”

It is.

Did I want him back then? Oh, probably, if I’d allowed myself even a second to think about why we were constantly at each other’s throats, a series of daily throwdowns that could have just as easily have been resolved by finding the nearest flat surface and relieving that tension in the best possible way.

I’ve been quiet too long, thinking too deeply, because he steps away fully and I’m suddenly bereft at the loss of contact.

“Don’t,” I say, reaching out, my fingers wrapping gently around his wrist and watch, fascinated as goosebumps appear at my touch.

And just like that, the spark between us flares to life again. It’s a dangerous thing, to know that with one simple touch I can feel this way, electricity dancing in my veins and across my skin, a slow simmer that could easily turn into a fully-fledged inferno.

He stands still. So incredibly still, like a marble statue as I reach up to run my fingertips along the sharp cut of his jawline, his eyes wary and careful when I move even closer, our bodies nearly brushing.

“Do you want me?” I ask. I need to hear it again. He was right. I am desperate.

“You know I do,” he answers in a soft whisper, his breath ghosting over my lips before inhaling deeply, his chest rising and falling while his teeth dig into his bottom lip.

Holding himself back?

It’s hot as hell.

Pushing up on my toes, I let my hand slide up into his hair, feeling the silky strands slip through my fingers as I finally close the distance between us, just a brush of my lips against his.

I pull away, just for a second, getting my bearings and now waiting for him.

He has my permission; I’ve opened the door and now he needs to kick it open.

He does.