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Chapter seventeen

Danae

I can’t even believe how much more relaxed I feel on the drive home versus the drive to dinner. After Griffin’s demeanor dissipated my initial anxiety about the date, his thoughtful conversation completely put to rest the lingering hesitations I had about him.

Without question, I like the man.

Which is a revelation I’m positive I will pick to pieces with apprehensive, imagined future scenarios all night. Good thing tomorrow is still the weekend since I don’t foresee much sleep happening tonight.

But for these few moments on the drive home, I’m going to embrace the giddy, kick-my-feet hormones flooding my system.

Griffin somehow managed to strike the perfect balance of personal questions and lighthearted banter over dinner. I haven’t felt that comfortable talking about myself since . . . well, maybe ever.

How did he do that? Come to think of it, I barely learned anything about him. He kept me so at ease talking about my life—my hopes, my likes and dislikes—that I hardly asked him anything.

I look over at him in the driver’s seat. His profile is striking in the near-darkness, and my pulse picks up steam remembering how this very attractive man declared he wants to be my “more than friend.”

“Okay, you got to know all about me at dinner, but now I get the final ten minutes of our evening to pepper you with questions,” I say. Griffin’s eyes find mine briefly, and the calm intensity in them sends a shiver through me.

“Fair logic,” he says, eyes returning to the road. “What do you want to know?”

“What does your day-to-day life look like during the season?” I ask.

Griffin sputters a breath through his lips. “Couldn’t start off with a soft pitch question first? Had to pull out the curveball right away?”

I bite my lip. “Can we go ahead and acknowledge that I’m going to understand exactly zero baseball lingo or references? You’re going to have to spell out that meaning.”

He cuts another glance at me, laced with playfulness this time. “Can we also acknowledge that I’m eventually going to pry the story out of you as to why you dislike America’s favorite sport so much?”

I wave my hand and make a dismissive sound.

“Soft pitch would be easy to hit, so an easy-to-answer question. Curveballs are trickier, which means the question doesn’t have a straightforward answer.

Or maybe I don’t want to give a straightforward answer.

Mostly because I don’t want to scare you off with the reality of my schedule,” Griffin says.

My face falls slightly, not that he’s looking at me to notice.

He licks his lips before continuing. “We’re away at spring training in Arizona for about six weeks before the official season begins.

We get back home but alternate being in town for seven to ten days and then traveling for the same duration of time.

Usually, we play six to seven games per week, so it’s not exactly a laid-back schedule. ”

I suck in a sharp breath before I can stop myself. That schedule is . . . worse than I imagined. Staring out the window for a moment, I say, “Wow. That’s a lot.”

“But, you know, I do have free time when we’re in town.

Not every game is in the evening—some are in the early afternoons.

And we do have some shorter days of practice and training when we don’t have games,” Griffin says, and I detect a note of desperation in his voice.

“A good chunk of the season falls over the summer, and players’ families are allowed to travel as much as they want to.

So it’s not like I wouldn’t see my wife and kids for weeks at a time or anything outrageous like that. ”

Realizing what he said, he slaps a hand to his forehead. “I mean, not saying that we’re for sure getting married. I didn’t mean to imply that. But also not saying that I’m not thinking about marriage, because I am, I’m not just looking for something casual with you. Or, what I mean is—”

As I’ve watched him scramble to explain his thoughts, a smile has slowly grown so large on my face that I can’t hold back a giggle any longer. His gaze cuts over to me, and relief softens his features when he sees my smile.

“I know what you meant,” I say, putting him out of his misery.

Although the verbal scrambling coming from this self-assured man was kind of adorable.

“I appreciate the clarity that you’re serious.

And to reciprocate the clarity, I will say that while a hectic schedule like that isn’t my ideal, it’s not an immediate deal-breaker for me.

I’m open to continue exploring where life might lead us. ”

“Okay, good,” he says. “I was seriously sweating it there for a minute.”

We turn onto my street, which means I’m running out of time to glean more information from him. “As we’ve established, I’m not a baseball fan,” I begin.

“Firmly established,” Griffin cuts in with a grin.

“An indisputable fact,” I add. “But Jason has been talking my ear off about your baseball stats and career. He mentioned that you were injured last year and were questionable to come back. I assume everything is all healed up now?”

The light in Griffin’s eyes dims, and his face hardens.

I didn’t expect such an intense reaction to a well-known fact.

Maybe reliving the injury is traumatic for him?

I try to retreat. “You don’t have to talk about that,” I say in a rush.

“Sorry if I shouldn’t have asked about it. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Griffin sighs as he pulls into the parking lot of my townhouse complex.

“No, you don’t need to apologize. I don’t want you to feel bad asking me anything,” he says.

He puts the Jeep in park and stretches his neck to either side before looking at me.

“Yeah, it was one of our first games to start the season last year. I injured my left shoulder—my catching arm—pretty badly. It was . . .” He trails off, looking out the window .

“Bad?” I supply for him.

“Yeah, it was bad,” he says. “The surgeon and rehab team were fantastic, though, getting me back into shape.”

“I’m sure you did a lot of the hard work to get yourself back into shape,” I add. “That’s admirable.”

“Sure, yeah. It was a lot of hard work. I’m glad to be back with the Crowns to start the season,” he says, still not meeting my eyes.

Apparently, I unintentionally poked a pain point. “We’d better get inside so I can get Jason in bed,” I say, pivoting to open my door.

I’m halted by the sensation of Griffin’s hand around mine. His calloused palm is rough against my skin, but his fingertips are soft as they wrap around and trace my palm. I turn to look over my shoulder at him.

“Danae, I’m sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong asking me about the injury—that’s a logical topic of conversation,” he says. I turn to fully face him, careful not to move my left arm too much. I don’t want to risk losing any of the points of contact between our hands.

“I wasn’t mentally prepared for your question.

I kinda have to psyche myself up to talk about being injured.

Can I take a rain check for that topic? I promise I’ll tell you more sometime,” Griffin says.

One side of his lips hitches up as he adds, “Please don’t let that be the lingering memory of our first date. ”

“Deal,” I reply. “I really should get Jason to bed, though.”

Griffin lightly squeezes my hand before reluctantly letting go (at least, he seemed reluctant, but maybe I’m projecting my own feelings).

We make our way inside and find Samantha and Jason sitting across from each other at the dining table.

There’s a half-empty plate of cookies and a set of playing cards between them.

“Miss Danae! We made cookies!” Jason exclaims when we walk into view. “And I can play cards now!”

I cross the room to hug his neck, glancing at the kitchen in the process. Griffin was not joking about finding flour everywhere. But knowing that Jason had a good time while I had a good time puts a messy kitchen in proper perspective .

“You’ll have to teach me how to play this game tomorrow after we go to the store,” I tell Jason. “Thanks so much for staying with him, Samantha.”

Samantha leans in toward Jason. “Hey, you were gonna show Griffin where you have all the posters from camp hung up, remember?”

His eyes light up. “Oh yeah! Come on, Mr. Griffin! Let me show you in my room.” Jason grabs Griffin’s hand and leads him upstairs, chattering away about dropping an egg on the floor while making cookies.

Samantha stands and turns to me. “That was my clever ploy to get Griff out of the room so you can tell me how the night went.”

I burst out laughing but quickly quiet myself. “We had a great time.”

Samantha widens her eyes and makes a “go on” motion with her hands. “You have to give me more intel than that.”

I roll my eyes but can’t hide my smile. “We had great conversation. He’s so easy to talk to. In fact, I think I shared more about myself on our first date than I share with friends who have known me for years,” I say with a shrug.

She nods knowingly. “Yep, that tracks. My brother, the human can opener.”

“The what?”

“I’ve always called Griff the ‘human can opener’ because he can get anyone to open up and start talking about themselves. But not in a manipulative way—just because he’s genuinely interested in what people have to say,” Samantha explains.

“Huh. That makes perfect sense. He seemed to know something personal about every employee we ran into at Capital Grille,” I say.

“Oh, he definitely knows everything about everyone there. He wasn’t putting on a front for you. Griff truly considers all of them friends. That’s part of the reason he always wants to eat there, and why I always beg and plead to go literally anywhere else,” Samantha says with a cheeky grin.