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GREYSON

There are a thousand reasons I cannot, under any circumstance, fuck Molly.

Doesn’t matter that she’s the cutest thing I have ever seen. Or that her smile could power a tri-county fair. She’s so sweet, I could get a cavity every time I look into her big, blue eyes.

She’s up to bat, the bottom of the roster of our teachers softball league. Cass convinced her to join, to make friends, but Molly couldn’t even catch a ball a few weeks ago. I literally had to get behind her like some mansplaining creepo in a movie and show her how to hold the bat and turn her hips. And I’ve been thinking about the way her body felt against mine every waking second since. Most of the dreaming ones too.

Fucking Cass, always trying to help. I half wonder if she suspects I have a…I don’t know what this is. A crush? No, it’s something worse than that, though I don’t think I have a word for what.

All I know is that it’s bad. It’s real fucking bad.

Molly bought this old worm-eaten house that should have been condemned. And on her salary, with student loan debt, there’s no way she can afford what needs to be done. How the fuck was I supposed to walk away and let her figure it out on her own? She’s only twenty-four. Brain’s still squishy. She doesn’t know how to fix up that piece of shit old house, and God knows nobody would buy it but her.

So, yeah. I’m helping her fix up her house. She doesn’t know it yet, but I have plans to build her a library in her study with one of those rolling ladders and everything.

Seriously, what else am I supposed to do? She’s like feeling the sun on your face for the first time, warm and familiar and perfect.

I’m about as cuddly as a thunderhead.

All I’ll do is ruin her.

But I can’t seem to get away from her. I can’t seem to make myself want to. I can’t seem to quit acting like her fucking bodyguard every time one of these dumbasses tries to hit on her. I spend all my spare time at her house, fixing it up and trying not to think about her lips, pouty and pink. Or the secret of her full breasts beneath her baggy dresses and cardigans. Or the way her nose crinkles up when she smiles.

Or how, when she fell into me the other day and it landed us nose to nose and a hair from kissing, she blurted out that she’s a virgin.

When she asked me to teach her, I ended up in the hospital. No, seriously.

They oughta just bury me. Assuming I’d stay dead after a request like that.

Stupid fucking fucked.

She’s swung three times, a ball and two strikes.

“Whatever it is, swing at it,” I shout from my box. “Just like we’re playing pepper.” I figure if she can relax like when we play games in practice, she might be able to hit it.

When she glances at me with determination all over her face, I nearly fucking die.

She pushes her glasses up her nose and narrows her eyes.

This time, when she swings, it connects with a ping.

It’s not pretty, but off it goes, and she’s jumping up and down screaming, “I hit it! I hit it!”

“Run!” I yell on a peal of laughter, and remembering herself, she takes off for first. The whole fucking team is losing it so hard, you’d think she hit a grand slam in the World Series. And I’m smiling like an asshole who wants shit he can’t have.

After all this time, after so many years alone, in walks Molly.

But I cannot fuck a woman twenty years younger than me.

No matter how bad my heart wants her.