Page 102 of Playboy Pitcher

With me?

As he drops a kiss on my nose and backs away, I fight the urge to claw him back. “Gotta go, Puddles. Be at my place at ten o’clock. Don’t be late.”

Stunned, I watch as he disappears into a circle of cheering teammates.

Leaping?The word keeps detonating in my brain like a bomb. Surely, he doesn’t mean what I think he means. Because that would change everything.

Everything.

If he leaps, what the hell will I do? Leaping with him would require a full jump. Not a step, not a trip, but a no-holds-barred free fall into the unknown. For the first time in my whole life, I’d have to allow myself to be completely exposed to someone. At their mercy. Bound to their word.

It would mean giving him the power to destroy not only me, but Emma as well.

As if answering my fears, my mind turns a key, unlocking the box where I keep my memories, and Emma’s voice fills my head.

“That man loves you, Willow. So, you better get past this self-destructive tendency, or you’re going to lose the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”

“What was that all about?”

Jumping, I turn to find Emma hanging over the guardrail as if I somehow conjured her. “Em, if I asked you a question, would you be honest with me?”

“Have you ever known me not to be?”

“How would you feel about leaving New York?”

A wide, cheesy grin plasters across her face. “Why?”

“The winters are really cold there.” Ignoring the “I told you so” look lighting up her face like the tree at Rockefeller Center, I fold my arms over the cement barrier beneath her and shrug. “It’s crowded. We can’t even live in the city because we can’t afford it. I’m thinking maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe somewhere warmer.”

“Like Miami maybe?”

Before answering, I look up to gauge her response. I don’t have to look too hard. The girl has no poker face whatsoever. I have a feeling if she knew I wouldn’t kill her for it, she’d have the Miami Storm logo tattooed on her ass along with the map of Florida.

“You miss it, don’t you?” She nods toward the now empty field. I don’t answer, but I don’t have to. Emma has always been able to tap into my emotions. Even when I haven’t. “Baseball is a part of you. You feel like you’ve come home.” After a moment of silence, she swings her legs under the railing and plops on the concrete next to me. “Okay, I’ll play devil’s abdocate.”

“Advocate.”

“That too. What about your impending divorce? You made a deal with Ben. If you stay in Miami, are you backing out of it?”

It takes me a few moments to answer, and even then, it’s a vague one. Mainly because I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. “I don’t know. Ben and I have a lot to talk about.”

Emma’s lip hooks up into a knowing smirk as she reaches through the railing and grabs Ben’s hat off my head, tugging it onto hers. “Yeah, it looked like it.”

I feel my cheeks burn. “He remembered my birthday.”

“Of course, he did. That’s what people who love you do. And he does love you, Will. We all see it. The only one who doesn’t is you.”

“We’re so different,” I muse. And that’s putting it mildly. “I mean, what if he wakes up one morning and…” Fuck, I’m starting to annoy myself with all this “does he love me, does he love me not” crap. Wincing, I glance up at her. “God, am I beingthatgirl?”

“Yes,” she says with a chuckle. When I groan and drop my head, she pats my arm. “And it’s about time. Will, you’ve spent ten years putting me first—giving up everything for me.”

Lifting my chin, I stare at her, a lump lodging in my throat. “I haven’t—”

“Come on…” She pins me with a serious stare. “You think I don’t know how many dates you’ve turned down? How many friends you haven’t made? How many roots you’ve pulled up and replanted? Jesus, Willow, you’re twenty-nine, not ninety-nine. You’ve spent your entire youth being my mom because the one who gave birth to me loved a little white line more than her little girl.”

The impact of her words knocks the breath out of me. “You know?”

“Will, I’ve always known. You just worked so hard to make everything so perfect for me, I didn’t have the heart to tell you.”