Page 29 of Playboy Pitcher

Then again, I can’t just sit here like a pussy either. “Sure,” I mutter, lifting my beer. I keep drinking just to have something to do with my mouth other than speak. If someone doesn’t talk about something else soon, I’ll end up in another Uber.

Finally, by the time I hit the bottom of my mug, there’s a lull in the conversation.

Thank God.

But then I catch Kyle staring at me through the distorted glass. I don’t like that look in his eyes, and as I lower the mug, I like his smirk even less. “All I could think about the other night were those red lips of hers,” he says, licking his own lips while watching me. “And how they’d look wrapped around my—”

“I have to go,” I say, standing so fast my legs slam into the table. Reaching into my wallet, I pull out a handful of twenties.

Tuck actually looks offended. “What the hell, Ben? You’ve been here fifteen minutes.”

Exactly. Fourteen minutes longer than I planned. “Pitchers report to practice an hour earlier than you girls.”

“What’s the point?” Glancing down, I see Cruz crushing a lime in his fist. “We’re all going to be out of jobs soon anyway,” he adds before shoving the mangled lime in his drink.

Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m sure as hell going to find out.

“In case you all have forgotten, we play the Astros on Friday, and we spent the last hour of practice today acting like morons. Maybe we’ll make it to the regular season, maybe we won’t. Whatever happens, I, for one, don’t want to go out in front of eight thousand people looking like a fucking idiot.” Throwing the money onto the table, I turn around and walk out.

Chapter Ten

“So, Benson LaCroix, huh?”

I drum my fingers against the steering wheel, tapping out the beat to some godawful pop song I don’t even like. If those words had come out of anybody else’s mouth, they’d be choking on them by now. But Emma is one of the few people in my life I don’t suspect of hiding a knife behind her back while waiting to go in for the kill.

It’s for that reason, and that reason only, I don’t hang up on her.

“It’s not like that.”

“Then enlighten me as to the reason you’re still in Jupiter?”

“One, I’m not in Jupiter,” I argue, taking the exit, my gaze sliding to the malfunctioning GPS on my phone. “I’m in West Palm Beach, and two, I’m on a fact-finding mission.”

“Right. The fact being that you have a crush.”

I growl out an unintelligible response. A sound that’s quickly become my go-to form of communication. That should’ve been the end of it. But it’s not. With Emma, it never is.

“It’s okay to like someone, you know,” she says, her voice softening. My hands tighten around the steering wheel as her gentle sigh harmonizes with the protesting squeak of mattress springs. “No one would blame you.”

God, why did I think it was a good idea to tell her about my less than stellar encounter with major league’s Playboy Pitcher?

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Another cement block lands on my chest. It’s a familiar ache. One that grows heavier with every mile. I hate that she’s doing this. Maybe she’d never drive that knife into my back, but she sure as hell has no problem getting a few nicks in from the front.

“I’d blame me,” I mutter.

“Therein lies your problem,” she says. “You’re an iron-willed masochist.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

“Do you?”

Smartass.If she weren’t eighteen hours away, I’d swear she was sitting next to me, those green eyes boring into the side of my face along with a heaping side of judgment. I know she’s not. I’m not stupid. Even after everything that’s happened, I still have a shred of common sense left.

It doesn’t stop me from glancing toward the passenger’s seat.

Empty, of course.