Page 115 of Hot Streak

Loosened something inside him.

“Hell yes,” he said.

Maybe he couldn’t ever go back to that carefree, careless guy who’d danced around this bar with his shirt off, hitting on every woman in the vicinity, surreptitiously buying rounds for his friends, but he could enjoy himself.

“Did Mikey say for how long you’d be up?” Kevin asked.

“Maybe through the end of the season.” The major league team was fighting for a wild card spot in the playoffs, and if they made the playoffs, the roster expanded even more. If Connor could earn his spot, then he’d stay up. Maybe even see a few of his Rogues teammates join him when the playoffs started.

“That’s fucking awesome,” Charlie said, slapping him on the back. “God, Connor, I’m so proud of you.”

For a split second, Connor thought, why the fuck couldn’t Jackson be the catcher saying that to me? But then he pushed it away, pushed it down, and grabbed another shot from the tray.

There was no question that Jackson and he would be having some kind of reckoning—at some point—but there was no reason he couldn’t enjoy himself before.

“You’re gonna fuck this up,” Deke said in a low voice as he slid onto the barstool next to Jackson.

Whiskey was burning at the back of Jackson’s throat, but he didn’t need the booze to tell him the guy was speaking the truth.

He was fucking this all up. Maybe on purpose. Maybe accidentally. All Jackson knew was the moment Mikey had shown up in the clubhouse after the game, the look on his face had made it clear what was happening, and since then, the roaring in his ears hadn’t stopped.

“Don’t need advice, thanks,” Jackson mumbled into his whiskey.

“You should be over there, celebrating with him. Especially you. You turned him into a major leaguer, Jackson. You were exactly what he needed.” Deke paused. “And maybe he was exactly what you needed, too.”

“Don’t start.”

“That was you who started it, man,” Deke said wryly. “No matter what happened between you two, he deserves for you to go over there and buy him a drink and tell him just how proud you are of him.”

“You think I’m not?” That hurt more than Jackson had thought. And he already thought the pain was sharp enough, cutting him every time he thought about Connor leaving tomorrow.

“I know you are. But he doesn’t. He thinks you’re . . .I don’t know . . .sulking.”

“I’m not fucking sulking,” Jackson said. Except he was. “If it was just fucking baseball, I’d be the first one over there.”

Deke looked surprised—but how could he be? He’d seen this coming, from the very beginning. “You care about him.”

Jackson raised his glass of whiskey. “Cheers. Took you long enough, but you got there.”

“I just . . .I thought . . .”

“It was just sex?” God, he wished it had just been sex. He’d sort of intended it to be, in the beginning, though he hadn’t ever really thought of it in those terms, exactly. But he wasn’t delusional enough to believe that it was just anything now.

“Well, I guess you are fucked, then.”

“Thanks,” Jackson said dryly.

“Still, you should go over there. You can pretend for one night that it’s alright between you. Send him off with style and lick your wounds, after.”

“Yeah.” He knew he should do exactly what Deke was saying. But goddamn, he had been doing what he should do for so fucking long, he didn’t think he could do it any longer. Couldn’t swallow the feelings swirling inside him down one more fucking time.

Maybe he could have, if they were just run-of-the-mill feelings. But these were his feelings for Connor.

He wasn’t like anyone else.

There’d been a time when he’d have sneered at that, frustrated and angry that Connor was who he was. But now, everything that changed—and he hadn’t even realized it was morphing into something else, until tonight, when Mikey had walked in with that particular expression Jackson recognized all too well.

And something in him had broken.

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