Page 83 of Hot Streak

“Only sanity,” Jackson retorted. “Where am I gonna find someone to hook up with?”

“I don’t know,” Connor grumbled.

“You could, though,” Jackson said, before he could decide this whole conversation was a terrible idea. “You could probably walk into any bar in town and find a very willing lady.”

“If that was even what I wanted anymore,” Connor grumbled.

It should have made him feel better.

It did not.

“Alright, so we’ll go out then,” Jackson said. He pulled himself off the bed, tossed his tablet on the bedside table, and slipped his shoes back on.

“Come on, you don’t need to primp,” he added as Connor did the same, but unlike Jackson, stopped by the mirror on their way out of the room.

“I don’t? My hair—”

“Is fine,” Jackson said, steering him out the door.

“Are you sure?” Connor asked, frowning. He stopped in the hallway, halfway to the elevator. Like he was actually tempted to go back to the room and fix it.

Jackson put his hands on his shoulders. Looked him straight in the eye, even though it made him tremble deep inside. He wanted to be immune to Connor’s looks, and at some point, surely he had been, but it felt like that time had long since passed.

Now he looked at the guy and all he wanted was to eat him up.

“Trust me,” Jackson said wryly, “you look good.”

Connor grinned. “Ditto. Trust me, you’re hot.”

Jackson dropped his hands. “That wasn’t my point.”

“No, but it was a happy accident.” To Jackson’s relief, Connor changed the subject. Because if Connor kept looking at him like that—like Jackson kept looking at him—in the middle of this dingy hotel hallway, God only knew what would happen. “Where are we going?”

“First, to grab TJ and Ro. Deke and Kevin, too.”

“To do what?”

“Just trust me.” Jackson paused, realizing that maybe he didn’t, and that would fucking suck if it was true.

But Connor smiled, wide and happy. “Alright, I think I can manage that.” Okay, maybe he did, after all.

It took a few minutes, but they finished gathering their group. They took off out the front door of the hotel, but Jackson refused to answer questions until they were halfway back to the ballpark.

“Are you kidding me?” TJ asked as they rounded the corner, the tall brick walls of it coming into sight. “We’re gonna play more? I’m tired, man.”

“No,” Jackson said. He headed towards the little-used side door and typed the code he’d seen taped up inside Andy’s locker. The door unlocked, and they walked right in.

For a second, Jackson had been sure alarms were going to blare. Or some security guard with an over-hyped sense of law and order was going to come out of the shadows and tase them.

But nothing happened.

Okay—it was definitely on.

“If we’re not gonna play, what are we gonna do then?” Kevin wanted to know.

“Deke, you said you wanted a rainout. So, we’re gonna give you a rainout,” Jackson said as he led them down through the maze of barely lit narrow hallways running under the stands, hoping he was going the right direction.

He’d been in this ballpark a handful of times—once you’d been in one though, it felt like you’d been in all of them—and sure enough, when he pushed open a door all the way at the end of a dark hallway, TJ holding his phone flashlight up to give them enough light to see, there was a little courtyard at the far end, past the first base line, where the grounds crew kept all their equipment.

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