Page 58 of Heavy Hitter

Jimmy shrugs. She’s perched back on his knees, enough space between them for plausible deniability. He stops himself from pulling her closer, but barely. “It’s a valid worry. I would worry about it, if I were you.”

“I’m not worried about it,” Lacey says hotly. “I said it specifically to hurt you. I’ve been around people who are using me, Jimmy. I can smell it on them. That’s not what this is.”

“No,” Jimmy agrees, looking at her evenly. “That’s not what this is.”

“What is it, then?”

“I don’t know, Lacey,” he tells her honestly. “I don’t know. I want to win this fucking Series. I want it like I’ve never wanted anything else. But then it’s going to be over, and I know I don’t want to go back to my condo with my ring and be proud of myself by myself and never talk to you again and feel weird every time one of your songs comes on the radio until finally I drop dead in a puddle of my own drool. I want you to be there when it’s finished. I want something with you that’s going to last.” Jimmy takes a breath. His heart is pounding like he just ran suicides up and down the bleachers for an hour, knocking wildly around in his chest. “I’m serious about you, Lacey. I think I could be really fucking serious.”

Lacey kisses him.

Right away Jimmy kisses her back, the pure, unadulterated relief of it like a hot shower after extra innings. The feeling is replaced a moment later with something darker, his head swimming, all the blood in his body rushing to his dick. Easy, he thinks as he nudges her mouth open, be careful, only it’s not easy or careful, it’s like somebody slammed open a fire door inside him and everything he’s barely managed to hold back for the last couple of weeks, everything he told himself he wasn’t really feeling, is raging out of him all at once in an uncontrollable blaze. He missed her, he realizes, hooking his hands behind her knees and pulling her toward him until their chests are fused together. He missed her tall, pretty body. He missed her expensive-perfume smell. “Where are you hurt?” he mutters into the crook of her neck, running careful hands over her ribs and stomach. He wants to strip her down and check her for damage. He wants to stand guard outside her door for the rest of his natural life.

“I’m okay,” Lacey promises between kisses, wrapping her arms around his neck and scratching gentle fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. “You’re good. Just touch me.”

Jimmy does, tugging off her hoodie and peeling off the tank she’s got on underneath it, unable to keep from wincing at the constellation of blue and purple bruises around her ribs and arms and shoulders. There’s a mark in the shape of a hand where someone grabbed her through her clothes. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, tracing a finger along the lace of her bra strap. “I should have been there.”

Lacey laughs at that, full-throated. “Bro,” she reminds him, “Javi spent fifteen years in the United States Marine Corps. I love you, but I gotta say I don’t think you were the thing standing between me and—” She breaks off, blanching, both of them registering the confession at the same time. “Um.” Lacey clears her throat. “Sorry. I just meant—”

“It’s okay,” he says. “I get it.”

Lacey wrinkles her nose. “Sorry,” she repeats, leaning forward and bumping their foreheads together. “Did I just make it weird?”

Jimmy shakes his head. “No,” he promises, and kisses her again to show her he means it. He boosts her gently off his lap and peels the rest of her clothes off—taking his time about it, mindful of the bruised places. He kneels down in front of the sofa and tugs her gently toward the edge of it, then lifts her long, warm thighs up over his shoulders and sets about apologizing to her for real.

It takes some time, her hips shifting against the cushions, the muscles in her calves flexing and relaxing against his back. “Don’t stop,” she gasps, reaching down to thread her fingers through his hair, tugging a little. “Oh my god, Jimmy, please don’t stop.”

“Not stopping,” he promises. Holy shit, is Jimmy not ever stopping, his whole world narrowing to her smell and her taste and the urgent way she’s moving, her quiet, half-desperate sounds. He’ll stay here while the rest of the team plays the Series without him, he thinks vaguely, working two gentle fingers inside her. He’ll stay here until the day he dies.

“Come up here,” she gasps when he’s finally wrung it all out of her—her hands scrabbling for the hem of his thermal and yanking it up over his head, pulling at his shoulders so he’ll come close and kiss her without bothering to peel his arms out of the sleeves. “I mean it, I want you to—”

“Yeah.” Jimmy nods dazedly and nudges her back onto the cushions, but Lacey shakes her head. “Not here,” she says, wrapping her arms around him. “In my bed.”

So Jimmy scoops her up and carries her up the wide, curving staircase, down the long hallway to her room. The thermal’s cutting at a weird angle across his neck, but he doesn’t care. He sets her down on her bed, then gets up there beside her and lets her strip off his jeans and his boxers, running her hands across his stomach and chest like she’s refamiliarizing herself with the topography of his body. Like she’s checking to make sure he’s really here.

“I love you, too,” Jimmy says right before he pushes himself inside her, and as soon as it’s out of his mouth he knows it’s the truth. He loves her like the first day of pitchers and catchers reporting. He loves her like the bottom of the ninth. What’s happening between them isn’t a distraction. What’s happening between them is the main event. “Hey. Lacey. I love you, too.”

When it’s over they lie there for a long time, the quiet of her house all around him. Jimmy uses one finger to trace ghost patterns over the skin of her back. “I’m going to Europe,” she murmurs finally, her sleepy voice muffled against his chest.

Jimmy lifts his head to look at her. “Today?”

Lacey smiles. “After Christmas,” she reminds him. “For the tour.” She’s quiet for a moment then, pushing herself up on her elbows. “I’m just, you know, putting it out there. On the off chance you’re looking for something to do after you retire.”

Jimmy laughs at that. “Sure,” he says, letting himself picture it for a moment: waking up beside her in a hotel bed in Paris, waiting for her backstage in Berlin. “Europe sounds nice.” He presses a kiss against her shoulder. “I got a couple of things I gotta do before then, though.”

Lacey smiles, her dark eyes shining. “Just a couple of errands.”

“Quick stop back home,” he agrees. He raises an eyebrow. “Speaking of which: you, uh. Wanna come to a baseball game tomorrow night?”

“What?” Lacey shakes her head—she shakes her whole body—so hard she almost falls off the bed. “No!”

That surprises him. “Really?” he asks, propping himself up on one arm. “You don’t?”

“No!” she insists again, sitting up and resting her chin on one bare knee. “Are you demented? You literally just said you were sorry you didn’t tell me not to come the last time.”

Jimmy makes a noncommittal sound, reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair back behind her ear before flopping down onto the bed one more time. “Horse is out of the barn at this point, wouldn’t you say?”

“Listen to you, with the farm metaphors.” Lacey rolls her eyes. “Also, not for nothing, I don’t seem to be what one might call a good luck charm.”

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