Page 29 of Heavy Hitter

“About that,” he interrupts. “I owe you an apology. I was in a bad mood about other shit, and I was drunk, and I was jealous, and I acted like a schmuck.”

Oh, that intrigues her. “What were you jealous of?” she asks.

“Fuck off,” he says mildly. “You know what.”

Lacey guesses she does, though it truly hadn’t occurred to her in the moment. She’d felt stupid about the Toby rumors, stupider still when Jimmy made that crack about not reading the gossip rags. She’d been so busy trying to keep him from figuring out how much their conversations meant to her that it had never actually occurred to her to wonder whether possibly they meant that much to him, too.

Still, “I’ve had jealous boyfriends before,” she tells him now, curling her legs up underneath her. “It’s not my style.”

“Am I your boyfriend?” It sounds like a challenge.

“I don’t know,” she says honestly, “and for the record, I don’t feel casual about you, either. But we should probably see each other in person before we make any rash decisions, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy agrees. “We probably should.”

Neither one of them says anything for a long moment, both of them waiting, but in the end Lacey’s never been good at playing chicken. “Dude,” she says finally, “I asked you out once already.”

That makes him laugh, the sound of it low and rumbling; Lacey feels it in her ribs and her legs and her spine. “I guess you did,” he admits. “Come see me.”

“When?”

“As soon as you possibly fucking can.”

Lacey breathes in, her stomach flipping with anticipation and hope and desire. She’s going to have to tell Maddie, she thinks immediately. She’s going to have to tell Claire. She’s going to have to admit she’s been keeping a secret, going to have to figure out all the hundred thousand ways this is all about to get so much more complicated than it’s been so far. But for a second she doesn’t care about any of that. For a second all she feels is glad.

“I gotta tell you, pal,” Lacey says, as casually as she can possibly manage, “I thought you’d never ask.”

Chapter Twelve

Jimmy

JIMMY WAKES UP MONDAY MORNING, AND HE FEELS LIKE HE’S died. His knees are swollen. His hands are killing him. It takes him fifteen minutes to get out of bed. He dry-swallows four ibuprofen and stands in the shower for a long time, alternating the water as hot and cold as he can stand it and trying to figure out how to call this whole thing off in a way that somehow preserves both his dignity and Lacey’s. What the fuck was he thinking, suggesting she come here on such short notice? Sure, when they compared their schedules over the phone it became abundantly clear that between the rest of his season and her various celebrity tea parties it needed to be either today or like six weeks from now, but still. Even after weeks and weeks of buildup, all at once this feels way too soon.

He could say a work thing came up, he thinks, scrubbing the shampoo out of his hair. Baseball emergency? Is that convincing? That’s not fucking convincing.

When he sits on the mattress in his towel and he picks up the phone, she’s already texted. See you soon! Headed for the airport.

So. That’s that, then. This is happening. Jimmy yanks at his beard, then gets dressed and shuffles downstairs to the fridge. What do people like Lacey Logan even eat? Last night he added three bags of baby carrots and some fizzy water to the grocery app he shares with his housekeeper. Is that sexist? Probably. Jimmy doesn’t fucking know. She just seems like the kind of person who probably eats a lot of baby carrots, that’s all. She seems like the kind of person who might eat most foods raw.

It’s not a small thing, moving a person like Lacey Logan, let alone with so little advance warning. “Want to shoot me your assistant’s number?” she asked him yesterday. “That way Claire can reach out to her to talk about logistics.”

“Oh.” Jimmy hesitated. “Well—”

“You have an assistant, don’t you?” Lacey asked, sounding uncertain all of a sudden. “I mean, I just assumed, but if you don’t—”

“No, I do.” He does, too, a fortysomething blonde named Jennifer who makes sure his bills get paid and dresses almost exclusively in capri pants, but arranging a clandestine hookup is not the kind of thing Jimmy likes to use her for, so instead he got on the phone and talked to Claire himself for almost an hour last night, making dutiful notes on a wrinkled yellow legal pad about security and privacy and accommodations for Lacey’s various bodyguards. When they finally hung up Jimmy went outside and stood on the back porch of the farmhouse for a long time, staring out into the darkness, wondering if possibly he was making a mistake.

By the time Lacey turns up a little before one, his body is thankfully approximating basic functionality, though his hands are still aching like all hell. Jimmy shakes them out one more time, hard, then hits the button to open the gate at the front of the property and heads out to the wide front porch, watching the black SUV roll down the long dirt road that leads to the main house. It’s early October, and warm, the beeches and black cherries and poplars all making a leafy green canopy up above him. Jimmy bought this place mainly because of the trees.

He starts across the driveway as the car slows to a stop, then freezes at the last second, weirdly nervous he’s going to get tased if he makes any sudden approaches. Instead he stands there dumbly with his hands in his pockets while her driver gets out and opens the door for her, watching as she hops nimbly down out of the back seat. Her heels kick up a tiny cloud of dust.

“Hey,” Jimmy says, lifting a hand in her direction.

“Hey yourself,” Lacey calls back, and oh, the fucking smile on her. She’s wearing jeans and a little red crop top, the smooth, tan strip of her stomach visible in the golden light of the afternoon. Her hair is long and loose down her back. She looks like a one-woman propaganda campaign for the United States of America and all at once it feels insane that Jimmy was ever in his entire life indifferent to her. It feels insane that he almost let her go.

He crosses the lawn then slows down abruptly as he tries to gauge how the fuck to greet her. Do they hug? Do they kiss? It feels deeply negligent on his part not to have considered this beforehand. He can tell she’s trying to figure it out, too.

Fuck it, Jimmy decides. “Hi,” he says, and ducks his head to drop a kiss against her smooth, matte cheek. “How was the flight?”

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