Page 3 of The Love We Make

Not that I wanted her likethat, but she felt like home. Shewashome. And when you lived life on the road and in the public eye, being home felt so damn good.

It wasn’t unusual for us to spend the night at each other’s apartments. We had been doing that for years now. But maybe I was going overboard these days. I just felt like it was my duty to keep her from making some huge ass mistake.

The night she called me to pick her up from the bar, she declared her desire to lose her virginity. And while I didn’t consider that I would ever care about something like that, turns out, I did.

A lot.

Since then, it had been my sole purpose outside of baseball—keep Madison a virgin. She deserved to find love first, the way I knew she wanted it. Someone that would give her the first-time experience that everyone wished they had. Anything less than perfect wasn’t good enough for her.

Madison wasn’t a “hook up” kind of girl and she knew it. She was too careful and timid to go off with someone she didn’t know. But I didn’t doubt her rebellious behavior would consider bringing someone home with her.

Which was just as stupid, by the way. So I had to be there to help and protect her.

Once she caught on that I was showing up every night, she stopped mentioning it and stopped trying. My plan was working.

So, there I was, day 29 of waking up in her bed after letting myself in with my key the night before. I knew I was driving her nuts. But I didn’t actually care. She would thank me one day. I was going to be hercockblockeruntil I could convince her to change her mind and go back to dating the way she used to.

For a purpose.

For love.

That is what she had told me she always wanted. And I promised myself I would make sure she got exactly what she wanted.

Always.

Unfortunately, I was about to leave town for two weeks and wouldn’t be able to keep tabs on her the way I had been. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and shot a quick text message off.

Ethan: You still good to check in on Madison?

Chase: You sure about this? She is going to hate both of us.

Ethan: She won’t hate you. She might hate me, but it will be worth it.

Chase: If you say so. But yeah, I’m good. You owe me something BIG though. Like a car.

Chase Turner.

He used to be my favorite catcher until he retired three months ago at the end of spring training. I was pissed at him for leaving me right before the season. And since our second catcher, Manny Fernandez, got busted with a drug issue, I was on my third catcher of the year. Pitchers hated switching catchers. We needed consistency. We needed cohesion.

My point being, no matter what Chase thought I owed him, I felt like he owedmeone.

And that was the argument I used when I called and guilted him into babysitting Madison. If he thought I owed him back, then so be it. Because I really needed someone watching her.

I wasn’t telling her about this, either. She was just going to be getting random surprise visits from Chase. Even if all he did was ask for a cup of sugar, he would be able to let me know what she was up to.

I was insane. I gathered that.

But so was Madison.

She didn’t have to lower her standards just to have sex. She was perfect. Guys should have been at her feet, rolling out a red carpet. As corny as it sounds, she deserved to make love, not fuck around.

This was a faze. She felt like she was missing out on something and her girlfriends giving her a hard time for it had made it worse.

Damn, she was exhausting.

I got up from the bed and stretched. I could hear the TV on in the living room. Madison liked to spend Sundays watching a week’s worth of recorded DVR shows, cuddled in a blanket like it wasn’t June in Atlanta and hot as hell.

I walked into the living room and found her, huddled in the before mentioned blanket and holding her coffee. It was close to 11 am and knowing Madison as well as I did, she was definitely on her third cup.

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