Page 38 of Totally Opposed

He deserves to know. I should just text him, and then he’ll at least know to be a bit more discreet. If the players on my team know, it won’t be long doing things like that until the whole of the league knows. I pull out my phone and on the screen is a message from Harry. The notifications are still silenced from last night, so I have no idea when he even sent it, but when I slide open the chat, I do.

HARRISON: I guess when they post photos of that, you can say it’s part of the star-crossed lovers act.

Well, fuck. I guess someone did see. And he’s not wrong. This place is full of cameras. Someone could have gotten that pinch in a shot, and before we know it, photos could be everywhere on our social media. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s time we just owned whatever this is. The guys got over it pretty quickly in the chat. None seemed really bothered by it at all this morning. His team is going to find out, eventually. Nothing stays secret for long in this place.

Maybe we can talk about it tonight. He needs to know that this has become so much more than sex to me. He’s sweet. He cares about people. He cares about family.

When I asked him about the dinners in Gramp’s freezer, he said he did it because helping out my Gramps made him feel like he wasn’t so far away from his own family. But I know itwasn’t just about making himself feel good, he’s always looking for ways to help other people. Even grumpy old men who think Banana Ball isn’t baseball. When I was at Gramps’s, he let slip that Ryan had promised to keep him well-fed while we were away. He was down to his last Tupperware container, and just the suggestion that I was going to pick him up a few TV dinners had his nose scrunching up like a child being asked to take medicine.

So instead, Kelly and I helped Ryan cook up another month’s worth of home-cooked meals for Gramps before we left. And by helping, we bought the ingredients, cut things up, and passed Ryan stuff. Guys like Ryan that spend their whole Sunday cooking for someone else’s grandfather, guys that care more about other people than themselves, are rare, fucking non-existent, in my experience. Now that I have him in my life, I don’t want to even think about what it would be like if he wasn’t there. But how do I tell him I’m falling in love without freaking him out?

Chapter fifteen

Ryan

Alan smiles my wayfrom second base as I step up to bat.

Harrison is crouched down, bouncing his ass in time to the strut music. Gordon is winding up, ready to pitch one right down the line to me.

“You found another Animal Control tree to climb up, I see,” Harrison says, and I spin to face him.

“What did you say?”

The smack of the ball hitting his glove has half the crowd cheering and my team screaming at me from the dugout. Fuck. I should know better than to let him get under my skin.

Harrison laughs. “Relax, little monkey, your secret is safe with me.”

I have no idea if he really does know anything about Alan and me. They’re friends, and it makes sense he might tell him about us, but we haven’t gone public because we worried what the guys might think, and we didn’t want to cause any drama if they had a problem with it.

“Are you having second thoughts about us?” I ask, full well knowing he’s totally happy with Arlo and having zero interest in him at all, but it’s all I can think of to say that might throw his focus, too.

Gordon lines up again, and this time when he sends the ball down, it connects with the bat, and with a crack, the ball goes flying towards the crowd.

I drop the bat and take off rounding first easily. My gaze lands on Alan, waiting at second base. His attention switches between me and the guys going after the ball. Stevie Peterson has it and is about to throw it our way.

I can make it to second,I think and run harder. Alan smirks as I get closer, and my stomach swirls, and it’s different to the rush of adrenaline the game brings. I hope no matter how many times he smiles my way, it always feels like this. My heart is thumping, breath sharp and cold in my throat, and as the ball flies towards his mitt, I dive. I hit the ground hard, dirt flying up into my face, stinging my skin and clouding my vision. I desperately swipe for the plate, my finger landing on the corner just before Alan slams the ball into my shoulder.

Half the crowd cheers, and Alan tosses the ball back to the pitcher.

“I wasn’t sure you were going to go for it or not,” Alan says as I stand and try to brush off some of the dirt. It’s in my mouth, too, and I turn away from the bulk of the crowd to spit out what I can.

“Would you have really tapped me out?”

“I tried to,” he replies, watching Tim Sage step up to bat.

“Good thing I went for the slide then.”

He glances my way, his stare traveling down my uniform, before his attention returns to Tim.

“Except now you’re all dirty.”

“That’s okay. You can help clean me later.”

“And where will I be doing this?”

“I scored a single, so I was thinking, my room.”

“How did you manage that?”

---