Page 1 of Off Season

PROLOGUE

CHRISTMAS EVE

KAMRYN

Istare at my peacefully sleeping sister, willing her to wake up. I’m all jittery. I need her.

I’m twenty-eight years old and today will be the first airplane flight in my life that I will take without Bailey. What’s worse? I’m a nervous flyer. Averynervous flyer. She’s the only person who can soothe me. How am I going to get through this without her? My crutch. My teammate. My best friend. My twin. My soulmate.

Cheetah asked me to come home with him for Christmas. His family lives in Galveston, Texas and we’re supposed to fly there from Philadelphia in a few hours. He has five hundred siblings. Okay, it’s six, but they’re all married with kids, so it feels like five hundred. He’s the black sheep of the family because he’s still single. Apparently, his mother’s mission in life is to see him married. She even has the woman picked out for him. He begged me to come home with him and pretend to be his girlfriend for a few days to get everyone off his back. Heeven promised me an all-expenses-paid trip to Jamaica afterward aspaymentfor agreeing to accompany him and being his fake girlfriend for five days. I would have done it for him without the promise of Jamaica, but there’s no need for me to tell him that.

Cheetah, everyone’s nickname for superstar, speedy professional baseball player Cruz Gonzales, is a tall, dark, and handsome blue-eyed Latino man. I call him kitten just to fuck with him, but the man is no kitten. I was instantly attracted to him when we met. Both his looks and his larger-than-life personality drew me in. Admittedly, no man has ever made me laugh like he does. After toying with him for a few months, we eventually became casual fuck buddies. That’s all I’m capable of, and he seems good with it.

I’m attracted to both men and women, depending on my mood. What I really like is having the autonomy to do what and who I want, whenever I want. In the handful of weeks since we started our casual encounters, Cheetah hasn’t once tried to rein me in. That’s the kiss of death for my bedmates. I’m wild. Untamable. Anyone who challenges that will be left like yesterday’s news.

I carefully crawl into Bailey’s bed, creepily taking in her familiar, comforting scent. My body immediately relaxes. Her eyes mercifully blink open, and she reaches for my hand. She croaks out, “Stop worrying. You’ll be fine. It’s safe.”

“Safe? There’s nothing safe about being tens of thousands of feet up in the air at the mercy of some random person you’ve never even met. Maybe they were out all night on a bender. What if they were last in their class in pilot school? What if they were absent the day they taught landing? What if they broke up with their significant other the night before? I wouldn’t know because you never get to see the pilot, a stranger, before the flight takes off.”

She gives me a sleepy smile. “I researched the statistics.” She knows I’m a big stats person. “Your odds of crashing in a planeare, like, one in eleven million compared to your odds of getting into a car crash, which is one in five thousand.”

I exhale a long breath. “I know. I get it in theory. I just hate having no control. It’s not like you get into cars with strangers though.”

She gives me an unimpressed look. “You Uber.”

I twist my lips. “Hmm. Valid point.” I squeeze her hand and whisper, “I’ve never done this without you. I…I don’t know if I can do it.”

She pulls me close into her comforting arms. “You can. I briefed Cheetah on how to manage you. He knows what to do.”

“What did you say to him?” I ask accusatorily.

“Nothing for you to worry about, but he’s aware of what he’s getting himself into.”

“What about you? Will you be okay flying without me tomorrow?” She’s flying to Colorado with Tanner Montgomery, a sports agent to all the top athletes. Bailey nannies for his seven-year-old daughter and is now secretly sleeping with Tanner. She won’t give me any real details but has finally admitted it’s happening. They’re heading out west with his daughter and her friend to ski for the holiday week.

“I’ll be fine. I’m only a call away, so don’t freak out.” We’ve never spent an entire week apart in our entire lives. In fact, we’ve never spent more than a night or two apart.

I nod. “I know. We’ll talk every day, right?”

“Of course.”

“Even with the time difference?”

“It’s one hour.”

I sink my head into the pillow. “Ugh. It might as well be a million.”

I hear our front door open and a deep voice yelling out, “It’s time, Kam bam. Get your hot ass up and ready to board the Cheetah kidney-buster.”

I perk up at the simple sound of his voice and purr, “In here, kitten.”

He walks into Bailey’s bedroom with his trademark enormous grin. “Morning, ladies. Merry almost Christmas. May Santa come long and hard down your chimneys tonight.”

Oh right, it’s Christmas Eve.

I scrunch my face. “That was kind of a boring entrance. Do you have anything better to say? Maybe a holiday poem?”

He toggles his head back and forth in contemplation for a minute. “Hmm. Santa’s suit is red, but the mistletoe is greener. When I think of you, I play with my wiener.”

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