Page 13 of Double Play

She looks into her cup of coffee with a small smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’ve learned to never expect anything less from him. I’d think you’d know that by now too.”

“Yeah,” I reply. “You’re right.” She’s avoiding eye contact, and I can feel the tension in the air as she fidgets with the handle of her mug, sliding the tip of her pointer finger up and down it while watching like it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

I hate how awkward this all feels. I wanted to talk to her more last night, but when I returned to my room, she was already gone. I didn’t want Jacks to hear me knocking on her door, so I went back to bed, tossing and turning for hours because it’s all so fucking confusing.

I never should’ve kissed her. I was stupid to think I could convince myself it was a one-and-done thing to help her through the panic attack she was having. Because as soon as she walked away, I knew I wanted more. Her coming to my room to talk to me hours later only made things more complicated, since I couldn’t restrain myself then, either. Kissing the way we were, with only a couple of thin layers of fabric separating us, had me ready to risk everything—because I wasn’t even thinking about Jacks. All I cared about was that Arden was pressed against me, and I craved so much more than I could ever allow myself to have. I wanted to tie her up. Whip her. Spank her. Fuck every hole in her body until she was passed out, her exhausted limbs hanging from each one of my bedposts while spit and cum dripped from her skin. Instead, I pulled away like she had the plague when I heard him coming up the stairs, and that was the end.

I fucking hated leaving it like that, especially when she was vulnerable.

“About last night,” I begin, but she cuts me off.

“It’s fine. We don’t have to talk about it. I don’t know what got into me. I just had a really stressful practice. I need to learn how to handle stuff like that better. Let’s just forget it ever happened. Please?” She looks my way with a pleading expression, and my heart cracks beneath the wall of ice that protects it. I hate that she’s downplaying what she went through because she doesn’t think she can talk to me about it. I get her apprehension because we don’t truly know each other—but I don’t want it to be like this. There’s only one way to make her understand that I see her, and it’s not going to be easy for me, since it’s the one thing I normally avoid at all costs. I need to let her in.

I turn my body so I’m facing her, keeping my eyes trained on the mug in her hand because, as much as I know I have to say the words, I can’t look at her while I do. “I get them too,” I say quietly.

“You get what?” she asks, abandoning her coffee and turning toward me. Her bare knee brushes mine with the movement, and my eyes are drawn to the barely-there connection as warmth ghosts over my skin.

When I came into the kitchen and saw Jacks holding her, I’ll admit I felt a pang of jealousy. Not because he was touching her—I like the bond they have and watching them strengthen it again after all the time they lost. I was jealous because he made it look so effortless. He provides her with the kind of familiar comfort that makes her feel safe and warm—and I hate knowing that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to do that. I’m too fucking broken. I have too many issues of my own for her to ever feel that security with me. Nonetheless, for reasons I can’t explain, I wish she could.

I swallow hard as anxiety flows through my veins because, other than Jackson and my therapist, nobody knows this part of me. But I think telling her could help us both. “Panic attacks. Where you feel like you can’t breathe, like you’re going to die right where you stand—and there’s no way to stop it from happening. I’ve been able to keep them at bay for the most part, but every now and then, they still hit me out of nowhere.”

Her eyes soften and she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, sinking them into the plump skin. I want to reach out and pull it free, but I don’t, because I’ve already been selfish enough. I don’t suspect that my cravings for Arden will go away any time soon, but I’m still conflicted about them, and I need to remember that my friendship with Jackson could be at stake if I’m not careful.

“How do you keep them under control?” she asks, barely a whisper. “I thought I was doing good until I came back from Argentina. Then, I started to feel more and more anxious when I thought about how badly I had failed. Now, it’s on a whole other level. There’s so much pressure to be perfect for my team—and for myself, so I don’t get benched or cut. Sometimes I’m fine. Other times, I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. It would be nice just to be able to let it all go, but I don’t know how.”

“It’s a tightrope act,” I reply. “I used to take meds for it, but there were too many side effects, so I had to find other ways to cope and get out of my own head. I still see the team therapist at least once a month to check in—sometimes more if I need to. There’s no shame in asking for help, Arden.”

She nods her head, shrugging. “Women’s sports aren’t exactly valued in our society, so we don’t have all the perks you guys do. We have a team trainer, and there are doctors we can see if we get injured, but there aren’t any mental health professionals on the Flare staff. My insurance covers it, but when I checked, the wait to see someone was weeks long. It seemed so daunting that I gave up. I thought if I just worked harder, I wouldn’t be so stressed, and it would all go away.”

On instinct, I reach out, placing my hand on her leg, just above the knee. It catches us both off guard because we simultaneously look down at the connection as though it’s the most shocking thing we’ve ever seen. Other than the occasionalWe’ll get ’em next timeto my teammates after a loss, I haven’t attempted to comfort someone since my brothers were still around. But she needs it right now, and even though I may be shit at it, I want to try.

Rubbing my thumb over her warm, silky skin in slow circles, I meet her gaze with mine, conveying as much understanding as I’m capable of. “Jacks and I will do whatever we can, you know that, right? If you need help paying or finding somewhere to go, we’ll take care of it. You shouldn’t have to feel this way.”

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I’ll make an appointment. But in the meantime, want to tell me about the other ways I could clear my head?”

Do Iwantto tell her? Fuck, yeah. I’d love to go into detail about the ways I could get her to let go for me. How I could turn her into an empty-headed little sub that I would bend and control at the snap of a finger. Flashes of Arden in a collar and leash, crawling behind me as I stroke her hair and tell her what a sweet little pet she is, play in my mind like a porno, and I hope she doesn’t notice the way my cock twitches under the material of my shorts. I can’t say any of that out loud. Hell, I shouldn’t even bethinking it. But at this point, she’s consuming my thoughts, so the best I can hope for is that she doesn’t read me and realize what kind of filthy fucking fantasies I have about her.

“Maybe some other time, Hellcat,” I reply, putting the subject to bed and turning back to my plate. I feel her gaze burn into me for a moment before she does the same, placing both hands on her mug and lifting it to her mouth. I try not to watch out of the corner of my eye as she swallows, licking the last drop from her plump lips and making me fight against the groan that’s working its way up my throat.

This is fucking bad. Seeing how Jackson helps her and knowing that I might possibly have a way to bring her solace—albeit in a much different way—is killing me already. But would it be worth breaking his heart to give her what she needs?

I’m fighting it for now, but the tiny voice in the back of my head is telling me it’s only a matter of time before I find out.

TWELVE

ARDEN

“Isthis pity party open to the public, or do I need an invitation?” I ask, hovering over Jackson as he sits on the floor with his back resting against the couch. When he went to visit with the team doctor last week, they were concerned about him tearing his hamstring with the way he kept tweaking it, so they put him on the disabled list. He’s almost a week in and has at least one more to go before they’ll put him back in the lineup, pending a clean bill of health.

He scrunches his nose, looking up at me. “I told the bouncer to keep the riffraff out, but I guess they’re just letting anybody in.” He smirks and I playfully kick his arm, but he grabs my ankle, lifting it to his mouth and nipping at the skin of my lower calf. I bark a laugh, yanking out of his grip as his smile grows wider, the dimple in his cheek sinking in like it always does when he’s truly happy. It’s a welcome change from how sad he’s been, having to watch his team play without him while he sits here unable to help. I’ve been trying to lighten the mood, but I get it. I wouldn’t be very good company if I were in his shoes right now, either.

“How was practice?” he asks, patting the floor beside him in invitation. I sit, letting my head fall back onto the couch cushion behind me as I take a deep breath and exhale slowly.

“Better than it has been. I’m starting to fall into a rhythm with my hitters, which took a while, but we’re really working well together. I swear, no matter how good of a day we have, Dahlia digs until she finds something wrong so she can yell at me in front of my teammates. Today, Zara tried to stick up for me and she ended up getting chewed out, too.”

“Didn’t you guys go to Penn State together?” he asks.

I nod my head. “Yep. And she was always kind of underhandedly mean, but I was younger than her, so I stayed in my lane and did my job. Then she randomly quit one day, and since I was her backup, that was my shot.”

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