Page 106 of Wild Pitch
For now, I’m going to let it be. Like the team is doing at the facilities, I’m also upgrading my home security system. I’ve installed more cameras than a bank.
I grab a clean towel from the rack and get to work. A couple of guys go by to grab towels too, and stop before me.
“Hey, Starr. Looking good out there.”
I resist the urge to say and in here too. Instead, I return, “You too, man. Wild save you made at the bottom of the second.”
“Ha! That’s a good one.”
We lift our chins at each other in farewell and keep doing our thing.
Once I’m mostly dry, I wrap my towel around my waist and take the bend around the showers to the lockers. Ever since we got our first female trainer, the management made some changes to the clubhouse so that we essentially have two lockers: these ones right behind the showers, and the ones outside. This area is smaller and by company policy, it’s the only area in the clubhouse where we’re allowed to be buck naked.
I put on my underwear here and wrap the towel around my neck before heading out to the open area. I don’t like getting dressed here because the shower steam makes my clothes cling and I hate that. Besides, it’s not like Hope Garcia, a full blown athletic trainer whose main hobby is reading books about muscle groups, clutches her pearls at the sight of some skin. In fact, that’s why for the longest time I thought she was made of steel.
Until yesterday.
I may be just a jock with a high school diploma, but I know what the look on her face meant when I was getting out of the ice water tub.
Hope Garcia isn’t as stoic as she seems and she definitely liked what she saw.
It was in the way her pupils dilated while she ate me up top to bottom, how her nostrils flared, her difficulty swallowing or even speaking, and for the first time in my life I saw color rise to her face.
I camethisclose to pulling her against my wet and freezing body, and warming up my lips with hers.
But considering what she’s been through with one nightmare date after another, enough to ask me for help with coaching her through it, I’m convinced that she deserves some proper, old school romancing. Something to let her really understand that she’s worth every effort.
On the other hand, slowly introducing the idea of maybe dating me, instead of some random guy from an app, can give her plenty of time to decide if she really wants to be with me. One thing is finding me attractive—which, yay—but an entirely different one is keeping me around long term. There’s no precedent of that in my entire twenty seven years of life. The one girlfriend in my teens ditched me just as quick as we got together. Then I was a temporary stop for the rest of the women in my life since.
What I know for sure is that I never felt for any of them what I feel for Hope. That need to keep her safe, while also standing in sheer awe of her, and the visceral desire to have her pressed up against me in something more than a friendly hug.
I don’t know what that says about me, that I was never capable of feeling this way with other women. But I know it means that she is the real deal for me.
And speaking of her, Hope appears through the door from the gym, eyes trained to the front as she strides with purpose toward her boss. Steve is talking with one of the younger players off to my right—dude’s in a similar state of undress to me and she doesn’t give him a second glance while she shows some piece of paper to her boss.
I’m extra slow getting dressed now, not because I want her to catch me in my underwear again like some sort of creep, but because every single system in my body slows down in her presence except for two. My eyeballs, taking her in, the shirt slightly bunched at her waist, the way the black leggings hug her powerful thighs, her wide hips and her firm butt. And my heart,working on overdrive to pump blood harder than it does even in the middle of a game.
“Okay, thanks,” I hear her say. She does the same chin nod as a farewell that the guys do, swivels around while keeping her back to me, and jets right out.
So cold. So fast. So purposely not looking at me.
“Hmm.” I narrow my eyes at the doors swinging shut behind her, and this time I hurry up getting dressed. My plans for tonight were going home to stretch again and eat a whole cow, because I’m sure Kim will notice if I don’t do as he says one way or another. But I’d much rather see if Hope would like some ice cream or something low key and still friendly.
Lucky strides out half dressed by the time I’m putting on a black T-shirt over my head. “So how about we?—”
“Hey, be right back man.” I bump his shoulder, grab the jean shirt I intend to put on top later, and walk right out of the clubhouse and into the training gym.
A few long strides take me to the bend at the right, where light streams from the inside of the trainers’ office. It’s too silent to be packed with the other trainers, but it could also mean that Hope ran all the way out and is on her way to the parking lot.
My pulse trips when I spot her in her office, but it’s not because of the best reason. She stands on her tippy toes on a step ladder, trying to reach something on a high shelf. At the first sign of the step ladder tipping and her little yelp, my amygdala kicks in and I rush.
“Oof!”
That’s the sound of air swooshing out of her lungs as she crashes against my chest. I cinch my arms tight around her waist to stop her fall. Her head falls back on my shoulder. As gravity tries to take her, her chest pushes against my arms and she gasps. Slowly, I let her slide down until her feet touch the floor. And then something truly weird happens.
None of us move.
Me, I know why. I’m trying to imprint this moment in my memory for the rest of my life. To savor the way every curve of her body feels against mine, the scent of vanilla that teases my nose and makes my mouth water, the softness of her cheek against mine, her hands squeezing my arms.
