Scoring With Him

by Lauren Blakely

  “I do,” I say as we keep up a good clip.

  “I knew it was my shot. I had to make it count. Was yours the same?”

  “Definitely. Feeling the spotlight. Knowing you’re the top prospect. Wanting to prove your worth to the team.”

  “And keeping distractions minimal. Better yet, non-existent,” he adds as the running path dips behind a hill, passing under canopies of trees.

  “Couldn’t agree more. Learned that rule by breaking it.”

  Grant tilts his head, his eyes curious. “A guy in every port?”

  I shake my head, dismissing that notion. Normally I don’t care if a guy thinks I’m a player. For some reason, I don’t want Grant to think that whatsoever. “No. That’s when I started dating my boyfriend.”

  “Was he a ballplayer too?”

  I snort. “God, no.”

  Even as he runs, Grant seems to tense at that answer. But I don’t need to sugarcoat the risks of dating someone in the same sport. “Getting involved with a ballplayer would be a mistake.”

  “Of course.”

  “Anyway, with Kyle, I managed minor league ball fine when we were dating, maybe because he lived close by. It was casual and all. But when it turned more serious, and it was time for spring training, the distraction became too much. I wasn’t very good at keeping things light and uncomplicated.”

  “Are you better at it now?”

  I scratch my jaw, but there’s not much to consider. “When I get involved, it’s not usually for very long, and mostly just during the off-season.” I’ve learned I need limits, even if they’re self-imposed. Given the way my parents’ marriage imploded with the force of an F5 tornado, I’m best off keeping relationships on a tight leash. “It’s just easier that way. Cleaner.”

  “Less complications and less distractions,” Grant agrees.

  “That’s why I had to end things with Kyle. It was messing with my head,” I say. “Worse, it was messing with my game.”

  I’m saying it for him.

  And, even more so, for me. Because as we run and talk about the minors, I need the reminder.

  I can enjoy these mornings with Grant as a workout.

  And that’s the limit.

  The week unfolds like that—extra workouts in the morning as the sun rises then team time after nine.

  Drills, exercises, sprints.

  Batting practice and field work, then extra time practicing the new rules for sliding into home, meant to reduce punishing collisions at the plate.

  I stay in touch with my friends and family—texting baseball updates to Mom and Tyler, trash talking Fitz, and enjoying Emma’s funny observations after moving to New York City. (So much scaffolding! How can there be this many dry cleaners? I am in diner heaven!)

  My favorite text conversation comes from Emma and Fitz in a group chat.

  * * *

  Fitz: I’ve got a game against Phoenix in March. Want tix?

  * * *

  Declan: Hell, yeah. So long as it doesn’t conflict with a spring training game.

  * * *

  He sends the date, and I check my schedule. The timing lines up.

  * * *

  Declan: Center ice, baby. I want center ice.

  * * *

  Fitz: And I want first baseline when you play the NY Comets. Do we have a deal?

  * * *

  Emma: Hello? I’m still here! And I want to go to Phoenix too!

  * * *

  Fitz: Say the word and I’ll fly you in, Ems.

  * * *

  Emma: Word.

  * * *

  As I close the thread with Can’t wait to see you, I smile, glad they’ll be in town.

  Yes, life is good.

  Ticking along.

  I’m One-Track Steele—friends, family, baseball.

  The one glaring exception? How much I look forward to morning workouts with Grant. How they’re becoming the best part of each day for the next week.

  Saturday morning, it’s a game day, and once more I find Grant on the track, ready to hit the golf course path as the sun rises.

  We didn’t discuss switching to the golf course. It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out why we gravitated that way.

  It’s more private, with more shade and less chance of being seen. Even if I didn’t find him wildly, insanely attractive, I’m hanging out with the other queer dude on the team. Rumors would fly, and there is no need to fan ’em.

  “Have you always been an early-morning-extra-workout person?” I ask.

  “Definitely. Gotta stay a step or ten ahead, you know?”

  Do I ever. “Work harder and better,” I say with a nod.

  There’s an understanding with Grant that I’ve only ever had with Fitz—the awareness that we have to work harder, have to constantly prove we belong.

  Sports has changed so much over the last ten years, thanks to a guy named Sandy Hildebrand who bought the Dallas football team, making headlines then as the first openly gay team owner. Soon, he banded together with other queer business leaders and spoke up about wanting queer athletes to have the same sponsorship opportunities, respect, and chances as straight players. Soon more athletes came out—in high school, college, and the pros.

  Still, I feel the pressure of what it means to be part of that change. Of being lucky to be on this side of it.

  “It’s a good pressure though,” I say to Grant.

  “Same. Reminds me of Apollo 13. The movie,” he adds.

  I jerk my head back in surprise. “Wait a hot second. Are you referencing a movie from the nineties? And you said I was from another generation.”

  “I am a study in contradictions,” he says. “It makes me all kinds of fascinating.”

  “It sure does,” I mutter under my breath as we near a small lake along the edge of the course.

  “And the flick is from 1995. I’ve seen it about twenty times because it’s my grandfather’s favorite movie. There’s this line early on when Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise are running a sequence for the moon landing, and Sinise wants to run it again. At first there’s some resistance, but then Tom Hanks says, ‘Well, let’s get it right.’”

  “And that stayed with you? ‘Well, let’s get it right’?” It says a lot about him—about his work ethic, which matches mine.

  “It applies to a lot of things. Doesn’t matter how much you practice or how many hours you’ve put in. The goal isn’t to check off time on a box. The end game is doing it till you get it right.” He shrugs, but I know what he’s saying is important to him. “That’s why the early morning workouts. Not to log hours or reps or miles, but to win games.”

  I nod along. I see it that way too, but I like how he’s said it. “Words to live by.”

  “Movies have some good ones now and then,” he says.

  For a flash of a second, I imagine watching a flick with him, then turning it off because I’m overwhelmed by the way he smells and how much I want to lick the column of his throat, drag my lips over his jaw, rub my face against his stubble.

  God help me.

  A caw rends the air—we both jerk our gazes to the edge of the lake as a heron swoops down, joining another one. The male snaps his bill then stretches his neck.

  “Ah, the mating call of the heron,” I remark. Maybe it should be “Heron help me,” because the break in tension has saved me.

  “How do you know they’re mating?” Grant asks. “They aren’t banging. Also, how do birds bang?”

  This, I can talk about easily. “He’s preening for her. Soon he’ll bring her twigs. They might even exchange them.”

  “Ah, the twig exchange. Of course.” Grant shoots me an amused smile. “And my other question, Mr. Ornithologist?”

  “The how-do-they-bang one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Grant,” I sing-song, “when a male bird loves a female bird very much . . .”

  “Enjoy this bird,” he says, flipping me the middle finger.

  We keep th
at up, running and shooting the shit, and before I know it, I’ve peeled off an hour. Grant makes these morning workouts something they’ve never been before—fun.

  But are they too fun?

  I’m here to work, after all, not to get to know this fascinating man.

  Should I end them?

  Cut them off?

  But they have a natural end every damn day, when we join the team for practice. Once we hit the diamond, we’re catcher and shortstop again, and that’s working out just fine.

  That day, the Seattle Storm Chasers arrive for a home game, and we destroy them.

  That’s all that matters.

  Friendship with Grant isn’t a detrimental distraction.

  These morning workouts aren’t hindering my game.

  The problem is lying in bed at night, thinking about how badly I want morning to come.

  10

  Grant

  Like that, we’ve become workout partners.

  Early birds and all.

  It’s not deliberate. It just happens. We run. We lift weights. We spot each other. One morning, I’m on the bench press and he asks where I’m from. Funny that this hasn’t come up in our many conversations.

  “I grew up in Petaluma. It’s not too far from San Francisco,” I say, pushing up the weight bar.

  He gives a slow and easy smile. “I know where Petaluma is.”

  “Didn’t mean to imply you didn’t know your geography as well as your ornithology,” I tease, lowering the bar then pressing it up again. He stares down at me, his eyes roaming over my chest but never straying too far.

  “I know my geography just fine. I also live in San Francisco,” he points out.

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you venture to Petaluma.”

  “I’ve been there on the way to wine country,” he says.

  Out of nowhere, envy thrashes in my chest, painful as a cleat in the ribs. This is what happens when you become friends with your crush. I know why he’s been to wine country. He once dated a guy who lives there, a chef. I picture him cruising up the highway, laughing with some other guy in the passenger seat, free and easy. He’s headed for a weekend getaway. A weekend he could spend with that guy because they weren’t teammates.

  “Must have been nice. Going to wine country.” I push up the bar, doing my damnedest to shove away this dumb jealousy too. “You from there?”

  “No. I grew up in Los Angeles, but we moved to San Francisco when I was in middle school.”

  “You and your family?”

  His jaw tightens. “My mom and me.”

  That’s all he says, and I let it go. There’s more there, but now’s not the time to mine that territory.

  Instead, I ask, “You and she are close?”

  “Definitely. Me and my stepdad too.” He answers, but his tone is clipped. I should change topics, but he does that himself. “Kind of crazy to wind up being drafted to your hometown team.”

  “Maybe it was meant to be,” I say.

  “You’re someone who believes that?” Declan sounds doubtful. “That things are meant to be?”

  “I believe in hard work. But yeah, I think sometimes things are meant to be. I take it you don’t?”

  He shakes his head. “Nope. Not one bit.”

  The shadows in his eyes go even darker, and if we weren’t treading on dangerous ground, I’d ask what he meant. But I know it’s for the best to nip this convo in the bud.

  I set the bar down on the holder then sit up, my chest heaving. I’m about to stand when I catch him staring shamelessly at me. My pecs, my abs, my arms. My piercing . . .

  “Like the view?” I ask. I can’t resist danger sometimes.

  Without a reply, he tips his forehead to the bench, a sign for me to skedaddle. Hoping I haven’t pissed him off, I stand quickly, making room for him as he settles in. “You know I do,” he mutters, and a bolt of lust slams into me.

  We’ve tangoed, and we’ve toyed. But that’s the first admission that he feels these sparks. This heat. This fire that’s blazing between us. It’s the first time we’ve outright fanned the flames.

  I throw kerosene on them too. “Look at us . . . switching positions.”

  Declan stares up at me, hunger in his eyes. “Is that a metaphor or a challenge?” His voice is husky.

  And holy fuck, I am treading on uncertain ground. I’ve got to be careful. But holding back would be like letting a fastball down the middle pass you by. You have to swing.

  “Maybe both,” I say as he pushes up the bar.

  With a huff, he shakes his head.

  Is he annoyed?

  Shit. I do need to behave.

  “Sorry,” I add hastily. “I’ll rein it in.”

  Declan lowers the bar. “Rookie, we are both guilty.”

  The way he says that—rookie—sends sparks down my spine.

  “Very, very guilty,” I add, and inside, I’m beaming.

  I shouldn’t be, but I am.

  Another lift, another press, another sexy glance. He doesn’t talk, just grunts as he lifts in the early-morning quiet of the hotel gym.

  When he finishes his reps, he racks the bar and wipes a hand across his forehead but doesn’t sit up.

  Instead, he picks up the thread of the conversation. “You know how hot you are,” he whispers.

  “Why would I know that?” I ask, fishing shamelessly for compliments.

  He cranes his neck, taking a backward glance at my body. “You’ve got eyes. You look in the mirror. You know what you see. You know what I see.”

  Electricity crackles and pops as I croak out, “What do you see?”

  He sits, cocks his head, strokes his jaw. His dark gaze cranks my thermostat to furnace hot. “Danger. I see danger.”

  That one word contains multitudes—in it, I hear him saying he wants danger, he craves danger.

  But he won’t let himself have it.

  I want it too, and I’m pretty sure I’m more reckless than Declan. The man seems so in control, and I feel wildly out of control with him. But it’s a feeling I crave more and more each day, even though I know the stakes. I’m well aware of the risks. We are as taboo as we can be.

  I’m not flirting with some guy I won’t have to see at work. He’s someone I have to work closely with every single game, every single day on the field.

  But the field is where I need perfect concentration. A millisecond mistake can cost a game. If my mind wanders to the guy manning shortstop, can I call the right pitch at a critical moment in a game?

  No idea.

  Trouble is, when I’m near Declan, my body lights up. My skin tingles, and everything inside me spins faster and faster. He’s like adrenaline, and I want another hit, then another.

  I set a hand on the weight bar, not too far from his. “Our job is dangerous. Standing at the plate every day as someone throws a ninety-five-mile-an-hour ball at you is pretty risky,” I counter.

  A sliver of a smile tugs at his lips. “Yep. And so is flirting with you.”

  “You could stop,” I offer. I want him to know I’m not going to pressure him. I’m chill with being buds. “Or you could just acknowledge we enjoy some harmless flirting. That’s all it is, right?”

  Those full lips curve into a grin. His eyes sparkle. He seems to weigh my question in his hand then decide he likes it. “That’s all it is, rookie. Harmless flirting.”

  I hope he’s lying, like I am.

  When we’ve finished our workout, he drops a hand on my shoulder like he did the first day we met. No one is around. He curls it tighter, clasping me. I nearly die of pleasure—his touch drives me insane with longing. I want those hands on me, grabbing me everywhere, reckless and crazed.

  He squeezes, and that’s it. I am gone.

  “Tomorrow, I won’t flirt with you,” he says as we leave the gym, and it sounds like a solemn swear.

  One I hope he’ll break.

  That night, I call Reese. She answers on the third ring. “I’m studying for a Spani
sh test, so this better be good,” she says.

  I play my ace. “It’s the report you want. And my report is . . . you were dead wrong.”

  She’s silent for a few seconds. “About what?”

  “You said that my crush would go away when I met him in person.”

  She laughs. “I am pretty sure you said that, not me.”

  “Whoever said it was a dipshit,” I say, pacing my room. “Everything about him is intense. He’s also sarcastic, and interesting, and smart. And he notices things. And he’s the biggest flirt I’ve ever met.”

  “So, this is a two-way street.”

  I drag a hand down my face, nodding even though she can’t see me. I’m not the most experienced guy. I don’t have gobs of sex intel to draw on. But I know a hell of a lot about one thing—trusting your instinct. Everything is instinct with Declan.

  “It’s not a one-way street at all, Reese. It’s like an electrical charge runs between us, and it’s frying my circuits.”

  “But, Grant, are you going to do something about it?” Her question is an icy-cold shower. It’s bracing, and it knocks me out of the haze I’m in.

  Ice—we need to keep this thing on ice.

  I sink down on the couch, push my head back against the cushion, and heave a long sigh. “I’m not going to do anything. That’d just be dumb. So, I’ll do nothing.”

  It’s gut-wrenchingly painful to say.

  “But do you want to do nothing?” she asks tentatively.

  “Girl, I want to do everything with him. Everything I’ve never done.”

  She hums thoughtfully. “You need to be careful.”

  “I’m not going to do anything,” I snap, and it sounds like I’m lashing out at her. “Shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.” She takes a beat. “You really like him?”