Winning With Him

by Lauren Blakely

  Grant jerks his head back. “What? How?”

  I scrub a hand over the back of my neck, wishing I could speed through this conversation to get to the other side. “Remember when I said your weight was too far back on your knees?”

  “Sure.”

  “That was his advice. He’d said that to me in a text. He watched my last Cougars game online. He’d seen the photo of us, and he said, ‘Tell your boyfriend his weight is too far back on his knees.’ So, I passed it on to you,” I say, hating that I somehow sound like a liar.

  Grant drops my hand, drags his through his hair. His eyes widen, shock registering in those blue irises “Wow.”

  Yes, this is my baggage. This is what I come with. This is why I don’t open up.

  “That came from him?” he asks, maybe needing to be sure.

  “It did.”

  “I thought it was you. Like a piece of advice from you.”

  I shake my head. “No. That was Jon Steele. He was a great minor leaguer. Honestly, he’d be a great hitting coach if he could get his act together. I was pretty pissed when he first told me what you should do. But I knew he was right, and I wanted you to do well, so I passed it on.”

  A long sigh seems to fall from his lips. “He was right. So, I guess, thanks. I get why you told me. It worked.”

  My hand aches to hold his again, so I reach for him, and he lets me. That emboldens me. “The whole time he was talking in Florida to the guys, all I could think was how he was seconds away from blurting out your name. Everyone would know we’d been involved, and it would look bad that we’d been together as teammates, especially with you going into your first season.”

  Grant nods in understanding. “That would have been a red-hot mess.”

  “Exactly,” I say, relieved that he gets it. “I was just so sure he was going to say something. He kept it up during dinner that night. All I could think was that someone would know, word would get out, we’d become this media circus. And if that happened, what would it do to you when you hadn’t even made the roster yet?”

  Grant’s jaw ticks, like he’s processing all this news.

  And it’s a fuck-ton of news.

  “Not gonna lie, Deck. This is . . . a lot,” he says in a heavy tone.

  That’s what worries me the most now, I suppose. That I’m a lot. That he won’t want to deal with my a lot.

  It’s not just baggage. It’s a cargo-hold full.

  “And you were playing better without me. You did well in the first game when I was gone, and you’d done so much better before we started up. I thought ending things had to be for the best. For you.”

  He’s quiet for a beat, then a few more. “But was it for the best? Shutting me out like that?”

  I drag a hand through my hair, regret roiling through my veins. “It was all I knew to do at the time. That’s what I was trying to say when I called you before Opening Day,” I say, and like a kick in the pants, it hits me how thoroughly short-sighted that was. “And now I can see like a billboard flashing in front of me that calling you before Opening Day to deal with my shit was a mistake too.”

  He gives a subtle shrug that says yeah, it was. “Listen, I understand everything you’re saying. At least, I think I do. I won’t try to pretend I understand addiction or alcoholism, but it sounds like the way you grew up was complicated and difficult.”

  “I know you didn’t have it easy, either,” I say. I don’t want to be all woe is me.

  “I didn’t, but I’m talking about you,” he says, soft but firm. “So let me talk about you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What I’m saying is thank you for telling me. Thank you for letting me into your stuff. I know that’s not easy,” he says, then takes both my hands in his and squeezes, and I think yes, we can fix this, we can sort this out. “But you could have called and told me that. You could have talked to me.”

  And he hits that on the nose.

  Gets right to the heart of the matter.

  “I was a coward, Grant,” I say, owning it. “I fucked up. That’s my biggest regret. I was too scared to call you.”

  “Why? I’m not going to judge you for your family.”

  I press my lips together, wanting to hold in all these hard truths. But I let them out instead. “I knew if I called you, if I heard your voice, if I even asked for advice on how to handle the shitstorm of my life, that I’d cave. Ask for more of you. Want more of your time, more of your big fucking heart.”

  “I’d have given it to you,” he says, tender and so damn vulnerable that I want to smother him in kisses and let him do the same to me. I want to drown in his affection and get lost in him.

  “But I thought the only way I could help you was to . . . end it.”

  Grant’s face is stony for a few seconds. Then for several more before he drops both my hands, ending his touch. “I get what you’re saying.” He pauses, works his jaw. “But the problem is you really fucking hurt me.”

  My heart plummets, an elevator cut from its cable. “I know,” I mutter.

  “But do you? Do you have any idea how I felt when I got your text?”

  I meet his eyes, face him like a man. “No. Tell me. Because I thought about it every day. I thought about you every day.”

  He swallows like there are rocks in his throat. “I felt like I was nothing. I felt like what we shared was nothing. Like our plans to meet in November were a lie. Like I was just this stupid virgin you messed with and then kicked to the curb.” His eyes are hard enough to cut glass. “That’s how I felt.”

  “You weren’t nothing, Grant. You were everything,” I say, then I dig down deep, reaching far inside with a brand-new shovel. “I was falling in love with you. I’m still in love with you.”

  The world turns silent.

  Everything in the universe hits pause.

  Cars stop.

  Animals freeze.

  The Earth ceases to orbit as Grant drags a hand down his face, then turns away from me.

  18

  Grant

  It’s like I’ve been walking through a house with the lamps off, feeling my way in the dark. Now, room by room, the lights are slowly turning on, illuminating nearly everything.

  I can see Declan clearly now, understand him better. He makes so much more sense.

  I always knew he doled out bits of himself on teaspoons, offering a morsel here or there. Now, he’s offering a whole meal.

  And I want it.

  Truly, I do.

  I want him, flaws and all. Because I’m pretty sure I still feel the same as I did last spring.

  But feelings aren’t everything.

  They aren’t even the most important thing.

  But tell that to my stupid heart. It’s about to explode in my ribs. It’s thundering, trying to beat its way out and curl up with this man.

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sigh and slide a hand down my face.

  Do I tell him I feel the same? That everything he just said snapped me right back into stupid, crazy love?

  Do I blurt out the pathetic truth of my heart too?

  But that’s what I did most of the time we were together in the spring.

  I have to tread carefully this time around. Whatever this is.

  I keep my hands to myself, clenching and unclenching my fists so I won’t touch him again. “What exactly are you asking me for, Declan?”

  Those dark eyes don’t stray from me. They laser in on mine, never letting go. “I’m asking you for another chance.”

  He hardly sounds like the Declan I knew. I’ve known him witty, tender, sexy, dirty, funny, gentle, powerful, intense, and surprisingly vulnerable in bed.

  But never stripped bare like this.

  Never raw.

  Part of me wants everything he has to give. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’m sure he’s everything I never knew I wanted. He’s my missing piece.

  A man with flaws.

  A man with guts.

  A man who’s bee
n through more than his fair share of shit and knows nothing worth having comes easily.

  Someone who gets me and my passions and has many of the same ones.

  But that’s part of the problem.

  “And what would that look like?” I ask, eager to know. “Us sneaking around again? Or us going to Miami as boyfriends and letting the world see that two guys in the majors fell in love?”

  The intensity fades from Declan’s expression. In its place comes a slow and easy smile—one that hooks into my heart.

  “Fell in love, did you?” he asks, all cocky and impossibly sexy.

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah. I did. There you go,” I say, holding my hands out wide, admitting for the first time that he’s the L-word for me. “I fell in love with you. Like you didn’t fucking know that.”

  “I didn’t.” He reaches for me, hands cupping my face, making everything inside me go whoosh. “I just hoped. I hoped you felt the same.”

  I lean into one hand because it feels so good, so right. “I told you I was falling. I told you I was crazy for you. Where else do you fall but in love?”

  He hums, and it sounds like he’s happy. Like I’m giving him his greatest wish.

  Am I, though?

  I don’t know if I can.

  “I’ve never been in love before,” Declan says softly, pressing his forehead to mine, lighting up my whole damn soul.

  I want so badly to come together.

  To kiss him desperately.

  To yank him down on me so I can feel his full glorious weight stretched on top of me.

  So I can let him in.

  “Me neither. I’ve never been in love either,” I say, and then, because I’m dying to let him in, I kiss him.

  It’s hot and wild.

  And all kinds of dangerous.

  Sparks ignite the sky as I scramble to get under him, to pull him on top of me. To feel him.

  Declan’s on me in a heartbeat, knocking my legs open, giving himself room, covering me.

  “Oh fuck . . .” I moan. It’s too much, too good, too everything.

  I need to stop this.

  I have to stop this.

  But he feels too right.

  Then we are grinding together, pressing, pushing. His hands clasp my head. Mine grab his firm ass. I jerk him closer, and we don’t stop.

  We moan and grind and rub, and it’s like the first time we combusted in the back of his car and, at the same time, it’s so much more. Because it feels like he could be the big love of my life.

  All I want is to get as close to him as possible, so I kiss him that way. Frenzied, frantic, putting all my emotions into a white-hot kiss as we devour each other’s lips.

  As we slam our bodies together.

  As our hard cocks line up, seeking each other.

  Nothing in my life has ever felt this true. This real.

  Except . . . baseball.

  And something else too, which I learned tonight at the award ceremony.

  Making a difference.

  As I kiss Declan like it’s a prelude to fucking, I’m acutely aware of what I only suspected when I walked into his apartment.

  I can’t have it all. I’m not strong enough. I can’t withstand the consuming intensity of how I feel for him. It’s going to destroy me—chew me up and spit me out. And I half want to let it, even though I won’t survive it.

  That’s the problem.

  Somehow, I wrench my mouth from his. “We have to stop.”

  His breath shudders in a harsh pant, but he listens without hesitation.

  Pulling away.

  Sitting up.

  Smoothing his wrinkled shirt then offering me a hand.

  I take it, sitting up too.

  Then, I say the words I might regret for the rest of my life. “I want to be with you, but I can’t.”

  19

  Grant

  His brown eyes are broken—as devastated as mine, I suspect.

  “You can’t be with me?” he asks, like my words don’t compute. Hell, they certainly don’t align with my actions tonight. Kissing him in the kitchen. Kissing him like I want to fuck him in the living room. Kissing him like there’s no tomorrow. But that right there is the problem. “I can’t, and maybe this sounds crazy, and maybe it is, but I’m too in love with you to be with you.”

  He furrows his brow, shakes his head. “I don’t get it.”

  “There’s no halfway for me, Deck. I can’t be just your off-season boyfriend.”

  “That wasn’t what I was asking you for.”

  “Are you ready, then?” I push because he has to see what this would mean. “Ready to be that exposed? For people to talk about our relationship instead of the game? We’d go from ballplayers to boyfriends.”

  “I’m ready,” he says, and it’s almost like he’s digging his heels in. Like this is a come-hell-or-high-water pitch.

  “But what if it doesn’t work out? You want to know what happens then?” I tap my chest. “Then I’m the guy whose heart was broken, and everyone knows it. I don’t mean everyone knows that two queer guys who used to be teammates fell in love. I mean the attention, the microscope, the way we’d be seen for that rather than for being good at the game.” I take a beat to drive the hardest point home. “And if you break my heart again, that’s all I’ll be.”

  “What do you mean that’s all you’ll be?” Declan asks.

  I stab my finger against my sternum. “I’ll be the guy who got dumped. You’ve been playing baseball for five years. I’ve got one year. One amazing year, but that’s it. I have to prove I’m not a fluke, that I’m not a flash in the pan. I have to play harder next year. Put up better stats.”

  “And you will,” he says emphatically.

  That’s the issue, though. The flashing red warning light. “But if I’m with you, I don’t know that I can. Want to know why?” I ask, laying my big, fat feelings for him on the line.

  “I do. I really do.”

  “Because,” I begin after a steadying breath, “I don’t know how to be with you halfway, Deck. When I’m with you, that is all I want. You are all I want,” I say, baring my soul to him. “And trust me, that’s not something I ever thought would happen to me. My parents didn’t even want me, so wanting another person like this makes no sense. And yet I do. I want to say fuck the world and be with you.”

  “Say it,” he whispers desperately. “I want to be here with you, here for you.”

  “I know you believe that, but the thing is, we’re strong in different ways. You know how to have baseball and protect yourself. You’ve had to do it since you were a kid. That’s your skill—you can focus on the game when the world around you goes to hell. And me . . . If you’ll let me, I can support you in whatever way you need while you deal with your family. That’s my strength. But the flip side is, I don’t know if I can keep my shit together on the field if I’m with you. I don’t know if I can focus on my job when I’m this caught up. I don’t know if I could get through heartbreak a second time.”

  Declan shakes his head. “I don’t want to break your heart.”

  “But you can’t promise you won’t,” I say, and he sighs, maybe knowing I’m right. “And I don’t know how to have both. I don’t know how to feel the way I do when I’m with you”— I grab at my shirt like I’m clutching my heart—“and to have the game, as well. I’m too afraid of what will happen when baseball starts again because I think I could be lost in you.” This time I reach for his face, hold him hard. “If I spend the off-season with you like I want to, I think I would fall so far in love with you I’d never come out.”

  His sigh is laced with pain and regret, tinged with this wild longing too.

  “I’d give everything to you,” I say. “I’d never love baseball the way I need to.” I hear desperation in my voice and can’t help it. “And I need to, Deck. Not just for me, but also for this.” I let go of him to gesture to my phone on the table.

  He frowns in confusion. “Your phone?”


  I shake my head. “Social media. I’ve got queer kids reaching out to me. Gay teens telling me their story. Athletes coming out for the first time. It’s insane and awesome and inspiring.” I sound impassioned, like I’m giving a speech, maybe because I am. “I don’t want to fail them. I don’t want to be a one-hit wonder. I know I’m not the only gay pro athlete, but I’m loud and I’m vocal, and I talk about LGBTQ issues online. Rights, equality, all of that.”

  I have to take a breath before I can go on, speaking more gently but intently too. “I am so damned grateful you paved this path, Deck. You and other gay athletes. But I’m walking it now too, in a way that means something to me—doing work, speaking up, being a voice. And I want to matter outside of myself. I want to represent something to others. I want to succeed at the highest level to show the world that a gay guy can play ball just as well as a straight one. I want to be remembered for how I played, not just who I loved.”

  He nods as he listens, inhaling deeply, exhaling heavily, resigned. “It’s love or baseball.”

  I shrug helplessly. “Yeah, it is.”

  “And you’re choosing baseball.”

  “I can’t choose anything else,” I say, trying to get him to understand.

  Declan’s dark eyes shine as he swallows roughly. He shakes his head and grabs my hand, squeezing it. “You don’t have to explain,” he says, with potholes of emotion in his voice. “I understand. I don’t like it”—he draws a deep, hard breath like he needs it to finish without choking up—“but I respect it. I get it, and I get you. Completely.”

  I hate that I’ve hurt him even as he accepts the decision. But I’d hate myself if I didn’t make this decision.

  Neither one of us says anything for a while. Maybe there’s nothing more to say. Finally, I rise, grab my phone, and head to the door.