If I wasn’t still shaking with anger at Mickey myself, I might have found all of this to be hilarious.
Mickey turned to me now. “Where were we?”
I was about to go get my fucking shoes, then my daughter, and leave his house forever. That was where we were.
So, in an attempt to do just that, I abandoned him.
Marching through his home—which was a damn maze, certainly not one of those ‘open floor plans’ I loved from the HGTV channel—I went into the kitchen for my shoes. They were where I’d left them on the floor. With my hands trembling slightly, I slipped my feet into my heels.
“What are you doing?” He’d followed me into the kitchen and now he was blocking my path.
“I’m leaving.”
“You just got here.”
“Well, you’re an asshole. So yeah...” My hands landed on my hips, and I sighed. Some of my anger was coming out of left field, I realized that. Mickey didn't know everything about why I hated him so much. So between that, and his general annoyingness, how were we ever expected to manage living together? “I've only been here a couple hours and I already can't handle this.”
Maybe because I was threatening to leave, in a split second everything changed. His whole ‘I'm-a-cocky-shit’ demeanor dropped and something entirely different replaced it—sincerity, perhaps. “I shouldn't have commented on your profession. You're right, I know nothing about it or you and if you don't want me to bring it up ever again then I won't.” There was no trace of sarcasm in his voice as he said this.
“I don't,” I answered, surprised at how easy that had been. “And?” Raising my eyebrows, I waited for the rest of his apology.
“And? What else is there?”
“The other woman. You can't just bring some strange women over for sex with Samantha living here.”
In my heels, closer to his height, I felt so much better. Maybe many women had trouble saying exactly what they felt to the men in their lives. Not me. If something wasn't right, I wasn't going to sugarcoat it. I'd scared off plenty of men by being honest in my life, but laying down the fucking law was the only way I knew how to protect myself.
“Who says I brought that woman over for sex?” He crossed his arms over his chest. I noticed for the first time that they were rather nice arms—taut with muscle, tanned from the sun, strong from either being a gym rat or having some sort of job that made them strong. My guess was on the privileged gym rat type. There was no way Mickey was the manual labor type.
“Don't even try to lie.” I rolled my eyes. “That girl—Jill or June or whatever her name was—was most certainly a lunch break booty call. She'd probably been ecstatic for the opportunity to sleep with Mick...um...wait, what was your other last name again? It was something girly.”
“Jasmine,” he answered.
“Right, like the princess.” I thoroughly enjoyed getting that one small jab in the middle of my argument. “Mick Jasmine. Because you are handsome, in your generic way, and my guess is she felt like she was off doing something dangerous with you. But then she got one look at me and decided you weren't quite worth it.”
He only grunted in response—neither confirming nor denying my theory. Which I took as confirmation. But, alas, I'd gotten off topic. The last thing I cared about was the women he liked to fuck.
“Just don't have strange people over while my daughter is here. Do it elsewhere,” I concluded. I guess, as I said this last part, it meant I was staying.
Mickey realized it too and simply said, “Okay, fair enough.”
Now that the conversation had ended, a silence followed. For a second I leaned uncomfortably against the waist-high counter behind me, unsure what to say next or how to get back to the living room. His body was kind in the direct path I wanted to take. I'd spent two days safely able to stare at the back of his head in the car. So this face to face, full sunlight, exposure really felt way too exposing.
“Were you really going to leave?” His tone changed from harsh to soft and it caught me a little off guard. It sounded like he honestly cared.
“Yes. Maybe. I don't really know.” Why was my heart suddenly racing now?
“We're probably going to get on each other's nerves. That's a given. Even as kids we used to do our fair share of bickering. I'll do my best to stay out of your way, though.”
I nodded.
“Eat whatever you want in the kitchen. Groceries get dropped off on Monday's and Thursday's. If there's anything you need, write it on my list on the fridge. In the garage, I have two cars I hardly use. The keys to both are on the hook. Take them whenever you'd like. There's a park and a library about a block down that-a-way.” He pointed off in a particular direction as if I understood what way he meant outside. “If Samantha's interested in that sort of thing.”
“I like books.” Libraries were free, and I was big on taking advantage of free things.
“Okay.” He gestured for me to follow. “C’mon. Nick texted and said he never showed you around. Let me.”
I think I liked asshole-Mickey better than considerate-host-Mickey. I followed, not saying a word, and listened as he gave me a tour. His home had three floors, five bedrooms, three bathrooms, an attic Samantha was going to fall in love with, and a partridge in a pear tree. It was a nice home. I was jealous, I'll admit it. I also felt super inferior. Mickey had his life perfectly put together. Mine was a freaking mess. He even went on and on about how he'd done all the restoration on the home himself. I nodded and listened, while a knot in my stomach formed and gnawed on my insides. Why couldn't he have stayed buried in the past where I left him long ago? Why couldn’t he have turned out fat, ugly, and balding? Seeing his home, seeing how passionate he was about it, knowing now how wonderful everything had always been for him, made today feel a lot like the day he left me all over again. Like a knife in the fucking heart.
Finally the tortuous tour concluded when Mickey said, “This is my room. I'm going to try to get some rest before I have to be back for the game.”
A polite person might have asked, “What game?” Or might have wanted more personal details. But I wasn't a polite person, and I didn't dare ask any more questions than was necessary.
“You do that, Mickey,” I told him, and I turned around to head downstairs—back to the living room where I felt more comfortable.
CHAPTER 6:
MICK
I shut my bedroom door, leaning against it. I'd just finished giving Raven a very thorough tour of my home. With each room I showed her, she seemed more and more disinterested.
Maybe she hated it.
Maybe she just hated me.
Other than being attracted to her, I didn't know what I thought of her. I only knew, when she'd gotten so upset with me, that I hadn't wanted her to leave.
I'd brought Jill over stupidly. Fucking Tony. Tony Christmas played catcher on the Sea Dogs, a good friend of mine, and he'd gotten in my ear this morning about superstition and rituals and all that crap. And no I hadn't planned on having sex with Jill in the house when I had company staying with me, I wasn't that much of a dick. We'd just dropped over because I wanted to check in on Raven first. Although, after, I had planned on taking Jill to the Holiday Inn about a mile down the street. I had planned on having my wicked way with her, all afternoon too if that was what it took.
Why? For two reasons. One, because superstitions were a bitch. And as much as I liked to laugh at other guys who fell victim to them, I was among the worst offenders.
Some guys won't wash their socks all season. Some catch the same number of grounders during warmups before every game. Others have lucky bats or batting gloves or need to have their mom in attendance at every game. All of it so ridiculous, but the honest to God truth is sometimes rituals are everything and sometimes they can make or break your career. Hell, Tony went the entire season last year without shaving his beard once. He looked like a caveman by September.
And my thing lately, among a few other rituals I had to carry out o
n the days I pitched, had become sex before game time. Many guys abstain from sex on game days. I was the opposite. Sandra, for all her flaws, was pretty good at taking care of that need for me. And when she wasn't around, when I left town for away games, it never was all that hard to find a willing participant. I had girls I could call in every city. So inviting Jill over had been me trying to keep up my game day streak. But I hadn’t been even slightly disappointed when Raven scared her off. If anything I'd been relieved. Why? Probably because Jill wasn’t the one my cock really wanted today.
My second reason for bringing Jill over had everything to do with Raven. Despite how much the woman annoyed me when she opened her mouth, my cock had started to develop a certain affinity for the woman. So before I tried to do something stupid, I thought I could use Jill for the afternoon. Maybe use her to take the edge off.
But my failure with Jill had only exacerbated the problem.
I walked over to my bed. Setting the alarm on my nightstand, then I flopped down on top of the covers. I guess today I was trying the abstaining thing, and I had a feeling my entire team was going to suffer just because I couldn’t get lucky.
* * *
When a team scores eight runs and still loses, there’s no one to blame but the pitching staff—i.e. me. Entering the fifth inning we had a 6-1 lead which quickly evaporated. I allowed four singles, then a walk, before the couches took me out of the game. It was rough. What was worse was how well I’d been pitching lately, only to have it all fall apart. Of course it was only one game, I kept telling myself that, but some stupid part of me kept blaming the fact that I’d screwed with my pre-game ritual.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Dad told me later outside the locker room. He and Mom—my stepmom, Pamela, but I called her mom—always checked in on me after my games. They never missed a single game I pitched. No matter how I played they were always right there. Nick was with them tonight.
“Nick tells me you brought your old friend home from Kansas. She and her kids are living with you now.” Mom was what was known as a BMW—a Big Maine Woman. She was hearty, with a little extra meat on her bones, and she didn’t take any shit from anyone.
“One kid,” I corrected. “She has one kid.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know, five. I’m not sure.”
“Seven,” Nick corrected.
“Oh.” I rubbed at my shoulder. It was going to be damn sore tomorrow, but that was normal. “How do you know that?”
“I asked.” He narrowed his eyes at me as if he had more to say. I was too tired to interpret his unspoken words. Plus, I was slightly annoyed he’d already told our parents about Raven. That didn’t take long.
Mom was mom, though, welcoming as ever. “Well, bring her over for dinner sometime,” she offered.
I nodded, going through the motions of conversation after that. Samantha was seven? That meant Raven had only been eighteen when she’d been born. Jeez, that was young. At eighteen I was a freshman in collage at NYU, partying and living it up, with baseball as my only concern in the world. Those days felt like a lifetime ago. I wondered what happened to Samantha’s dad. There’d been zero mention of him thus far.
The next few days passed quickly. The Sea Dogs were away the rest of the week which meant that I was automatically able to avoid Raven. God only knew what she was doing to my house without me there to watch over her. I half expected the place to be either destroyed or Raven to be long gone when I came home late Monday night. But the place wasn't a mess and she wasn't gone. She was right there. Barefoot in my kitchen. Wearing one of my Sea Dogs sweatshirts. At one in the freaking morning, no less. With her hair tied up in a knot on top of her head. And a glass of red wine in one hand.
“Ah!” She let out a small scream when she saw me walk through the garage door and into the kitchen. “Oh my God, are you trying to give me fucking heart attack!? Where the hell have you been the last few days? I thought you were dead.”
My mouth dropped open. And my bag to the floor along with it. She wasn't wearing pants. Hot damn. My sweatshirt, a couple sizes too big on her, hit her bare legs mid-thigh. Her legs were long, toned, tan, and everything a beautiful pair of legs should be. An image of them wrapped around my waist involuntarily flashed through my brain. The sweatshirt hung off one of her delicate shoulders. I could tell she didn’t have a bra on—as her nipples were like little pebbles underneath the material. My heart started to beat fiercely and I swallowed hard. Holy hell. She looked so incredibly sexy in my sweatshirt that I didn't even care that she must have stolen it from my closet.
“You can't just randomly walk into the house in the middle of the night!” She continued to scold me. “I thought you were a rapist.”
I cracked a smile. “A rapist who used a key? Besides it's my house. I can come home anytime I want.”
She huffed, moving her arm with the wine glass a little too quickly so that some of the wine sloshed out onto the floor. “You just scared me, that's all.”
“Sorry.” I waited for her to notice that she'd just spilled some of her wine on my clean tile floors. She didn't notice.
“So where were you for four days?” Her voice wasn't angry anymore. Hell, if I wasn't mistaken it sounded almost seductive.
“Um.” I cleared my throat, because it was turning way too scratchy on me, and I carefully approached her. I took the glass from her hand before she could spill any more. She let me take it. “Trenton...New Jersey,” I answered and I set the glass on the counter beside us. “I had away games.”
“Baseball? You play baseball?”
“Yes.” How come she didn’t already know this?
“So the Sea Dogs are a baseball team.” Her green eyes hadn't left mine. “Okay, lots of stuff makes sense now.”
“Nice sweatshirt, by the way,” I muttered.
“I found it in your closet. It gets so damn cold here at night. I hope you don't mind I borrowed it.”
It was summer. She didn't even know what cold was yet. “I don't mind.” Really? I didn't mind? Nothing annoyed me more than when a women took the liberty to just wear my stuff. Especially without asking first. “It looks better on you. You can keep it.”
Holy fuck, what were these words coming out of my mouth? That was my favorite sweatshirt. Not only that, we were standing way too close. I took a step back.
Remembering her spilled wine, I went to the sink for some paper towels. Breaking a few pieces off the roll, I bent down to my knees and began cleaning up her wine. It occurred to me then that she must be a little tipsy. Not drunk the way she'd been off the vodka on the night we'd first met, but not sober either. It seemed she had just the right amount of alcohol in her to not completely hate my guts.
I glanced up from the floor. A pretty pink blush hit her cheeks the moment I did and she sunk her teeth into her bottom lip—the same fucking moved she'd tried to pull on me when she'd mistaken me for one of her clients. Which made zero sense. Was she looking at me with 'fuck me eyes' as some sort of wicked test or because she genuinely and seriously wanted to fuck me? What had changed in four days?
I stood up, hella confused and frankly, hella turned on. Not that I would dare act on anything my traitorous cock felt for her.
“You know,” she said softly. There was a hint of a sexy little smile on her lips. “Before I knew you were you, when you showed up at my house and I assumed you were the other guy, you wanna know what I was thinking?”
Hell, yes! But it would be better if this entire conversation ended right here before it crossed any lines. “Raven.” I said her name like a warning—a warning she completely ignored.
“I was thinking...finally. Finally someone, that if met on my own in a bar, I would want to sleep with. Not to be fucked by someone because it was someone else's choice or because of an obligation. But simply because I wanted it. And for a small moment, before I knew who you were, I wanted you like I never have wanted anyone before. Just a random hookup with a handsome man.” She gave
me a small wink that made my heart sped. “And it suddenly seemed like an extra bonus that I was going to get paid for it.”
“And then I turned out to be me,” I added, the words hoarse on my lips.
She shrugged. “And then you turned out to be you.”
Her words were so blindingly honest—they left me feeling something entirely too real. I couldn't even begin to deny the electricity I felt coursing through my entire body in that moment, all for her. But I also had a knot in my stomach.
She inched a little closer. And for second I thought she might move to touch the hard bulge in my pants. I mean, seriously, it was right there, straining against my jeans, begging to be freed, wanting her so suddenly and fiercely that I was having a hard time keeping a level head. But as much as my body and my cock wanted to take advantage of this moment, I knew in my heart I couldn’t let anything more than words happened between us tonight.
Instead of immediately trying to touch me, she leaned her stomach against my counter. Then with her eyes looking back over her shoulder, she tugged up the edge of her—no, my—whatever—sweatshirt. She had on a thong and the curve of her ass was exposed, right there in open light, and it was the most perfect, lush ass I'd ever laid my eyes on. “Let's pretend you're not you and I'm not me, just for this one moment,” she whispered. She ran her tongue against her lips. “Tomorrow you can resume hating me, and I can resume hating you.”
“I don't hate you,” I uttered. Her eyes were big and pleading. God, I'd never wanted to touch a woman so fucking bad.
“Tomorrow you can resume being an asshole then. Please, Mickey.”
Fuck me. She was begging for it. The worst part, I didn’t even know if this was real or an act, a test or a game. Hell, I think it was real. But none of that even mattered. Even my stupid pre-game sex that I needed have—because, lets be real, when I didn’t get any before the last game I pitched, I’d completely choked—didn’t matter. I was starting pitcher in tomorrow’s game, and it was after midnight and thus technically tomorrow. I knew all of that was made-up, superstitious bullshit, but if fucked her right this moment it would theoretically count. It would get me out of my own head about all that nonsense.
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