Aiden whipped around and his eyes bugged out. “He told you to take less?”
I laughed. “Yep.”
“You fire his ass, now!”
We both doubled over and fist-bumped each other.
Once we’d recovered from having a nice laugh at Ethan’s expense, Aiden looked at me, a tad more serious. “Seriously, though. Why in the hell would he want you to take less?”
“Well, he said the Rangers were stretching themselves financially to make the offer they did.”
“I guess that makes sense. Fuck it, what do I know? E is a smart dude. Knows his shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I say, do what makes you happy. You can’t be all worried about great-great-great-grandchildren. And I’m sure you’ll still raise a shit ton of money for charities.”
“I know. At the same time, though, it’s—”
“It’s what?” Aiden quirked an eyebrow.
“You know I hate the Yankees. It just comes from being a Rangers fan as a kid. But at the same time, it’s like a different type of hate. Like an envious hate.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s like the hottest snobby girl in school. Know what I mean?”
“Ahhh, I see. You talk shit about her, but you wouldn’t turn her down in the bedroom when you’re sixteen with acne all over your face.”
“Exactly. The Yankees are the prom queen.”
“Speaking of the ladies, this new one—”
I leaned back into the couch and sighed. “I know.”
“Never seen you like this with a girl before. That is true. But it’s still new, right?”
“Yep.”
“And you know that newness wears off after a while, right?”
I rolled my eyes over to him. “I’m aware.”
Aiden’s hands shot up in defense. “I’m just keeping it real. We gotta be practical and shit.”
“I know.” I dragged out the last syllable.
“Shit can go wrong. Does she know about your past?”
“Yeah. I told her all about it.”
“Good, good. Did you tell her about the contract situation on the phone earlier?”
I shook my head at him.
He glared. “You have to tell her.”
“It’s so soon. I don’t want to—”
“Matt—” He flashed me one of those real stares. “She needs to know if you’re even entertaining the possibility you might leave.”
“This is going to sound really stupid, but can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, bro.”
“Is it weird or just—I don’t know—fucking completely insane, that she is the number one thing in my mind that’s making me want to stay? Honestly? I would never tell anyone else in the world this, because it just sounds so stupid when I say it.”
Aiden looked up at the ceiling and let out a long exhale. He sat there for what seemed like an eternity, just staring up. “My mom always told me that when you know, you know.”
I stared over at him.
He turned and stared right at me. “Do you know?”
My heart thumped against my rib cage. I knew the answer. The answer was yes, a million fucking times yes. My brain tried to be rational but this whole moment with Aiden was so truthful and real. “Yeah, man. She’s the one.”
Aiden smiled.
“My head keeps getting in the way, like it’s too soon to know. Like this shit doesn’t just happen this fast. It’s all chemicals and shit firing off and hormones, but I’ve had that happen with women before. Nothing of that even scratches the surface with Kelsey. She is it. The one.”
“Then what is making this decision so hard for you?”
“Because I’m pretty sure I’m starting to fall for her.” I shook my head. “I didn’t think it was that big of a deal to pursue her in the beginning, because I think I would’ve ended up staying in Texas no matter what before her. Like I was worried, because I knew there was a small chance I might leave, but I really think I would’ve reasoned it all out and taken the deal with the Rangers at the end of the day. I was just taking my time to think things through.”
Aiden looked at me like I was a weird-looking bug. “Wait, pretty sure? You are or you aren’t but whatever, dude. What’s the problem, then?”
“You know what I mean. Yeah, I’m sure.” I sighed. “And I’m afraid if somehow the universe pushes us apart, if I tell her now and she doesn’t want anything to do with me—I mean fuck, I’ll probably go to New York.”
Chapter 10
“Mental wounds still screaming, driving me insane. I’m going off the rails on a crazy train.”
—Ozzy Osbourne
Kelsey
I sat in my apartment staring at his name in the search bar on my computer. For three hours and two glasses of wine my finger hovered over the key.
Do not press Enter.
Matt Stallworth was going to be the beginning and the end of me. I wasn’t myself when I was around him. I glanced over to a mirror and looked long and hard at my reflection, sitting in the dark at 10 P.M. with the glow of my screen illuminating the room. This was what he did to me.
Two days had passed since he’d listened to me get off over the phone, in the storage room of my work. That wasn’t me who did that. He turned me into some sex-starved maniac. We’d exchanged a few flirty texts since, but nothing like the way we’d talked the first day he was there.
Was he busy? Probably.
My mind refused to just sit by and accept that and at the same time I didn’t want to be needy and attention-seeking while he was trying to hang out with his friend. Or was it friends? Were they hanging out with women, too? They were professional athletes after all.
“Ugh!” I rolled my chair back from the desk and stood up, pacing around in a pair of Rolling Stones pajama pants and a black spaghetti-strap top. “Fucking Matt Stallworth, you beautiful dick!”
Jesus, that picture of his dick.
I squirmed just thinking about it. No man had driven me bat-shit crazy like this before, and Matt was so different from anyone I’d ever pictured myself ending up with, and at the same time he was exactly who I pictured myself with—like there were two versions of him.
The computer screen called to me like a magnet. I needed to press Enter, find something wrong with Matt, and then I’d be back to normal. Sure, it would’ve been nice to have him fuck me senseless against a wall, or in my bed, or in a public park, for that matter—but this was the responsible thing to do.
It would hurt me, but guys like him and girls like me didn’t belong together. My destiny involved a down-and-out musician or dying alone with a cat. We were from two separate worlds.
The worst part was that I already knew what I would find. He’d told me all about it. Fuck, I was a mess, but maybe seeing it would send me over the edge. I could break it off, tell him I couldn’t handle it, and it would save him from hurting me himself when that day came.
I strode to my keyboard with purpose and clicked the enter key. Sitting down, I clicked on images, and everything looked normal if not perfect at first. There were action shots of Matt diving and sliding in the dirt and candid shots with his teammates. I’d have been lying if I said his ass didn’t look fucking amazing in his baseball pants.
I may have even had to fan myself a little at the thought of him coming home in a baseball uniform. I shook my head and smiled before snapping out of the ridiculous, yet kinky scenarios playing out in my head. Scrolling farther down, there were pictures of Matt holding up giant checks with little kids, and even my own icy heart started to melt a little.
His smile lit up the screen, and yet I scrolled farther, knowing what it would do to me.
My heart and stomach tightened at the same time when I saw pictures of shirtless Matt with girls on each arm. It was stupid. The pictures could’ve been from years ago. Anything was possible with Google, and yet I couldn’t turn away because of my incessant need to sabotage w
hatever it was we were developing.
It’s for the best.
I took a deep breath and a few more sips of red wine when I came across more pictures of Matt partying in bars with women everywhere. He took shots off their bodies—some of them were topless, though it was all blurred out. One after another appeared and I started to feel sick.
I clicked off the screen I never even should’ve been looking at, but the images had seared into my brain. Anxiety coursed through my bloodstream and it hurt a million times more than I thought it would. Why the fuck had I let myself have feelings for him? It was a curse.
A tear rolled down my cheek. It was stupid. It wasn’t like Matt had done anything wrong. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been hanging on tattooed guitar players and other assholes the whole time he was doing the same thing. The whole thing was because my life was a series of cycles. Meet a guy. Be happy. Think it’s perfect. Guy gets sick of me and moves on to next best thing.
I allowed this to happen over and over to the point that it became like a drug addiction. Without it there was chaos and withdrawal.
Matt was so different, though, and yet something inside me needed to protect myself and put an end to what we had going on. The anxiety was from knowing I’d probably succeed. The tears came from the one other fact that I refused to accept—that Matt was it. He was the one for me and somehow I’d fallen for him, and we didn’t even have an official title yet.
Pathetic.
I wiped away the tear and sniffled a little, then got my shit together and tried to be an adult. My phone sat on the table, plugged into the charger, and I walked over and picked it up. I needed to talk to Jenny about some wedding planning stuff I’d promised her so it was a perfect opportunity to get this shit off my chest, because if there was one perspective on this whole ordeal I couldn’t trust, it was my own.
She answered on the first ring. “Hello.”
“Hey.” Hey? Jesus, I sounded like Eeyore.
“What’s wrong?”
All kinds of clicking noises sounded in my ear.
“Are you writing a novel?”
Jenny laughed. “No, sorry. You know I can’t write for shit.”
“Ahh, yes. You’re killing a bunch of numbers on one of those spreadsheet things, aren’t you?”
“Correct. And looking at wedding stuff. And—wait, no. What’s wrong?”
“Why do you think something is wrong?” I walked over to my glass of wine and took another sip. I may have silently cursed the computer screen for making me shed a tear or two, because it was obviously the computer’s fault.
“Spit it out. I’m too busy to mess around and guess. Though I have a few guesses.”
“If you’re too busy I can call back—”
“Uh-uh. Nope. I’m not too busy to talk to my friend about her problems. I’m too busy for my friend to bullshit for half an hour while I guess what they might be. There is a difference. We can do it to men and watch them sweat bullets, but we don’t do it with our friends. You know the rules.”
I grinned. “Fine! You know it’s about a boy, so why don’t you get the laughing over with and then tell me how stupid I am.”
“Have you noticed we can pretty much solve our own problems most of the time, but it’s like we just need someone listening to us while we do it?”
I nodded and smiled wider. “We do that, don’t we?”
“Yes. Yes, we do.” The clicking of keys halted. “I can stop what I’m doing if you want. I’m just multitasking like a fool right now. I promise you I’m listening either way. Ethan is meeting with some of the Rangers bigwigs to talk about Matt, so I have to take advantage of the alone time.”
“Why is he meeting with them about Matt?”
Awkward silence.
“Jenny?”
I heard a faint mumble that sounded like “shit.”
“Jenny? What the hell?”
“Yeah, what was that? I think you cut out. Kelsey? You there?”
She was a piss-poor actor.
“You know you heard me.” My fingers clenched into a fist.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot talk about it.”
“Why?”
“Legal reasons. I just can’t. I’m sorry.”
My jaw clenched. “Fine.”
“Seriously, I shouldn’t have said that, I’m so sorry. It slipped.”
“It’s okay.”
I said the words, but for some reason it didn’t sit right. Maybe it was the tone in Jenny’s voice, like she’d expected me to just know what was going on, and then her reaction to my question. I knew enough to know that Ethan handled all the business stuff for Matt. It wasn’t like Matt and I had been doing whatever we were doing long enough for him to explain his financial life to me or anything, though.
“So why are you upset?”
I shook my head and tried to pretend like the previous conversation hadn’t happened. “Okay, I know you need the CliffsNotes version, so here it goes. I’m going to be girly for a second. Please don’t judge me.”
Jenny chuckled. “I won’t. It’s allowed once in a while.”
“Okay, good. So I know I act like Matt isn’t serious, but fact is I do have some serious feelings for him. I’m pretty sure his are the same, but he is a professional baseball player and famous and all kinds of other shit. And he’s away hanging out with his friend across the country and I just want him here right now because my mind is being mean to me.”
Jenny laughed.
“Don’t laugh at me, asshole.” I chuckled along with my words. “I need my friend to tell me to stop being stupid.”
“Well, Matt is a good guy. You know this.”
“I do, but I Googled him and saw pictures of girls hanging all over him. When we were at the concert these fake-titted Barbie Doll women flocked to him for his autograph, and I’m sure that shit happens all the time.”
“Kelsey?”
“Yeah.”
“Just slow down, okay? Deep breaths.”
I took another pull off my glass of wine. “Done.” It was practically the same thing as breathing.
“You took a drink of wine, didn’t you?”
I glanced around the room. “Do you have surveillance on me?”
Jenny snorted. “I just know you. It was that or Scotch. I guessed. Now listen—Matt was a player back in the day. Ethan told me this. In their midtwenties they were both hot millionaires. See what I’m saying?”
I blew a strand of hair out of my face. “Yes.”
“Even the most wholesome guy in the world, if put in their position, would have banged as many women as humanly possible.”
“Okay, point made.”
“And if it makes you feel any better, Ethan told me that the friend he’s staying with is the most down-to-earth guy around. That when it’s the three of them they usually just sit around and drink beer and play video games.”
“Fine.” I pretended to just be appeased, but fireworks went off inside me.
“I know you’re still going to worry about it, but I hope that helps.”
“I will, but it does.”
“Good.”
“There’s one other thing, Jenny. But I don’t want to tell you what it is.” I shouldn’t have said anything, but I had to talk some of this shit through while Matt was out of town. I was going crazy, alone with my mind.
“What’d you do?” Her voice was a motherly, concerned tone.
I closed my eyes for a second.
“Kelsey?”
I needed to just rip the bandage off, for my own sanity. “He’d already told me about the pictures, and I searched for them anyway.”
“Oh, Kel.”
“I know.” I found myself fighting back tears again. What the hell? I did not cry. “He told me about it. How upset he was with himself. For doing normal guy shit in his early twenties. And I told him it was fine. Even comforted him about it. I know he was young, and I know he’s probably cursing a video game right now with his buddy, and doing imm
ature nerdy guy shit. And yet in my mind, he’s out somewhere in a room with a hundred women that are prettier than me, choosing which one he’s going to fuck later. Maybe even more than one. I’m worse than being insane, because I’m aware of how fucking stupid I’m being and I can’t turn it off.”
“They do that to us, don’t they?”
“I guess Matt does. I’ve never been this way before. I’ve felt betrayed and hurt before, but that was when the guy actually did a lot of horrible things. I’ve never acted this stupid over normal shit. Fucking Matt, that asshole.” The wine was obviously getting to me. I was on a roll here.
Jenny laughed. “You really like him a lot, don’t you?”
I wiped a tear from my eye. “Yes.”
“Are you crying? Jesus.”
“You’re crying.”
Jenny chuckled at my joke, but her tone turned to super-serious. “God, Kel. I didn’t know you had feelings this strong. I mean, I knew you’d like him but this happened fast. This sounds like a different L-word altogether.”
I propped my elbow on the desk and my palm met my forehead. “Let’s not get crazy.” She was probably right, but I didn’t want to admit it.
“Kel, are you in love with him?”
I sat there, unable to say anything. All I could think about was Matt’s smile.
“Kelsey?”
I started to speak and a slew of tears ran down my face, and my voice cracked when I spoke. “Yes. I think so. Yes. I don’t know. I just want him here with me right now.” I broke down, right there on the phone.
“Hey, just breathe a little.”
The wine sloshed around in my glass and it trembled up to my lips. “O-okay.” When I took a swig the cab-sav stung my throat a little, in the best way possible. “Why am I like this?”
“Oh, babe, it happens to everyone when they meet the right person.”
“Well, it’s not supposed to happen to me. Make it stop.”
Jenny tried to hide a chuckle. “It’s going to be fine. I promise.” She paused for a sec. “Look, I told you Matt is a great guy. He would never hurt you on purpose, okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“But he’s not perfect. You have to realize that. He may seem perfect, but that’s all the hormones having a field day right now with your body and your brain.”
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