Addicted to Glove (Rose City Roasters #4)

Chapter 1

Dani

Opening Day

The only thing better than pound cake at two a.m. was getting pounded at two a.m.

Unfortunately, the only one getting pounded tonight was my roommate’s girlfriend. The two of them had been going at it for over an hour.

I nearly tumbled from my perch on the kitchen counter when the cuckoo clock in the dining nook chimed—the one Pink had insisted on bringing back from Germany last month, despite the astronomical shipping cost.

Make that two hours.

I scooped up another bite of cake, topping it off with some Cherry Garcia, a handful of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and finally, the pièce de résistance, one of Pink’s homemade bread and butter pickles. The guy might have painfully loud, wall-banging sex, but at least he knew his way around the kitchen.

And garden, for that matter. Our fridge was stocked with more homegrown produce than most farmers’ markets thanks to his green thumb—er, Pink thumb. Who would have guessed that living with a pro-baseball player would yield so many benefits?

Just not those kinds of benefits.

A series of moans and groans echoed down the stairs, keeping pace with the headboard thwacking the wall.

For fuck’s sake, I knew that athletes—especially those nearly ten years my junior—had incredible stamina, but they had to come up for air at some point, right?

Or, at the very least, replenish their . . . fluids.

Bleh.

I suppressed the urge to gag. It was probably best not to focus on my friend-turned-roommate’s fluids while eating. He had already tainted donuts for me when I’d walked in on him and Nessa acting out some phallic ring toss fantasy in our living room on Valentine’s Day.

There was no way he was taking Ben and Jerry from me, too. Especially not when I needed them most.

Growing up, ice cream had always been a luxury, one reserved for every other birthday—to “keep me humble”—or when my mom had brought home more tips than usual. It had been all she could afford, and I’d accepted that. But I’d also more than made up for it as an adult.

These days, I kept at least one pint stocked in the freezer at all times.

It was a hard and fast rule of mine, a reminder of just how far I had come since leaving our one-bedroom apartment in South Baltimore fifteen years ago.

Just yesterday, I had restocked my supply, opting for Cherry Garcia and something called Spuds and Fudge.

Nothing exorcised my personal demons quite like a bowl of Vermont’s finest—it was my therapy in a cardboard cup. That or a long run. I could outrun half of the guys on the team, and I had the gold medal from this past fall’s Rosé Run to prove it.

Pink was still salty about that one.

I rested my head back against the upper cabinets and focused on the swirl of cherry, chocolate, and pickle brine coalescing in the bottom of my bowl, like a chocolate milk and pickleback hybrid. Minus the alcohol, of course.

Fuck, I was gonna miss vodka.

“Hey.”

I looked up just as Nessa padded down the final few steps, clad only in a T-shirt, panties, and that “I just get railed” smile.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.

“It’s a little hard to, what with all the . . . banging.”

A pink hue colored her cheeks. It wasn’t a blush born from embarrassment, but rather satisfaction—earned and shameless—the kind of glow that came from good sex and zero regrets.

And why shouldn’t she be proud? Nessa, a born and bred Rose City native, had bagged the Jared Pink, Cy Young Award nominee and, as of last year, a World Series champion.

On top of that, business was booming at her romance bookstore, Smutty Buddies, though that had less to do with who her boyfriend was and more to do with her being a boss ass bitch.

Then again, it didn’t hurt that several of the guys on the team had started their own book club and were known to stop by the shop at any given moment. The Rose City Roasters had officially made it to Booktok.

Nessa and I had become fast friends even before she and Pink had started dating. No surprise there, though. Two tattooed, bisexual girls who used sarcasm as a defense mechanism? We’d basically been cut from the same dysfunctional cloth.

“Right,” she said, biting her bottom lip like she was almost sorry. Almost. “Guess we weren’t exactly subtle.”

I gave her a look.

“Subtle? Ness, the drywall moved.”

She laughed, soft and low, rubbing the back of her neck like she was trying not to look too pleased with herself.

There was no hiding the pride in her eyes .

. . or the glint of something else—concern, maybe—once she took in the nearly empty bowl in my lap and the way I was clinging to my spoon like it might help me fend off reality.

“Did I interrupt a . . . party?” she asked gently, nodding toward my briny ice cream soup.

“More like a . . . meltdown,” I muttered.

Nessa arched her brow and leaned against the counter, close enough that I could smell her signature vanilla lotion beneath the remnants of sleep and sex. “Everything okay?”

And just like that, the mood shifted. The casual banter between us dissipated, leaving behind an aftertaste that was neither sweet nor pickle-y.

This was it, the moment I had been dreading all day.

But there was no point denying the obvious any longer.

It was time to put on my big-girl panties—preferably the purple cotton ones with skulls—and get this over with.

The test was still in the pocket of my Scooby-Doo pajama pants, tucked beside a crumpled tissue and antacid. I pulled out the offensive piece of plastic and tossed it onto the counter, watching it slide across the white quartz until it skidded to a stop next to the still-open pickle jar.

Ness looked down at it, then up at me, then back down, as if the word blinking up at us like a small, digital billboard might change any second. Maybe if we stared at it long enough, it would.

“That’s a pregnancy test.”

Wordlessly, I reached into my other pocket and pulled out the others—all three of them.

Her jaw dropped a little. “That’s a whole lot of pregnancy tests.”

“Well, I’m a whole lot pregnant.”

She let out a weird little puff of laughter that was one part disbelief and two parts trying not to ask too many questions at once.

At least now we were on the same page.

“When did you— How did you— Who did you?”

I choked back a laugh. “You’re lucky we speak the same language.”

That language being Da Fuck?!?

“And to answer your questions,” I said calmly, finally accepting my fate. “I just found out today. As for how, assuming my guesstimation is correct, that would be up against the wall outside your brother’s bar. Is that specific enough for you?”

The furrowing of her brows told me she was too busy doing the mental math to register my snarky response. “And who?”

That was the million-dollar, hormone-fueled question—a curious case for Velma, Shaggy, and the rest of the Mystery Gang. The case of a bump in the road.

Only, this mystery wasn’t so mysterious after all. There had only been one man in my bed for months now, and judging by the sudden widening of Nessa’s grayish green eyes, she knew as well as I did who was to blame for my . . . situation.

“Who, Dani?”

I swirled my spoon through the sweet sludge in the bottom of my bowl, avoiding her glare.

“Don’t you dare hide behind Ben and Jerry.” She reached over, snatched the dish out of my hands, and plopped it on the counter with a dramatic thunk. “Talk.”

I sighed, long and slow. “It’s Brooks.”

Nessa blinked. “Brooks Bailey-Ward?”

“The one and only.”

But that wasn’t true. Brooks Bailey-Ward—my Brooks Bailey-Ward, though I had never, and would never, refer to him as such in public—was in fact, the third in a line of professional-baseball stars-turned-coaches.

And I might be carrying the fourth.

Fuck, that was a sobering thought.

“Holy. Fucking. Shit.”

“Shh,” I scolded, eyeing the stairs at her back. “Keep it down.”

Pink did not need to know about this—not yet at least. Hell, I was still trying to wrap my head around the idea of being a parent without feeling like I might throw up or shit myself—or worse, some combination of the two—at any given second, so the thought of telling my roommate—my best friend—that I was three months pregnant with his boss’s spawn did not sit well with me.

Also, there were certain things you just didn’t discuss with friends, and one of those was the R-rated play-by-play of how their boss had knocked you up.

Hard pass.

“I can’t believe it.” Nessa’s hands flew up to her mouth. “You’re having a baby with Coach Daddy.”

“Please, never call him that again.”

“Oh, I will one-hundred percent be calling him that again. Between the muscles, full body tats, and slutty little glasses, the man looks like he could be on the cover of a romance novel.” Her eyes lit up. “Or a calendar. Oh, Dani, can you please organize some kind of Roasters calendar?”

I dropped my head forward. “One crisis at a time, please.”

Nonetheless, I made a mental note to reach out to the head of our community relations department. If the bachelor auction during last fall’s Buns and Roses Festival had proven anything, it was that the girls, gays, and theys all wanted a piece of the Rose City Roasters.

Nessa paced across the tiles, one hand raking through her mussed sex hair, the other waving at the pregnancy tests like they were cursed relics. “How long?”

“Geez, I don’t know. It might take a few months to organize the photo shoot, but we could definitely get the calendars out by Thanksgiving—”

“No.” Nessa leaned on the counter across from me, her teasing expression slipping into something gentler. “How long has it been since you guys started things up again?”

Silence stretched between us. The rain outside ticked against the kitchen windows like a metronome counting down to impact.

Nessa and Pink were the only ones who knew about my fling with Brooks—the first time around, that was.

Like most of my relationships, ours had been short, hot, and complicated beyond repair.

As had our breakup, if you could even call it that.

What had started one hell of a fuck fest had quickly spiraled into the most awkward night of my life, one that had ended with Nessa and Brooks bumping into each other in our upstairs hallway.

Naked.

There’d been no coming back after that—nothing soured a secret relationship faster than the truth.

“It’s not like that,” I said.

Nessa gave me a pointed look. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been secretly hooking up with Coach Daddy this whole time.”

“Not the whole time,” I replied, holding up my hands in mock surrender. “We had a nice little stretch of mutual avoidance. Very healthy. Very mature.”

She gaped at me. “And then?”

I gave her a slow, knowing smile.

“Then came New Year’s Eve.”