Chapter 24
Tanner
Four days later, the pain wasn’t throbbing in my leg, but the limb still ached when I didn’t stretch.
It was almost torture not being on the field with the guys and the only thing keeping me sane was Kenzie.
When Zade and Aaron were at home, she suggested we go to a café to write our papers for our film class.
When they were gone, we were in bed, naked and starting a tally of orgasms.
It fucking rocked.
“Hey, you’re smiling over there like a weirdo.
” She nudged my side at the coffee shop she’d found ten minutes from the house.
They had incredible cold brew and the walk was good for me, even though it sucked.
“You have this cute expression on your face and your eyebrows come together to form a little triangle right here.” She pressed on my forehead and the gesture caused an odd flurry just below my ribs.
It felt as though the ground shifted under our table, but I ignored it. “I don’t have cute expressions.”
“Yes, you do.” She smiled and pushed her glasses up. “Why are you so happy today?”
“I was thinking about what we did last night.” I slid my hand under the table and squeezed her thigh. She blushed red and squirmed against me. It did not help my dick, because whenever she was around, I was ready to go.
“Last night was pretty incredible.”
We shared a heated look before she winked and went back to her computer.
I kept watching her movements, like how she chewed on her lip when she read, or how she adjusted her hair every couple of minutes, or the way she kind of hummed when she sighed.
I liked her gestures and I had to force myself to stop staring at her.
We finished our assignments for our class and submitted them, but Kenzie wanted to stick around for a bit to work on class selection for her freshman year.
She has her entire life ahead of her. New start.
But it didn’t stop the fact I wished I could keep her as mine even after I went back to baseball.
She fitted into my life so easily. It could happen.
It was just the possibility of it not working that held me back.
The situation when I’d gotten hurt, thinking I’d seen her in the crowd…
I couldn’t afford it and I shook my head to clear my thoughts.
Baseball first, always. She was jotting something down in her notepad filled with lists when I saw a dude approaching our table.
He was shorter than me, a dark-haired kid decked out in our school’s colors. I had no idea who the guy was but he was bold, walking right up to Kenzie and staring at her. It amused me that she didn’t see him for a solid thirty seconds, until the guy said, “Kenzie.”
She glanced up at me first. Score. But she followed the voice and her entire body stiffened when she eyed the stranger. “Uh, hey. What in the world? How are you here?”
He smiled, darting his gaze down her bare legs. I did not like that. “I’m having an informal tour with my mom. She wanted some coffee and we were literally right here. What are the chances?”
“No shit.” Kenzie scanned the entryway but the dude moved closer so he could touch her if he wanted.
He lowered his voice in a practiced move and twitched his hand, as if he wanted to reach out to her.
“How are you? I heard you moved here early and I saw your house is already sold to someone else. I’ve texted you a couple of times…
I missed you.” The dude moved his intense stare to me, but I remained expressionless.
Kenzie’s neck turned red. I had to know who this kid was to her.
“I’ve been pretty good. Living with Aaron and his friends has been interesting. I’m picking my classes for fall now. This guy has been entertaining me all summer.”
The dude had a forced expression of kindness on his face as he reached over to shake my hand. “H-hey, man.”
I squeezed my grip harder than normal. I didn’t respond. Instead I just jutted my chin at him. He let go and directed all his attention back to Kenzie, and I had every urge to smack this kid.
“Look, Kenz, I wanted to tell you in person, not text, but I’m coming to school here in the fall.
I know we talked and I said I was going out of state…
but it makes sense paying in-state tuition.
Isn’t that awesome?” The guy smiled with a hint of hope, but Kenzie did not have the reaction I expected. She laughed.
“Sweet. Good for you, man. It’s a nice school.”
“You’re…I thought you’d… you know. Look, who is this guy? Can I talk to you alone?”
That set off my alarm.
Kenzie raised her voice, a bit more dominance escaping her, and said, “This is Tanner Johnson, a friend of my brother and me. He plays on the baseball team. TJ, this is Sean. My ex-boyfriend.”
Sean. The fucker who’d slept with her and left her. I gave him a tight smile.
Sean looked a little flustered and blinked a lot. He then stared at Kenzie a little too long and I wanted to say something, but my girl did it just fine herself.
“Well, this has been awkward. I’m not sure what you were expecting here, but it isn’t some reconciliation. I’ll be friendly if I see you around, but that’s about it.”
“I thought…I don’t know. Maybe you’d be happy to see me again?”
“Sean. You dumped me. I’m not real upset about it, but don’t make this weird,” she fired back. “I’m being honest. We won’t have any friendship, so please don’t try.”
“Okay. Uh, sure. Well, bye.” Sean spun around so fast I felt air hit my face, and Kenzie turned to me with the widest eyes.
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah, that was entertaining,” I replied, holding back from asking a thousand questions. Like, did she text him back? Did she miss him? Was she glad he was going here? Instead, I acted real mature. “He seemed…fun.”
“Ha. Ha.” She made a bemused face and blinked back the uncertainty that had been there moments ago. “God, that threw me for a loop. I never expected to see him again.”
“Do you miss him?” Shit.
“Uh, no. Not at all.” She laughed and slid me a coy look. “The sex is comical, comparing what I had with him to you. Astronomically comical.”
“I like where this is going. Please, continue.”
She giggled and leaned into me a bit. It was simple, just her shoulder touching mine, but it felt like more.
She didn’t let a lot of people get inside her circle, and I was in.
I felt special—a totally cheesy thing to feel—but I liked being in her world.
“It was something to do—no pun intended—to have a boyfriend. My life was crazy with my dad being sick and me working all the time to avoid feeling things, taking care of the house and finishing classes. A boyfriend was a distraction from it all. I didn’t really like the guy all that much.
But we got dinner, we went to prom, we went to movies.
We did things. It got me out of the house. ”
“As all good boyfriends do, doing things.”
“Shut up,” she goaded, resting her head on my shoulder for two seconds.
It made my heart skip a beat and I wasn’t sure why.
“It’s important to be friends with the person you’re with—meaning, there is a foundation to completely be yourself without judgment.
Zade and Callie, Aaron and Greta—they have that.
That’s tough to find and why I probably won’t have a boyfriend for a good long while. ”
“Don’t believe in love?” Wait—do I even believe in it? Why did I ask that?
“No, I do. It’s a lot of effort to find that with someone, isn’t it?” she asked, her green eyes hinting at something I couldn’t figure out. They were the brightest shade, almost like outfield grass, and I loved the color.
“Yeah. It is. We’re a lot alike, you know. For different reasons, relationships just aren’t in the works for us. At least not for a good while.” Good, she won’t be with anyone soon.
“That’s why this fling is perfect.” She gave me a toothy grin, making me laugh, and I wished for the first time that our fling could maybe be something more. But the illusion burst when she asked about my one true love—baseball. “You going to try and head to the field next week?”
I swallowed the uncomfortable ball in my throat.
Baseball. That was my life. My dad had tried calling, again, and the itch to get my mom and brothers safe brought my focus to the front.
Money, draft, baseball. “I’m gunna try and just have a presence there, but not dress for practice, or Coach and our trainer will kill me dead. ”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, TJ, but I’m not going to be upset if you have to wait another three weeks before you can play. I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with you and we still have…let me see…twelve more things to knock off my list.”
“Yeah?” I reached around her and flipped her book to our list. “Damn. Twelve more times between your legs, naked, screaming—”
“Tanner! Shh!” she laughed, putting her fingers to my lips to get me to shut up. “We are in public, Mr. Johnson. Behave.”
“I like it when you’re bossy.”
“If that’s your kink, I can boss you around all night.” She pursed her lips with all her confidence, looking adorable as hell, and I didn’t think. I leaned forward, kissing her softly, tentatively, and hummed in pleasure when she parted her mouth for our tongues to connect.
It didn’t last long, but that kiss felt different.
Real different. She looked up at me with hooded eyes and it felt like a sucker punch in the gut seeing all that warmth directed at me.
Say something. Do something to make it not weird.
Clearing my throat, I said, “Do you need help picking classes? I am a wise senior who’s survived up to this point. ”
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
Thank god. Normal. We are back to normal. “What do you have so far?”
She tilted her screen at me, but in order to see it, I had to scoot closer to her. This put our torsos together, her body heat combining with mine, and it took a copious amount of effort to not react. Focus on her classes.
“Since I have no idea what I want to major in, like, seriously, no clue, I’m going for all gen-eds.
English 101, American Politics, Psychology 101, but this is where it gets tricky.
I’m at nine credit hours. I need fifteen.
Do I pick a language since I skipped over them in high school?
Or do I pick a math class that I know will be super hard? Both? Help meeee.”
Her dramatization of asking for help made me laugh and she joined in. “See what time they’re offered. You’re a morning person, but you might work late nights. Psych is tough. Your grade is the midterm and final. That’s it, so you’ll need to make time to study a hella amount of hours.”
“Ugh, studying is not my thing. I’m a worker.
I like tasks I can cross off my list, but studying…
that’s a hard concept for me to tackle. Okay.
Times available. Let’s see.” She scrolled on the screen, her focused face involved her teeth coming down on her lip and her forehead wrinkling in the middle.
“Hm, this one is eight a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. No thank you.”
“Try to load up your classes on two days. I know that’s not conventional, but it helps me a lot during season. Sports management has a lot of hands-on, project-based classes that take up a lot of time so I try to only go to classes Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“Is that what your major is?” she asked, bringing her gaze to my face with a slight tilt of her head. “Sports management?”
“Yeah. It was beaten into my brain that baseball is just an injury away from not having a future. My mom made it pretty clear I had to have a back-up plan if baseball doesn’t work out. I love sports and coaching, teaching, working with a college team…I’d be happy doing any of those.”
She gave me the toothiest grin. “Tanner, I don’t think there’s much in the world you wouldn’t be good at, but I can see you liking any of those options.”
“Thanks, Kenny.” I nudged her shoulder, wishing I could show her how much I enjoyed hearing her say those things.
“It’s a constant worry—one injury could derail every dream I’ve ever had.
It’s not an excuse for my behavior last week, because you didn’t deserve the brunt of it, but it terrified me.
If I was out for two months, someone else could earn a starting spot in the lineup. It’s that simple.”
“Hm, I’d like to give your coach credit. You wouldn’t be replaced that fast.”
“It’s a business, so yeah, I could. I accept the rules and am willing to play, but the line of what could be or what could’ve been is real thin for me. That’s what I need to be focused all the time.”
“No, I get that for sure.” She snorted and gave me another look I couldn’t decipher.
“Man, all these fans and cleat chasers, they have no idea the emotional and physical toll the sport has on you. They see fame and fortune, the pretty face with the big paycheck, but it’s so much more than that.
I’m glad you all have a circle of people you trust.”
“I am, too. You’re in that circle, you know. At least for me.” And her brother’s, but I’m not bringing him up.
“Yeah, I worked myself into yours pretty quickly.”
“That you did, Kenzie.”
Another moment passed between us. The things I wanted to say but didn’t know how clogged themselves in my throat. I couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be fair to either one of us. I chose silence and Kenzie opted to stare at her screen. I would take what I could get. Ten more days of her being with me.