Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Brayden
When I get home from the ballpark after the game, Savannah’s up in her bedroom, door open, papers spread around her on the desk, a highlighter in hand as she bends over whatever she’s reading.
Since that first night, I’ve tried not to go in her room, even if I can still catch whiffs of her rose-scented perfume.
She doesn’t have much up on the walls, but her clothes are hanging in the closet, her shoes stacked in neat boxes on the floor.
There’s a cat-shaped throw pillow on the bed and a picture of a cat next to all her other papers on her desk.
Does she like cats? I realize I don’t know.
For a moment, I stand in the doorway, watching her as she studies, her hair up in a loose knot.
A few threads have fallen out of her bun and play at the base of her neck.
She hasn’t noticed I’m here. I hold my breath, watch the soft angle of her wrist as she highlights something, then switches to a pen to jot down a note.
Her teeth hook on her lower lip as she concentrates.
She has a smudge of highlighter on her cheek.
If I really focus, I can just make out the dot of her nipple through the fabric of her shirt and bra.
She must finally catch me, because she looks up. “Brayden, hey.” Her voice is throaty like she’s been at this for a while.
“I take it you didn’t crash the car,” I say.
She frowns like she doesn’t remember our conversation from earlier. “The car. Right. Thank you for lending that to me.”
“It’s yours. I got my truck.” A drive that took thirty minutes in an Uber followed by an hour with Brad dragging me into the batting cage in our garage and telling me everything that’s wrong with my swing.
So a normal trip home, more or less. I scan the papers scattered around Savannah. “Do you have a test or something?”
She laughs. “No, just, have you ever started something and realized you’re already struggling to keep up?”
Brad used to toss me out of bed at four a.m. to run around the neighborhood while he followed me in a golf cart, yelling. That was something I learned to do: put one foot in front of the other, knowing that if I slowed down, he’d be right behind me. “Yeah, sometimes.”
“So, I kinda put in some serious work time.” Her eyes drift to her papers like she’s eager to get back to it.
I know a dismissal when I hear one. I go to the kitchen, pull down a glass.
Into it, I put a few fingers of whiskey.
Something that will make today a little easier: Brad’s criticisms, Adler’s smug look in the dugout after he’d gotten on base for the third time and I struck out twice.
Savannah’s gaze drifting to her papers and what she really wanted to do—which wasn’t talking to me.
Then I remember how she sounded: throaty.
Maybe thirsty? Growing up, Blake used to bring two water bottles to practice because I’d always forget mine.
I pour a second glass—water, not whiskey—then go upstairs and drop it on her desk.
She’s so caught up in whatever she’s doing that she barely looks up.
“Night,” I say and retreat into my room with my whiskey. It’s not drinking alone if Sav’s in the house too, thirty feet and a million miles from where I can touch her.