Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Asher
The conversation stops the second I get into the clubhouse. Guys are there going about their business—working out and heading to the field for practice and generally just hanging around. A group is playing cards in one corner. Two put down their hands; the other two peer at me over their cards.
So…that might answer that. Brayden knows.
That much is clear from the argument—and the ensuing make-up sex—that came echoing from the other room this morning.
At first, I listened for Brayden’s reaction: anger is one thing.
Rage is another. If Brayden so much as lifted a hand to her, I was ready to tear their hotel door from its hinges.
But from the sounds she was making—the sounds I knew because she’d made the same ones with me less than twenty-four hours ago—Savannah wasn’t objecting. At all.
He made her come once, little bitten-off noises like she was whimpering against the window.
Again when they were fucking on the bed—going by the squeak of springs and thump of the bedframe.
And he used the toy I got her to do it. It paired with the app on my phone last night and was still registering data.
I’d tried to drown them out. Headphones. Water from the shower. Eventually, I just sat on the bed, cock in hand. Jerked myself roughly in time with her moans. If I couldn’t have her, at least she was being taken care of. Even if it was by him.
Forsyth must have said something to one of the guys, and gossip did what it always does among baseball teams: spreads uncontrollably like clubhouse flu.
LeBlanc is looking at me pityingly. McDonald seems like he might try to have a conversation with me about leadership or sportsmanship or something.
Half these guys cheat—not McDonald, but a bunch of them fuck other people’s wives.
I’m not gonna be lectured on morality by someone who takes his wedding band off to screw a bottle girl, then doesn’t even bother to call her the next day.
At my stall, I pull off my street clothes and prepare to work out. Today is supposed to be a rest day, but fuck that, I’m lifting heavy. I go into the weight room, rack up. Lose myself in the rhythm of weights and the simplicity of picking something heavy up and putting it back down.
I’m alone for a while, music playing, body reminding me that I might not look like I belong here, but I do.
I’ve earned this. It’s possible I’ll be shunned by the team for the season.
It’s possible that Forsyth will go to Coach and management and make it clear that they trade me or him.
It’s possible word will get around the league.
Baseball has a lot of rules, but none more important than bro code.
The first of which is: don’t fuck your teammate’s wife.
Worst of all, it’s possible Savannah will never speak to me again.
My throat starts to tighten as I think about what this means. Was I just a distraction while she got her marriage back on track?
I pick up the weights, relish the burn in my muscles: it makes it easier to ignore the answering burn behind my eyes.
No, I’m not going to focus on that now. I’ve done enough therapy and meditation and general feelings bullshit to know that emotional regulation requires time and space. So everything else can keep itself at a distance, at least for now.
Telling myself that doesn’t solve my throat or my eyes or, most pressingly, the ache in my chest that has nothing to do with the weights I’m lifting.
Distance. I just need distance, so I feel less like a powder keg that’s about to go off.
And that’s of course when Forsyth decides to come in.
He’s been at the clubhouse awhile, judging from the ring of sweat at his collar, the slight dampening of his hair at the temples. For a moment, we just look at one another.
“Put the weights down.” Forsyth’s voice is steady, but it’s a steadiness I know: one of carefully banked anger.
This wouldn’t be the first time in my life I’ve been punched—nowhere near the first—but it’d be the first time it’s happened when I’m an adult. Slowly, I rerack the weights. “What’d you say to everyone?” I ask.
Forsyth scrunches his forehead. “What?”
“The team. They clearly know something’s up.”
“I just asked if anyone knew where you were.” He’s using that same tone—in control. For now. “Why, are you worried about your reputation?”
I shrug. “Not mine, but, yeah, I’d have an issue with it if you spread Sav’s business around like that.”
He steps closer to me, eyes going stormy. “Maybe you should stay the fuck out of Sav’s business.”
I don’t flinch. I don’t step back. If he wants to prove himself by slugging me, he can come over here and do that. “I wasn’t in Sav’s business any more than she wanted me to be.” I should just end it there, but I can’t help adding, “And it seems like she wanted me in her business a lot.”
That does it. Forsyth stalks across the room, snatches the front of my T-shirt, shoves me against the nearest piece of equipment—a leg press machine—hard enough to send a ringing impact through my back.
“You aren’t gonna talk about her,” he snarls.
“You aren’t gonna think about her. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve never met.
” He’s right in my face, his foot nudging mine apart, his fist balling the fabric of my shirt.
“This is your fault, you know,” I say. His gray eyes flicker.
Sometimes the best insults don’t have to be the meanest ones, just the ones that are the most true.
“She’s in a new city—she moved across the country to be with you—and all you did was ignore her.
But I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re selfish on the field.
Why wouldn’t you be selfish everywhere else? ”
“You think I don’t know that? You think I’m not trying to—” His voice breaks and for a second, I’m not seeing Brayden Forsyth, who’s had everything given to him, but Brayden Forsyth, who’s terrified of losing what he has.
“You think I don’t know that she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me and that one day, she’ll be gone, and I’m going to be left with—”
He cuts himself off. Breathes harder. Doesn’t say anything, just tightens his hand fractionally in my shirt, pulling us closer together. His mouth is very near mine. His eyes flick again, this time down to my lips.
Oh. Huh.
Usually I have a sense of these things—usually men who want me to fuck them aren’t that subtle about it.
Which is good. Makes things easier when I fuck them.
Forsyth…I don’t know if he knows that’s what he wants.
I extend the tip of my tongue, just enough to wet my lower lip, watch him as he tracks the movement.
I take that as an opening, walking him back from where he has me pinned to the side of the leg press machine to a wall on the other side of the room. One sheltered from the open door where our teammates might come traipsing through at any moment. “What do you mean, one day she’ll be gone?” I ask.
“Because—” He swallows a few times. “I was just trying to help her. Help myself. I never meant for things to go this far.”
Pieces are starting to fall into place. How Forsyth was a church boy if ever I met one and yet had gotten married in a chapel in Vegas. How Savannah protested that he’d been there for her when no one else was. How their beds sat in different bedrooms almost like they were—
“Are you really married?” I ask.
Forsyth barks a laugh. It doesn’t have much laughter in it. “Are you really asking me that? Especially if you heard what I think you heard from our room today.”
So he knew I could hear them fucking and he fucked her anyway—maybe because I could. “How much of that was for her?” I ask.
“All of it.”
“And how much of that was for me?”
Forsyth sputters. Shakes his head. Doesn’t answer the question. But he doesn’t push me off.
I press him further against the wall, until there’s only a slim, shivering layer of air between us.
That gets his attention. His eyes are thundercloud gray; his cheeks flushed from shoving me around. He’s resisting, but only slightly, muscles in his chest and shoulders tense. “You could shove me off,” I say, mostly to rile him.
It works, and he grabs my wrists, spins me, puts his entire body weight against me—until we’re touching more places than we’re apart. “Yeah.” I huff it right into his ear. “That’s what I thought you wanted.”
“Fuck you.” But it’s not a denial, and he doesn’t draw back. We’re both in filmy basketball shorts with exercise tights underneath. Layers of fabric between us. Still, he’s getting hard, his cock nudging at my hip.
“Are you mad I fucked Savannah?” I whisper. “Or are you mad that she did something you wanted to?”
“I—” Forsyth cuts himself off. He shakes his head, not like he’s denying it but like he wants that thought out of his brain.
Like this isn’t the first time he’s tried to shake out this kind of thought.
Finally, he gets control of himself. Reaches up and grabs the back of my shirt, like he’s going to try to fling me across the room. “Don’t change the subject.”
For a moment, we’re suspended like that, Forsyth’s mouth a mere few inches from mine. I could kiss him. I’d only have to lower my head slightly. He wouldn’t be the first man I’ve kissed—nowhere near the first—but I bet I’d be the first man he’s kissed. That alone makes me hesitate.
“Adler…” It comes out somewhere between a growl and a whine, like he’s that close to giving in and is just looking for an excuse.
“Asher,” I correct. Getting called by my last name is inevitable in a clubhouse, but that doesn’t mean I actually have to like it that much.
“Go to hell.” But his lips are slightly parted. His hips brush mine again and he makes a noise like his voice is caught in the back of his throat.
Fucking a teammate’s wife is a very bad idea.
Fucking a teammate is somehow even worse.
Jonathan Halperin, who’d just gotten drafted this summer—who’d almost tanked his own shot at a major-league career because he put up an Instagram post declaring he had several partners—was careful to mention that one was his former teammate.
If anyone came in now, maybe they’d see two guys fighting over the same woman. Maybe they’d see something else, something a team that’s as traditional and family values oriented as the Peaches can’t overlook. Never mind there are all kinds of families who come to our games.
Still, one of us should draw back, for both our sakes. Fine, if Forsyth needs me to do it, then that’s what I’ll do. I move away, injecting air between us.
He blinks a few times as if he’s just now realizing where we are, then smooths his hands down the front of his T-shirt and adjusts himself briefly in his shorts as if he’s merely uncomfortable and not achingly hard.
He’s still glaring at me, less like he might rip my head off and more like he’s pissed off that I let him go.
“Fine,” he says, walking away from me, “but this isn’t over. ”
That much is true. We’re not done. And after the past twenty-four hours together, I’m not sure any of us wants to be done. “Come back when you know what you want,” I call.
He turns back. Shoots me a grin that’s all teeth. “I want you to stay away from my wife.”
I toss him a smirk to watch him go incandescent with anger. “I don’t think that’s up to you,” I say. “There’s only one person who gets to make that decision—and she’s back at the hotel.”