chapter 49
Twenty-seven flights of stairs was a bitch; it didn’t matter who you were.
Well, unless you were a Major League freak of nature who barely wheezed while the blonde beside him struggled to stand.
Not that I was wheezing. Or had sweat dripping down my cheek (I think they had the heat on.). Just hypothetically speaking.
We left the hotel through the stairwell door, coming out in a back parking lot. Chase grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the street. I gave one last glance back at the building, then followed.
I had told my Dad goodnight, in those minutes before we left. Same as I did every night, his voice tired and sleepy, the light under his door already out. He wouldn’t know about this, couldn’t, but I still worried, my phone tucked into my back pocket.
“What if someone recognizes you?” I hissed. They would. His face was too beautiful not to notice, too famous to forget.
“We’re not going anywhere that I’ll be seen.”
And, thirty minutes later, he was right. It’d taken three phone calls, five hundred dollars in cash and a photo op with two security guards, but we were standing in the one place that no one in a city of millions, would see him. The Newport Aquarium, at eleven o’clock at night.
Before us, glass stretched to the ceiling, a thick divider between us and a million gallons of salt water. Floating gently, lit bright blue, the biggest stingray I had ever seen.
“He’s beautiful,” I said quietly, watching his giant fins silently pass through the water. Chase nodded, crouching beside the tank and watching a group of seahorses bob along colorful grasses.
“Have you been here before?” I asked, lifting my chin and following the path of the ray as he soared above me.
“As a kid. Not at night. You?”
I came here as a kid also, my hand tight in Mom’s.
I had a small memory of a coloring book, purchased at the gift shop.
And of holding a starfish. I remember those moments, but not the sight of her face when she looked at the fish.
Or the sound of her laugh. I was too fixated on the things that hadn’t mattered.
It seemed unfair that I’d remember those and not her.
I told him so, and he pulled me to his chest, his arms wrapping around my shoulders, pinning me to him.
I looked up into his face and memorized the line of his nose, the dent of it where a break once occurred.
The thick brush of his eyelashes, framing eyes that searched my soul.
I dropped my gaze to his mouth, his lips pale and smooth, tilting toward me as he softly brushed them against mine.
I stayed still, the delicate skin of our lips against each other, and vowed never to forget this moment.
I smelled the faint scent of chlorine, and his cologne, and felt the tighten of his hand, our lips parting, tongues meeting, and held onto each detail desperately.
I would not forget this moment. I would never forget this moment.
I laid in the backseat, my head in his lap, his fingers in my hair, absentmindedly playing with strands. The SUV, a fleet car from MLB, drove slowly, bumping over occasional potholes, the driver clueless to my identity and highly-paid to ignore Chase’s.
We passed over a train track and the clatter made me think of my mom. Of the sounds in the kitchen when she cooked. Pots clattering, the scrap of metal spoons against a pot. Funny how odd things can take you to new places. I looked up, into his face.
“My mom was a great cook.”
“Yeah?” He ran a soft finger over the lines of my ear and waited.
“Yeah. I remember sitting in the kitchen and drawing as she cooked.” I could picture the coloring book perfectly—my favorite—one with Belle and Gaston and all of her relationship drama.
“Is it bad that that is the only thing I can remember?” Not the scent of her perfume.
Not the sound of her voice. I just remember that damn coloring book and the smell of spaghetti cooking.
“It’s not bad. I don’t remember much from that stage of my life. And you don’t have to remember her to still love her.”
“I know.” I turned my head, watching the shadows as they moved across the leather. But did I?
“What happened to her?”
“She was having surgery. Something went wrong with the anesthesia.” I’d been home with a sitter. Dad had been in Colorado, playing. Neither of us there when she died.
“I’m sorry. Is it hard to talk about?”
I looked away from the shadows and up into his eyes.
“No. But you’re the first person I think I’ve ever told.
” I think he was the first who had ever even asked.
When I was younger, people brought up my mother a lot.
Nothing worse than a heartbroken girl being innocently asked where her mommy was.
“My dad did a good job of stepping in,” I said quickly, my loyalties fierce. “A great job.”
“Are you going to tell him about us?”
I opened my eyes. “Us?”
“Well, yeah.”
It was a question worthy of sitting up, and I did, turning to him, my equilibrium off for a moment before I found my bearings. “I didn’t know there was an us.”
“I’d like there to be.” His voice was low and steady, like we weren’t having the biggest conversation of my life, like he wasn’t CHASE STERN asking me to be his girlfriend.
“You want to be my boyfriend.” Clarification was needed because this was huge, and if I was wrong, if I was misreading this, then I needed to reel my heart in before—
“Yes.”
“Exclusively.”
“Yes.”
I looked away from his eyes for a moment. “That means no other women.”
His mouth twitched into a smile. “Yes. I know what it means.”
“I’m not ready to have sex.” Again. I wanted to add the words, to give him some hint that I had, unfortunately, done that before, but couldn’t.
Adding that would lead to questions. Answering those questions would mean facing my mistake head on.
It was easier, especially in this new world, one where Chase wanted to be my boyfriend, to pretend that it never happened.
“That’s fine.” He reached for my hand, and I pulled away.
“No. You say that’s fine, but I’ve lived in a world of men for ten years. And I’ve seen almost every one of them cheat. There’s too much temptation—it’s not fair for you to be with someone like me, someone—”
“Ty.” He cut me off, his hand pulling at the back of my neck, bringing me forward, his mouth hard as it kissed the top of my head.
“Shut up. I’m a big boy, I can handle some celibacy.
Just please don’t tempt me too much.” He lowered his mouth, bringing it to mine, and we shared one long kiss, a kiss that had my heart pounding and nails digging into him, the muscles in his arm tight under my grip.
When the kiss ended, we were both breathless, and I pushed my hair back, trying to find my composure, my sanity in all of this.
“I can’t tell my dad.” Not yet. Not when his opinion of Chase was lower than garbage.
Not when I was barely eighteen, and Dad was finally giving me space.
“If he knows, he won’t let me see you. I mean …
not like this.” There would be curfews and limitations.
He’d watch me like a hawk, and question me to death.
Assuming that he didn’t forbid it altogether.
I may be eighteen, but I was a Yankee employee.
And I was his daughter, his world. For the moment, my life, and my decisions, weren’t exactly my own.
He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “It’s your decision. Just let me know when. But I’m yours. No other women. No drugs. I promise.”
I nodded. And when he pulled me onto his lap for another kiss, I felt his conviction in his touch, his taste, his reverent whisper of my name.
And just like that, five blocks away from the Marriott Marquis, we were official. Officially together.
Officially committed.
Officially screwed.