chapter 84
"Stay.”
“I can’t stay.” I sat up, sliding off the bed and eyeing my panties, damp and alone, on the floor.
“I have to get back.” Before he wakes up.
I didn’t want to turn and see the clock, was terrified of what it might say.
It felt like we’d been in this room for decades.
First the sex, then the spooning, then the conversation.
Words about nothing, each of us trying to stretch out the time, a hopeless feat.
“What are you going to tell him?”
I gathered my clothes and sat at the desk, working on my panties, then my leggings. “I don’t know.”
He got off the bed, boxer briefs on, and walked over, picking up my shirt and helping me with it, the built-in sports bra a tight fit, his hands taking liberties in their pull of spandex over breasts. I smirked at him despite myself, taking the pullover from his hands and handling it myself.
He didn’t smile back. He looked worried. “Maybe I should come with you.”
“No.” I grabbed my Nikes and sat down in the chair. I didn’t know what he thought. That I was going to walk into my house, wake up my husband, and ask for a divorce? I couldn’t do that to Tobey. I needed to think, to plan, to figure out—
“This isn’t a fling, Ty.” His words were hard, and I looked up at him, momentarily pausing my shoe-tying. “You aren’t going to go back to him and occasionally fuck me when you are bored.”
I finished the knot and stood. “Don’t talk to me like that.” I glared at him. “Do you think that’s what I’m like? Seriously?”
“No.” He shook his head with a scowl. “I don’t. But I’ve lost you to him before. And I can’t—”
“I understand.”
“You don’t understand. I’ve been alone for four years, haven’t touched another woman, and you’ve been with him every … fucking … night.” He gritted out the words and I searched his face, trying to understand the frustration I saw in it.
“You haven’t—why not?” I’d seen hundreds of games, thousands of fans.
I knew the type of girls, what they wore and how they pounced, especially on the single players, especially on the ones that looked like this man.
There had been so many nights where I’d pictured Chase, where I’d cried over what he might be doing and who he might be doing it to.
To think that he had been celibate this whole time …
it twisted a place deep in my gut. “I didn’t ask you to stay faithful,” I said helplessly, while inside, a part of me sang.
“You never asked me anything, that was the whole problem, a lack of communication.”
It was the merry-go-round of blame that wouldn’t stop, each turn more exhausting, both of us equally to blame.
I looked away and he let out a loud breath of frustration.
“I tried to be with other women, Ty. I just couldn’t.
Every woman that I touched—it just felt like I was cheating on you.
Each time, I couldn’t get you out of my head. ”
It was what he didn’t say that I heard the loudest. The fact that I hadn’t struggled with the same guilt, the same feelings.
For him to not be able to touch another woman—and for me to share Tobey’s bed—my feelings must not have been as strong, my morals not as intact, my love incomplete in some way.
I didn’t have an answer for that, no excuse good enough, my cheeks heating with the shame of it all.
“Do you love him?” There wasn’t judgment in his voice, only dread.
“I’m married to him,” I said helplessly. “We’ve been … it’s been four years. We created and lost a child together. It’s not as simple as…”
“So you love him,” he said flatly. “Still.”
“I can’t just delete feelings because of a trade.” Because of a kiss. Because of a fuck. I swallowed. “But I can tell you that my love for him…” I stepped closer to him, placing a hand on his chest. “It doesn’t touch this. It doesn’t even come close. And it never has.”
He covered my hand with his, his touch gentle as it pried my palm away, turning it over, his head dipping to kiss the soft skin of my inner wrist. “I know that, Ty. I believe it.” His eyes lifted to mine, and there was pure torture in their depths.
“And if I didn’t love you so strongly, it’d be easier for me to watch you go back to him.
” His hand tightened on mine. “Promise me you’ll leave him. ”
“For what?” I said, feeling helpless, my world shaky in every piece of its foundation. “What do you want from me?”
His eyes softened, his mouth, when it pressed to me, gentle and soft, a plea of lips against a weak soul. “Everything. I want a life with you. I want to be the father of your children. I want every second we missed and a million more. And I’ll give away the world to get it.”
A sweet sentiment. But I couldn’t leave Tobey, and I couldn’t leave the Yankees. Not now. Not when somewhere in this city, a girl’s death sentence loomed.