Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
STELLA
Even though I’d been up for the past hour, I groaned as the alarm blaring from my phone pierced my eardrums. I rolled over, feeling around on my nightstand until it stopped.
I didn’t have to be up yet, but I was too restless to stay in bed. It wasn’t a school day, but I had to make sure Bennie ate breakfast before we headed to the Bats game later this afternoon.
The sun was already bright at seven a.m., bleeding through my pink curtains enough to hurt my eyes. The breeze was still cool, even though the temperature was supposed to peak in the low seventies this afternoon.
It was a perfect day for a ball game—and to get out of the house and hopefully out of my head.
The Bats were in the middle of a stretch of home games, and we’d settled into a sort of routine over the past week.
Most of the games had been at night, with a couple of day games in between.
Lee and I were mostly two ships passing in the day and night, but we’d linger in his living room together for an hour or two when he was home and after Bennie had gone to bed.
Lee didn’t have to be at Wayne Field until later this morning and had come home late, so I expected him to sleep in.
Bennie had been excited enough about today to make it impossible to get her to bed, but in the weeks I’d taken care of her, she’d never woken up on her own, despite how hard she worked to delay her bedtime.
How I wished for that same kind of blissful, unburdened sleep.
The soundest I’d slept in weeks was on the couch, in Lee’s arms, before I’d woken up and come to my panicked senses.
Lee had seemed to have no recollection of calling my name in his sleep and pairing it with baby.
Unfortunately for me, I heard his slip flop around my head for days. I’d made sure to sit in the recliner instead of on the couch when we watched TV together, in case I fell asleep and drifted away from my spot and into his arms again.
I decided to believe he either knew a different Stella or he was having two dreams at the same time. Of course, asking him would have cleared all that up, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that.
I didn’t think I could handle confirmation that he’d been thinking about me or that he hadn’t.
My feelings for Lee were supposed to fade by living in his house, not get more complicated.
Lee had a road trip coming up next week, and as terrible as it was, I yearned for the relief of some distance.
Too lazy to change, I reached for my robe on the closet door and draped it over my tank top and sleep shorts, sifting the hair tie out of my tangled waves while I trudged into the hallway.
The house was still dark when I padded toward the stairs, rubbing my eyes as I collided with something hard and wet.
Lee was awake. And wet. And naked, other than the towel cinched around his waist.
“Hey. Sorry, Stell. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, that was…my fault. I should watch where I’m going,” I said, forcing out a nervous chuckle as I tried with all my might not to gawk at Lee’s glistening chest.
He was built but not bulky, muscles defined with smooth ridges and what looked like a soft dusting of dark hair. My fingertips tingled to sift through it as my greedy eyes roamed over his torso, counting the rest of his abs beyond the sneak peek I’d gotten on the couch.
We’d gone to the beach as teens, and I’d seen Lee without a shirt and in a tank top, but that was then, and now was…a lot. My brain was about to flatline from all it was taking in, despite my desperate and futile attempt not to look.
“Eyes up here,” he whispered, touching his temple as the corner of his sinful mouth twitched.
“They are. You just surprised me. Like I said, I should watch where I was going. My fault,” I said, clearing my throat when I caught it squeak. “I’m going to make coffee. Do you want coffee? I think we have muffins left too.”
I shifted to move past Lee, trying to shield my face so he wouldn’t notice the blush singeing my cheeks. He stepped in front of me, taking the end of the fuzzy belt of my robe and tying a knot as his gaze bored into mine.
“It’s a little cool,” he said, his voice low and husky while he roamed his gaze over my body. “You should cover up.”
And you should drop that damn towel and give me what I’ve wanted for half my life.
Desire and need were battling with my common sense, and if I didn’t head downstairs in two seconds, we would all lose.
I nodded and rushed downstairs, opening the fridge for a moment to lean in and let the cool air hit my face before I shoved it closed. I dropped my chin to my chest, my eyes bugging out when I noticed my tank top drooping on one side, almost low enough to see my left nipple.
That must’ve been what Lee had noticed when he’d said cover up. I could still feel the rasp in his voice deep in my belly and…lower.
He was probably just teasing me, like always. Seeing me flustered had been his and Gary’s favorite pastime, although now I was a very different kind of flustered.
This was not the everyday scenario I’d been hoping for while living with Lee. As hard as I’d tried, I couldn’t find any bad habits to turn me off. Ramming into him like that, wearing nothing but a towel and a crooked smile like a bad sketch from a roommate sitcom, only made things worse.
I set up the coffeemaker, drifting my gaze out the window above the sink as it hummed to life.
So I’d seen Lee’s chest, and he’d seen most of my breast. This was no different from when I’d watched him play baseball and tried not to look at his ass in baseball pants.
It was a nice ass, and he had a nice chest. An amazing chest.
I noticed nice things. Like the flower beds at the base of the windows on Diane and Jimmy’s house next door. I tried to get lost in the vibrant roses and daisies and willed my pulse to slow.
I wasn’t sure if humiliation or desire was kicking up my heartbeat.
I’d managed to convince myself that all the heavy moments between us were my own muscle memory of pining for Lee, but lately, I wasn’t so sure.
If he’d been only teasing me, he would have laughed and goaded me more before he’d have let me leave.
When his eyes had dropped to my almost-exposed breast, he hadn’t been laughing. He’d had fire in his eyes, unmistakable even in a dark hallway.
Maybe this was a product of forced proximity. I’d read countless novels about the tension between two people and the powder keg it created when they were forced to stay in the same space. That was probably messing with both of us.
After his next trip, he’d be home for almost a month. I’d managed to hold in my crush for Lee—at least from him—for years, but this was the first time I had a genuine worry if I could control myself.
“Hey,” Lee whispered against my neck, making me yelp and almost fall against the sink.
“You need to stop doing that,” I said, feeling the rumble of his laugh at my back while I rinsed out one of the coffee mugs I’d grabbed from the drainboard.
“I’m sorry I scared you that time.”
I kept my gaze on the sink, Lee’s arms coming up on either side of me.
“It’s okay. I didn’t expect you to be up so early, and I couldn’t sleep. Not a big deal.”
I forced myself to swivel my head to meet his gaze. His hair was still wet as he peered down at me, the corner of his mouth hitching up.
“How come you couldn’t sleep? I figured you and Bennie would sleep late on a Saturday.”
“She is, I’m sure.” I grasped the mug to busy my shaking hands. He’d pulled on a T-shirt, but it was tight enough to stretch across his chest, the fresh memory of it underneath the material still making me squirm against the stainless-steel edge of the sink.
“I guess I’m used to waking up early. Years of early meetings and flights conditioned me, I suppose.”
“And now you don’t have to worry about that anymore, right?” Lee lifted a brow. “You’ll stay close to home for your next job?”
“I already promised my mother and Bailee. My mother deserves one kid who is in the same time zone.”
“Well, how about you promise me too?” Lee held my gaze until the coffeemaker beeped. “You can’t leave me now that I’m used to having you around.”
He grabbed the pot before I could reach for it, taking the mug from my hand and filling it up.
“Thank you,” I said, narrowing my eyes while I wrapped my fingers around the mug handle. “You’ll be sick of me soon.”
“I like talking to you all the time, even when I’m on the road. I don’t want to go back to once-a-week check-ins because you’re somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, working all day. If that’s what you want, I support it, but I guess I’m a little selfish.”
I wrapped my hands around the steaming mug, trying to distract myself from what he’d just said and the vulnerable pull in his features as he’d said it.
Blurred lines. They were a mind game that was going to drive me to madness before the end of the season.
“I don’t want that. I probably never did but was too busy to register how miserable I was. So, you got me. All of you can rest assured I’ll stay in the local New York area and be a nomad no more.” I lifted my mug in salute.
“Good,” he said, that husky dip in his voice ricocheting from my heart and that overexcited spot in between my legs that needed to calm down. I couldn’t think straight when my entire body was throbbing.
“Maybe when you’re home, we should coordinate when we wake up.” I poured creamer into my coffee and took a big gulp, eyeing Lee over the rim.
“Coordinate?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.
“You know, so that,” I said, flicking my eyes toward the stairs, “doesn’t happen again.”
“What doesn’t?” He sucked in his bottom lip as if he were holding back a laugh.
I set the mug down on the counter with a frustrated thunk.
“That I don’t catch you right out of the shower, and you don’t see one of my boobs by mistake.”
“I wouldn’t call it a mistake.” Lee reached over me to grab a mug out of the cabinet. “I’d call it more of a happy accident.” His brows jumped when his eyes met mine.
Was he flirting with me or fucking with me?
I slapped his chest when he burst out laughing.
“Come on, Stell.” He grabbed my hand when I pulled it away, his gaze skimming over my face before it roamed up and down my body. “Wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Yes, it was. Really bad.
“And you don’t have to see me with a rat’s nest on my head.” I flipped a tangled lock of hair over my shoulder. “I’ll spare you.”
“What if I don’t want to be spared?”
He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, tingles radiating down my neck when he moved his hand away.
What if he didn’t want to be spared? What did that even mean?
“Lee, I—”
“I’m ready!”
Bennie’s excited voice wafted down the stairs.
“I have my new Nate shirt on. Why don’t I go with you to practice, Daddy? I still have my whistle.”
I collapsed in relief against the sink, Bennie breaking the spell that had rushed over us and almost made us do something stupid.
I wasn’t sure what we would have done, but I feared it would have been something we couldn’t come back from or reason away.
“Not today, Ben. I have to work on the guys all morning, so I’m heading up early. But you get to come with Stella later, and Silas told me Rachel and Taylor will be there today.”
Bennie let out a gasp, her long lashes grazing her brows as she widened her eyes.
“Taylor is the best.” Bennie’s head whipped toward me. “She plays baseball too.”
“Softball,” Lee corrected. “Taylor has been Bennie’s idol since she babysat for her a couple of times last year. Well, until you came along.” Lee smiled, picking up his coffee and sauntering into the living room as if nothing had happened.
“Could I have a muffin for breakfast? That way, I can eat faster and we can get ready.”
“The game doesn’t start until two, kiddo,” I told Bennie. “Enjoy the muffin, and we can relax a little bit.”
Bennie bounced back and forth on her feet as I handed her the blueberry muffin on a plate. She rushed into the living room, taking a spot next to her father, and I was sure she’d try one more time to convince Lee to take her with him.
“But I’m too excited to calm down,” I heard her say.
That made two of us.