Chapter 8 #2
I mouth to Thea, You ready? She nods back, and I give her a soft toss. The bat connects, sending a fly ball far into the outfield.
“Holy shit!” Thea screams.
I holler back, “Run!”
My outfielder fumbles the catch, and Thea makes it to second base. As soon as she stops running, she turns to me, holding her arms out wide as if to say, Did you see that? It feels like a sparkler’s been lit behind my sternum, and I can’t hold back my answering smile.
“Impressive,” I call out.
“Beginner’s luck, I’m sure,” she says with a little shrug.
I turn back to home plate, where Harrison is celebrating his run with Tommy, Johnny’s identical twin brother, who’s up to bat.
Johnny’s ribbing goes to a new level with Tommy, distracting him enough for me to get the first two pitches past him.
He successfully hits the third, the ball flying straight from his bat into Gabriel’s glove.
Thea starts toward third base the second Tommy’s bat connects, and Gabriel runs after her.
She’s a couple of feet from the base when his glove connects with her back, sending her forward and sliding against the clay.
She shouts loud enough for me to hear her a half field away, and I go sprinting to her.
“What was that, Gabriel?” I yell as I help Thea roll over. There’s blood running from her elbow.
“I’m so sorry, Thea,” Gabriel says. “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard.”
She gives him a weak smile, wincing when I shift her arm to get a better look. “It’s fine. All’s fair in love and baseball, right?”
Addy and my mother come running out of the dugout, dropping next to Thea. “Oh my god, Tia, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she says, her eyes darting around before she says louder, “I’m fine, everyone. Get back to the game.”
“I’m taking her to get fixed up,” I say to Addy, sliding my arms around her and lifting her bridal style. There’s a small office in the center of the park near the restrooms. I’m sure they have a first aid kit.
“I really am fine,” Thea says, wiggling in my arms.
I pin her with a hard stare. “You have blood running down your arm.”
Addy dusts off her hands as she stands. “I’ll help.”
“Stop. It’s a scrape. Please don’t miss out on this with Harrison’s family. Getting time with them is important to you,” Thea says, and Addy glances out at the field. “It’ll take a couple minutes to clean it up. Stay. Please.”
My mom wraps her arm through Addy’s. “Let Owen handle it. He’ll take excellent care of her.”
Mom winks at me, and I stifle my eye roll. Addy’s lips pinch, but she nods, and I walk off with Thea still in my arms.
“You know I can walk, right?” Thea asks, lifting a brow at me. “It’s my elbow, not my leg.”
I shrug, tugging her closer to my body. “No need to exert yourself. You’re injured.”
She laughs but doesn’t push for me to put her down. I love the way she feels in my arms, so I’ll keep her there if I can get away with it.
Once we reach the office, I set her down on a low wall next to a pillar.
She leans back against it while I run inside to grab the first aid kit and then into the bathroom to wash the clay off my hands.
I sit down on the wall, sliding close and twisting my baseball cap backward so I can get a better look.
She whimpers, and I glance up to find her bottom lip trapped between her teeth.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
Her throat bobs. “No, it’s okay.”
“You don’t have to be tough for me,” I say, and she grits her teeth as I run a saline wipe over the scrape to clean it.
“Thank you,” she whispers as I finish bandaging her arm.
Curls have escaped from her low ponytail and there’s a smudge of clay on her cheek. She’s never looked more beautiful. “Of course.”
She leans back on the pillar again. “I should have known you were a baseball guy.”
I laugh, bracing my elbows on my knees. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She waves her hand in my direction. “Just all of this. The good ol’ boy, Captain America thing you have going on. You’re like baseball in human form.”
I laugh again, and I realize I’ve laughed more in the past day with Thea than I have in years. “If I’m baseball, what are you?”
She tilts her head in thought. “I don’t know. Street fighting? Oh! WWE!”
“Oh really?” I say, my eyebrows flying up, and she nods. “I can see it now. Thea Shark, going for WWE SmackDown champion.”
Her grin grows into a full-blown smile. “Thea Shark?”
“Since you learned all your skills from fighting off the sharks at New Smyrna Beach, obviously.”
Thea tilts her head back against the pillar, letting out a throaty laugh that draws attention from every man in a twenty-foot radius. I want to lock her away from their view. To hoard that laugh for myself. To find out what it feels like against my lips.
I take her arm in my hand again, turning it so I can check on the bandage. There’s nothing more to do, but I need something to distract myself from the tempting woman in front of me.
“Addy asked me to keep my distance from you,” she says, and my head snaps up.
“Why? What did I do?”
Why wouldn’t she like me? We haven’t interacted much, but I don’t think I’ve done anything that would make her warn her sister off me.
Thea grimaces. “It’s not you. She’s worried about drama. Look at it from her perspective. We dated and had a big, dramatic breakup that left you heartbroken. She just thinks it’ll be better if we, you know, don’t fall back into ‘old feelings.’”
I know it was all fake, but the sarcasm that laces her tone when she puts air quotes around “old feelings” pinches behind my breastbone. It’s not fair to her. She agreed to be my fake girlfriend for a weekend, then my fake ex for the week. I can’t push my confusing feelings on her.
So instead, I say, “That may work. Me seeking you out and you trying to avoid me. Kind of plays into the narrative.”
She tilts her head to the side, one curl falling across her eyes. “True.”
I can’t tell if there’s hesitation in her voice or if I’m just hearing what I want to hear, but it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, she’s going to make the best choice for Addy.
“Starting tomorrow, we avoid each other?” she asks.
I nod. “Simple enough. I’ll come over to you a couple more times to sell it to my mom but then leave you alone from there.”
“Yeah, right. That’s good. The easiest way to avoid drama.”
“The best thing for Harrison and Addy.”
“And it’s their special week,” she adds, like she’s convincing herself of our plan’s merits, and it soothes some of the sting.
“Exactly.”
Our gazes collide, and there’s so much that I want to say. That I loved spending the day with her. That I hate that she’ll be near, and I won’t be able to talk to her. That even though everything with us has been fake, I hope she knows how special she is.
But all that will do is make this thing more uncomfortable.
“I guess this is goodbye, then,” I say instead.
She looks away, a smirk gracing those full lips. “Thanks for the memories.”
“Even though they weren’t so great?”
She laughs again, and I’ve never felt more accomplished.
“We should get back to the game,” she says, standing and dusting her hands off on her shorts.
We walk back in silence. And later that night, as I lay in bed trying not to think about Thea, I kick myself for not stealing those last few minutes with her.