CHAPTER 35 KAYLEE
I glance over at Cooper.
“Go,” he says, and my heart swells. He’s been such a good friend, and he knows what this potentially means to me. He nods toward Derek and a couple other former Dodgers who made it to today’s event. “I have some old buddies to entertain once we’re done cleaning up here, so I’ll be late.”
“Thanks, Coop.” I offer him a smile and then I turn toward Ben. He’s standing in front of me, so I gesture off the stage so we can get out of this place and go somewhere where we can talk.
Where I can tell him what I’ve been waiting to tell him.
My chest tingles with nerves.
It’s time.
He grabs the duffel bag he set down when he took the stage, and I grab my purse, which was on a table backstage. Cooper grabs my arm as I turn to follow Ben. “Hey,” he says softly. “Good luck.”
I press my lips together in a nervous smile and then I walk down the stairs behind Ben.
“I rode with Cooper today, so we can call a car.” I pull out my phone and open the Lyft app.
“You two are close, huh?” he asks, his eyes roaming along the street in front of the rec center rather than on me.
I touch his bicep, and my fingers tingle with need. He’s so close, yet so far. We’re right there, yet we have so many obstacles still standing between us.
Even if he wants to get back together and I can find it in me to forgive him for leaving me on our wedding day and for the things he said that hurt so badly…he might not want what I have to offer.
He might run scared.
But I have to take the chance anyway.
He deserves to have all the facts, and then together we can come to some decision.
“Yeah. He’s become my best friend since I moved here,” I admit.
“Friend?” he asks, and when I turn to look at him, his eyes have landed on me.
“Friend,” I confirm.
“So all that BF business?”
I chuckle. “Best friend.”
He nods, but I don’t miss the relief that passes across his face. “Right.”
“How’s the shoulder doing?” I ask.
“Well, I’m not wearing the sling anymore, so that’s something. The doctor said I should be fine to play opening weekend. Since I wasn’t traveling with the team to Baltimore, I decided to look at this injury as the gift of time I was searching for.”
My brows dip and I’m about to ask what he means by that when our car arrives. We hop in the back.
“Ben Olson,” the driver says jovially, recognizing my companion. “How’s the shoulder?”
The driver is obviously seeking a large gratuity with the way he’s making conversation. I get that he’s trying to be friendly, but I wanted to talk to Ben.
I wait patiently for the short trip back to the apartment. We take the elevator up and head inside.
“Wait a minute,” Ben says as he glances around. Cooper is very neat, but there’s a Dodgers t-shirt hanging in the laundry area right by the front door. “Does he live here, too?”
“It’s corporate housing,” I explain as we walk into the kitchen. I set my purse on the counter. “Temporary until we each figure out where we want to settle. We’re co-programming directors for StrongFitKids, and we started at the same time, so it just made sense.”
He keeps his expression blank, but I can tell he feels some sort of way about the fact that I’m currently living with a sexy retired baseball player. “Have you, uh, figured out where you want to settle?”
I shake my head as tingles of anxiety pulse in my spine. “Not yet. I, uh, have some things I should tell you.”
His brow crinkles in concern. “I have some things I should tell you, too.” He sighs. “Starting with the truth.”
I nod toward the slider doors. “Is this a balcony overlooking the ocean kind of talk or a couch kind of talk?”
“Wherever you’re most comfortable,” he says.
“Balcony. Can I get you anything?”
“A beer would be great.” He eyes Cooper’s empty bottles near the sink, but he doesn’t know I haven’t been partaking.
I nod. Cooper won’t mind. I grab a bottle for him and some water for myself, and we head out to the patio. I choose my favorite seat first and prop my feet up like I do every night, and he sits in the chair next to mine, angling it so he’ll be looking at me while we talk.
“So I—” I begin at the same time he says, “I need to—”
We both pause and offer some quiet nervous laughter, and then I nod toward him. “You go first since you traveled all the way here.”
“I, uh…I came to tell you the truth about what should have been our wedding day.” He chugs a few sips from his bottle, and it’s not like him to be nervous. “Tatum called me that morning,” he says flatly.
Part of me wonders if this is where he tells me he decided to get back together with her, but I know him better than that.
He would never.
Not for anything.
I hold out for him to tell me the whole story.
“She blackmailed me. She found the towel I tossed in the trash after our, uh, horse-riding incident.”
“You mean our sex on a horse incident?” I clarify, and he nods warily.
“Yeah. It was covered in my blood and somehow she ended up in possession of it. She told me if I didn’t end things with you, she’d give the towel to Kitty and she’d pay her to tell the press she defended herself against me and made me bleed.
She said she’d find someone to rough you up, too, so you’d look like a weak woman too scared to leave me.
” His tone is flat, and even though he’s angled toward me, his eyes are on the bottle in his hands.
“Oh my God,” I murmur. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I panicked,” he admits. “I needed her to think I was ending it with you. Somehow she knew it was our wedding day. She knew about the towel. I didn’t know what else she knew—what else she could use against us.
And I’d just vowed I would do everything in my power to protect you, and in that moment, I thought the right thing to do to keep you safe was to end it with you.
To hurt you so you wouldn’t want me anymore.
To stay away from you and let you live your life with all the things you want. All the things you deserve.”
He says the last part with a little more emphasis, and for a second I almost think he knows about the babies. He hasn’t mentioned that I look like I’ve gained a few pounds, though if he did, I’d probably throat punch him.
“Anyway, eventually I pieced together that she was working with Craig.”
I gasp in surprise. “Craig?” Though to be honest…it’s not that big of a shock. I didn’t trust the guy from the moment I met him. I knew something was off about him.
“She said she had money, which I knew she didn’t, and she said it was so ironic that I didn’t know how she got it.
Turns out he was stealing from the gym.” He shakes his head.
“I stayed with Gramma the whole time I was learning all this, and by God, does that woman love you. She gave me a lot to think about, and on the drive back to Vegas, I decided that if you were still here, I’d tell you everything.
When I got back, and you weren’t there, and it felt like the sign to just let you go. ”
“But you’re here now…” I say.
He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. Training camp started, and I missed my window. The more time I spent away from you, the more I knew how much I needed you.” He sets his now empty bottle on the ground next to him and leans forward, elbows on his knees.
He reaches over for my hand. “The more I realized how much I love you. I’m so, so sorry, Kaylee.
Your age was never an issue for me. You’re smarter than me, more mature than me, better than me.
I don’t deserve you, and I’m not good enough for you, but goddammit, I want to be.
I want to try. I want you, and I want to give you everything you deserve.
” His dark eyes burn into mine, and I can see the honesty there. The sincerity.
But before I can accept what he’s offering, he needs the whole picture.
I open my mouth to try to form the words to tell him, but he stands.
“I have something for you.” He heads inside and returns a moment later with a box in his hands. “I’ve never been an arts and crafts kind of guy, but I made something for you,” he says. He hands me the box.
My brows dip as I take it from his hands, and I tug at the bow on top before I lift the lid. Inside is a scrapbook.
I open to the title page, which reads Kaylee and Ben: A Love Story in Ben’s handwriting.
I flip to the next page and find a picture of Jack’s house and his dining room table. I read the words on the page. It all started under a table.
The adjacent page has photos of the guest room where I stayed at Jack’s place.
Over the photo of the wall he had me up against as he jammed his fingers into me and delivered the first of many orgasms are some words.
It finished in here, but that was only the beginning.
I touch the page where the photo lies as I remember that night, the thrills that sparked up and down my spine as we gave into this easy flirting between us and started on a journey neither of us saw coming.
I flip the page and find our entire history together.
He must’ve gone to all these places over the last few days if he didn’t have the images, and they’re interlaced with photos of our public appearances and our posts from Instagram and more.
The selfie of him and me with Buddy has a heart around it and the words, My all-time favorite picture.
There are peaches and horses and his house in Montana.
There are even screenshots of some of the flirty text conversations between Peaches and Trouble.
It’s a portrait of what we had, and I get the feeling he did this to remind me of everything we shared—to bring up our shared history so I remember how good it was. To try to get me out of Cooper’s arms, a place I’d never really been even though there was a moment when I led him to believe I had.
I move to flip to the final page, and he sets his hand on mine.
“The last page…” he says. He clears his throat, and I can tell he’s nervous.
“The book was about our time together, but the last page is about what I see in the future. What I want for my future, and what I hope you want, too. And if you still want it, and if you think I’m good enough for you, which I don’t, I’m offering it. All of it.”
My brows dip as I flip to the final page.
Photos of the two of us are all over it along with his house in Montana, and a freaking dream house that must be in Vegas somewhere based on the desert landscaping, and in the middle, a family. They’re walking away from us, hand in hand on a beach as they move toward the water at sunset.
Two adults.
Four children.
All connected together.
And the word in the center reads Family.
“I want us to have a family, Kaylee. To be a family. I was scared, but I’m not anymore.
Losing you was far worse than any fear I had about that, and when I look at my future, I see you.
I see kids. I see Vegas and Montana.” His voice is low and raspy, a little emotional as he unloads everything that’s been weighing on him since our would-be wedding day.
“I see horses and UTVs and lakes and fishing and hikes and fancy events and Saturday morning S’mores cereal with homemade raspberry chocolate croissants and Diet Dr Pepper in bed,” he continues as I stare at the image on the page in front of me.
“I want those things. I was too scared before to realize it, and it’s because of you that I did.
I didn’t think I was good enough to be a father, or good enough to be a husband…
but when I’m with you, I’m the best version of myself.
I even like who that guy is. When I watch Jack with JJ, or Luke with Nolan, or Josh with Warner, I get this feeling in my chest like I want that connection, too—but with someone who’s a miniature version of you and me.
I can’t see anyone else in that image except you, and over the last few weeks since I realized it, that image only burns stronger and brighter. ”
By the time he’s done with his impassioned speech, tears are streaming down my cheeks.
He thumbs one away, and another tracks down in its place a second later.
He looks at me nervously as he waits for me to say something—anything—after all the wonderful things he just told me.
And instead of thanking him for telling me that, or for telling him I feel the same way because I do, the words I was desperately trying to hold onto a little while longer seem to fall out of my mouth.
“I’m pregnant.”