“Tired Ty?” he called out, reworking the glove onto his hand.
“Nope.” I scoffed, earning a laugh from him, his head turning as the hit went high left. Foul. Five innings in, and we were up by two. The remaining innings were crawling by, my eyes heavy, a nap calling my name. I’d been dragging all day, Dad all but pulling me out of bed that morning. My body wasn’t built for 3 AM bedtimes, a habit that my secret relationship with Chase was fostering. Last night we’d driven to his hometown, a quiet suburb forty-five minutes out of Cincinnati. He’d given me the grand tour, the final stop his high school.
The ball shot through the dark toward me, and I reached out, catching it barehanded, grateful for his light toss. Behind him, the dark lights of the stadium, the high school barely visible across a sea of grass. I stepped closer to him and threw it back, the toss short, him only fifteen feet away.
“It’s so odd,” he said. “That you’ve never been in high school.”
I shrugged, glancing over my shoulder. “I didn’t miss it.” I held out a hand, ready for his throw, but he turned, tossing the ball back to the dugout. I watched as he came closer.
“High school’s pretty great.” He looped an arm around my shoulders and steered me around, heading for the bleachers, his first step up on metal loud in the deserted dark. “I had some great moments here. I hate that you missed it.”
We sat halfway up, the metal hard and cold against my upper thighs, and I looked toward the buildings, a fortress of red brick that looked more like a prison. “What was so great about it?”
“It’s hard to explain.” He leaned forward, rubbing at a spot on his palm. “There’s this energy in high school. A sort of magic.” He looked over at me. “I see it in you, sometimes. The way you smile when you see something new. The excitement you get over something dumb. How your breath hitches when I lean toward you.”
“That’s not high school. That’s just … being young.” I hated that I was five years younger than him. I wanted to have this conversation on an adult level, one where we were equals.
He leaned back, resting his elbows on the row behind him. “I would have loved to meet you back then.”
“When you were in high school?” I wrinkled my nose. “You would have ignored me.”
“No.” He sat up, tucking some hair behind my ear. “I would have fallen for you the minute I saw you. You would have been the star of our softball team, and I would have stayed after practice and offered to help you with your batting.”
I snorted. “And I would have told you where to stick it.”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “I was a stud in high school. You might have tried to play hard to get, but you would have been all over me.”
“You know … you’re still a stud.” I looked over at him, his eyes lifting off the field and back to me. “I think you’re probably more of a stud now than you were here.”
Something in his eyes dimmed. “High school’s funny. It builds gods out of those who don’t deserve it. Makes them feel invincible just because they can hit a ball, or score a goal.”
I heard the catch in his voice and knew he was thinking of Emily. Of the late practice and distractions that had cost her life. And I distracted him the only way I knew how, throwing my leg over his and straddling his lap, my hands settling on either side of his face. “What would you have done, if I had let you coach my swing?”
He ran his hands slowly up the back of my thighs, caressing the skin before he got to the edge of my cutoff shorts, his fingers carefully sliding under the edge of them, hot points of contact that squeezed my ass. “I would have gone to first base.”
“Which is?”
His hands pushed further, and I lost my breath, his mouth lifting to mine as he pulled me down, harder on his lap, the rough fabric of my shorts almost painful as he lifted his hips and pressed against me. His mouth was greedy, his kiss ragged and deep, my hair falling around our lips as they battled. His final kiss slowed the tempo, his hands sliding out of my shorts and I panted, my body craving his, craving more, and never wanting to stop. “That’s first base?” I asked. It felt enormous for something so minor, yet nothing between us had ever felt ordinary.
“A Chase Stern first base.” He smiled at me and swept my hair behind my shoulder, his hand on my neck as he tilted it back and kissed the delicate skin there.
“Would you have tried for second?” I closed my eyes, his hold on my neck comforting, his mouth on my throat the most sensual thing on the planet.
“With you, I’d have tried for anything.”
I pushed gently on his chest, his lips leaving my neck, and pulled at my T-shirt, the thin material stretching over my head, everything Yankee gray for a moment before it was off, and he was staring at me, and if I could have taken a photo of his face right then, I would have saved it for eternity.