My throat burned, but I kept saying what I needed to. “That’s what history is, Luke. The past.”
His arms wound around the back of his head as he shoved off from the door. He looked lost, the way a person might when they woke up from a coma. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I chewed on my cheek. “There’s nothing to fix or explain or apologize for. I enjoyed my time with you, but it’s over.”
His eyes narrowed on me. “Oh, please. You are no more the person who looks for no-strings relationships than I am.”
I bit back the bullshit that found its way to my lips and reminded myself to stay cool. To play it off like emotions hadn’t been involved. “You barely know me. How can you say that?”
“I know plenty.”
Yeah, you knew all you needed to know to meet your needs. “Well, if you did, you’d know I was just like every other woman who couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be bedded by Luke Archer.” I smiled sweetly at him while bitterness churned in my stomach. “I mean, come on, who wouldn’t want to brag to their friends about scoring with the Homerun King?”
Hurt spread across his face, settling into his eyes. Just when I thought he was going to turn around and leave, he powered across the room toward me. He backed me into the wall, but not by touching me. The look on his face was enough to move me until I could go no farther. He lowered his head until he was at my eye level. Then he waited for my eyes to meet his.
“It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than that to push me away,” he said, leaning in so close I could feel the warmth of his breath. “A hell of a lot more.”
He gave that a moment to set in before he stormed for the door. With his hand on the handle, he paused. “Oh, and by the way, my leg’s doing great. You know, in case my athletic trainer was concerned.”
I stayed planted by the wall, steeling myself. “If you’re still having problems with it, run it by Shepherd. You two seem to be better suited for each other.”
THE SHOCK LOST the game. A game they were favored by a large margin to win. The top team in the nation had just had their asses handed to them by one of the lowest-ranked teams in professional baseball.
That loss might have had a lot to do with a certain clutch hitter striking out three times, getting walked twice, and getting out before he’d made it to first base the one time his bat did manage to connect with the ball.
Number eleven hadn’t just had an off night—he’d had the kind of night people would be talking about for years. He’d errored more times in this one game than he had in his entire career. He’d moved like he’d just had a hip replaced and the surgeon had gone ahead and replaced his shoulder too.
It wasn’t just Archer who’d been off tonight though—the entire team had. Even though the Shock wasn’t just Luke Archer, in a lot of ways, Luke Archer was the spirit of the Shock. He led the team to victories by example, but tonight, the only example he’d set was one of listlessness.
After Coach had screamed his lungs out after the game, we all left that locker room in a state of shock. What the hell had just happened? was written on all of our expressions.
It was the same question I was asking myself as I rode the elevator to my hotel room. The team would be rolling out bright and early for the next game, and after last night’s state of no sleep, I was eager to crawl into bed and punch erase on this day of horrors.
Like earlier, I’d elected to take a cab back instead of the team bus, explaining I had a few things to wrap up before leaving. After Archer’s and my talk before the game, he hadn’t said a word to me. He hadn’t so much as looked my way, not even when he crawled back into the dugout after each strike out and I held out a bottle of water for him. Maybe what I’d said had finally set in. Maybe he was already over me.
Maybe he was already having someone line up his next Incentive Girl since this season’s had cut him off early. I didn’t have the first clue why he’d gone from seeming like he’d cross an ocean on a paddleboard to keep from losing me to acting like I didn’t exist.
When the elevator doors opened, I stuck my head out to make sure he wasn’t waiting outside my door as I was half-expecting he might be. When I felt a stab of disappointment because he wasn’t there, I made myself remember what Shepherd had told me.
Disappointment was a distant memory by the time I shoved open my door.