The Secret Hook-Up

It’s been almost a week since the elevator incident, and I can’t decide if Duncan texting me GIFs every other day or so is a good thing or a bad thing.

It’d be easier to make up my mind if I’d let myself decide if I want to like him or not.

And possibly if one of us would actually talk about what happened in the elevator.

I haven’t. Not then, and not since.

Once I finished laughing my ass off, I told him I needed to get ready for work, including packing for a long road trip.

He checked the weather, said the thunder was past us and he was going to head home.

He didn’t even make it up to my apartment.

And now, I’m traveling with the team. We’re in LA, finishing the first three-game away series of our road trip tonight. We get a day off for travel tomorrow, then two more series to go after this one before we’re done and head home again.

Then I owe Duncan his Croaking Creatures date.

I step out of the makeshift locker room set up for me in the visiting team’s quarters after a hard-fought win and find Dusty and Hugo, the team’s fielding and conditioning coaches, waiting for me.

“Cooper and Waverly invited us over for drinks,” Dusty says. “You in?”

Yes. “They’re home?”

“She’s got a show in Seattle this weekend, but they’re not leaving for it until tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I’m in. Thanks.”

One of Waverly’s security agents is waiting for us at the team entrance, and he hustles us into a black SUV. Despite the late hour, lights are ablaze at Waverly’s place when we arrive. The security guy shows us out back to the pool deck, where Cooper’s entertaining several of the older players and their wives and partners already.

And by entertaining, I mean he’s swaying back and forth, baby in a sling, while he chats with his former teammates and friends.

Dusty and Hugo head over to join them.

“Alcohol or not?” Waverly asks behind me.

I turn, finding exactly the woman I was looking for standing behind me with a can in each hand. Bubble water or hard cider.

I glance at the players again. “If I say alcohol, can we hide somewhere else for a while?”

She grins at me. “Girl talk?”

“You’ll think it’s dumb, but my sisters-in-law don’t get it, and I can’t talk to my ladies pro coach group because—just because.” Because the Thrusters just hired a woman conditioning coach who joined my professional group, and I cannot talk about Duncan in there now.

Not that I would’ve before, but I would’ve been tempted.

“I won’t think it’s dumb,” Waverly tells me. She hooks her head to the left. “They can’t hear a thing if we’re on the other side of the pool. I’ll turn on the hot tub jets.”

“You’re a goddess.”

“Aww, usually only my husband calls me that.”

I laugh. Half the world thinks Waverly Sweet is a goddess, and I have zero doubt she hears it regularly.

And that’s why I feel like a complete dumbass for wanting to talk to her over every other woman in my life.

She’s mountains more successful than I am.

But I’m as successful as I want to be, and I get more public attention than I would if I weren’t in pro baseball.

Also, that feeling is all on my side of our friendship, and I know it. She’s never treated me like anything other than an equal as a woman in a man’s world.

So when we reach the other side of the pool, I just spit it out. “How do you get brave enough to date a guy when your career is all you’ve ever wanted and your schedules don’t line up at all but he makes you happy except you don’t trust happy in relationships because you’ve been so screwed before, but he’s giving you all of the right signs and signals that he’s willing to be patient until you work out all of your own shit because he likes you that much and he knows the good and the bad and still likes you that much?”

Her lips briefly plump out in an O before she grins at me. “Normally I’d tell someone to breathe after a sentence like that, but I think I need to tell you to drink instead.”

I don’t disagree with her assessment, so I pop the lid and take a swig of cider.

“That enough?” she asks me.

“Unlikely.”

“One more, and then Dr. Waverly is at your service.”

I crack up, but sober quickly. “I’ve never had good relationships or good relationship examples,” I say quietly. “I don’t believe they exist. I don’t know how to believe they exist.”

“Even when you’re surrounded with that every day?” she says, nodding to the group across the pool.

Luca Rossi has one arm tucked around his long-time girlfriend’s waist. They have two babies together, and I suspect a third on the way, though it hasn’t been confirmed yet, and Luca’s mom is traveling with them to help watch the adorable little minions.

Brooks Elliott is wearing his I’m not listening to a word you’re saying face—and yes, I’m very familiar with that expression from him, which is fine so long as he keeps hitting the ball.

And why is he wearing that face?

Because he’s staring at Mackenzie, his wife, across the group as she baby-talks Cooper and Waverly’s baby girl.

Emilio Torres is joining the party, carrying a fresh wine cooler for Marisol, his wife.

And Max Cole, who’s retired now, but married to Cooper’s sister, Tillie Jean, is standing behind her with his arms looped around her waist. They show up frequently at home games, but less frequently at away games.

Harder to travel with their two little ones as well.

I’m guessing the fact that Cooper and Waverly are here is the biggest reason they showed up. Uncle Cooper’s a good babysitter, and odds are high at least one of the Rock parents are here too.

Especially since the last couple in the group is Cooper and Tillie Jean’s oldest brother, Grady, and his wife.

“I wasn’t around when any of them met,” Waverly says quietly, “but Cooper’s told me about them. You’d know better than me, clearly, but can you point out which one believed in love when you met them?”

“Emilio,” I say without hesitation, even though we both know that’s a cheating answer. He and Marisol were practically engaged already when I started with the team.

“And?” Waverly says.

“And Cooper.”

“Cooper’s a unicorn who believed in love but not necessarily for himself. Who else?”

That’s it.

That’s it.

Brooks was pissed as hell at being traded to the Fireballs because the team historically sucked. He didn’t want forever. He wanted to lose his virginity and catch up for all of the years he didn’t sleep around because of a superstition that his bat would go to hell if he got laid.

And yes, I do regularly wish I didn’t know that about him.

Luca didn’t do relationships. Between his own very relatable family issues and the fact that he was more or less the most-traded player in the game when he landed with the Fireballs the first season that I was with the team, he was a dedicated bachelor who would’ve rather spent his free time renovating his house than having anything to do with a woman. Especially a woman who believed so strongly in love that she writes paranormal romance novels for her day job and who often has to do interesting research that leads to more pets—of all varieties—entering his life.

The only guy on the team who had him beat for never wanting to be involved in a relationship was Max. He was battling mental health demons and had no intentions of ever settling down.

And yet here they all are, completely and madly in love with partners they’ve all sworn to love forever, whether they’ve made it legally binding or not.

As for the last couple, after spending several winters in Shipwreck, where Grady runs a bakery, I’ve heard stories about how he and Annika reconnected years after being secret best friends in high school. Not the easiest romance, but they made it work, and I’ve never seen them anything but happy together.

“If you asked any one of them what they’d do if their ladies ever left them, do you know what they’d say?” Waverly asks softly.

I squeeze my cider can too tightly and feel it in my still-recovering shoulder. “Are you calling me a chicken?”This belongs © NôvelDra/ma.Org.

“No. It’s completely normal to be afraid of getting hurt. It’s a risk. It’s a massive risk. And when you feel like you’ll have to choose between a man and your career…” She shrugs. “Do you know how many people told me I’d never go back to recording and touring when I announced I was taking time off to support Cooper while he finished his baseball career?”

“All of them.” I was there. I saw it firsthand. Cooper quit doing media availability for a while because even Mr. My life is awesome because Fireballs Forever! got tired of being asked nearly daily if Waverly was recording or if he’d tanked her career forever. “But it bothered him more than it bothered you. Unless you hid it well.”

She smiles across the pool. “He promised me he’d retire, and I believed him. I didn’t have any reason for the questions to bother me.”

“He played an extra year.”

“I told him to.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t ready to go back out on tour, and I just felt like he wasn’t done. Now? No regrets. He finished his time playing on his terms, and he went out on the highest high you can go out on. Was it hard? Sometimes, yeah. But worth it. And the thing is…I don’t regret any of the guys I dated before Cooper. Including the ones who completely destroyed me. Including Cooper the first time. Because those experiences made me who I am today. They taught me so much about who I am and what I do and don’t want. What I will and won’t tolerate. What I can and can’t sacrifice for love.” She nudges me. “Sounds like you have a very firm grip on what you won’t sacrifice. But if you could be that happy?”

I watch the group across the pool too. Hugo’s stepped away from them and is smiling as he has a conversation on his phone.

Talking to his wife, I’m nearly positive.

Brooks has slipped around the group to stand closer to Mackenzie.

Darren Greene and his wife, Tanesha, step onto the patio from the house and head to the little group too. Darren’s also retired from the Fireballs, and he and Tanesha have two kids as well.

“What if it’s not in your genes to be happy in love?”

“Don’t you have four married older brothers?”

“Married and happy don’t necessarily go hand in hand.”

“They’re unhappy?”

I wince. “I don’t ask. I don’t want to know. Especially when I don’t think they saw our parents’ relationship the same way I did. I don’t think they can. Being the only girl and the youngest… It was just different for me.”

Waverly leans closer. “You know who makes the best partners in life?”

“Who?”

“The people who understand all the ways relationships can go wrong and choose to actively be part of them anyway. Who choose to do their best with all of the lessons they’ve learned from their own experience and from watching others.”

Duncan’s already told me about his sister and what he learned from watching her first marriage. Plus he’s been through a divorce himself. And he’s an athlete. Doesn’t matter that it’s a different sport. He’s seen his teammates struggle and triumph in relationships the same as I’ve watched my players struggle and triumph in relationships. He knows the ups and downs. The good and the bad.

“He says he’s retiring at the end of his next season.” I say it so quietly, I’m not sure the words are actually coming out of my mouth.

Waverly doesn’t squeal I knew it! or bounce in her seat or clap at the hint. Instead, she asks back, just as quietly, “For you? Or for himself?”

“He says his body’s giving him signs.”

“What does he want to do after?”

“What does he say? That he has a year to figure it out. What did I hear? That he wants to do whatever’s best so that he can be part of my life.”

She smiles. “Do you want him to be part of your life?”

I blow out a long breath. “The man he is right now? I like that man. I feel like I can be me with that man, like he appreciates me for me, not for who he thinks he can make me be. But how do I know that that’s him and not the him that he wants me to see? How do I know that this isn’t best behavior rather than standard behavior?”

“You give him a chance.”

You give him a chance.

You take the risk.

You quit being a chicken.

You do the brave thing and face your fears to see if what you want—and I do want—can turn out to be better than it’s been before.

I swallow hard. “I’ve never wanted a relationship, but he makes me want to give it a real chance. Not because something’s missing. But because he makes everything better.”

“Will you regret it if you don’t?”

“Yes,” I whisper, unable to squash the truth from coming out.

“Then go for it. And call me if you need anything. Please. My friend Aspen is about the only person in my life who believes me when I say that, but I mean it. You, Addie Bloom, are freaking awesome, and I like being your friend. Okay?”

I’ve trained myself not to be a hugger, but I hug Waverly.

She squeezes me back.

And I realize how much I miss hugging.

How much I say I love my job, but how much of myself I’m sacrificing for it every day too.

And that’s why I like Duncan so much.

He caught me with my defenses down, but he’s never used it against me. At my request, he kept our situationship a secret four years ago. He’s reading all of the silent cues I didn’t even realize I was giving him that have him moving slowly as he’s working his way back into my life. The man washed my hair with a raging hard-on, hugged me, and didn’t make a single innuendo.

I know the sex is good.

He knows the sex is good.

And he’s waiting for me to tell him I’m ready.

Who does that?

Someone who loves you.

That’s who does that. Someone who loves you.

“I have to go,” I tell Waverly. “I need to send a text message.”

“Calls are better.”

“Text is where I’m at.”

“Good luck then.” She smiles. “And I hope you hit phone call level soon. Those are way more fun.”