“I told you,” he says, “I’m always a step ahead. We call it a bird-dog step in baseball.” He lets his head burrow into the down pillow and he pulls me up under his chin again. “Why won’t you just admit you want to be with me?”
“I will admit it,” I say simply. “I want to be with you.”
“You are the most confusing woman I’ve ever met.”
I smile. “I’m not confusing. I’m fairly simple, actually.”
“Then help me out here, Ms. Simplicity. If you know you want to be with me, and it’s obvious I want to be with you,” he says, rolling his hips against me so I can feel him, “why aren’t we together?”
“We are.” I swing a leg over his hips. “Feel me? I’m here. With you. Together.”
He sighs in frustration. “Okay, let’s try this another way. Most women are all over me.”
I roll my eyes, even though I’m sure it’s true.
“I can’t help it,” he winks. “But you—I feel like I want you more than you want me and that’s really fucking weird.”
“I don’t think that’s true. Arrogant on your part, but not true,” I laugh.
“Then help a guy out,” he groans. “Fix my ego.”
“Your ego is fine.”
“And you’re deflecting, babe.”
I roll away from him so he can’t see my face. “You bring things way too close to home for me. That’s the truth,” I tell him.
“Go on . . .”
“Getting involved with you puts me one step closer to becoming my mother, and that’s the one thing I’ve promised myself I won’t be.”
I’ve never admitted that out loud before a
nd it’s a damn personal thing to admit to the man that’s pretty much from the perfect family. It’s also embarrassing.
“Hey,” he says. His arm drapes over me. “What’s this all about? You don’t want to be like your mother? What’s that have to do with me?”
“My father was in sports,” I say, glossing over the topic. “My mother ended up losing both him and herself to the game. Professional athletes are where they are because it’s their passion, the one thing that matters more than any other. You wouldn’t be where you are if that weren’t true.”
“Dani . . .”
I turn so I can see him over my shoulder. “I promised myself I’d never be like them. I’d never put those I love second to a game, and I’d never let another person take the game over me.”
“I’m not taking anything over anyone.”
“But you would,” I say, fighting my voice from breaking. “I get that. I respect it even. You can do something only a handful of people in the world can do. You have a giant opportunity in front of you. But I don’t want to be crushed as you go crushing the world.”
“I’d never crush you.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” I say, touching his cheek. “At least not on purpose. But it’s more than that.” My hand falls and I take a deep breath. “It’s not being crushed but it’s not having a life like my mother too. Waiting on my guy to come home. Hoping he calls. Listening to statistics over dinner and trying to get your man to squeeze some time for you in the middle of a couple of hundred games. It’s not the life I want. That life broke her. I watched it. I don’t even really have parents because of it. What I want out of life is the polar opposite.”
His features crease, his eyes darkening, as he takes that in. The soberness of his expression makes me think maybe he realizes how right I am, just how much I know what his life is like. And how this thing between us can never deepen too much.
“I like the way things are between us,” I say, my voice soft. “You are so much fun. Smart. Sexy as hell. But we really need to try to keep it on this level.”
“I feel like this is completely unfair,” he says, a sort of laugh in his voice that doesn’t mean he’s amused. “Out of all the chicks that want me, I have to like you.”
Slapping at his chest, we both laugh. He pulls me in close again. There’s a tenderness in his eyes that tugs at my heart. and if I let myself, I could fall right in. I also know I can’t do that. As much as it hurts to claw my way back from the ledge of doing just that.