Winning With Him by Lauren Blakely

Declan

I always make good on my bets.

I take my ribbing like a man too. Crosby gives me a helluva hard time while we play pool, mocking me for my hitless night—as well he should.

It’s the spring training crew, together again, but I’m the odd man out as the lone Comet amid five Cougars—Sullivan, Miguel, Crosby, Chance . . . and Grant.

After an hour or so, Sullivan and Miguel say they’re going to hit a club, and those rookies take off.

And then there were four, just two guys I call friends and my favorite rookie in the whole wide world.

Five and a half months haven’t changed a thing for me.

Time has done nothing to lessen my desire for Grant or dampen my feelings for him.

I’m not entirely surprised I still feel this way. The man hasn’t been far from my thoughts since I landed in New York more than five months ago. But I’m a visual guy, and seeing is believing.

I do believe.

Here I am, mere feet away, and all the feelings have come rushing back. All the longing, all the desire.

All the falling.

My heart beats so damn fast when he’s near.

It’s so hard not to stare at him like he’s the only one. Even with Crosby and Chance around, I can feel a charge between us, reminding me of everything I like about Grant Blackwood. He’s funny, outgoing, gutsy . . .

And he cares.

He cares deeply for people.

I need to get a minute alone with him. The whole evening, my antennae are up like I’m sensing the air or waiting for the perfect pitch. When Crosby and Chance wind themselves up in a debate about the episode of The Office playing on the bar’s TV screen, I see an opening. The guys start googling trivia facts and wander away from the table, and I’ve never been more grateful for Michael Scott.

I waste no time. I turn to Grant, who’s on the other side of the pool table, rubbing chalk on the end of the cue. “What was up with that pitch?” I ask.

He gives me a blank look. “Which one?”

“You know which one. You called for a slider.”

I don’t actually want to talk about the pitch. But you can’t just dive right back into I think about you all the time and all the things we could be. I can’t start this convo by telling him how good he looks, how fast my pulse is spiking, how often he invades my head. So, baseball it is.

Grant scoffs. “No shit I did.”

“But I thought we talked about that.” I laugh, trying to be casual.

His hard eyes say this isn’t funny. “Don’t. Don’t fucking embarrass yourself by saying anything about that night. I called for it because I knew you wouldn’t hit it,” he says, crisp and sharp.

Practically hissing at me.

Seems I misjudged this conversation.

“Right,” I say, backpedaling into I don’t even know what.

Fire burns in his voice as he holds up a stop-sign hand. “You didn’t have to tell me that for me to know it. I knew it because I studied you, like I study everyone else. I’m a fucking Major League catcher, and it’s my job to know what you can and can’t hit. Now excuse me,” he says, setting down his pool cue and stalking to the restroom.

Well, fuck me.

I didn’t ask him a real question, and already this conversation has gone horribly.

But I refuse to accept my own failure when I can do things differently this time. I give him a minute to take a leak, then I follow him, heading into the restroom where he’s washing his hands.

I shut the door, press my back against it, and leave my hand on the knob. We’re the only ones here. “That’s not what I was going to say, Grant,” I say quietly.

He turns his gaze to me, still looking pissed, as he dries his hands with a paper towel. “What were you going to say then, Declan?”

“I was going to say good job. You called a good game. I was impressed.”

Twin spots of red spread across his cheeks. That hint of embarrassment is so damn adorable. “Oh. Thanks,” he says, dipping his head as he tosses the towel in the trash can. He takes a beat then looks up, and gone is the anger. “Didn’t mean to get pissy. I thought you meant something else.”

“I didn’t mean anything bad.”

Then, I just stare at him. I run my eyes up and down his frame, taking in how good he looks in that tight red T-shirt from his alma mater, those jeans that hug his legs spectacularly, that mess of dark blond hair. His clean-shaven jaw. His blue eyes that seem to see inside me. That always have.

Yet he has no idea that I let him in more than I’ve ever let in anyone. That maybe, just maybe, I could let him in more.

He doesn’t know that I miss him desperately. That I’m so much more than sorry. That I regret how badly I handled everything, from the text to that last phone call.

Every day I replay what I could have done, should have done, starting with opening up.

“I majored in English in college,” I blurt out in my first attempt to do just that.

He cocks his head. “That so?”

“I did. Most people don’t know. Chance and I had some stupid convo about it earlier this summer, and I didn’t even tell him. I just let him think I majored in art history. But I studied English lit.” I realize I’ve been a closed book, and I want Grant to know something about me that others don’t. “I minored in poetry.”

A smile teases at his lips. “T.S. Eliot. You took poetry classes,” he says softly, remembering the night I gave him the barest of details. A night in bed in Arizona, the first night I stayed in his room.

“And you studied history,” I say, recalling every second of our pillow talk. “But took classes in mythology.”

“I did.” Grant tilts his head like he’s trying to understand me. And I want so badly to be understood. I just don’t know how.

“I didn’t take a single art history class,” I admit.

“Why don’t you tell people you majored in English?”

“I don’t tell people a lot of things,” I say, my gaze locked on his blue eyes like they’re an anchor as I start to show a sliver of who I am.

“I’ve noticed,” he says, but it’s no judgment, just an observation. “And ‘November Rain’is your favorite song?”

“Yes, but only recently. Before then it was anything by Pearl Jam.”

“And now it’s a Guns N’ Roses tune?” I swear there’s hope in Grant’s voice, like he knows why I’m saying that tune rocks my world.

I swallow past a dry patch in my throat. “Yes. Now it’s my favorite.” I can’t look away from him. I don’t want to as I come closer to saying how I feel. “Reminds me of someone.”

He breathes out hard, his eyes glimmering with a faint hint of longing. “Songs will do that. Good tune,” he says, his voice going quieter too, and husky, like mine.

“Definitely,” I say, and the fact that he’s not leaving emboldens me. Here in the bathroom of a pool hall in Murray Hill, I peel back another layer. “I bought this place on the Upper East Side. It looks over the river. There’s a sushi joint on the corner, and I order out a lot because I can’t cook.”

“I can’t cook either,” he says. “Maybe someday I’ll learn.”

“Same here. I want to learn too. But until then, there’s takeout. And the sushi place is owned by two ladies. They’re together. That’s important to me, to support it, and them.” I know this only scratches the surface, but it’s something.

It has to count for something.

His lips quirk up, a sign that maybe it does. “I hear ya, man.”

It’s a reply to the last thing I said, but I also hope he means that he hears me. That he hears what I’m trying to say.

Some things, though, aren’t hard to say at all. Some truths come easy. “You look incredible,” I say, low and smoky as my skin sizzles.

He crosses his arms. As he stares at me, a hint of amusement plays across Grant’s blue eyes. One side of his kissable mouth lifts in a smirk. “Dude, are you coming on to me in the bathroom of a pool hall?”

I smile and shrug, owning it. But when I speak, it’s without flirting, teasing or toying. “Seeing you fries my brain, Grant. It always has.”

And now I want him.

Want our bodies to collide.

“I know the feeling,” Grant murmurs, licking the corner of his lips, his gaze never straying from mine.

The air crackles, charged like the edge of a storm. I want to stop time, to live in these seconds before a lightning strike. I want to close the distance and hold his face, fuse my mouth to his, erase the mistake I made.

I don’t. I need to regroup—not to act on impulse but to devise a real game plan for getting back to him.

After a few more seconds, he tips his forehead to the door behind me. “I should go,” he says roughly. He takes a step closer, reaching for the handle, but I don’t move my hand from the doorknob.

When his palm touches mine, it’s a chemical reaction.

It’s electricity and fire, spontaneous combustion.

I shudder. “Grant.” His name comes out full of unchecked heat.

He turns his head toward me in slow motion, his jaw dangerously close to my lips. His breath hitches—a soft, barely audible pant of desire as his face nears mine.

We could kiss.

Right here. Right now.

That clean, barbershop scent goes straight to my head. He’s inches away, and my mouth is watering.

I tilt my face, my jaw brushing his.

We both groan.

“You are still just . . . my undoing,” I whisper as my body aches to return home to him.

But the sound of approaching footsteps in the hallway wrenches us apart. A heavy hand pushes on the other side of the door, and the rope connecting Grant and me to this heated moment is severed.

The door swings open, and Grant takes another step back. I move farther away. The man who walks in is a stranger and pays us no mind.

Grant, though, casts me one last glance, his eyes saying I have to go, and then he’s out the door before it closes again.

As he leaves, I know two things with absolute certainty.

I fucked up badly, letting him go.

And I want him back more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.

The flush of the urinal reminds me I need to do a better job.

Real classy, Steele.

A bathroom isn’t the place to ask him to be with me again.