The Last Strike by A.R. Henry
Chapter 14
At precisely five am the next morning my doorbell rings. When I open the door there’s immediately a large cup of coffee in my face. I sigh a contented, “Mmm,” and take the cup from Weston’s hands.
“You know how to treat a girl, Mr. Bell. I will lie, steal, and cheat for a good cup of coffee.” I look up into his eyes seeing a small smile on his face that I don’t truly know the meaning of.
“Good morning, Cherry Bomb, sleep well?” He asks me softly, placing a hand on my back to guide me towards his waiting truck.
Who is this man, and what has he done with my grumpy baseball coach? Since when does he ask about my sleeping habits?
“I slept good, did you?” I smile at him brightly as he helps me up into his truck. I should be holding more of a grudge about him dating someone else, but I’m a glutton for punishment when it comes to Weston Bell. I can’t help but soak up his attention whenever he wants to give it to me.
“First real good sleep I got in two weeks.” Then he quickly shuts the door before I have a chance to respond. Two weeks? That’s exactly how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other.
He can’t possibly mean that he got a good night's rest because we made plans to meet up today. He’s probably been out with who knows how many women since I’ve last seen him. Surely there’s no way he means that he missed me.
When he pulls away from my driveway I yawn and ask, “So, where are we adventuring to today?”
I know he sees me yawn because he reaches over to turn the radio down and tells me, “It’s close to where we went before. Go ahead and take a nap baby girl. It’ll take us a while to get there.”
I try to fight my eyelids, but I’m not used to getting up this early and I quickly lose the fight and fall asleep.
An hour later I’m climbing out of the cab of the truck after Weston gently woke me by rubbing my shoulder and softly whispering, “Come on, baby. I know it’s early, but the view is worth it. Trust me.”
I’m pretty sure I murmured something resembling, “I trust you.” I’d walk over a cliff if he told me he would catch me at the bottom.
Unlike our last time hiking, I decide I’m too tired to try and pry information out of him. That and I’m still too in my feelings about him to try and make conversation. I want to be more than his friend, but I have to accept that’s all that we are. So, instead of talking I sulk and try to force myself to take in my surroundings and meditate in my own head as we climb.
I don’t know if Weston can sense my sour mood, but unsurprisingly he doesn’t try for conversation either. For once I’m glad that he’s the silent type. He does stop once about forty-five minutes in, probably sensing my need for a break, and offers me some water and a protein bar. I take both, enjoying the much-needed rest, and as soon as I finish the bar he starts off again. After another forty-five minutes of only my heavy panting to fill my ears, we arrive at the crest. The view from this outlook is just as beautiful as the last one. I climb out as far as I dare to the edge of a giant rock and not-so-gracefully plop down and just breathe.
I don’t know how long I sit there with my thoughts before I hear Weston come and settle in next to me. He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. We just sit together and enjoy the beauty and creation in front of us. Each processing different things in our minds, but somehow connecting together. I don’t know if I reach for him, or he reaches for me, but our hands end up intertwined.
We sit here for close to an hour without uttering a word. Only once I feel like my soul has been roughly scrubbed, rinsed in cold water, and hung out to dry, do I rise to my feet. I hold out my hand, Weston clasps his in mine, and I help him to his feet. When I start to head back towards the trail, he stops me.
“It was Amber.”
“What?”
“At the restaurant the other night, I was with Amber. Cami’s mom.”
Well, if that just doesn’t make me feel any shittier. He went out to dinner with his ex-freaking-wife, and now, after I’ve just spent the last hour meditating myself into feeling better, I feel the weight sinking me down again. I need to invest in some crystals or some shit. I definitely attract bad energy at this point. Should I pay someone to sage my house? Can they sage me?
“She and I have an agreement.”
“Okay?” I throw my arms up, which is totally childish, but I’m more than a little pissed that I have to research the difference in rose gold and quartz crystals when I get home. I don’t have time for this shit. “I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”
What does he want me to tell him? Good for you for having dinner with her? He won’t catch me telling him that. I can be really petty when I want to be. He has no idea.
When he doesn’t offer anything else I drop my arms and start walking again.
“We have an agreement—” I stop, one foot lifted in the air. “—That if either of us wants to introduce someone to Cami that we tell the other about it first.”
Is this what it feels like to have your whole body torn in two? I feel like throwing myself off the side of the mountain. I know that’s too dramatic of a reaction—and I can’t do that anyways, my mom would never forgive me.
So, I put my foot down and start walking away from him. The tears burn on my face from shame. How could I be so stupid. He told me. He freaking told me we were friends, and here I am still pining after him. He’s freaking telling me that he’s found some woman to introduce to Cami. He’s finally going to start dating after four freaking years. This has to be some kind of a cruel ass joke.
I feel his hand wrap around my arm and jerk me back. I quickly try to scrub at my eyes, praying he doesn’t realize I’m crying, but I fail miserably and I’m sure my face is all blotchy anyways.
“Why are you crying?” He asks, confused. I selfishly don’t offer him anything, I just turn my face to the ground. But the bastard won’t let me hide in my shame. He takes his long pointer finger and oh-so gently lifts my chin, so our faces are inches apart.
“I told Amber that I met someone. I told her that she’s stubborn, she’s clumsy, she can’t play baseball for shit—”
I mutter, “she sounds like a real catch.” My jealousy comes in waves at this point.
He laughs at my interruption, but keeps going, “I should have added that she doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. I also told her that she already knows Cami.”
I’m still so blissfully unaware of what’s happening, so I ask, “Doesn’t that go against your deal?”
“Well, I had to explain that I met her through Cami, actually.”
My eyes are the size of dinner plates. “Is it a parent?!” I shriek, not even hiding how frustrated I’m getting.
He chuckles as he wraps his hands around mine, “Sweetheart, I can’t tell if you’re making a joke or not at this point.”
I clench my hands into fists around his, and stomp a foot on the ground, “I’m not joking right now. This conversation is going nowhere. Let me go.”
His grip only tightens. “Courtney, stop moving and look at me.”
I reluctantly obey, not sure how I’m going to handle the words that leave his mouth next.
“I told Amber that I’m interested in Cami’s teacher. That even though she’s infuriating sometimes, I can’t stay away from her anymore.”
I blink. White spots cloud my vision, and honest to God, I think I might pass out. He can’t be serious.
“Breathe, Angel. You look really pale right now. This isn’t the reaction I thought you would have, but considering I never know what you’re going to do I’m not really surprised.”
I start to sway, feeling dizzy, and the smile is wiped off his face in an instant. “Sit down. Cherry. Now.”
The dominating tone has me immediately dropping to my butt on the ground. I barely register the wetness from the grass seeping into my leggings—I’m not worried about my clothes right now.
“Y-you,” I breathe—on the cusp of hyperventilating, “You were there. That night. To have dinner with her. To talk to her about…about me?”
The look I give him is like he’s a dragon fairy with five heads. There’s no freaking way.
He gives me a sheepish smile. “Yeah, you can imagine how I felt when I saw you come out of the restaurant. Then, when I saw you were on a date, I was so mad I couldn’t see straight. Amber told me I was an idiot for letting you walk away with him. I even drove by your place after I finished dinner with her to make sure there wasn’t a car in your driveway.”
“W-what?” I sputter.
He’s joking. This is a cruel, cruel joke, right?
“You drove by my house?! You had the nerve to come by my house after I spent the night crying because I thought you were on a date?! You—you ass!” I shove at his shoulders, but all he does is laugh at my weak attempt to knock him back. He grabs my hands again and holds onto them.
“Calm down Cherry Bomb. I wasn’t planning on telling you about dinner with Amber.”
“Oh, wow. Suddenly, I feel so much better,” I spit sarcastically.
He blinks at me.
I blink back.
“What I meant, smart-ass, is that one day I would explain how that situation worked, but I wasn’t planning on telling you about why I was meeting with her until later on in our relationship.”
My little heart grows wings when he says, “our relationship,” down girl.
“I didn’t want our first date to be me explaining our terms to you. I wanted to woo you. Bring you flowers and take you to a nice dinner. Go on hikes together, maybe take Cami to the movies or the aquarium, and you could bring her or your parents to some games. Then maybe later on down the road when we were more serious, I thought I would tell you how my ex-wife and I came to an agreement about how we would raise our daughter. I didn’t think it would be fair to you to dump all that responsibility on you on our first date. I know you care about Cami. Our situation is a little different, but I wasn’t going to pressure you with that. Then we ran into each other, and I realized that I needed to get my shit together. So, I spent the last two weeks going back and forth on how to approach you with this. I could tell when I picked you up this morning that something was off, so even now I'm not sure that I should have brought this up.”
He pauses and takes a deep breath before saying, “I don’t want you to go out with that bald idiot from the other night.”
“Hey! Tom is a nice guy.” I try to smack his chest, but he doesn’t let my hands go. So, it just ends up being an awkward fumble of our hands.
He pins me with a look that says are you dumb, and I zip my mouth because I’m so not going to pick Tom over him.
“I don’t care if he’s a saint. I don’t want you to be with him. I want you for me, with me, all the time. I’m telling you right now that I can be possessive, and kind of an asshole about it. I don’t give a shit if you want to go out with your girlfriends, but you’re going to be calling me to take you home at the end of the night—not some random asshole you meet at the bar. Hell, I want you to come home with me at the end of the night. Hopefully sometime in the near future. If you need something, you call me. If you’re lonely, you call me. If you’re hungry and you don’t want to eat alone? You. Call. Me. Hell, if you’re just thinking about me, I want you to call me and tell me what’s going through your mind. I want your thoughts too. I know I’m throwing a lot at you right now, so don’t worry I’ll give you some time to get caught up, just don’t take too long.”
Then he kisses me. There’s absolutely no hesitation on his part either. It’s like he’s trying to show me with his mouth what he just said in words. Like he’s trying to melt our bodies into one, and I freaking love it.
It takes me a few seconds to get caught up, but I’m quickly giving him back everything and then some. It doesn’t even register that I’m sitting on wet grass in the middle of a forest where there could be bears and who knows what else while I'm making out with college baseball’s hottest coach.
It doesn’t register at all.
When we finally break apart, he places both of his hands on either side of my face, and looks into my eyes then whispers, “Damn.”
I’m panting, wishing that he would keep going, but he doesn’t. He just rises and helps me to my feet. Linking our hands, he starts pulling me back down the trail, and I’m mostly following behind like a puppy.
My tongue is probably wagging.
When we reach his truck, he sweeps me off my feet, placing his hands under my knees and grabbing my ass to lift me up into the seat. With millions of things flowing through my head I think to ask him, “So, does this mean since you’re coming to family dinner again?”
I’m rewarded with a big smile from him as he brings one of my hands to his mouth for a kiss. “I wouldn’t miss it.”