He gives a subtle shrug that says yeah, it was. “Listen, I understand everything you’re saying. At least, I think I do. I won’t try to pretend I understand addiction or alcoholism, but it sounds like the way you grew up was complicated and difficult.”
“I know you didn’t have it easy, either,” I say. I don’t want to be all woe is me.
“I didn’t, but I’m talking about you,” he says, soft but firm. “So let me talk about you, okay?”
“Okay.”
“What I’m saying is thank you for telling me. Thank you for letting me into your stuff. I know that’s not easy,” he says, then takes both my hands in his and squeezes, and I think yes, we can fix this, we can sort this out. “But you could have called and told me that. You could have talked to me.”
And he hits that on the nose.
Gets right to the heart of the matter.
“I was a coward, Grant,” I say, owning it. “I fucked up. That’s my biggest regret. I was too scared to call you.”
“Why? I’m not going to judge you for your family.”
I press my lips together, wanting to hold in all these hard truths. But I let them out instead. “I knew if I called you, if I heard your voice, if I even asked for advice on how to handle the shitstorm of my life, that I’d cave. Ask for more of you. Want more of your time, more of your big fucking heart.”
“I’d have given it to you,” he says, tender and so damn vulnerable that I want to smother him in kisses and let him do the same to me. I want to drown in his affection and get lost in him.
“But I thought the only way I could help you was to . . . end it.”
Grant’s face is stony for a few seconds. Then for several more before he drops both my hands, ending his touch. “I get what you’re saying.” He pauses, works his jaw. “But the problem is you really fucking hurt me.”
My heart plummets, an elevator cut from its cable. “I know,” I mutter.
“But do you? Do you have any idea how I felt when I got your text?”
I meet his eyes, face him like a man. “No. Tell me. Because I thought about it every day. I thought about you every day.”
He swallows like there are rocks in his throat. “I felt like I was nothing. I felt like what we shared was nothing. Like our plans to meet in November were a lie. Like I was just this stupid virgin you messed with and then kicked to the curb.” His eyes are hard enough to cut glass. “That’s how I felt.”
“You weren’t nothing, Grant. You were everything,” I say, then I dig down deep, reaching far inside with a brand-new shovel. “I was falling in love with you. I’m still in love with you.”
The world turns silent.
Everything in the universe hits pause.
Cars stop.
Animals freeze.
The Earth ceases to orbit as Grant drags a hand down his face, then turns away from me.
18
Grant
It’s like I’ve been walking through a house with the lamps off, feeling my way in the dark. Now, room by room, the lights are slowly turning on, illuminating nearly everything.
I can see Declan clearly now, understand him better. He makes so much more sense.
I always knew he doled out bits of himself on teaspoons, offering a morsel here or there. Now, he’s offering a whole meal.
And I want it.
Truly, I do.
I want him, flaws and all. Because I’m pretty sure I still feel the same as I did last spring.
But feelings aren’t everything.
They aren’t even the most important thing.
But tell that to my stupid heart. It’s about to explode in my ribs. It’s thundering, trying to beat its way out and curl up with this man.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sigh and slide a hand down my face.
Do I tell him I feel the same? That everything he just said snapped me right back into stupid, crazy love?
Do I blurt out the pathetic truth of my heart too?
But that’s what I did most of the time we were together in the spring.
I have to tread carefully this time around. Whatever this is.
I keep my hands to myself, clenching and unclenching my fists so I won’t touch him again. “What exactly are you asking me for, Declan?”
Those dark eyes don’t stray from me. They laser in on mine, never letting go. “I’m asking you for another chance.”
He hardly sounds like the Declan I knew. I’ve known him witty, tender, sexy, dirty, funny, gentle, powerful, intense, and surprisingly vulnerable in bed.
But never stripped bare like this.
Never raw.
Part of me wants everything he has to give. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’m sure he’s everything I never knew I wanted. He’s my missing piece.
A man with flaws.
A man with guts.
A man who’s been through more than his fair share of shit and knows nothing worth having comes easily.
Someone who gets me and my passions and has many of the same ones.
But that’s part of the problem.
“And what would that look like?” I ask, eager to know. “Us sneaking around again? Or us going to Miami as boyfriends and letting the world see that two guys in the majors fell in love?”
The intensity fades from Declan’s expression. In its place comes a slow and easy smile—one that hooks into my heart.
“Fell in love, did you?” he asks, all cocky and impossibly sexy.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah. I did. There you go,” I say, holding my hands out wide, admitting for the first time that he’s the L-word for me. “I fell in love with you. Like you didn’t fucking know that.”
“I didn’t.” He reaches for me, hands cupping my face, making everything inside me go whoosh. “I just hoped. I hoped you felt the same.”
I lean into one hand because it feels so good, so right. “I told you I was falling. I told you I was crazy for you. Where else do you fall but in love?”
He hums, and it sounds like he’s happy. Like I’m giving him his greatest wish.
Am I, though?
I don’t know if I can.
“I’ve never been in love before,” Declan says softly, pressing his forehead to mine, lighting up my whole damn soul.
I want so badly to come together.
To kiss him desperately.
To yank him down on me so I can feel his full glorious weight stretched on top of me.
So I can let him in.
“Me neither. I’ve never been in love either,” I say, and then, because I’m dying to let him in, I kiss him.
It’s hot and wild.
And all kinds of dangerous.
Sparks ignite the sky as I scramble to get under him, to pull him on top of me. To feel him.
Declan’s on me in a heartbeat, knocking my legs open, giving himself room, covering me.
“Oh fuck . . .” I moan. It’s too much, too good, too everything.
I need to stop this.
I have to stop this.
But he feels too right.
Then we are grinding together, pressing, pushing. His hands clasp my head. Mine grab his firm ass. I jerk him closer, and we don’t stop.
We moan and grind and rub, and it’s like the first time we combusted in the back of his car and, at the same time, it’s so much more. Because it feels like he could be the big love of my life.