The Ninth Inning Read online

  I sucked in a quick breath, hoping my next words would help calm him down. “We can’t change the past, Cole. You know that, right?” I asked, and he nodded even though I could tell that he didn’t want to agree. “Let’s make a decision right here, right now,” I insisted as I put my fork down and leaned toward him, my elbows on the small table between us.

  “I’m listening.”

  “We don’t go back. We don’t spend our time focusing on what we could have done differently or what we should have done or how we could have been better to each other. We only look toward the future. And we live there. Deal?” I asked as I extended my hand toward him.

  “Deal,” he said as he reached for my hand, shook it, and then kissed the top as a soft grin appeared.

  Best First Date in the History of First Dates

  Cole

  I’d been right about the waffles. And the restaurant’s lack of social media presence. The owner didn’t see the need, claimed that business was plenty busy without it. And while Christina didn’t argue that particular point, she did appeal to his other senses when he stopped by our table to say hello. She told him that the goal didn’t have to be about getting new customers, but more about showcasing the restaurant’s history, staff, and menu.

  He loved her idea, claimed it was something that no one had explained to him before, and then he kissed her on the cheek without warning. I allowed it, considering he was about a hundred and five years old. Christina walked out of brunch with a full stomach and a new client.

  “You’re incredible, you know that?” I pulled her hand to my lips and pressed a kiss there. I’d found myself doing that a lot with her. It seemed safer than constantly trying to maul her face, which, trust me, I wanted to do.

  “Thank you.” She looked down for a second before lifting her head back up.

  “How did you do that back there?” I asked.

  Watching her in action was thrilling. She was so damn good at what she did. It was fun to see. I wondered for a second if that was how it felt for her to watch me play baseball.

  “I listened. Being a good social media manager is about hearing what your client wants to sell or offer the public. What’s their angle? Mr. Barlow has no interest in advertising. And he’s right. He doesn’t need to. But I think it’s a shame to not let people know this place exists. There’s so much history. Did you know that Frank Sinatra ate there? More than once!” Her voice was ecstatic, and it was fucking adorable.

  “I heard him say that,” I said with a grin as I pulled her door open, and she got inside.

  She waited for me to get in the truck before she finished talking. “I’ll use the platforms to showcase how the restaurant has changed throughout the years. And how it hasn’t. Show old pictures, original menus, things like that. But also, the food. Because you wouldn’t expect food that tastes that good to come from a place that looks like that.”

  “Told you,” I said, sounding more than a little smug.

  “You were right.” She nudged me with her arm.

  I sucked in a breath before asking if she was ready for the next part of our date. She nodded with a beautiful smile, and I drove off with one place in mind.

  I drove all the way to the top of the parking structure, which was thankfully empty, before cutting the engine.

  “You brought us here?” she asked as she looked around, her voice sounding more than a little shocked.

  “Yeah. It’s kind of our place, right?” I said because I had always associated this structure with her. It was where we’d stayed up all night together and talked about the kinds of things that I never talked about with anyone. “It reminds me of you,” I added, and she looked at me, a soft half-smile appearing. “I come here when I need to get away from it all.”

  “I honestly figured you brought all the girls here.”

  “All the girls?” I asked, thoroughly confused. “What girls?”

  She rolled her eyes and gave me an annoyed huff. “Don’t act like you’ve been some sort of saint this whole time. I know you’ve slept with other girls besides me.”

  It was a subject I really didn’t want to talk about but only because it led to knowing what other guys she had slept with, and I couldn’t fucking stomach hearing that answer. Not when I had tried so hard to keep that stuff out of my head. Not when I wanted her to only be mine.

  “I’ve never brought any girl here. Hell, I’ve never brought any girl anywhere. Only you.” I reached out to cup her face and was grateful when she leaned into it instead of away from it. “It’s okay that we’re here?” I asked because, now, I was suddenly unsure.

  She let out a slight laugh. “It’s okay. Maybe I’ll stop hating it now,” she said, and I opened my mouth in shock.

  “You hate our parking structure?”

  “Uh, yeah. You broke my heart, Cole. I had to hate anything that reminded me of you,” she said as if that explained it all, which, in a way, I guessed it did.

  It was just that I had never hated anything that had to do with her. And this parking structure, which held memories of us, had become my solace. It was where I went to when I needed peace and quiet. I found it ironic that she’d avoided the one place that I kept coming back to.

  “Time to make you love it again,” I said before reaching around into the backseat and pulling out some blankets and pillows I’d stashed there.

  “What’s all this?” she questioned as I got out and went to work on setting up the blankets and pillows in the bed of my truck.

  She quickly joined me, and I lowered my tailgate and hopped up, reaching for her hand. When she gave it to me, I pulled her up with little effort.

  “Sit with me?” I said as I pressed my back against the pillows, propping them up and moving them to get comfortable.

  She sat in between my legs, scooting until her back was flush with my front, and leaned into me.

  “Your hair smells so good,” I said as I breathed it in. I almost couldn’t believe that I had her in my arms again.

  “This is nice,” she said as her body relaxed.

  I was hard as a rock and only getting harder. I wanted Christina in more ways than one but knew it wasn’t the right time. My dick really needed to get the memo and take it down a notch.

  “Thank you for giving me a chance.”

  She turned, her body angled awkwardly toward me, and I knew she wanted to say something, but she stopped herself. Cupping her cheek, I pulled her toward me, my tongue instantly searching for hers. She moved into me, turning all the way around so that her legs were wrapped around my waist. It definitely didn’t help in the dick-hardening part of things.

  “You’re killing me,” I said as I continued kissing her, loving the way her lips felt against mine, grateful that she hadn’t tossed me out of her apartment when I showed up there last night.

  Has it really only been a handful of hours since I declared my feelings for her? It felt like so much longer, and I knew it was because we had years of history lingering between us.

  Breaking the kiss, I ran my fingers through her hair.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head as I looked into her blue eyes. “Nothing. I was just thinking about how comfortable I am with you. How natural it feels.”

  She smiled, and it took up her whole damn beautiful face. “I feel the same way.”

  “You do?”

  She pulled her legs back and crossed them, taking her body away from mine, and I stopped myself from wrapping my hands around her waist and holding on for dear life. “Of course I do. We’re not strangers. We didn’t just meet an hour ago.”

  “So, this is normal then? To feel this way?” I asked because what the hell did I truly know about relationships and love? Nothing. I knew fucking nothing.

  “I think for us it is. It’s pretty logical that after three years, we’d feel this way.”

  “You know, looking back now, I see it all so clearly. But it was so muddled at the time,” I started to explain what I had only m
ore recently figured out and admitted to myself.

  “What do you see?”

  “How it’s always been you. Well, you and baseball. I didn’t think there was room for anything else. But you’ve always been there. I tried to outrun you for so long. I don’t want to run anymore.”

  Christina’s mouth opened slightly, and she blew out a breath. “You can’t just walk around, saying things like that to a girl.”

  I looked around. “I wasn’t walking.”

  “You know what I mean.” She swatted my leg, and I knew that I had affected her by admitting the truth, but it’d felt good to say it out loud.

  “I know we said we weren’t talking about the past, but I need to say one more thing. I am sorry for how I treated you. After my mom left, my dad never dated or remarried. I don’t have any idea what a normal couple looks like, realistically. I never learned, you know? And I’m not trying to make excuses. I just want you to understand that I’m a little messed up.”

  “We’re all messed up. And our parents screw us up one way or another without ever meaning to. No one’s perfect,” she said, and I didn’t fail to notice that she hadn’t accepted my apology. She’d simply moved right past it.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything,” she said, and I wondered if she’d take back that response once I asked the question.

  “Will you tell me about the no-alcohol rule? It’s been driving me crazy, not knowing.”

  Her body visibly tensed, and I reached for her, moving her so that her back was pressed against my front once more. I wrapped my arms around her middle and held on, wanting her to know that I had her and that she was safe with me.

  “It isn’t what you think,” she started to say, but her voice said otherwise.

  I almost told her that she didn’t have to go on, that she didn’t need to tell me, but I wanted to know.

  “It was my first high school party. Everyone was drinking. I thought it was so cool to take shots and drink mixed drinks like a grown-up, you know?”

  Her tone was a mixture of sadness and anger, and I mentally braced for what I was sure was coming next. How was I going to stay calm and composed if she told me that someone had put their hands on her without her permission? Touched her when she hadn’t wanted them to? My mind raced, but her voice pulled me out.

  “I was there with my best friend. I had a curfew that night, but she didn’t. So, when I left the party with a friend’s older brother who had come to pick a few of us up, she stayed behind. I knew I shouldn’t have left her, but she wouldn’t leave with me. I’d tried to get her come, but she’d kept saying no.”

  I started rubbing the side of her arm with my hand, hoping to comfort her as she continued, “The next day, there were pictures of her passed out on the couch while guys lingered over her, making lewd gestures and stuff. They were all over the internet.”

  I stayed quiet as she took her time.

  “Nothing physically happened to her, but the pictures told a different story, you know? They looked really bad,” she said before moving away from me and turning so we could look each other in the eyes. “They made her look really bad.”

  “How did she know nothing had happened if she was passed out?”

  I wasn’t trying to sound accusing, but Christina’s tone turned defensive. The memory was still fresh in her mind, still upsetting.

  “Because she remembered everything up until that point. And when she woke up, all her clothes were on, she wasn’t sore anywhere, and she was alone.”

  “Let me guess.” I assumed what was coming next. “No one believed her that nothing happened.”

  “I did.” She nodded her head. “But I was the only one. The pictures were eventually taken down, but by then, it was too late. Everyone had already seen them. And they had copies or screenshots. It was the ultimate example of how bad social media could be. How it could ruin someone’s life.”

  I felt like a lightbulb had switched on inside my head. “And that’s when you discovered your passion for it?”

  “That’s definitely where it started, yeah. I wanted people to be accountable for the things they posted online. To realize that everything wasn’t a joke. That sometimes, real people were affected and got hurt. I wanted my fellow students to think about the messages their posts were sending. You have any idea how hard it is to get a teenager to think before they act?” she said with a slight laugh.

  “I think most people don’t think before they act. Especially online. It gives them some kind of power trip to be anonymous.”

  “I totally agree.”

  “So, is that where your rule came in?” I asked, still wanting to know.

  “Well, yeah. The shots got me pretty drunk. It felt like all the logical and rational parts of my brain shut off. I didn’t care about anything. They could have told me to jump off the roof and into the pool, and I would have done it without question. If I had stayed, it would have been both of us in those pictures instead of just her.”

  “ ‘Alcohol makes you stupid,’ ” I said with a nod of understanding, repeating the words she’d once told me.

  “Exactly.”

  “Then, why’d you take the shots from Logan?” I found myself getting upset, but I wasn’t sure why exactly.

  “I’m older now. I think I can handle my liquor better than when I was in high school,” she said. “But mostly, I did it to get back at you. To show you that you weren’t the boss of me. To be rebellious,” she rattled off the list like it was right there on the tip of her tongue the whole time, just waiting to be set free.

  “Took shots with my enemy just to spite me,” I started before she interrupted.

  “I didn’t know he was your enemy,” she said seriously, as if trying to convince me of something I’d already known.

  “But you do now, right? You know he isn’t a good person. Tell me you see that,” I pressed because I needed to hear her say that she saw through Logan’s false front.

  “I do see that. But it doesn’t matter. I’m with you now. Logan’s irrelevant.”

  I wanted to agree with her, but I knew Logan better than that. If he wanted to fuck with me more, I’d just given him the ammunition he needed to do it. He was only guessing before that Christina was my weakness, but all I’d done by pursuing her and making her mine was prove him right. This thing with him wasn’t over, and I knew it.

  Girlfriend

  Christina

  We stayed in the parking structure—or “our parking structure,” as Cole had called it—holding each other and talking until the sun started to set. Hours always seemed to fly by whenever we were together, and today had been no different. How had a single day felt more like twenty?

  When he walked me to my apartment door, he shocked me for what felt like the hundredth time. “I don’t know if people do this anymore, but I don’t care. Will you be my girlfriend?” he asked, and I forced myself to hesitate instead of blurting out a resounding yes.

  I thought I’d waited a little too long because he started shifting on his feet and dug his hands into his pockets.

  “Look, I know that one day doesn’t change the past three years. But it’s just the beginning. We don’t have to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend even though I want to,” he said in a tone that left little room for questioning how he felt on the matter, “but I really, really, really don’t want you to date other people.”

  “What about you?” I asked because it felt foolish to assume anything without at least asking. We’d been through too much.

  “I don’t want to be with anyone else. Only you. But I get that I might be jumping the gun a little here even though it doesn’t feel like it. Like you said, it’s not like we just met.”

  It didn’t feel like it was too quick for me either, but there was still a tiny part inside of me that wanted to encourage his suffering.

  “Let’s hold off on the titles but definitely yes to the exclusively dating part.” It was my way of offering a compromise.
Plus, I knew that I would never in a million years agree to be in this place with him again if there were going to be any other girls in the picture.

  “Isn’t that basically the same thing?” he asked with an uncomfortable laugh, and I realized that I was being stubborn purely for the sake of it. Trying to hurt him because a part of me still hurt and hadn’t recovered.

  “You’re right; it is,” I relented.

  “So, that’s a yes then?”

  I tried to stop my smile when he asked the question but failed.

  “Don’t say no, Christina. Don’t say no because you want to punish me or make me work harder. I mean, I’ll do it. I’ll jump through all your hoops. But don’t make me if you don’t really want me to.”

  He looked exhausted but sounded determined, and I knew that he meant every word. If I continued to keep him at arm’s length just to prove a point, he’d let me do it and probably not complain. But that wouldn’t be fair—to either of us. If I was going to give us a real shot, I had to do exactly what I’d told him we should during brunch—live in the future and not in the past.

  “Okay. Yes.”

  The smile on his face was enough to tell me that I’d made the right decision. He reached for me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and picked me up into the air, planting kisses all over my face and neck. He was so damn happy. And all because I’d agreed to be his girlfriend.

  I am Cole Anders’s freaking girlfriend!

  One Week Later

  When I’d walked through the front door that night after our first date, Lauren had been eavesdropping—or at least trying to. She said she couldn’t hear a damn thing and insisted I fill her in. To my surprise, she was excited, encouraging, and hopeful. A part of me had thought that she might be more hesitant than I had tried to be, but she wasn’t. It felt good to have my best friend on my side. It reassured me that I wasn’t a complete idiot for giving Cole a real shot after everything we’d been through.