Make Me Yours (Top Shelf Romance Book 4)

by Devney Perry

  Three pair of eyes angle my way. “You want man-hands on you instead of woman-hands?” Tino asks, and the table erupts into laughter.

  “T, you’re so hard up you’d take any hands at this point.”

  “At least I’m not a picky bastard like you,” he replies.

  “East has a point,” J.P. says. “But considering I was thinking about pulling a groin tonight just so Scout could rub it out for me, my vote is to keep her around.”

  “Fucker,” I chuckle. “You’re vote’s no good, though. Scout’s here for me. Only me,” I taunt. “So you’re shit outta luck. Be my guest, though, and pull that muscle. I’m sure Sumo Sam would love to rub out your groin and maybe take a quick detour to find your dick while he’s at it.”

  “Gonna need a magnifying glass for that,” J.P. mocks.

  Phones ding around the table and interrupt the conversation as we all move to see what’s going on.

  ESPN Alert: Trade rumors are swirling that Jose Santiago will likely be traded in the coming weeks.

  “Fucker.” My comment is repeated around the table as I stare at the name of the person responsible for my stint on the DL.

  “God help whatever team he lands on,” Drew says.

  My phone alerts me again, and when I look at the screen, I sigh but for a completely different reason. Not again. “Sorry guys. Put mine on my tab. I’ve gotta head out.”

  “You good to drive, man?” Drew asks.

  “Yeah. I only had two. I’m good.”

  Too much damn time to think.

  About Santiago.

  Scout.

  If my arm’s fucked up to the point of no return.

  And only one of those thoughts on the hour drive to the outskirts of town is welcome. So, by the time I pull into the familiar gravel lot, tires crunching beneath me and the silver moonlight around me, I’m in no mood to face this. It’s not like I have a choice though.

  The slam of my truck door echoes as I stride up the pathway I know all too well.

  “Sorry it took me so long, Marty,” I say as I walk through his plume of cigarette smoke to where he’s standing outside the rundown bar.

  “No worries. She’s not hurting anyone. Sissy called in sick tonight. I’m flying solo so I can’t leave the bar to take her back to her place.”

  Same old song and dance. Just a different day.

  The air, stale with cigarette smoke and cheap liquor, hits me the minute I open the ill-hanging wooden door and walk into the dimly lit bar. I spot her immediately. She’s slumped in her booth with empty glasses littering the table in front of her.

  “Mom.”

  She jumps at the sound of my voice, her eyes painted with too much makeup look up at me, and her lips, a bright red, turn up in a smile. “Easton.” She says my name like it’s the first time she’s seen me in months—excited, grateful, and hopeful.

  “Hi, Momma. You’ve gotta stop doing this,” I tell her as I fake the same level of enthusiasm, my insides fucking exhausted from this dance.

  “I know, but I was so excited that you won tonight!”

  “I didn’t play tonight. My arm’s still hurt,” I explain as I help her scoot from behind the table and wrap my arm around her waist to get her out the door.

  “But you were playing on the TV. I was watching it. My handsome boy. You went three for three and picked two people off base . . .”

  “Good night, Marty. Thanks for calling,” I say as we pass by him.

  “And I was so proud of you I thought I’d go and celebrate and wait for you to join me . . . and here you are!” She throws her hands up, her happiness sincere, as I usher her inside the cab of my truck.

  We drive the quarter mile to her trailer in silence, but her smile remains wide. There’s nothing else I can do other than squeeze the hand she’s placed in mine, so giddy that I came home to her.

  “You were watching a replay of one of my games on the DVR again,” I tell her gently as I push open the unlocked door of her mobile home to find the TV on and the lights blazing.

  “I was?” she asks, as if it’s complete news to her, and a small part of me wonders if it’s the alcohol making her forget, or if something is wrong with her mind. Both options scare the shit out of me.

  “Yes, you were. I wish you’d let me move you out of here, Momma.” I look around the double-wide mobile home she refuses to leave. The furniture is threadbare, the new pieces I’ve bought her returned time and again, and the wall opposite of us is lined with stacks of boxes filled with brand new things I’ve given her she refused to open.

  “I don’t need anything. I love it here,” she murmurs as she sits on the edge of her bed and I wonder if she really does or she just believes her own lies. It takes me only a minute to find the makeup wipes and remove the paint from her face.

  “There’s my girl.” I smile when she looks up at me, face bare, lips still in a smile to match mine. “So much prettier without all that gunk.”

  “A lady likes gunk, East.”

  “I know. I know.” I take her shoes off, one by one. “I could move you near me. It would be so much nicer and safer for you, and I’d be able to keep an eye on you.”

  “Not gonna happen. I’m not gonna leave here. He’ll come back for me some day, and I want to make sure he knows where I am when he does . . . much the same way you know where to find me each time.”

  “Who, Momma? Who is going to come back for you?” I reiterate the same question I’ve asked countless times over the years.

  “The love of my life.” Her voice is dreamy when she says it, and the sound tugs on my heart. What is it like to hold out hope for someone for this many years?

  “And who’s that?” I ask again, knowing she won’t tell me, just as she never has in the past.

  “Some things children aren’t supposed to know,” she says with a laugh. Her eyes are tired, but her smile remains. “You are always so good to me. I don’t deserve you.”

  “You’re talking nonsense now. It’s time for you to get some sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “Are you gonna leave me?” she asks, voice wavering in panic.

  “No. You know I’ll never leave you. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

  I help to pull the covers over her, wipe her graying hair off her face, and stare at her for a few minutes as her smile slowly fades into sleep.

  My sigh is heavy as I turn off the television, the lights, and then sink down on the lumpy couch she won’t let me replace. Pulling the blanket she made from all my various team jerseys up to my chin, I listen for the soft rattle of her breath and wonder how many more years I’m going to allow myself to continue to do this.

  “Night, Momma,” I whisper like I used to when I was a little boy. And yet, this time I know no one is going to answer.

  I’m the parent now.

  Even when most days I still feel like the child.

  Scout

  “Faster. Faster,” I shout as I watch pure male perfection move across the field.

  Honed muscles ripple with pristine performance. His grunt echoes off the empty plastic seats around us. His cleats hit the base with a thump of sound.

  When I click the stopwatch, I’m more than impressed with his time. “Not bad,” I muse as I watch him from behind my mirrored lenses and wait for him to trot back over.

  “Are you trying to kill me? What did I do to piss you off?” He pants the questions and then lifts a bottle and squeezes some water into his mouth.

  “No and nothing,” I answer as I hold up the stopwatch so he can see the display. “That’s an impressive time.”

  He grunts in response as he swallows more water. “Not bad. But not my best. Are you going to explain what running bases has to do with rehabbing my arm?”

  “When you run, you swing your arms without thinking about it. And swinging your arms moves your shoulder joint,” I say, placing my hands on his arm to swing it and demonstrate the point. “And when you move your shoulder without t
ensing up, you also break up any scar tissue that might have built up in the joint. And that scar tissue is most likely what is giving you that pinching feeling when we toss the ball around.”

  “Huh.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you’re convinced, but I don’t need you to be convinced, I just need you to not feel the pain.”

  “I’m still sticking with the ‘you’re pissed at me’ theory.” He angles his head and takes a step closer. “Or at the world. I just haven’t decided which one you’re taking out on me right now.”

  I bristle, hating that he can read me so easily when I’ve put an enormous amount of effort into trying to appear perfectly fine these past few days. But I haven’t been fine. I’ve been far from it. I’m pissed at my dad, angry that he’s shutting me out when all I need is to be closer to him. I despise that I have to hear secondhand from his caretaker, Sally, that the cold he’s caught has set him back a few steps. I hate that my brother’s birthday is coming up, another year gone by, making the memories even fuzzier.

  So, yeah, Easton’s right; I am pissed at the world. Obviously, I’m doing a shitty job of hiding it.

  “C’mon, let’s get you stretched out.” Conversation over. I turn my back to him and walk to the foul line on the outfield grass. I could have stretched him perfectly fine where we were standing, and yet I needed the distraction to avoid him looking at me more closely and seeing that he’s right.

  “Classic avoidance. I get it.”

  “No, you’re just the player.” The comment slips off my tongue, more a reminder to myself than meant for him. The disdain tingeing my tone is intended for my dad, but I’m taking it out on Easton instead.

  How can you be mad at a man who is dying?

  “The player?” Easton’s voice is right behind me, and I cringe. He definitely heard me.

  Crap.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “No, please. I’m intrigued.”

  “It’s just a classic Doc Dalton idiosyncrasy.” I keep my back turned to him as tears burn in my eyes. Moments ago I was mentally lashing out at my dad, angry at the world, and in a matter of seconds, I’m smiling bittersweetly at the quirk so representative of my father.

  I can hold it together most days, push the grief aside, not believe the prognosis, but for some reason, this week it has hit me hard.

  Clear mind. Hard Heart.

  Shove it away, Scout. Not here. Not now.

  “Isn’t that how all fathers are?”

  There’s a surprising bite to his tone, and yet I’m too preoccupied with my own world to delve deeper into his. I clear my throat, push the emotion away, and turn around to face him.

  “How does your shoulder feel?” Time to change topics.

  His laugh rings out across the empty field and gets lost in the vastness of the stadium. “You really don’t like talking about yourself, do you?”

  His smile is genuine when I meet his eyes, and I hate that it pulls on me to say more. But I can’t. I won’t. “No.”

  Without another word, I begin his routine. I work in silence—my hands on his body, his heartbeat against my palm—feeling for the bunching of muscles as I pull and push and work through the tightness in his shoulder. The hiss of his breath is my only gauge to know when I’ve pushed him too far.

  “How does this feel?” I position myself behind him, our bodies pressed against each other’s, enabling me to manipulate his larger frame.

  “What’s bugging you?”

  I ignore his question. “Is it tight? Sore? Is that pinch still up in the top part of the cuff?”

  “You’re upset. That much is obvious.”

  “I’m fine. Can we get back to you and your shoulder? To my job.” My tone is clipped. “What’s hurting you?”

  “I don’t know. What’s hurting you?”

  I falter, trying to grasp that he’s really going to push the issue, and just when I realize I’ve stopped moving—one hand resting atop his shoulder, the other on his bicep—he turns to face me.

  Now we’re body to body, my breasts brushing against his chest while his eyes search mine for the secrets I keep. And we’re close, too close, but neither of us step away. It’s just him and me inside a sunlit stadium with thousands of empty seats as bystanders.

  His breath catches. My pulse races. I look away in a desperate attempt to avoid his question and ignore the sudden hum of desire snapping within me like a broken power line twisting in a storm.

  Not desperate enough, though, to step back.

  “Uh-uh.” Easton’s finger is on my chin, lifting my face so that my eyes scrape over the day-old growth on his chin, up to those lips, and on to the curiosity in his eyes. “What is it, Scout?”

  Our gazes lock. Hold. Question without speaking. Sympathize despite not knowing what the other needs.

  And it’s odd because we’ve stood like this dozens of times over the past week. When I’m stretching him in warm-up, midway through our exercises, after we throw the ball around for a bit, and again after our routine is completed—but for some reason, this time there’s an intimacy to it.

  It’s unnerving. It’s exciting. It can’t happen.

  Seconds pass before it hits me where we are, what might be happening—what I think I want to happen—and I push away from him as quickly as I can. The connection is broken.

  But the desire remains.

  “Sorry.” I shake my head, and without another word, I jog into the dugout toward the locker room, needing space from everything he makes me feel—and from making a huge mistake.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. You’re in the freaking stadium, where anyone from the front office can see you, and you’re standing there like a teenager begging to be kissed. Are you actually going to risk this job for a guy who will be gone and done with you before the post-season begins?

  “Scout?”

  “You’re good for the day.” Keep walking. Keep moving.

  He curses behind me, and then his footsteps fall into pace with mine when I just want them to walk the other way.

  Or maybe I don’t want them to.

  Hell if I know, because that little moment was enough to mess up my head. Sure, Easton hits all my buttons: hot, athletic, funny, and a bit of a mystery. But in this job, those buttons are pushed all the time. There are plenty of players who fit that bill. It’s everything else that he just made me feel that’s confusing me.

  It’s the fact that I wanted him to lean in and kiss me.

  It’s the notion that I press up against hard, male bodies all the time—so much so that I’m rarely affected by it—but right now, my body is reacting and wanting and pissed off that it is reacting. Easton Wylder just affected me.

  It’s the acknowledgement that for some reason he can see the things I think I’m hiding from the world. He sees them, and has no problem calling me out on them, either.

  It’s that right now I feel exposed and raw, and I hate that I am, but at the same time I feel relieved that someone sees it. That I’m not invisible, when lately, that’s all I’ve felt as I’ve worked to secure this job. To succeed in getting the long-term contract. Anything to try and keep my dad holding on.

  My footsteps echo down the concrete corridor, the clubhouse all but vacant of players since the team is traveling. I need a minute to clear my head and push away the sudden vulnerability I feel because of everything going on with my dad.

  Clear mind, hard heart, Scouty.

  Maybe it’s the toll of my emotions, maybe not, but when I enter the empty locker room, my feet falter at the sight. It’s eerie and beautiful and bittersweet all at the same time.

  This is how I remember it from when I was a kid. Ford and I would tag along with my dad to work and we’d sit in the empty locker room while he got everything set up for whoever he was in charge of rehabilitating. When the team straggled in, we’d be relegated to the office with a vending machine full of candy we weren’t supposed to eat but would stuff our faces with anyway. We’d giggle at the Mad Libs made
naughty with words we weren’t allowed to say in front of our dad—like hell and damn—and then grumble over our homework, which Ford would help me with when it was too hard. It was my dad’s way of keeping us with him—our fear he’d leave us was a constant in those early years after my mom left—but making sure we didn’t get in the way, or hear the cursing, or see the players as they changed.

  And every once in a while, depending on how long he worked with a club, the players would come in, kid with us, give us high-fives, and make us feel like we were part of the team.

  “What is it?” Easton pulls me from my thoughts. When I look his way I realize his hand is on my upper arm, his head dropped down so he can look into my eyes.

  “Isn’t it magical?” I whisper. Oh my god. Did I really just say that? I’m so lame.

  His laugh is amused, but the expression on his face as he looks around us—the empty lockers, the hanging jerseys, the nameplates on them—says he has a love/hate relationship with this room. And for a guy who probably grew up here more than anywhere else, the expression, and the curiosity it raises, surprises me.

  “Some days it is. Some days it isn’t,” he finally murmurs, confirming my assumption of his mixed feelings as his gaze lands back on mine.

  And we stand like this for a few seconds, his hand on my arm, his eyes asking me what’s wrong, and mine questioning why this room evokes the conflict I see hiding in his.

  The clearing of a throat has me jumping back like we’re two kids caught doing something we shouldn’t be doing.

  “Sir,” Easton says with a slow nod as I meet the eyes of the giant who is standing a few feet away from us, an indecipherable look on his unmistakable face.

  “Easton.” He looks down to his watch and then back up, with hazel eyes that are a mirror image of his son’s. “Cutting your rehab time a bit short, aren’t you?”

  The laugh that falls from Easton’s mouth is one I haven’t heard before. It’s void of any humor. “This is my second session today, so no, actually, I’m not.”

  The man’s gaze shifts from Easton’s to mine as he angles his head and studies me. “We haven’t officially met.”