Quit Your Pitchin'

by Lani Lynn Vale

  I’d hired out an ambulance to bring him home from Dallas, but that ride wouldn’t be available to take him around town.

  But, since the apartment was about a ten-minute walk from the field, I’d said yes under one condition.

  That she allows me to walk with them.

  So, before tomorrow’s game, Wrigley would be walking with me and Micah to the field. An entire three hours before the game started.

  And, hopefully, with my presence, nothing else crazy would be happening.

  Her immediate acquiesce had left me reeling, but since I was no longer her husband, I didn’t have the privilege of knowing her inner thoughts.

  Also meaning that I wouldn’t be having my questions ever answered.

  “Yeah,” I rasped. “I’ll see you tomorrow around eleven. Okay?”

  She nodded, her hair falling slightly into her face with the movement.

  “Yeah, that sounds really, errrm, great.” She smiled stiffly.

  That’s when I realized it was really time to go.

  I’d stayed around her for too long, apparently.

  “All right, have a good night,” I said as I hurried to the door.

  The moment I was out in the hall with the door closed behind me, I stopped and braced my hands on the opposite wall from Wrigley’s door, and then let my head fall.

  Mother. Fucker.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I didn’t want to leave.

  But I did.

  I didn’t want to be somewhere I wasn’t wanted, and it was more than apparent that she didn’t want me there.

  So I was going to have to suck it up and get moving before I couldn’t.

  I’d wind up sleeping right here on the fucking floor if I wasn’t careful.

  And then my phone rang.

  My sister.

  Fuck.

  I turned around and leaned my back against the wall, closing my eyes as I placed the phone up to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Georgie?” my sister said. “How’s Micah?”

  I rolled my eyes. My sister hadn’t called in two weeks since my son had been hurt, and she was calling now?

  “He’s okay,” I said honestly. “He’s been better, actually.”

  “Oh,” she hesitated. “Well, I was calling because of the Christmas gifts you sent.”

  I looked up at the ceiling. “Yeah?”

  “You forgot to send the gift receipts, so I don’t know where you got them from. And since Roden and I already purchased this particular gift for our son, we want to return yours,” she explained quickly.

  I felt my belly tighten. “Listen,” I scrubbed my hand down my face. “If you want to return one of them, return the one you got. Then get him something else. I bought these throughout the year, and I have no idea where the gift receipts are.”

  She did this every fucking year.

  Last year I’d sent them to her, too. But then my Grams had informed me that they were just returning the gifts to have the money. They weren’t even letting my nieces and nephews have the money from the return. They were keeping it for themselves. And they sure as fuck hadn’t gotten them the same gift.

  Which pissed me off.

  I would not be sending them the receipts this year. They could kiss my ass.

  “I’m sorry, but what?” my sister asked, seemingly like she was unsure of what she’d heard me say.

  “I said,” I pronounced purposefully. “That I’m not sending you the gift receipts.”

  She hissed in a breath. “That’s what I thought you said. Listen, I can’t return my gifts. I tore the tags off of them.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess he’ll just have two then,” I countered. “Was that all you needed? You could’ve just texted me and received the same reply about ten times faster.”

  Fucking leeches.

  “Well, I’m sorry if I took too much of your time. I won’t call again,” she countered.

  Yeah. Fucking. Right.

  She’d call again when she needed an extra hundred to pay her light bill, or the next time her car went into the shop and she was expected to pay anything out of pocket.

  “Have a good night,” I lied.

  I wished she had an awful night. Maybe have a place on her foot that kept itching, keeping her up for long hours so she could think about what a prick she was.

  The only thing that could make that call worse was…

  The phone in my hand started to ring again, and I answered it and placed it back up to my ear.

  “Yeah?” I asked without merriment.

  “Hey, how’s the boy?” my brother asked.

  “He’s been better,” I said, curious to what he was about to ask for.

  “That’s great news,” he said, not listening to a thing I said.

  Who said it was ‘great news’ that a kid had ‘been better?’

  Certainly not me.

  “What’s up?” I murmured.

  “I got the kids’ things today. Would it be possible to get the receipts? The kids have moved up sizes and they won’t fit anymore.”

  I snorted at my brother’s words. “Listen, bro. I got them a computer and a tablet. They’re not for sizes. They’re one size fits all.”

  “Oh, I know. But they want those bigger ones,” he backpedaled.

  I guess I should be impressed that he said he wanted a different size. At least he came up with a semi-plausible lie.

  You know, if I hadn’t done the shopping for them myself and asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas.

  What? Did they think I was stupid?

  “When I called and talked to the kids last month, they told me exactly what they wanted from me. I got them both what they wanted. An iPad Pro, and a new Dell laptop.” I paused. “Exactly what they asked for. If they don’t like it, oh well,” I growled semi-snappishly.

  “Oh, okay,” he mumbled. “Well, I guess they’re okay then. Thanks. Have a good night. Oh, and you played well in the last two games.”

  I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “You, too.”

  There was no point in correcting him on the fact that I hadn’t played in the last two games to play well. They didn’t watch me play. They said they did, but they didn’t.

  My Grams had also been the one to tell me that they don’t like baseball and that when asked to turn the games on when she’s down there, they refuse.

  “Your brother and sister are assholes,” Wrigley’s angry voice came from behind me.

  I looked up to find her standing in the doorway.

  “Yeah,” I agreed sullenly. “They are.”

  She studied my face for long moments. “Do you…will you stay the night?”

  My heart started to gallop.

  “Uhh,” I hesitated.

  “Please?”

  She hadn’t said that word to me in a really long time, and most assuredly hadn’t said anything in that tone. Like she was pleading with me with everything she had to give.

  “I…”

  “You can sleep in my bed.”

  Like that would help.

  “I…”

  “I need you here, Georgie.”

  I never was able to tell her no.

  “I…”

  “To be honest, I think I need you to hold me. I feel like my world has tipped on its axis, and the only thing that is right in it right now is you.”

  “Okay.”

  The blurted-out word was said so fast that she blinked.

  “Are you okay?”

  I grinned. “I was trying to say I’d love to, but you interrupted me ten times. I had to make sure I got the message across.”

  She grinned, then stepped back.

  “There’s a condition, though.”

  My brows drew down as I looked at her in surprise. “What?”

  “You have to give me your phone,” she answered.

  I held the phone out to her, not even hesitating.


  “It’s yours.”

  Chapter 18

  Leeches would be less invasive than you.

  -Things not to say to your ex-husband’s family over text message

  Wrigley

  I tiptoed out of the room and moved as quietly as my stumbling, sleepy body could carry me.

  I made it into Micah’s room and gave a sleepy smile when I saw George standing over his bed doing the same thing I was.

  “He okay?”

  George turned, having heard me, and nodded. “He’s fine. I came in to check on him. Made a whole lot of noise doing so, and then stood here to watch him. Did I wake you?”

  “I had to pee,” I lied.

  I didn’t have to pee. He’d woken me.

  But I wanted to see what he was doing, so I’d gotten up and followed behind him when he took too long to come back.

  The last two weeks, he’d been at my side, and I’d gotten used to him being there.

  I’d forgotten in all our time apart just how much I liked him plastered against me.

  Just the thought of him leaving earlier had sent me into a panic, and then before I could work up the courage to ask him to stay, he’d hightailed it out of my apartment like he had better places to go.

  Then I’d gone to the door and opened it while he’d placed his head against the wall in the hallway, and I realized that he hadn’t wanted to leave any more than I wanted him to go.

  And then his sister and brother had called, and I’d gotten angry.

  My ultimatum of having his phone for him to come inside hadn’t been a paltry request. I’d literally taken his phone and turned it onto silent once he’d come through the door. Over the course of the night, he’d gotten three more phone calls from his sister, and one from his brother, and all of them resulted in pissed off voicemails when he hadn’t answered.

  God, I hated his family.

  They were assholes to the fourth degree.

  I wanted to punch them all in the face each time they said something mean to George. Even though, in all honesty, he’d never tell them that they were hurting his feelings. He’d rather play off that he was upset rather than actually letting them know that they’d gotten to him.

  And, I understood that. Mostly.

  I just hated that they continued to treat him the way they did.

  They knew that Micah had been hurt.

  They were fucking lucky they got anything at all, in my opinion.

  And, let’s not forget that Christmas was still over a month and a half away.

  There was no way in hell that they’d purchased any gifts for them yet. They waited until the last minute to buy anything, and normally what they got were the crappy leftover unwanted toys from the Dollar Store on Christmas Eve.

  I knew, because the year that everything in my life was perfect, we’d taken one God awful weekend to go up there and spend the holiday with them so Grams didn’t have to split her time between all of us.

  It’d ended in a lot of crying on my end, Grams pissed off to hell and back, and George trying to buy kids presents on Amazon and get them delivered the day after Christmas.

  Needless to say, the next year we didn’t go back, and then we’d gotten divorced.

  This would be my third Christmas with George being a part of my life, and I would be damned if he went there again just to appease them.

  Fuckers.

  So yeah, I shoved his phone into a drawer so he wouldn’t get any of the calls. Then deleted the texts and calls every couple of hours so he wouldn’t know that they called.

  Then I’d texted Grams and let her know that we were home, and what the other two asshole grandchildren of hers did.

  She’d then informed me that she was coming to our house on Christmas, and to make sure we got over whatever we’d started to fight over by then because she didn’t want to have two Christmases.

  “I saw it happen on the news.”

  I blinked and looked up to find George standing closer to the bed, his hand running over Micah’s hair.

  “You did?” I croaked.

  God, if there was one thing I never wanted George to know, it was the particulars to that accident.

  I hadn’t wanted him to know—or see—what exactly had happened. I didn’t want him to know that Micah’s poor little body had taken such a beating. I didn’t want him to have those visuals forever in his mind.

  But in doing so, I’d kept all of it bundled up inside, and it was hard to function when all I kept seeing was my little boy’s body flying through the air.

  “Yeah,” George said. “The radio station had a television crew there recording the footage for the five o’clock news. Apparently, it was a big deal since we’d never been to the playoffs before. They wanted to document the excitement of the town. Meaning I saw the entire thing happen in real time.”

  I looked down at my hands, which I was tangling together in the dark.

  “I’m sorry, George,” I whispered. “If there was one thing in this world I would keep from you, it’s that.”

  Then I felt George’s muscular arms wrapping around my shoulders. “I don’t want you to protect me from that,” he murmured. “I was letting you know because I wanted you to know that I understood. And if you ever wanted to talk about it, I’d be there to listen.”

  I pressed my forehead deeper into the indention of his pectorals and shook my head. “That day was truly the worst day of my life.”

  “Mine, too,” he agreed. “I think I might’ve scared the guys. Rhys, the unshakeable badass, looked at me like I had a screw loose.”

  “You do have a screw loose,” I teased.

  He squeezed me tighter. “Only when it comes to my family. To you and Micah.”

  That I agreed with wholeheartedly.

  I breathed him in, basking in his scent, and remembering how much I’d missed it over the last nine months.

  I’d hugged him more in the weeks since Micah had been hurt than I had in the last year.

  And I realized just how much I’d been missing that, too.

  “Let’s go to bed,” he whispered.

  I felt the reverberation in his chest along my head and hands.

  And suddenly, I felt like crying.

  “Okay,” I whispered gruffly.

  He let me go and guided me back into the bedroom, and we both went to our respective sides of the bed.

  We were less than a foot apart, but goddamn, it might as well have been a freakin’ mile.

  I wanted to curl into him. I wanted to touch him.

  I wanted him.

  I breathed through the tears until suddenly I just couldn’t do it anymore.

  I had to be in his arms.

  He had to hold me, or I might very well die.

  I crawled to him, and he didn’t even hesitate. He opened his arms and curled around me like he used to do and said, “Thank God.”

  I didn’t read into those words.

  Tomorrow, I might think twice about what he said.

  But for right now, I wanted this. I wanted to feel normal. I wanted what we used to have. Just for one more night.

  Tomorrow, I’d go back to how it used to be. I’d apologize for acting the way I’d acted.

  And I’d be freakin’ miserable.

  Right now, I had the chance…and I needed to take it.

  I gathered my courage and said the words that I should’ve said nine months ago.

  “I was wrong.”

  He paused. “Wrong about what?”

  “Wrong to yell at you. Wrong to tell you that you had no right to do what you did. Wrong all the way around.” I took a deep breath, and then told him the one thing that I should’ve said all those months ago that would’ve made all this disappear. “I never stopped loving you. I love you so much that sometimes it hurts to be me. To know what I gave up.”

  His arms tightened around me.

  “I’ve been miserable without you. Micah�
��s been miserable. I’ve been living for the days that I get to watch you on TV, or at the games in person. The days you pick up Micah I cry for hours after you leave.” I took a deep breath. “And the day I saw you on that date? That was the day that I fully died inside. I didn’t think anything could make it worse, and then Micah got hurt.”

  I blew out the rest of the air in my lungs, then inhaled deeply to continue to try to convince him of just how much I’d missed him.

  But, before I could start in on a new explanation, or expound on the old one, he was kneeling over the top of me.

  Then, there wasn’t any more talking.

  There were only his hands on my body. His lips on my lips. His cock digging into my pussy.

  Then the sheet was yanked out from between us, my underwear were ripped from my body and down my legs, and his hips were settling in between my splayed thighs.

  Before I could so much as gasp in a breath at the suddenness of his moves, his cock was at my entrance, and everything was once again right with my world.

  At least, I thought all was right with my world.

  Then he started to press farther inside, and the rightness in my world turned into completeness.

  Him, here, inside of me? It was everything I’d dreamed about since the day that I’d said those ugly words. Since the day I’d ruined us.

  And I started to cry.

  I couldn’t help it.

  But he didn’t stop. He didn’t slow his thrust. He didn’t do anything but pull his cock out of me, then push it back inside.

  All of his thrusts were so fucking slow that I wanted to scream at him to take me faster.

  Really, I might have had I not been worried about waking Micah up. Micah, who’d had trouble going to bed because of his casts.

  So no, I would do nothing to ruin this moment for us.

  Instead, I ran my hands over his body. Refamiliarized myself with everything that was George Hoffman.

  I smoothed my hands up his neck, feeling the thickness there, then moved on to cup his bearded chin. Moments later I pulled him down so that his mouth was once again covering mine, and cried out when he shifted his hips.

  “George,” I gasped into his mouth. “Yes. Please.”

  He didn’t exactly give me what I’d wanted, but he did give me what I needed. And what I needed was his cock filling me, and him not slowing or changing anything that he was doing.