Hard and Fast

by Kathy Lyons

  I waggled my eyebrows. “Right back at ya.”

  He tugged at my littlest toe, but then sobered. “I know I’ve been watching you since our New Year’s Eve kiss.” He glanced up almost apologetically. “And you’re part of my pre-game ritual.”

  Baseball players, as a rule, had a zillion weird superstitions. Every player had a pre-game ritual to bring them luck. “What exactly do you do?”

  He smiled. “I just have to see you sometime before I play. Remember that series last year in Chicago, when you had the flu?”

  I nodded. I’d spent the entire week throwing up and praying for death, so I hadn’t traveled with the team. In fact, the coach had threatened to have me fired if I breathed anywhere near his players.

  “I played awful.”

  “I thought you were sick, too.”

  He shook his head. “It was because I didn’t see you before each game. After that, I snapped a picture of you and kept it on my phone, just in case.”

  I blinked at him. “You’re kidding.”

  He abandoned my feet and scrambled out of bed to grab his phone. A moment later, he was showing me a photo of myself. I’d had a pen knotted in my hair, my lipstick was smeared, and there were bags under my eyes.

  “I look awful.”

  “It was your first day back. I think you were still feeling rotten, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I needed that photo.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or to worry about your sanity.” I passed him back his phone. “Could you, at least, take a better picture?”

  He flashed me a grin. “I did. This morning when you were asleep. But that may be too, um—”

  “Provocative?”

  “Yeah. It’s hard to play baseball with a hard-on.” Then he flashed me a grin. “Though I’ve done it before.”

  I didn’t respond. My body was flushed with desire. When he looked at me like that, I couldn’t think. My heart was too full of hope, and the rest of me was on the edge of arousal. It was always that way lately. But that was the problem, right? Was this a hot time headed toward forever? Or was it just a hot time?

  I looked away, rather than give in to the lust that was building inside me. And in that moment, I whispered my biggest question. “Where is this going?”

  I felt his hand still on my ankle. He’d gone to massaging higher on my foot, heading toward the calf and what I knew would end in a mind-blowing orgasm. Then he blew out a breath.

  “I think that if Sophia finds out about us, she’ll do everything she can to destroy you.”

  Talk about throwing a bucket of ice water on my libido. I looked at him and knew he was dead serious. So I countered it with my own determination. “I can handle Sophia.” But when a flash of worry crossed his features, I amended my statement. “I want to face Sophia. You can’t let her control you.”

  “She’s not controlling me. I’m controlling her.”

  Maybe, but at what cost?

  “I also know that I played like shit yesterday because I was thinking about you.”

  Okay, this wasn’t going the way my heart wanted it to. “Players have good games and bad games. No amount of superstition, good luck charms, or pre-game rituals will eliminate the bad ones.”

  He nodded, acknowledging my point. “I like being with you even at work. I admire you, and you make me laugh. And you push me to talk about stuff I don’t want to talk about.”

  I grinned. “You calling me a tough interviewer?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a chuckle. “I am. And I know that I shouldn’t trust you, but I do.”

  I bristled at that. “Why shouldn’t you trust me?” I’d never do anything to hurt him.

  He shrugged. “I don’t trust anyone who lies to me or fudges the truth. And you do it all the time.”

  I jerked back, pulling my leg from his hand. But before I could argue with him, he pulled a journal from the bedside table. It was dark blue leather and worn from handling, and the pages were heavy with ink and clipped out articles. He flipped through until he was nearly at the end and started reading out loud.

  “Connor Hart’s smarts are what caught the eye of Bobcat owner, Joe DeLuce. ‘He reads the field like nobody else. Thank God, his knees are holding strong. We want him for years to come,’ DeLuce says.”

  Connor looked up and held my gaze with a level stare. I frowned at him and shrugged. So he was reading something I wrote about him. So what?

  “First off, Joe doesn’t talk like that. Second, I caught his eye because of my throwing stats and because I was cheap. It had nothing to do with any smarts. Third, my knees are crapping out, and last, there’s no way he’d promise me a job for years to come. My contract runs out before next season.”

  I gaped at him. “You’re counting that as lying to you?”

  He shrugged. “About me. Same thing.”

  He couldn’t possibly be that rigid. “Let’s start at the beginning. Joe talks like that when he’s giving interviews to the press. You caught his eye for a lot of reasons, and he’s called you smart a dozen times. No way in hell is he going to tell anyone your knees are crapping out, even if they are. And he does hope you’ll be with the Bobcats for years to come.” I folded my arms tight across my chest. Good God, how had I gone from turned on to livid in two seconds? “That’s what Joe said. Exactly. Because it’s a quote.”

  He nodded. “And you reported it. You shaded the whole article about how smart I am. Smart enough to know that I have to up the next area of my game.”

  It sounded like we were talking in circles. “You are focused on becoming a better hitter.”

  “Not to round out my game. Because my knees are shit, and if I want to keep playing, I have to get better at something other than catching.” He shifted on the bed to extend his legs out before him, and I couldn’t help but notice they were still swollen from yesterday’s game. “You reported a lie.”

  “I reported the truth. Just not the truth you see.”

  He shrugged. “Facts are facts. And in this world of fake news, accuracy matters.”

  “I didn’t lie. There is not one thing in there that’s a lie.”

  He sighed. “Maybe. But you didn’t tell the truth either, and that bothers me.” He took a breath, and for once I wasn’t distracted by the breadth of his torso. “I’m not telling you to stop being a publicist. I’m just saying it bothers me.”

  It took me a few seconds, but I finally understood. “You hate the spin, even when it’s in your favor.”

  He nodded, and there was defeat in the movement. “Spin is what Sophia does. It’s how she destroyed Cassie.”

  No way could I touch that without more information. So I put away my anger and tried to focus on his perspective. “I need details. And before you ask, this is all off the record. I’d never tell a soul about anything we say today.” And yet, even as I said the words, I wondered at them. This was the type of thing I’d usually talk to my sister about. Boyfriend troubles and the like. Which, naturally, made me wonder just how much truth was in me. What did it say about me if I promised him that I’d never tell a soul when I knew that I’d want to discuss the details with my sister?

  I wouldn’t. But I felt odd knowing I couldn’t. Bailey had always been there to help me see all sides of an issue.

  Meanwhile, Connor started absently rubbing his thigh right above his left knee. “Sophia constantly shaded things to Cassie. Your teacher said your grammar and spelling are terrible.” He looked up at me. “I spoke with her English teacher. What she said was that Cassie was so smart, her thoughts came out too fast, and her grammar and spelling suffered.”

  “Ouch.”

  Connor snorted, and the sound wasn’t pleasant. “That isn’t close to the worst. She told Cassie that her prom date canceled. Well, he did, but Cassie didn’t find out until two days later that it was because his mother had been in a car accident.”

  “Sophia knew the truth?”

  Connor nodded. “Her exact words were,
‘What did the details matter? He wasn’t taking her to prom.’”

  Details like that always mattered.

  “I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “Some people are just clueless, you know? They have no idea how someone else is going to receive the information.”

  “Sophia’s smarter than that.”

  He nodded glumly. “Back when I was in the minors, she told Cassie I didn’t have time for her. That she shouldn’t bother me when I was working so hard. And she told me that Cassie was too caught up with high school and a boyfriend to talk to me.” He glared at the headboard. “None of that was true.”

  “Did you ever confront her about it?”

  “She said she was protecting us both. That I needed to focus on baseball and that Cassie shouldn’t be so clingy.”

  “How did you figure out what happened?”

  “I went to one of Cassie’s high school volleyball games. The schedule was on the internet, and I thought I’d surprise her. Only she wasn’t there. They told me she’d quit the team months before.” He shook his head. “I went home to confront her. Sophia was out somewhere. Thank God, she hadn’t changed the locks. I found Cassie on the bathroom floor.”

  I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “Attempted suicide?”

  He nodded, his expression haunted. “Pills. I got her to throw up while we waited for the ambulance. The truth came out over the next few days.”

  He was so quiet as he spoke, his words barely audible, his body tightly contained. I could see the pain in him so clearly. It was as if every cell in his body was rigid with it. But he only let it out quietly, in measured words and steady breaths.

  Well, I wasn’t so controlled. So while he stared at his swollen knee, I stretched forward and pulled him into my arms. I held him when his back muscles tightened and he refused to rest in my arms. I pressed my cheek to his and kissed the hard jut of his jaw. And I whispered into his ear, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”

  He gripped my elbows but didn’t push me away. “Don’t you get it? She’s my sister. They’re both my sisters. Who else could have known?”

  “Your father?”

  He snorted, and I didn’t blame him. I knew next to nothing about Connor’s dad. He’d been an academic at a community college but had taken a sabbatical after Connor’s mother had died. Later, he’d gone back to teaching English Literature, though he’d never been to a baseball game, a volleyball game, or set foot outside his campus except to go home and back. I’d wondered if he’d been slightly agoraphobic. Whatever the truth, he hadn’t been a factor in Connor or Cassie’s lives. And then he died a few years ago from a heart attack.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  He shrugged that off. “It’s Sophia’s fault for doing it. And it’s mine for not looking deeper. For never questioning when she said shit that didn’t make sense.”

  He let me hold him for a minute, and maybe he drew comfort from my touch. I couldn’t tell because he eventually pushed me back onto the mattress and held my gaze with a level one of his own.

  “I don’t respect liars, Gia. And that includes people who speak in half-truths.” He waited a moment to make sure I understood. “Or with spin.”

  Which meant me or anyone who worked in publicity or marketing. What was that but the profession of spin? “Bet you hate politics,” I quipped because that was the only way to cover the sharp bite of pain I suddenly felt.

  “I despise it.”

  I nodded, because what else could I do? “Everything has spin, Connor. Even in sports, there’s the language of the best hitter, the greatest catch, the most exciting team.”

  He nodded, but his expression didn’t change. And I could see in his mind, it was all bullshit. And he didn’t respect bullshit.

  “But you work with Sophia. She’s your publicist. Isn’t she your ultimate gray area? She’s a liar among liars, and she’s also the one who got you to little league practice. You must see that there’s good and bad—”

  “She’s in my life because I made a deal with her. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “And when Cassie no longer needs your protection?”

  His jaw muscles jumped at that. Obviously he would protect her until the day he died. “When and if Cassie is strong enough to face down Sophia, I will cut Sophia out of my life like the bad seed she is.”

  Wow. I believed him. And I also had no trouble believing that Sophia deserved that and more. And yet, I thought of all my friends from foster care, kids I grew up with or who bounced in and out of my life in short blazes of glory. All of them were liars, by Connor’s definition. And many were a great deal worse. Thieves, con artists, abusers who had been abused and were just acting the way they’d been taught.

  But they were also the kids who’d shared good times with me. They’d taught me how to face down bullies in school, scam a few dollars to get food, and hide when it was too dangerous to run.

  “I can’t live in that kind of world, Connor. One where there is no flexibility and no understanding.”

  “I know,” he said softly. Then he reached out and stroked my hair, wrapping a curl around his fingers. “I don’t like what you do most of the time. I wince at every Facebook post and tweet. I thought the publicity photos were okay, but then I saw you touching up Rob’s.”

  “I was just adjusting for sunlight and bringing out his eyes.” Simple things. A normal part of my job, but I could understand the way he saw it. He’d been lied to most of his childhood, and now even the smallest twist in the facts bothered him. “Damn it, Connor, you’re smarter than this. You know the world doesn’t work in absolutes. You have to know that!”

  “I do. But that doesn’t mean I can’t hold myself to a higher standard. And those I love, too.”

  God, he was twisting a knife in my chest. He’d said the word love. He’d even looked at me like I could be someone he cared about. Except at the same time, he was telling me that I didn’t measure up. That my job alone defined me as a liar. Which left me with one final, inescapable conclusion.

  “So we’re done.”

  “We should be,” he said. I would have left then, but he caught my hand and held me still. “But I don’t see a liar when I look at you. I don’t think about how you spend your day working the press.”

  “What do you see?”

  “A strong woman I admire. A woman who pushes me to face things I don’t want to see. A woman who makes me laugh when I really want to be grouchy. You make my heart lighter, and I can’t stop thinking about you.” He pulled my face to his. “Gia, I don’t know what to do here. I shouldn’t love you.”

  I waited, wondering if he would finish the sentence. Wasn’t he supposed to say, I shouldn’t love you, but I do? But the words didn’t come, and that left me hanging, my heart beating painfully in my throat as I fought back tears.

  But once the tears started pricking, anger swiftly rode in to save the day. Where the hell was my self-respect? He found my moral character lacking, the bastard. The only thing I’d done wrong was to open my heart and my body to him.

  Well, fuck this. And fuck him. If he didn’t want me, then I was out of here. He could try and find some saint to grace his bed because that sure as hell would never be me. So I twisted my arm out of his, scrambled out of bed, and rushed to pull on my clothes. I had to get out of there before the pain became too deep. Before I curled into a corner and sobbed my eyes out.

  Because this was the secret dread of every street kid—that someone would look deep enough to see their inner self and judge them as worthless.

  I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to get right in his face and yell that I was not immoral. That I had never lied about anything. That I was pure as the driven snow, but that wasn’t true. And so I told him the truth. As I jerked on my bra and T-shirt, the words started falling like the tears I wouldn’t let go.

  “Well, I guess you dodged a bullet with me then.” I lifted my gaze and glared at him. “Because I do
n’t just spin stories about the Bobcats. I’ve lied about much bigger things. I’ve said my mother’s dead when she wasn’t. In my college essay, I wrote that I’d slept on the street for months when it was only a couple of weeks. I used to steal food from the restaurants where I worked, and I have no idea how many times I’ve shoplifted. I started with mittens because my hands were so fucking cold, but once I stole a pair of jeans right off a table display. They didn’t fit me worth a damn, but I kept them anyway. I ended up giving them to my foster sister. They fit her like a dream.”

  I jerked my T-shirt into place then folded my arms across my belly. I didn’t want to say these things to him. I didn’t want the words to come out to anyone, but they kept flowing along with all the pain and embarrassment. “I used to get high, too, when I was with my second to last foster family. We all did. I was nine.”

  “Gia, you don’t have to tell me—”

  “I want you to know who you’ve been sleeping with. A liar and a thief. Oh, and that’s another thing. I lost my virginity at thirteen. I was seeing a high school kid, and he said it was that or he’d dump me, so I said yes. It hurt like hell, but I pretended I liked it.”

  He cringed. “That’s awful.”

  “Yeah, it was. Thank God, my final foster family set me straight. And my foster uncle taught the bastard what happens when someone screws with a Kubic. He beat the crap out of him, and I hadn’t even been adopted yet. My new mother taught me about self-respect for when I felt strong and gave me condoms for when I didn’t.” Tears wet my face, and I wiped them away with impatient slaps at my cheeks. “You’re blackmailing your bitch of a sister, and you have the nerve to tell me I’m not good enough. That you hate yourself because you might have feelings for me.”

  “That’s not true!” He was off the bed now, standing before me, stark naked. I saw him wince as he put weight on his swollen knee, and I hated myself because I wanted to help him tape it up. “I’m trying to say I’m confused. You aren’t like anyone I ever thought I’d want. And yet I think about you all the time. I want you in my bed all the time.”

  “Even though I disgust you.”