Stealing Home by Nicole Williams
I wasn’t sure I’d survive the night. I wasn’t sure I’d survive the hotel.
As soon as the team had gotten checked in, I’d disappeared into my room and hadn’t left it. The phone started ringing five minutes after I locked myself inside. Since my cell was still turned off, I guessed he figured he’d try to get a hold of me this way. After the third call went unanswered, I took the phone off the hook. I wasn’t ready.
My cell I turned back on because I couldn’t risk missing a team call, but I kept it on silent so his calls, which came in every fifteen minutes, wouldn’t echo through the room. I refused to look at the stream of texts coming in from him, or the ones I’d missed.
As a distraction, I flipped the television on to break the silence and the tone of my thoughts. It didn’t work.
It was just past eleven when a soft knock sounded outside my door. I’d just been heading into the bathroom when I froze. It wasn’t housekeeping on the other side.
“Allie?” His voice was quiet, but it seemed to echo through my room like a shout. “I know you’re in there. I heard you moving around. I’ve been standing outside of your room for ten minutes trying to figure out what the hell to say. Trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. Are you okay?” A thud came from the other side of the door, like he’d dropped his forehead into it. “Are we okay?”
When I didn’t reply in the form of words or opening the door, I heard him sigh. “Is this about the charity ball the other night? Are you upset about something I did? Mad that we didn’t go together? Because you know how I feel about that. I don’t care if people see us. I don’t care if everyone finds out we’re together. I’m tired of pretending.”
His words were so sincere, the ache in them so raw. My throat was burning from the emotions erupting inside me. It was unfair that the world had created a man who could master such sincerity when none existed beyond the façade.
“Please talk to me. Please just open the door. Scream at me. Slap me. Just do something. This silent thing is killing me, Allie. This isn’t how two people communicate.” Another thud on the outside of the door. “Please just tell me what you’re upset about so I have the opportunity to explain myself or share my side of the story. I can’t fix this if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
My arms crossed like I was trying to keep myself together. There was nothing to fix, because there’d been nothing between us. You can’t fix something you never had.
“Allie? Please?” His voice was louder now, tight with emotion.
That was when I almost caved. That was when my body angled toward the door, my hand lifting in its direction. That was when I realized how weak I’d become because of him. I could barely control my own body. I was incapable of controlling my own thoughts, he’d rendered me into such a fragile state. The strength I’d known had left me in my most desperate moment, and part of me hated him for that.
I should have known what I’d felt for him wasn’t the real thing. I should have known it was false, because weren’t the people we cared for supposed to make us stronger instead of weaker? Weren’t they supposed to make us steadfast instead of feeble?
“I’m sliding a note under your door with a place and a time tomorrow morning. I’ll be there waiting. You can make me wait all day if you want, just please show up eventually. Please tell me what’s wrong so I can make it right.”
When a folded up piece of paper slipped under my door, I flinched, but I didn’t move. He was still waiting outside the door. I wondered if he’d wait there all night.
“For whatever I did, or for whatever you think I did, I’m sorry.”
His footsteps moved away from my door, but it wasn’t until I heard the elevator doors ping that I felt safe to move. I could have left his note on the carpet, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep with it sitting in plain view. After grabbing it, I rushed into the bathroom and was about to drop it in the garbage can when I thought twice. If I woke up in a moment of weakness, I could grab it and read what he’d written. In another moment of weakness, I could actually show up to wherever he was planning on being in the morning. In the worst moment of weakness possible, I could let him construct a story and an explanation I’d buy until I was reminded of the reality of it when the season ended, taking my employment with the team with it.
Veering toward the toilet, I dropped the letter inside and flushed it before I could change my mind. I tried not to let the irony of that letter’s journey hit me.
THE INEVITABLE. I couldn’t put it off another minute longer. After failing to sleep last night and spending the rest of the day hiding in my room, I was done. I was done feeling weak and acting like it. We were both employees of the Shock, and it wasn’t like I could reasonably avoid him the next two months of the season.
Confrontation. I’d have to do it eventually, and I guessed as soon as I stepped foot in that locker room, it would happen. That was fine. If he wanted to so desperately know why I’d cut him off, I’d let him know. He was an idiot if he didn’t already have an idea why.
Instead of taking the bus the team had chartered over to the stadium, I let Coach know I’d catch a cab over. Shepherd was technically who I reported to, but after our last conversation, which was about as unprofessional as it got, I wasn’t eager to report anything to him. Least of all why I was taking a cab instead of the team bus, because he’d know why. He’d love knowing why. I couldn’t deal with Shepherd’s gloating today. Not with everything else.
The locker room was buzzing when I shoved through the doors. After the win of the home game and the season continuing to go so well, the guys were almost acting like they’d already bagged the pennant. Tonight’s game against the New York Vikings should be a straightforward win. The players knew it too.
Shit-eating grins and Viking jokes were flying around the room. The only holdout was one player sitting on the bench in front of his locker, his head cast down, the only one who hadn’t changed into his uniform.
His back was to me, and I had every intention of getting straight to work, but seeing him like that hit me hard. I’d seen Archer after the two losses the team had taken this season, and he hadn’t looked a fraction as distraught as he did now.
A ball lodged in my throat out of nowhere. I wondered how long he’d waited this morning. I wondered what he’d thought with every minute that passed when I didn’t show up. I wondered what he’d looked like when he left. I wondered about it all when really, I shouldn’t have been wondering about any of it.
As though he could sense my presence or the tone of my thoughts, his back stiffened right before his head rotated over his shoulder. Our eyes locked, and while I was trying to fake the indifference in mine, the hurt in his was the genuine thing.
Shoving to a stand, he turned toward me, making no qualms about where he was heading as he moved through the locker room. The look on his face, the way he was moving toward me, I knew I had to get out of there. From the set of his jaw, I guessed he didn’t care if the whole locker room heard what he was about to say.
Veering to the right, I ducked into the med room. Just as I was closing the door, it shoved open.
“You’re not shutting this door on me too.” Archer moved inside the room, closed the door, and pressed the lock.
If this was the way he wanted to do this, then fine. No time would be opportune for confronting him. Slipping an imaginary coat of armor into place, I crossed my arms at him. “Looks like you didn’t exactly wait all day for me to show up.”
He had to work his jaw loose to respond. “After six hours, I got the hint that you weren’t planning on showing up.”
He’d waited six hours. I didn’t know why, but at the same time I felt myself harden with guilt, I softened with affection. Both were erased by the anger that surged to the surface when I realized I was letting emotions cloud my judgment where Luke Archer was concerned.
“Six hours isn’t all day. Try not to make a habit of lying—you might get caught in one someday.”
My teeth sank into my tongue to keep from lashing out my answer. The honest one. “I’m not pissed at you, Luke. I’m just over you.”
He made a face. “What does that mean?”
“This. Us.” I waved my finger between him and me. “I’m done. I’m out. Over it.”
He was about to snap something back when he caught himself. Scrubbing his face, he took a few breaths before opening his mouth. “And you decided this when?”
My shoulder lifted. “A little while ago.”
“You said yes to wearing my letterman jacket three nights ago, Allie. What in the hell’s changed since then?”
Besides finding out why I’m really here? “Oh, please, Luke. You and I both knew this wouldn’t go anywhere. It was fun, but it’s time to move on.”
“‘It was fun’? Is that really all you saw us as? Is that really all you wanted?”
“What did you want? You were the one trying to get me into bed two sentences after introducing yourself to me. What did you really want if it wasn’t a lot of no-commitment-required fucking?”
My words hit him like a shove. Backing into the door, his body hit it with a heavy thud. “Is that what you really think? That all I wanted was a few good fucks out of you?” He waited for my answer but kept going when I didn’t give him one. I didn’t feel the need to provide a verbal confirmation. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come on so strong, maybe I shouldn’t have fallen into bed with you so quickly.” When I exhaled sharply, he kicked his heel against the door. “Okay, I know now I shouldn’t have, but I pursued you not because I wanted to get between your legs but because I was hoping to work my way, eventually, into your heart.”
I didn’t know I’d grabbed one of the folded towels on the counter beside me before it was flying at his face.
“What the hell, Allie?” Archer ducked the first one, but he didn’t move when I threw the next few. He let them hit him, one right after the next, until I’d gone through the whole pile.
I didn’t feel any better after. That he could stand there and say those things and seem so sincere and be so full of shit wasn’t fair.
“Just give it up, Archer. It’s fine. We’re both adults. Consenting ones.” I hoped the tremor in my voice was only noticeable to me. “But it’s run its course.”
“Why are you saying this?”
“Because it’s the truth. You can call it what you want, but our relationship was based on sex. You don’t need to apologize. It was great; I just need to move on now.”
His shoulders tensed. “It was not based on sex.”
“It was. It was about two reproductive organs that really liked each other. Don’t make it something it wasn’t.”
The emotion he’d managed to hold back was pouring out of him now, filling the room. “Isn’t,” he snarled. “Stop talking about us like we’re in the past.”
My throat burned, but I kept saying what I needed to. “That’s what history is, Luke. The past.”
His arms wound around the back of his head as he shoved off from the door. He looked lost, the way a person might when they woke up from a coma. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I chewed on my cheek. “There’s nothing to fix or explain or apologize for. I enjoyed my time with you, but it’s over.”
His eyes narrowed on me. “Oh, please. You are no more the person who looks for no-strings relationships than I am.”
I bit back the bullshit that found its way to my lips and reminded myself to stay cool. To play it off like emotions hadn’t been involved. “You barely know me. How can you say that?”
“I know plenty.”
Yeah, you knew all you needed to know to meet your needs. “Well, if you did, you’d know I was just like every other woman who couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be bedded by Luke Archer.” I smiled sweetly at him while bitterness churned in my stomach. “I mean, come on, who wouldn’t want to brag to their friends about scoring with the Homerun King?”
Hurt spread across his face, settling into his eyes. Just when I thought he was going to turn around and leave, he powered across the room toward me. He backed me into the wall, but not by touching me. The look on his face was enough to move me until I could go no farther. He lowered his head until he was at my eye level. Then he waited for my eyes to meet his.
“It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than that to push me away,” he said, leaning in so close I could feel the warmth of his breath. “A hell of a lot more.”
He gave that a moment to set in before he stormed for the door. With his hand on the handle, he paused. “Oh, and by the way, my leg’s doing great. You know, in case my athletic trainer was concerned.”
I stayed planted by the wall, steeling myself. “If you’re still having problems with it, run it by Shepherd. You two seem to be better suited for each other.”
THE SHOCK LOST the game. A game they were favored by a large margin to win. The top team in the nation had just had their asses handed to them by one of the lowest-ranked teams in professional baseball.
That loss might have had a lot to do with a certain clutch hitter striking out three times, getting walked twice, and getting out before he’d made it to first base the one time his bat did manage to connect with the ball.
Number eleven hadn’t just had an off night—he’d had the kind of night people would be talking about for years. He’d errored more times in this one game than he had in his entire career. He’d moved like he’d just had a hip replaced and the surgeon had gone ahead and replaced his shoulder too.
It wasn’t just Archer who’d been off tonight though—the entire team had. Even though the Shock wasn’t just Luke Archer, in a lot of ways, Luke Archer was the spirit of the Shock. He led the team to victories by example, but tonight, the only example he’d set was one of listlessness.
After Coach had screamed his lungs out after the game, we all left that locker room in a state of shock. What the hell had just happened? was written on all of our expressions.
It was the same question I was asking myself as I rode the elevator to my hotel room. The team would be rolling out bright and early for the next game, and after last night’s state of no sleep, I was eager to crawl into bed and punch erase on this day of horrors.
Like earlier, I’d elected to take a cab back instead of the team bus, explaining I had a few things to wrap up before leaving. After Archer’s and my talk before the game, he hadn’t said a word to me. He hadn’t so much as looked my way, not even when he crawled back into the dugout after each strike out and I held out a bottle of water for him. Maybe what I’d said had finally set in. Maybe he was already over me.
Maybe he was already having someone line up his next Incentive Girl since this season’s had cut him off early. I didn’t have the first clue why he’d gone from seeming like he’d cross an ocean on a paddleboard to keep from losing me to acting like I didn’t exist.
When the elevator doors opened, I stuck my head out to make sure he wasn’t waiting outside my door as I was half-expecting he might be. When I felt a stab of disappointment because he wasn’t there, I made myself remember what Shepherd had told me.
Disappointment was a distant memory by the time I shoved open my door.
My room was not the way I’d left it. It didn’t even look like my room at all. The bags hanging over my shoulder fell to the floor, my mouth dropping open as I took in the room. On every surface that was solid or firm enough to support a vase, a bouquet of flowers had made its way onto it. But there wasn’t just one bouquet per surface—there were as many as could fit on that surface.
At least four on each nightstand, a dozen lining the window ledge, I couldn’t count how many on the desk . . . they were everywhere. Even in the bathroom, I discovered when I checked. Vases were scattered along the floor, petals strewn
A hundred varieties of flowers made up the bouquets bursting with color, creating a scent that was just as sweet as it was floral. It was the grandest gesture I’d ever had done for me. The grandest by far.
I didn’t need to open the note propped on my bed to know who was responsible for this. I shouldn’t have, because flowers or not, it didn’t change anything.
I couldn’t help it though. Lifting the card, I found only one simple sentence scratched down in his handwriting.
You’re more.
My eyes kept moving over the words, almost like they were trying to convince themselves there was some other message I was missing. There wasn’t though.
What did that mean? “You’re more”? More than what? More than a fling? More than the girls before me? More of a pain in the ass? Or more than something else I had yet to discover?
You’re more.
Those words haunted me all night, but by the next morning, I’d realized that words were just words. It was the actions behind them that gave them their meaning.
Archer’s actions did not support his words. These two on the note or the ones he’d uttered in the med room before the game yesterday.
You’re more. Whatever he meant by it, it was just a ploy to keep me on his string for the next couple of months. A damage control measure.
No more. That was my response.
ANOTHER CITY. ANOTHER game. Another disaster.
We were bottom of the ninth, and unless one of those miracle things decided to fall from the sky, the Shock was adding another loss to their season.
The team’s spirit had been sullen from the start and it had only gone down from there. Coach looked close to exploding as he paced the dugout like a wounded lion, cursing under his breath about replacing the entire lot of babies for some real players.