Hitting the Curve Read online

  “You made it.” Levi’s voice is closer than I’m expecting, catching me off guard.

  He seems to be making a habit of that.

  It’s getting harder and harder for me to mind.

  “I heard the popcorn was pretty good.” I shake the half-empty box in my lap, giving him a smile of my own.

  I can’t shake the image of him on the field nearly as easily. Even sweaty and spattered with dirt and grass stains, Levi is the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes on. It occurs to me that I wouldn’t mind laying more than that on him. In fact, seeing him in uniform up close might just make him even more handsome, especially after watching him in action.

  It’s a relatively new feeling. Not that I’ve never been attracted to a man before— I’m not made of stone or anything. But nobody’s ever threatened my sanity, never even come close to making me waver from my dogged single-minded pursuit of a degree the way Levi does with just a look.

  “So this means you’ll be my partner, right?” Levi beams that smile at me, and it’s brighter than all the lights in the stadium combined. For a moment, my heart threatens to stop, a shock of heat vibrating between my thighs. Then I remember what he’s actually talking about.

  “Levi, I—” I start to shake my head, but Levi just takes his cap off, plopping it on top of my head without a word.

  It’s a simple gesture, surprisingly effective. Every thought in my head evaporates as the brim of his ball cap sinks to the middle of my forehead.

  “I’ve got to get back out there. Let’s talk after the game, ok?” He takes a half step back, easily navigating the bleachers without looking behind him. I can’t quite read the look on his face, and I’m not entirely sure it matters anymore.

  “Ok,” I sigh. “We’ll talk. But no promises. I work alone.”

  “There’s no I in team, sha.” Levi winks one of those sparkling green eyes at me before bounding down the rest of the bleachers.

  Chapter 6

  Levi

  They’re gonna find intelligent life up there on the moon. And the Canterbury Tales will shoot up to the top of the bestseller list and stay there for twenty-seven weeks. And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league. — The Mountain Goats, ‘Cubs in Five’

  There’s something beautiful about the ballpark after a game.

  Once the frenzy dies down and the crowd thins out, once the dust settles and the buzz of the lights quiets, it becomes an entirely new place. Peaceful. Almost meditative.

  Normally, I like to take my time after a game. There’s a ritual to it. Like everything about baseball, savoring the win or dissecting a loss is steeped in tradition, doused with repetition, and sprinkled with a liberal serving of superstition.

  Not tonight, though.

  Tonight, for the first time since I can remember, something more beautiful than the field— more engaging than the game and more pressing than all of my teammates combined— is waiting for me. Charity’s deep blue eyes are etched into my mind. The bashful smile, the hesitant quiver in her voice, the stubborn refusal and the clear interest.

  She’s a puzzle. One I intend to unravel one gorgeous strand at a time until she comes undone in my hands.

  I don’t manage to slip away unnoticed, though.

  “Where are you going, Miller?” Trevor’s voice rings out from the dugout as I walk past.

  “Just thought I’d get out of here early. Long game.” I shrug one shoulder casually, hitching my bag higher on my shoulder.

  “Mmhmm.” Trevor’s dark eyes sparkle in the yellow light cast by the dusty bulb above his head. As a catcher, he and I have had to learn to communicate impeccably on the field. As my closest friend, he knows how to read my bullshit off the field better than anyone else. “Seems to me you’re looking to make it an even longer night.”

  I don’t dignify his lame joke with a response, heading out into the stands instead.

  Charity is waiting for me.

  The only one still left on this side of the bleachers, she’s got a book balanced on her knees, studying by the one remaining stadium light left blaring high above the metal seats. She’s still wearing my cap, and the sight of it hits me like a knuckleball to the solar plexus. Blonde ringlets fall out around the edges, framing her heart-shaped face as she skims through a textbook.

  I want to freeze the moment in time before she sees me, keep it in my mind forever.

  “Hey,” Charity looks up, that plump mouth curving into a perfect smile. “I was beginning to think you’d bailed on me.”

  “Never.” I give her an easy grin, but secretly wonder if she knows how much I really mean it. I’m beginning to think I’d be perfectly fine with climbing up the bleachers to find her waiting for me after every game for the rest of my life. “Want to take a walk? It’s a nice night for it.”

  It’s also a nice night for strolling away from the prying ears of teammates.

  Charity nods, slipping her hand into mine as I offer to help her down from her perch on the bleachers. It fits so perfectly, warm and sure, that I keep our fingers intertwined even after we wander out of the park gates.

  “Did you have fun?” I ask with a nod towards the field we’re leaving behind.

  “I did.” Her smile is genuine. “It was my first. Game, that is. Well, my first extracurricular anything.” Charity waves a hand dismissively as if going through college without having a lick of fun is perfectly normal.

  “You’re good at what you do.” She says it quietly, matter-of-factly.

  I’ve had people blowing smoke up my ass about my arm and my skill since I was twelve years old. Charity’s simple compliment, twin spots of color rising to her cheeks as she peeks up at me from under the brim of my own cap, means more than all the others combined.

  We walk the campus for a bit, enjoying the cool night air and the mournful call of katydids. Finally, Charity blows out a long breath. There’s something final about the sound like she’s been mentally arguing with herself since we left the bleachers and just now came to a conclusion.

  “So when do we get to work?” I squeeze her hand good-naturedly. “I have practice first thing in the mornings, but other than that, I’m free to brush up on my mastery of the female orgasm any time. Also, I should let you know my bubble letter game is on point, in case you want to put me in charge of visual aids.”

  Charity rolls her eyes dramatically. She’d almost get away with looking genuinely pissed if it weren’t for the way her dimples are flashing in the moonlight.

  “Levi—”

  “Ok, fine,” I cut her off with as innocent a look as I can muster. “You can make the poster board if you really want to. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. I have three older sisters. I have done a lot of bubble lettering in my time. I’ve even put in my time in the glitter mines.”

  “Levi!” Charity’s laugh is more musical than the strumming guitar trickling out from one of the open dorm windows above us. I decide then and there that I am going to make her laugh as often as possible for the rest of our lives. She stops walking, shaking her head until the brim of my cap sinks down over the pale arch of her blonde eyebrows. “I told you. I work alone. It’s the only way I can make sure I get an A on every assignment.”

  “There’s no I in—” I start to repeat the idiom that’s been drilled into me since my tee-ball days.

  “No.” She cuts me off. “But there are five of them in ‘individual brilliance’,” Charity blinks up at me with a straight face.

  It’s my turn to laugh now.

  “Why don’t you trust me to pull my weight?” I finally ask after I catch my breath. “You think I won’t put in the work?”

  Standing this close to her, it’s impossible not to let my eyes wander. Charity is still wearing her uniform— the black slacks and tan tee-shirt that mark her as an employee of the campus coffee shop. The nondescript clothing does nothing to hide the curves beneath. I can clearly make out the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips and ass. Even the semi-dark
ness around us and the long day she’s had can’t conceal how gorgeous she is. How much I want her.

  Charity licks her lips. It’s a simple action, just a dart of her tongue across the plump swell of her mouth. It still makes my cock ache painfully inside my pants.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Levi.” Charity’s eyes are suddenly everywhere but on mine. “It’s just that I need to keep my grades up. Like, way up. All of my scholarships are riding on it. I’m trying to get into this internship next year—”

  She stops herself, biting down on her lip to stem the sudden flow of excited words from spilling out. It almost physically hurts to watch, the way she cuts off her own happiness.

  “Charity?” I put a finger under her chin, tilting her face until she’s looking up at me. I wait until her blue eyes are looking up into mine before going on. “Tell me about the internship. I want to know.”

  I watch a mixture of unreadable emotions chase across her face. Finally, she smiles at me, stars dancing in her eyes.

  “It’s for a fantastic foster agency.” There’s obvious excitement in her voice. I understand the sentiment. It’s thrilling, to find what you were meant to be doing with your life. “I’d be working directly with children, placing them with families, helping them through the whole transitional process. Specifically, I’d be working with abandoned and orphaned kids; kids like—” she stops herself again.

  “Kids like you were?” I hazard a guess.

  Charity nods.

  We start walking again, heading towards the doorway of her dorm complex.

  “People laugh at the word calling,” I say to her after a moment of comfortable silence. “But I understand exactly what you mean. I knew I was born to play baseball the very first time I held a ball. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me.”

  I reach casually into the back pocket of my uniform pants, pulling out the inhaler that I keep with me, always.

  Charity looks from the piece of blue plastic in my hand back up to my face. Recognition registers in her eyes, even as she seems unwilling to make the connection.

  “You have asthma? What— how? I saw you running and pitching for hours tonight.” She shakes her head as if mentally arguing with herself.

  “I do,” I nod simply. “I just knew what I wanted to do— was made to do. Thorburn’s wrong about me, sha. I’m not just some flash in the pan with a big stick and a great arm.”

  She groans at that, remembering the professor’s cutting words. I’m rewarded with another smile, and it makes the rest of the world melt away.

  “I’ll make sure you keep that four-point-oh, Charity,” I say it more seriously, waiting until I’m sure she’s looking at me again. “And it’s way past time you learned about all the extracurriculars. What good is going through life with your nose in a book if you don’t catch a ball game now and then? We make a great team.”

  Charity chews this over for a moment.

  “That’s— There’s something else,” she finally blurts out. “It’s about the assignment. I’m not sure I can do it. With you, I mean. I need to do a lot of research, and it’ll probably take me twice as long as you.”

  Charity is blushing deeper than the azaleas clinging to the brick building behind us.

  “Thorburn’s assignment?” I ask, watching her nod in some combination of mortification and frustration. It takes my brain a moment to catch up. “Charity, you’ve had an orgasm, right?”

  The thought that someone as beautiful, driven, brilliant, and drop-dead sexy as she is might actually be a virgin is a completely foreign notion to me.

  “Shh!” Charity looks around dramatically as if we were sharing national secrets and not talking about the tragic reality that she’d gone her whole life without feeling a climax shatter her world.

  “No,” She finally says in the angriest tone I’ve ever heard. “I’ve never had an orgasm, Levi. Hell, I’ve never even had a real date. I was too busy trying to get to college. And once I got here, I’ve been too busy trying to stay in college.”

  I let the information sink in.

  Leaning down, I reach around behind Charity, opening the door to the building. This close, I can feel her breath pick up, see the pulse ticking away in her throat. There’s a satisfaction in the way her nipples press against her Gone Wired tee, in the way her hands curl into fists involuntarily when I come in close enough to taste her skin.

  “I’ll be here tomorrow morning—” I start

  “I have to study,” Charity murmurs, her eyes on my lips. “I start doing homework at seven.”

  “There’s only one way to learn about orgasms, sha.”

  I don’t wait for her reply. I don’t have to.

  The look in her brilliant blue eyes when I drop a soft kiss on her porcelain cheek before walking away is answer enough.

  Chapter 7

  Charity

  I had a friend was a big baseball player back in high school. He could throw a speedball by you. Make you look like a fool, boy. — Bruce Springsteen, ‘Glory Days’

  “There’s only one way to learn about orgasms, sha.”

  Levi’s parting words are the first thing in my head when I wake up. No. Before I wake up.

  They haunt my fevered dreams, right along with his gorgeous emerald eyes and his signature smirk. There isn’t a single thing about Levi that doesn’t turn me on, a fact that is as immensely frustrating as the man himself.

  Then again, maybe this is just what I need. If I can take care of the problem without him around, so much the better. I can get both Levi and the accursed Women’s Studies project out of my system once and for all. Time to do a little early morning research.

  I run my hands down my curves, feeling my own body. Even under the thin sheet, it’s too impossibly hot to sleep with a stitch of clothing on. Each night I go to bed in pajamas and wake up buck naked. I dip my fingers between my thighs, picturing Levi’s hands on me instead.

  It feels good. Impossibly good. Holding the thought in my head, I run one hand over a breast, pinching one of my suddenly stiff nipples. Normally it does less than nothing for me, but right now it sends a line of fire straight down my spine and into my pussy.

  A fire that my fingers only stoke to be hotter. Soon I’m sweating in a way that has nothing to do with the swelteringly humid air, gasping, rubbing myself in tight circles as I try to soothe the throbbing ache growing between my thighs.

  For the first time in my life, I can feel it. Something growing inside of me. Something I can almost reach out and touch, something that is only moments away from cresting…

  The knock at my door makes me jump, shattering the moment. Instinctively I jerk my hands away from myself, yanking the sheet up around myself. Once again the knock comes, but I sure as heck don’t.

  The frustration seeps into my voice as I call out.

  “Just a freaking minute!”

  No follow up knocks come, but I can already feel my orgasm slithering back into its cave. Like the groundhog, it saw its shadow and now there’ll only be six more weeks of a dead bedroom.

  I tug up jeans that I normally have to lie down on the bed to zip, anger fuelling me to jerk them up into place around my hips.

  Got to stop snacking at the muffin bar at work.

  I don’t bother with a bra, pulling a thin t-shirt over my breasts. I’m not planning on being at the door long anyway. I don’t know what kind of asshole shows up at unannounced at this hour but—

  I wrench the door open, ready to give whoever-the-fuck a piece of mind, and stop.

  Levi is standing there looking like he just climbed out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue. Docksiders, khaki shorts, immaculate white polo. Everything hangs off of him perfectly, clinging to his narrow hips and broad shoulders in a way that makes my stomach do a flip-flop. I swallow as I lift my gaze up to his too-bright smile.

  “Good mornin’, sha. I didn’t think you were one to sleep in, but it’s a good look on you.”

  Levi lowers his sunglasses as
he gives me a sweeping glance. The kind of head-to-toe once over that usually makes my skin crawl. For some reason, all of my usual reactions are reversed with him. I’m still flushed from my early morning activities, or I’d be blushing an even deeper shade of red than normal.

  “Levi. What. Just...what.” I try to keep my voice calm, cool, collected. My body is anything but.

  The sudden appearance of the literal man of my dreams has me completely mixed up from head to toe. I can’t shake the feeling that despite everything he knows. Knows exactly what I was up to, like he can smell my lustful thoughts. Maybe he can. I don’t put anything past the gorgeous bastard anymore.

  He just keeps grinning at me as he taps his wrist.

  “You said you were going to hit the books at seven. I’m not late, am I?” He asks.

  I blink up at him, completely lost in studying the shape of his jawline. I could shave my legs with that thing, it’s so sharp. Or other parts of me. I squeeze my thighs together as I turn around and head inside.

  When I turn back, Levi is still standing there. Arms folded across his chest, the scattered dusting of hair on his forearms catching the sunlight just enough to draw my attention to them. Damn those are some jacked arms. Imagine what they could do.

  “You going to invite me in, or…?” Levi trails off, still smiling.

  I shake my head at him but beckon him forward with one hand.

  “Come on in. What are you, a vampire?” I chuckle.

  Levi saunters into my dorm room like he owns the place. The room is tiny, what I affectionately call cozy. I know it’s not much, though. Old feelings of shame and inadequacy snake their way through me. He’s probably used to much nicer things.