Moonshot(56)

I gasped, he stilled, and there was a moment of pure fullness, his lips against mine, one sweet kiss that promised me everything, including heartbreak.

Then his hand tightened on my hair, he pulled from our kiss, lowering his head beside mine, his breath hot on my shoulder, fingertips biting into my ass, and he started to move.

I didn’t know what I was thinking, my vision of Chase as a lover. I had thought it would be crude. Quick and dirty, like our meeting in the bathroom. I had thought he would be selfish. Demanding. I had been, in a thousand orgasmic ways, wrong.

I was wrong when he started, like that, our souls face-to-face, impossible to escape.

I was wrong when we moved, on our sides, my back to his front, his whisper on my neck, kisses brushing my shoulder, his hands everywhere, thrusts never stopping, not until the moment that my orgasm came, long and brutal, my body seizing around his cock.

I was wrong when he came, inside of me, my hands gripping the edge of the desk, him standing before me, gasping into our kiss, his hands in my hair, his final push so deep and solid that I bucked against it.

I was wrong when he carried me to the bed, and cleaned me up, his mouth following the washcloth, his tongue gentle, then stronger, knowing everything, leaving nothing, my final orgasm one that broke the record books, his name screamed loud enough that Brooklyn must have heard.

I was wrong when he crawled under the sheets behind me and wrapped his arms around me.

I was wrong when he told me he loved me, and I repeated it back.





“The detectives hadn’t even considered an affair. That just wasn’t the direction they were looking. Tobey and Ty Grant had always been baseball’s golden couple, and the Yankee fans loved them. It was because of how iconic they were, of how much so many people believed in them—it was like if they didn’t succeed as a couple, then there was no hope for the rest of us. And that ideal, that hero worship of their relationship was, quite literally, their kiss of death.”

Dan Velacruz, New York Times





84



"Stay.”

“I can’t stay.” I sat up, sliding off the bed and eyeing my panties, damp and alone, on the floor. “I have to get back.” Before he wakes up. I didn’t want to turn and see the clock, was terrified of what it might say. It felt like we’d been in this room for decades. First the sex, then the spooning, then the conversation. Words about nothing, each of us trying to stretch out the time, a hopeless feat.

“What are you going to tell him?”

I gathered my clothes and sat at the desk, working on my panties, then my leggings. “I don’t know.”

He got off the bed, boxer briefs on, and walked over, picking up my shirt and helping me with it, the built-in sports bra a tight fit, his hands taking liberties in their pull of spandex over breasts. I smirked at him despite myself, taking the pullover from his hands and handling it myself.

He didn’t smile back. He looked worried. “Maybe I should come with you.”

“No.” I grabbed my Nikes and sat down in the chair. I didn’t know what he thought. That I was going to walk into my house, wake up my husband, and ask for a divorce? I couldn’t do that to Tobey. I needed to think, to plan, to figure out—

“This isn’t a fling, Ty.” His words were hard, and I looked up at him, momentarily pausing my shoe-tying. “You aren’t going to go back to him and occasionally f*ck me when you are bored.”

I finished the knot and stood. “Don’t talk to me like that.” I glared at him. “Do you think that’s what I’m like? Seriously?”

“No.” He shook his head with a scowl. “I don’t. But I’ve lost you to him before. And I can’t—”

“I understand.”

“You don’t understand. I’ve been alone for four years, haven’t touched another woman, and you’ve been with him every … f*cking … night.” He gritted out the words and I searched his face, trying to understand the frustration I saw in it.

“You haven’t—why not?” I’d seen hundreds of games, thousands of fans. I knew the type of girls, what they wore and how they pounced, especially on the single players, especially on the ones that looked like this man. There had been so many nights where I’d pictured Chase, where I’d cried over what he might be doing and who he might be doing it to. To think that he had been celibate this whole time … it twisted a place deep in my gut. “I didn’t ask you to stay faithful,” I said helplessly, while inside, a part of me sang.

“You never asked me anything, that was the whole problem, a lack of communication.”

It was the merry-go-round of blame that wouldn’t stop, each turn more exhausting, both of us equally to blame. I looked away and he let out a loud breath of frustration. “I tried to be with other women, Ty. I just couldn’t. Every woman that I touched—it just felt like I was cheating on you. Each time, I couldn’t get you out of my head.”

It was what he didn’t say that I heard the loudest. The fact that I hadn’t struggled with the same guilt, the same feelings. For him to not be able to touch another woman—and for me to share Tobey’s bed—my feelings must not have been as strong, my morals not as intact, my love incomplete in some way. I didn’t have an answer for that, no excuse good enough, my cheeks heating with the shame of it all.