Stealing Home(61)

Before I could overthink it and second-guess what to say first, I shouted, “I’m sorry, Luke.” When his stance seemed to go even more rigid, I kept going. If he planned on dealing with this the way I’d dealt with him when he’d tried talking to me, I didn’t have much time to say what I needed to. “I messed up. So, so much, and I’m sorry.”

I was halfway to home when Luke’s bat lowered. “Sorry for what? That list could be pretty long from where I’m standing.”

There was a sharpness in his words I wasn’t used to, and he still refused to look back at me. That was fine, but I wasn’t going to leave here before he knew. “For not communicating with you, for starters. I should have told you why I was so upset and given you the chance to explain.”

Luke tapped the bat against home plate. “So you were upset about something? It wasn’t just about our f*ck-buddy shelf life expiring?”

My eyes closed. I’d made a mess by letting my fear drive me. “No, it wasn’t about that. I had you paying for someone else’s mistakes, just like you warned me not to do. I let my fears come between us.”

Luke shook his head. “You let a lot of things come between us.”

“I know.” I stopped when I was still a ways back from where he was. To give him the space I could see he needed.

“You’ve been talking to Alex.” He didn’t voice it as a question.

“You knew?”

Alex had been so proud of herself, thinking she’d given everyone the slip. The first time a seventeen-year-old had sneaked out of the house had been to go talk to her big brother’s girlfriend to talk some sense into her. The “good” gene ran in the Archer family.

“I guessed where she’d run off to when I got the call from Cameron.” For the first time, he glanced back to look at me. It was brief and there was no fondness in his expression, but it somehow managed to make me feel like nothing could really ever be wrong if I could just wake up to Luke’s face every day. “I’m surprised you still have your hair. She wasn’t very happy when she found out you broke up with me.”

“I am too.” I gave my ponytail a little pull. “But she gave me a second chance.”

Throwing the ball still in his hand into the air, the empty ballpark echoed with the sound of his bat connecting with the ball. This one flew over the center field fence.

“She’s always been the generous one in the family.” He reached deep into the bucket for another ball.

“Will you do the same?” I asked, moving a step closer. “Give me a second chance?”

He was quiet for a minute, tossing the ball in the air and catching it. “Did she tell you about Owen?” He was trying to mask it, but the pain in his voice when he said his name was evident. “About what happened?”

I nodded, padding closer. The fine dirt of the diamond felt like cool silk beneath my bare feet. “Yes.”

Luke stared at the center field fence, his eyes narrowing like he was somewhere else. Then his face cleared. “I was going to tell you,” he said, turning so he was almost facing me. “I should have told you sooner, but it’s a complicated story I don’t share freely.” As soon as his eyes lifted to mine, they flitted away. “I want you to know all of me, Allie, but I didn’t want you to know all of me all at once. I wanted the good parts to shine first before the skeletons came falling out of the closet.”

My chest ached, but it wasn’t for me—it was for him. For everything he’d been through and everything he’d risen from. Losing both parents in one tragic night would have ended the careers of most players. Instead, he’d applied for guardianship of his three sisters and made his name a permanent fixture in professional baseball. And then that woman, the baby he’d thought was his—my heart didn’t possess enough beats to throb for him. He could have smeared her name through the mud and cut the little boy off for good. Instead, he’d let the woman be and set up a college fund for the child.

“Luke,” I said, my voice breaking. “You have nothing to explain. I understand all of it.”

His head lowered. “I was just so desperate for comfort after my parents died, for some kind of companionship. I needed someone I could forget about the pain with for a while.” The end of his bat tapped the sides of his sneakers. “My parents had the kind of relationship no one thinks is real, but they had it. Even as a kid, I knew my sisters and I had it good. I wanted what my parents had so badly that I was willing to overlook a lot to find it. I should have trusted my gut with Callie, but I let my desire to find true love justify fake love.”

My hands wound around my stomach like I was trying to hold myself together. “I understand. You don’t have to explain any of that to me. I get it.”

“But I do have to. Don’t you see?” His eyes lifted to mine and stayed there. “Because I want you to know all of me. Not just the good stuff, but the not-so-good too. I don’t want you to know the pretend Luke Archer. I want you to know the real one. Because that’s the Allie Eden I want to know too.”

Flickers of hope were shooting through my veins. “Can you forgive me?”

“Allie.” He exhaled, looking at me like he was surprised I even had to ask. “I forgave you before there was anything to forgive.”