Stealing Home(62)

My body rocked from the sob I held back. “How can you say that?”

“Because forgiveness is part of a relationship.” He took a breath and made his first step toward me. “Listen, I’m going to screw up. Everything from a simple mistake like forgetting to bring home milk to a serious f*ck-up.” His tongue worked into his cheek. “Like coming on way too strong from the start and making you think all I wanted was a f*ck buddy.”

“That’s not why I thought that,” I said. “I mean, yeah, you came on so strong you probably set a few records there too—”

“Can you forgive me for that?” The promise of a smile was in his eyes.

“Forgiven.”

The smile started to spread, but then something seemed to hit him. “Wait. If it wasn’t because of me coming on too strong, why did you think all I wanted was sex from you?”

“I didn’t think that. Not really. Or not at first,” I rambled.

“Not at first? So it was only after getting to know me that you started to think that?” Rightly so, Archer’s face was creasing with confusion.

“No, sorry, this is harder to explain than I thought it would be.”

His brow peaked. “Imagine trying to keep up with it.”

“Someone said something to me,” I tried again. “Something about you and why I was on the team.”

He circled his bat at me. “Because you were the best person for the job?”

“You’d think, right? But no, that’s not what I was told.”

Luke’s jaw stiffened. “What were you told?”

There was no easy way to put this. No gentle way to phrase it. “That I’d been hired to pretty much be your beck-and-booty-call girl. Oh, and after that main priority, to fill in as an athletic trainer.”

Luke was quiet for a minute, his face a blank canvas. Then a few dark strokes of anger lashed across it. “And you believed it?”

I shifted. “This person made a convincing case. He brought up Callie, who’d been on board with the team your first season. The physical therapist the next season, and the dietitian last season.”

His chest was moving fast, the grip on his bat turning his knuckles white. “Other than Callie, I barely knew those women. If they were some perk the Shock lined up for me, they failed to mention it in my contract because I sure as shit wouldn’t have signed up for something like that.”

“I know,” I interrupted. “I know that now.”

“But you didn’t at first?”

My head bowed as I scuffed at the dirt with my toes. “No.”

“Why?”

I made myself look at him. He didn’t seem angry anymore, maybe just a little disappointed. “Because believing someone like you could only be interested in me for sex was so much easier than believing someone like you wanted the rest too.”

His gaze roamed me before settling on my eyes. The look in them siphoned the air right from my lungs. “Someone would have to be the world’s biggest fool to look at you and not want everything, Allie.”

If it was capable of bursting from being overfull, my heart would have right then. “But everyone looks at you, Luke Archer, and wants everything. I’m just one of those millions.”

Luke tossed the ball back into the bucket and started toward me, each step slow and purposeful. “No, everyone looks at me and sees a number, a team, stats. It takes a rare person to see the stubborn ass I can be at times and not walk away. A rare person to put up with this lifestyle, the schedule, my moodiness, and my seeming inability to hit the brakes once I get started. It takes a special person to see the real me and not be scared away.”

“Rare? Another word for abnormal. Atypical. Unusual.” I smiled as he approached me. “So are you saying I’m you’re abnormal person?”

“Hell yeah, that’s what I’m saying.” When he was in front of me, he wound his bat around my back and pulled me to him with it. “And I’m your abnormal person too.”

My hands lifted to his chest as he held me to him like he had the day of the photo shoot. The cool metal of his bat running across my back, the warm planes of his body spanning my front, the heat in his eyes made me weak at the same time it made me strong.

“Before I kiss you, before I do more”—his dimple pierced into his cheek—“I need to know who told you that.”

“Why? Are you going to threaten to kick his ass too?”

He groaned, giving me a little shake. “Please don’t bring up that first line fail ever again. It will haunt me to the grave as it is.”

“I’ll never bring it up again. Except for when I have to.”

The lightness left his face as he held my stare. “Who was it?”

“Who do you think?”

“I know who I think, but I want to know if I’m right.” He waited for my answer, not saying anything else.

One side of my face drew up. “Shepherd.”

Luke’s head fell back, a grumble vibrating in his chest. “That night at the charity event?” When I nodded, another sound erupted from his throat. “That son of a bitch. I saw you and him all up close to you, and I wanted to tear his throat out. If I’d known what he was saying to you, I actually would have.”