Moonshot (29 page)

I pulled my eyes from his hand, from his cock, and looked into his face. Saw pain there, his voice almost shaking on his last words, the need in his eyes so strong it screamed.

“On your back,” he repeated. “Pants off.”

I held his gaze, my sneakers kicked aside, my leggings peeled off. I left on the underwear, a white thong, and he let out a soft sigh, standing alongside the bed, my body stretched out beside him, his hand sliding down, from sternum to tummy, sliding over the white cotton, his eyes closing briefly. “If you only knew, Ty.”

I didn’t ask. I didn’t speak. I didn’t think, had he said something else at that moment in time, that I could have handled it. He pulled the panties slowly, carefully, over my hips and off, his fingers lingering on their path, his eyes on his work, face unreadable. When he pulled the thong off my legs, he tossed it aside, looking up to my face.

“Sit up.”

I did, propping up my body with my hands, my feet digging into the coverlet, knees raised. He knelt on the bed before me, the mattress sinking under his weight, his hands reaching for me, pulling me, until the backs of my thighs were against his, and we were face to face, my legs wrapping around his waist, my pussy against his cock. His eyes closed briefly, and he winced. “God, you have no idea how much you tempt me.”

“It’s not temptation if you can have it.” I wrapped my arm around his neck, one of his hands tightening on my ass, bringing me closer, the other knotted in my hair, his mouth coming down for a kiss.

“But I don’t have you, Ty. And once we do this…” His words fell into a groan, my free hand wrapping around his cock.

“Once we do this … what?”

“I can’t walk away.”

I didn’t want to have this talk. I wanted to forget life, forget obligations, forget everything but the two of us. I squeezed his hard length, looking down, at the look of us, everything on him hard against my soft, my hair wet with arousal against the ridges and lines of his shaft. I pulled back, away from him, and pushed his cock down, my name hissing from his lips in warning, everything going away the moment it was there, thick and perfect, my legs greedy in their pull closer, his hands tightening on my skin, hips thrusting. And then he pushed in. Deeper, deeper. My hands scrambled against his skin, clawing at it, my world bursting into light as he groaned my name and pushed the final inches home.

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 fuck 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 … fucking … 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.

“Do you love him?” There wasn’t judgment in his voice, only dread.

“I’m
married
to him,” I said helplessly. “We’ve been … it’s been four years. We created and lost a child together. It’s not as simple as…”

“So you love him,” he said flatly. “Still.”

“I can’t just delete feelings because of a trade.”
Because of a kiss. Because of a fuck
. I swallowed. “But I can tell you that my love for him…” I stepped closer to him, placing a hand on his chest. “It doesn’t touch this. It doesn’t even come close. And it never has.”

He covered my hand with his, his touch gentle as it pried my palm away, turning it over, his head dipping to kiss the soft skin of my inner wrist. “I know that, Ty. I believe it.” His eyes lifted to mine, and there was pure torture in their depths. “And if I didn’t love you so strongly, it’d be easier for me to watch you go back to him.” His hand tightened on mine. “Promise me you’ll leave him.”

“For what?” I said, feeling helpless, my world shaky in every piece of its foundation. “What do you want from me?”

His eyes softened, his mouth, when it pressed to me, gentle and soft, a plea of lips against a weak soul. “Everything. I want a life with you. I want to be the father of your children. I want every second we missed and a million more. And I’ll give away the world to get it.”

A sweet sentiment. But I couldn’t leave Tobey, and I couldn’t leave the Yankees. Not now. Not when somewhere in this city, a girl’s death sentence loomed.

85

I leaned back against his chest, on the balcony of the room, eight floors above the street, his arms around me, his mouth nuzzling at the curve of my neck.

“I have to go,” I said softly.

“Don’t.” His arms tightened for a fraction of a moment, the touch weakening my resolve.

I watched a taxi roll to a stop, a young girl stepping out. I thought of April McIntosh, in that dumpster, and wondered if she was taken there by car or carried. “What do you know about the curse?” I asked, my words so faint I almost repeated them. The curse. Such a stupid phrase, yet so fitting for the dark cloud it put over all of our lives.

He stiffened, his arms dropping and he turned me until we were face to face. “My publicist briefed me on them. When that girl was found in my jersey.”

“Julie Gavin.”

“Why do you ask?”

It was cold on the balcony, a stiff breeze hitting my bare arms, and I fought the urge to shiver. I leaned against his chest, my cheek on his shirt, and looked down the street, my eyes floating over dark buildings, past hundreds of sleeping bodies and empty offices, the hour too late for life. “I think of them all the time.” I said quietly.

“You should have brought me back sooner.” There was the hint of a smile in his voice and I frowned.

“We don’t exactly know the winning combination,” I said, pulling away from him. “We’re guessing at everything. What his motivations are, if it’s even a man, if he’s obsessed with you or the World Series…” Just another part of my life that I didn’t know, couldn’t control.

“The first girl died the year I left?”

“Yeah.”
Rachel, in the alley
.

“And there’s been one every year since? Always on the last day of the season? Or the playoffs?”

“Yeah.”
April in the dumpster. Julie at the stadium. Tiffany at our home. RachelAprilJulieTiffany.
I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold.

“Maybe it will stop this year. If we win.”

“And then what—it’ll start again if we lose next year?” I pushed away, out of his warmth, and rubbed at my forehead, the stress mounting. It was a possibility that Tobey and I had never discussed, neither wanting to imagine it. This hell might never end. There were just too many people in this city. Too many girls. Too many possible killers. They might never catch this guy. I knew that, in some hopeless part of my heart.

“It’s not your problem, Ty. It won’t be your problem. You’ll be with me.”

“Where?” I lifted my arms, gesturing to the city. “This is my home.” I turned right, pointing to the stadium in the distance.
Yankee Stadium
. “
That
is my home.”

“You chose that home before. Back then.” He fixed me with a hard look, his jaw flexing as he crossed his arms over that beautiful chest. “And it hasn’t made you happy.”

No, it hadn’t. Still, the thought of leaving it, them, him … it was terrifying. Would I be able to do it?

I rubbed at the empty place where my watch wasn’t, my desire to stay trumped by a sudden panic at how long I’d been gone. “I’ve got to go. Really.”