“Leave me without a mug and I’ll buy Styrofoam cups.”

Her eyes sharpen and I swear fire lights up in them as she says, “Don’t you dare mutter the S word around me. How companies still use Styrofoam is beyond me. It takes fifty years for one single cup to decompose. Fifty years, so that means coffee you drank from a Styrofoam cup ten years ago is still floating around here and will be for the next forty. The cup you slipped your canker sore lips over is still—”

“I don’t have fucking canker-sore lips.”

She huffs. “I’m trying to be dramatic here, Maddox.”

“Choose a different route.”

She waves at me. “You get my point. Don’t you dare even think about bringing Styrofoam back to our apartment, or I will slash you in your sleep. And then ensure your body decomposes quickly to help grow more trees.”

Smiling, my hand still on her thigh, I give it a squeeze and say, “Our apartment?”

“You surely don’t consider it just yours, not after I brought recycling back from the office, do you? That right there is claiming the space as mine too. Which reminds me, we got off track. Why are you mildly irritated with me? It’s not the recycling or the mugs.” She taps her chin. “I know I’m a little messy, but I cleaned that up, and—”

“It’s Clyde.”

“Clyde?” Her nose crinkles, and fuck it’s so adorable, I want to kiss that crinkle away. “What do you have against a sleeping mechanism that has provided you many nights of comfort in the past?”

“The past being the key word. The thing is breaking down every night and hearing the duct tape is annoying as fuck. Plus, is duct tape really eco-friendly?”

She smiles wide. “My off-brand is.”

Of course.

“Either way, it’s fucking annoying. Just use the air mattress or hell, share my bed, sleep on the couch, do anything.”

“Sleep in your bed? Yeah right, I don’t want to see you wanking off at night. Gross.”

Wow. Can’t hear that enough.

“You really think I’d jerk off with you right next to me?”

She shrugs. “Possibly. If you were horny enough. Honestly, I don’t want the sheets to wave up and down while I’m next to you, hearing you grunt and chuckle—”

“Why the hell am I chuckling when jacking off?”

“I watched Stan jack off once,” she says so casually that it freaks me out. What kind of shit did she and Stan get into? Do I really want to know? “We were doing this thing where we’d play with ourselves in front of each other. I always thought it would be one hell of a fantasy fulfilled, but unfortunately Stan wasn’t sexy when it came to winging his willy around. He would grunt and then chuckle, grunt and then chuckle. So I figured, might be a Woodland thing?” Seriously, she asks, “Do you grunt and chuckle?”

“Do I look like a man who grunts and chuckles when clutching his cock?” I ask in a low voice, trying to make a point.

I watch as she carefully swallows and then looks me up and down, giving me a full once-over, pausing at my lips . . . then slowly wets hers.

They glisten under the bar light.

A light thrum starts at the base of my spine as I wait for her eyes to connect with mine again, but the longer they stay on my lips, the harder my body gets.

It’s so tempting . . . to reach out, close the space between us, take her mouth with mine.

Finally, when her eyes return to mine, she takes a deep breath and says, “No, you don’t . . . you look like a man who squeals like a pig in heat.” And then she laughs so hard tears start to fall down her cheeks.

Really, fucking funny.

“Do you want more ice?” Kinsley asks as we push through the apartment door. I switch on the light, illuminating the living room, but keeping the rest of the apartment dark.

I have one thing on my mind—it’s taken me time to muster the courage—and I’m not going to bed without doing what I played over and over in my head, while my hand was on Kinsley’s thigh.

The rest of the night we hung out in the booth. She teased me relentlessly, constantly bringing me back down to earth, mocking my celebrity status. It’s one of the things I love about her. She’s never treated me as Maddox Paige, the multi-million-dollar pitcher on his way to the Hall of Fame. She treats me as Maddie, the boy she grew up with. If that ever changed, I think my entire world would be flipped, and I wouldn’t know what to do.

We didn’t move in the booth.

We didn’t attempt to leave.

We both were content with where we were.

At one point, she handed me a pen from her purse and I drew on a napkin, upside down and she had to guess what I was drawing before I finished. She guessed Nick Jonas. It was Mr. Rodgers. When I turned the napkin around, she saw it, but that didn’t bode well for my drawing. She laughed so hard from her mistake that she used the Mr. Rodgers napkin to dab at her tears.

Fuck, she makes me laugh when she does stupid shit like that. Not a care in the world, just using my drawing as a tear collector. And it made me realize how much I’d genuinely missed her. Nothing gets her down . . . apart from animals being mistreated. I can forget I’m an elite athlete with constant pressure to perform when I’m with her, and I can’t take for granted. That . . . freedom to be myself. To laugh with my favorite person, because that’s how my life used to be.

“No more ice, I’m good.”

She stops me in the entryway and takes my chin in her hand. Her other hand falls to my shoulder, steadying herself. On her toes, she examines my eye and when she pulls away, she smiles. “The bruising is quite interesting. What are you going to tell your guys? Bar fight? Or that you were struck in the eye by a little lady with an unyielding arm?”

“Luckily, I won’t see them for a week, so . . . nothing.”

“You’re not even going to post it on the gram? Come on, your fans would love something like this. They’re used to you getting in fights, which I really hate by the way. Did you know that?” She moves her hands so they rest on my chest, and I’m so goddamn tempted to bring my hands to her lower back, squeezing her in tightly against me. But I keep my arms at my sides, not sure I could control myself if I moved them anywhere else.

“You don’t like me fighting? And yet, you pegged me with an air hockey paddle tonight.”

“It slipped out of my hand when I was raging. I didn’t mean to throw it. But you punch someone on the field for no reason. That scares me.”

I can’t fucking help it. I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “It’s not for no reason, babe.” My hand lingers behind her ear. “It’s about protecting your team and your teammates. Baseball can be really fucking dangerous, especially when pitchers viciously peg another player. Some aim for heads, and that’s unacceptable to me. And I make it clear: don’t hurt my players.”

“You do the same thing. You’re known for taking out elbows.”

“Only when I have to. What people don’t hear or see is what’s said on the field, in the batter’s box, on the bases. My teammates report back, and we decide if we’re going to take action. Rebels don’t roll over.”

She moves her lips to the side. There’s something she wants to say, but she’s holding on to it. She backs up and nods, head tilted down. I catch her wrist and bring her back. This time, I place one hand on her lower back. “What are you not saying?”

She bites her bottom lip and shakes her head. “It’s nothing. I should get ready for bed.” Before I can stop her, she walks away, leaving me feeling very unsettled, so I follow her to her bathroom where she’s brushing her teeth. I grip the doorframe and stare her down. When she spits, I say, “We tell each other everything, Kin. So what are you not telling me?”

She slips one of my Rebels shirts over her head and I watch as she undresses in front of me underneath it. The magical work she does of removing her clothing without showing one inch of skin is something I’ve seen her do many times growing up, but there’s something about seeing my Rebels shirt on her that twists at my heart. It’s all I ever want to see her in. I want to know that my shirt is huge on her but gives her comfort. I want to know that she’s soaking in my scent when she’s sleeping. And I want to peel that goddamn shirt off her to reveal her beautiful body.

She must notice me staring because she says, “I borrowed it. I hope that’s okay.”

“Take whatever you want of mine.”

She rolls her teeth over her bottom lip just as her eyes flash to my mouth and for a brief second, I have the thought that maybe she’s starting to have this crazy sensation as well, this all-consuming need to touch me, to be close to me, to kiss me.

But as soon as the fleeting thought comes into my mind, it flies away as she pushes past me to the kitchen where she gets water.