“Max,” she sighs as her body sags and she suddenly becomes dead weight.

“Fuck,” I mutter again.

My own body’s about to give up the ghost.

I’m wound so tight but utterly relaxed and free and shit shit shit.

Don’t drop the girl.

Don’t drop Tillie Jean.

I turn, and somehow I manage to sit, right there in the cooling bathwater, the hot water still pouring down on us, TJ’s hair wet and plastered to her face, her legs splaying oddly because this bathtub is fucking small and suddenly my dick’s flopping out of her as we try to fit in a space built for a parakeet.

But she doesn’t seem to mind.

Not if the way she’s collapsing onto my chest is any indication, taking the brunt of the hot water on her back. “Oh my god,” she whispers.

I kiss her temple, and that’s when I feel it.

Peace.

I’m squished into a bathtub with Tillie Jean splayed across me, one of her knees pressing down on my thigh since there’s not enough room for us in here, her other leg twisted in a way that can’t possibly be comfortable, one arm around my back, making me arch funny so I don’t squish it, and I’m completely one hundred percent at peace.

No counting.

No worries.

No need to move.

Baseball doesn’t exist. People don’t exist. Stress doesn’t exist.

I can breathe.

Tillie Jean settles a hand on my chest. “Have you ever had cinnamon oranges?”

I shake my head.

“When we can move again, I’ll make you some.”

Home, a little voice whispers deep inside my chest.

I don’t fight it.

Not now.

Maybe later.

But not right now.

28

Tillie Jean

It’s three AM, and I have to be at the senior center for aerobics in five hours, but all I want to do is lie here and watch Max sleep.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to work.

I poke him gently. “Max. Wake up.”

He groans. “I want to, Tillie Jean, but you broke my dick. Five more minutes, okay?”

It was not like this the last time I hooked up with a guy. He got his, I got mine, everything about the situation felt weird, and we went our separate ways afterward.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with casual sex.

It’s more that I haven’t figured out how to make it work for me.

But Max has been here since my bath, and he’s demonstrated exactly how strong and flexible professional baseball pitchers can be at least three times since, to the benefit of my lady parts every time, and I don’t want him to go.

It’s in both our best interests if he does, though. “I know. You broke my vagina too. You need to go home before it’s too late.”

One brown eye slides open in the dim light. “Can’t. Legs go poof.”

If he gets any more adorable, my ovaries might go poof. “Max. C’mon. Aunt Bea’s up at like, four in the morning half the time, and if she sees you leaving my house, she’ll tell Cooper, and I know my brother. He needs to come to grips with this on his own time.”

He grunts like he knows I’m right.

I grunt back.

And then I giggle, and I grunt again. “This is fun. I should grunt more often.”

His lips twitch.

That’s all it takes.

One little lip twitch of unabashed amusement at me being a dork face, and everything inside me puddles like candle wax under a flame.

I have it so bad.

And maybe that’s why I resisted him for so long. Because I knew this would happen.

I knew I would fall for Max Cole. It’s like every time I’ve tried to annoy him for the past four years, I’ve been quietly whispering see me. See me for who I am and like me.

But is falling for him really a bad thing?

Considering he lives in the city and you live here…

Stupid voice.

What does it know?

“Max.” I skim my fingers over his shoulder, pretending my only goal is waking him up and not also shamelessly enjoying touching all that hot flesh over firm muscle. “For real. You need to go.”

He grunts again, but he follows it with a big, loud, noisy inhale through his nose that reminds me of my dad waking himself–and half the house—with a snore in the middle of the night in my teenage years before he got his C-PAP machine. “Okay. I’m going.”

He doesn’t.

Instead, he flings an arm across my midsection and settles his head into the crook of my neck.

For a guy who’s always aloof and also too hot, the man likes to snuggle.

One more little facet to him that I wouldn’t have guessed but that I am completely smitten with.

“Max,” I whisper.

“Shh,” he whispers back.

He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but then he doesn’t.

“Are you pretending you’re going to answer me so that I quit talking?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You realize I know your tickle spot too?”

His body tenses.

And I suddenly feel like an ass. “Not that I’m going to use it,” I add quickly. “But I can’t flip a switch and not be myself just because you took me to the top of Mount Max a few dozen times.”

“You’re going to talk to me until I leave, aren’t you?”

“I haven’t spent four years annoying you without getting very, very good at it.”

He goes still again.

And suddenly I fear I’ve misread everything, or maybe I assumed too much, or maybe he was just humoring me tonight because he really is a sex god and his pride wouldn’t let him not leave me satisfied, or maybe this is why I don’t do relationships.

Because I freak men out, or I really am that annoying. “Oh. This was that one time only thing, wasn’t it?” I whisper.

Shit.

Shit shit shit.

Okay.

This is fine. This is okay. This is not the end of the world, and I have a lot of great memories, and—

“No,” he says into the darkness, the word sounding almost pained.

“Max. Oh my god. You do not have to worry about protecting my feelings or anything if you don’t want to do this friends-with-benefits things, and—”

“Trouble Jean, would you please give a guy a minute to figure out how to say something he’s never said to a woman before?”

I open my mouth to agree, then clamp it shut and nod instead.

My pulse is off like a horse out of the gate at the Kentucky Derby, and given where his hand is resting, he can probably feel it, but I can’t squirm away without making it even more obvious that I’m not the cool cucumber I usually am.

Or try to be.

He sighs and turns his head into my shoulder, and I do my best to keep all of my cringing inside.

“I don’t want to leave,” he mumbles.

“Oh.” My racing heart is suddenly swelling thick and warm. “I—oh.”

“But if you want me to—”

“No! No, I don’t want you to go. I just think it’ll be easier for everyone else who thinks we’re his business if he doesn’t have to stress about this too. And by everyone—”