Chapter Thirty-One

It was strange, to be in his bedroom. Daphne had been low-key avoiding him since they got back from the last road trip, still trying to figure out what to do about the whole double-identity mess. And now she was here, and all she could do was picture him reclining back in that same bed, texting with her.

There were a few books on his nightstand, and she let her tote slide off her shoulder, crossing the room to get a closer look. They were stacked in the opposite way from how she would've done it, the top book a heavy hardback covering a slimmer volume and then a book so small she couldn't see its edges peeking out at all. The hardcover was exactly what she might've expected from an athlete—a sports biography that seemed half-journalistic, half-inspirational. Underneath was a book called The Tender Land: A Family Love Story, a haunting black-and-white image of a boy in a striped shirt standing in a kitchen on the cover. Daphne went to turn it over, to read the back, but then she saw the book at the bottom of the stack and her heart stopped.

It was Mandy by Julie Edwards. The cover was so familiar to Daphne, she felt like it was engraved on her soul—that swing of chestnut hair, the hat hanging down the girl's back from a satiny black ribbon, that vibrant garden carpeted with clover and violets and daffodils.

She was sitting down on his bed, holding the book in her hand, when he came back into the room. "I just put the garlic bread in," he said. "So maybe a couple minutes. Did you want some wine or anything like that? I can't promise how well it'll pair with the meal. I don't know dick about wine."

"I have to talk to you," she said.

He gave her a crooked smile that made her chest clench. "You take your wine seriously."

"Chris."

His smile faded, and he came to crouch at her feet, fitting his body between her legs in a way that reminded her of that first night after the elevator kiss. It was hard to believe that had been only a month ago. It felt like a million years had passed since then. It felt like no time at all.

"Before you say anything," he said. "I just want to say that I know this goes against our deal. I know that we're breaking our own ground rules here. But we don't have to overthink it. We have a few days off, we're both together in the same city, I don't know about you but I could use the time to decompress. I don't want to think about the team's record, about my dad or my brother or a single bad thing in the world. I just want to hang out with you, laugh sometimes, have some fun, the showerhead actually has great pressure, that's it. Okay? It's as chill as you want it to be."

Everything he said seemed to confirm what Layla had told Daphne. The last thing he needed right now was some huge discussion that would derail this break, the rest of the season, who knew.

She smelled something acrid, and it took her a second to realize what it was. "The garlic bread," she said.

"What?"

She sprang up from the bed. "Chris, the garlic bread is burning."

"Oh, shit." He ran back into the kitchen, grabbing the oven mitt off the counter before reaching in to take the bread out. Sure enough, the tops were charred black.

"Did you have the broiler on high?" she asked, finding the button to turn off the oven.

"I thought that's how you got it crispy on the top but soft on the bottom."

He started trying to scrape the black bits off the bread, little flakes of char going everywhere, and Daphne couldn't help but laugh. "I think it's done for," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist and giving him a squeeze. He was warm and strong and smelled so good, and she realized that this was maybe the first time she'd ever made the first move to touch him this way, just a casual embrace out of nowhere. From the way he stilled for a moment, pausing for an almost imperceptible beat before bringing his arm around to rub her back, she felt like he'd noticed it, too. She could hear him swallow as he rested his chin on the top of her head.

"You wanted to talk," he said.

Right now, that was the last thing she wanted to do. "It's not important," she said. "Dinner looks delicious, and I would love a glass of whatever wine you've got."

After dinner, they settled in on the couch, and Chris handed Daphne the remote. "I think I have most of the streaming services on here," he said. "I don't really know, to be honest. I'm not home that much."

She'd kind of figured that. The condo was really nice—he'd taken her out to the balcony, to appreciate the view, and the inside was light and airy and modern and she bet he'd never had to put a mixing bowl under the bathroom sink to catch leaks the way she did at her place. But it didn't feel very lived in. The part that felt the most him was the open Battery duffel bag she'd seen on the floor of his bedroom, and that was the same as what he would've had in any hotel room.

"You said your dad lives nearby?"

"A little further out in the suburbs," he said. "But yeah, not too far."

"Do you see him a lot?"

Chris didn't answer that right away. He was rubbing his right hand, something she'd noticed he did if they were idly watching a movie or otherwise relaxing. She'd thought maybe he did it because it was hard for him to keep his body completely still, but she remembered now what he'd texted her once, about how his hand hurt. She wondered how many different ways he hurt every day that he just didn't tell anyone about. She reached over to take his hand in hers, pressing her thumbs into his palm.

"Is this okay?" she asked.

He leaned his head back against the couch. "Mmmm. Feels good."

Daphne liked being able to watch him like this—his eyes closed, his lashes against his cheekbones. The sharp angle of his jaw, the exposed line of his throat. He'd taken off his shirt right after dinner, and now he was only wearing his necklace and a pair of gray sweatpants, which were somehow the sexiest item of clothing she'd ever seen.

She dragged her thumbs hard over the lifeline in his hand, and saw a tic in his jaw. "Sorry," she said. "I don't want to hurt you."

He opened his eyes then, looking over at her. "You couldn't hurt me."

There was something in his hazel eyes, not a flicker or a spark, but something steady and true that was almost painful to look at directly. She had to drop her gaze, giving an awkward little laugh to cover the moment. "I mean, I could," she said. "I'm not a professional hand masseuse."

"You're perfect."

She knew he probably just meant that she was doing a decent amateur job of it, but the sentiment still made her uncomfortable. "Oh, I have flaws," she said. "Lots of them."

"Sure," he said. "Everyone does. What do you see as yours?"

Dishonesty? Self-sabotage?She didn't know. "I can be incredibly stubborn," she said. "And not always in a good you-don't-give-up kind of way. Sometimes I just get something in my head and it's hard to let it go, even when I know I should."

He seemed to think about that one. "You're self-aware about it, though," he said. "Which means you can notice when you're doing it and course correct. Or if someone called you on it, you wouldn't be as defensive. I don't think that one's so bad. What else you got?"

"I have a tendency to idealize people," she said. "Maybe that goes hand in hand with being stubborn. I see what I want to see, and that's not always the healthiest way to be in a relationship."

"You're looking for the best in people," Chris said. "I think that's a generous way to be."

She paused in her ministrations to his hand, pulling a face. "One of your flaws is that you're shooting down all my flaws."

"Well, it's good to know you're not idealizing me," he said, then made an exaggerated expression of injury when she swatted his arm. "Whatever happened to do no harm?"

"I told you I'm not a professional," she said. "I signed no oath."

He laughed, watching her as she brought his hand back into her lap and continued her massage. "Was that what happened with your ex?" he asked. "You idealized him?"

That was exactly what had happened. Their split had been inevitable, and she knew it was as much her fault as his. For however dismissive he'd been of her, however casually cruel, she'd married a person who didn't really exist. And on some level she'd known it, and wanted whatever dream of a marriage and home and children she'd built up in her head so bad that she hadn't allowed herself to look at the way things actually were. She'd basically told him all of that already, as Duckie.

"We married really young," she said. "I just think we didn't know ourselves very well."

He was quiet for a moment. It was summer, the sun didn't set until late. When Daphne had arrived, it had still been bright outside, but now it was well and fully night, and probably had been for some time. She realized she hadn't even noticed the transition.

"One of my flaws is I get tunnel vision," he said. "I used to think it was a strength, actually. I can really focus. Take every at-bat pitch by pitch, start fresh every single play. You can't throw two balls at once, you know?"

Daphne frowned, not quite sure she did know. On a literal level, she understood. He seemed to register her confusion, and flexed his hand, giving hers a squeeze.

"It's a saying," he said. "Applies more to pitchers, really, but the idea is the same. If you throw a bad pitch, let it hang right over the plate, the guy hits it out of the park…that sucks, right? It's the last thing you want. But you can't throw that ball again. You can only throw the next ball, and if you try to throw both of them at once you'll only fuck up that next pitch, too."

"So you're good at getting rid of the first ball," she said. "Putting it out of your mind. That's what you want, right?"

"I used to think so," Chris said. "Or maybe I still do. I don't know. I feel like my tunnel vision used to be too narrow, that it shut everything out when I should've been paying more attention. And now I've calibrated too far the other way, and I'm trying to throw about a million balls all at once."

They were talking about his brother, Daphne knew. But she also knew that Chris didn't really want to get into it, was already thinking of how to edge the conversation onto another topic. It was shocking sometimes, how good she felt like she was getting at being able to read his tells, to figure out when to push and when to let something go.

"One of my flaws is sports metaphors," he said. "Sorry. Part of the territory."

This was a time to let it go. "I think I'm learning to keep up."

"Oh, you're a very quick study." He grinned at her. "A baseball savant. Although I've been thinking about it, and why the Red Sox? Why not the Reds?"

"Are you workshopping my period joke from weeks ago? Count this as a fatal flaw."

"Fatal? Come on. I think about you a lot. That can't be a flaw."

That brought Daphne up short. For some reason, she'd never considered that Chris might spend as much time daydreaming about her as she did about him. Even as they'd been texting, even once they hooked up in real life, she'd just assumed…she didn't know. There wasn't much to think about when it came to her. Not interesting or charismatic. It stuck in her head, even if she knew Justin had been being an asshole. The most cocktail-party-story-fodder thing that had ever happened to her was when she'd been on SportsCenter for heckling Chris, which he'd be the last person to be impressed by.

Daphne wanted to commission an essay from him about that one sentence—I think about you a lot. She wanted to know every specific detail. But she also didn't want to come across as needy or desperate or insecure, even if she was feeling like all of those things. So she had to let that one go, too.

"Okay," she said. "You got me. You want to know your real fatal flaw?"

"I'm on the edge of my seat," he said.

She leaned closer to him, not intentionally brushing his hand against her breasts, but not mad about it, either. From the way his gaze dropped to her mouth, she knew he was as affected by that brief touch as she was.

"You can't do this," she whispered. He was still watching her mouth as she pursed her lips, letting out a bright, clear whistle.

A smile cracked over his face. "Oh, thank god," he said. "I thought you were going to say my abs."

"How can your abs be a flaw?"

"That they're so intimidating," he said. "Or so hot. I don't know, I'm insecure about my abs."

She ran her hand over the flat, hard plane of his stomach. "Sure," she said. "That's why you're always keeping your shirt on. You're obviously plagued with self-doubt."

"It feels good to be so seen."

"They could use a little more definition, you know," she said, tracing the outline of his muscle, liking the way he automatically clenched beneath even that light touch. "You should see some of the covers of my romance novels. Washboard stomachs, the lot of them."

"Is that so?"

"Mmm-hmm," she said. "Just trying to give you something to aspire to."

He leaned forward, grabbing something off the coffee table. She saw what it was only after he'd uncapped it and held it out to her—a black Sharpie.

"Show me," he said. "Draw me like one of your romance covers."

Daphne gave him a dubious look, like are you serious? But he was grinning at her, and she took the marker from him, surveying his body like it was her canvas. "Okay, I don't know what crunches or burpees or whatever are going to get you these results—that's not my area of expertise. But if you want a glimpse of the final product, you'll want it to look something…" She started drawing wobbly squares on his stomach in a rough approximation of a six-pack. "…like…" This was fun, actually, she was really getting into her artist's rendition. "…this."

She tried adding some shading in the lower corner of each square, but Chris almost doubled over laughing, sending the marker line shooting sideways across his skin. She frowned at him in admonishment.

"I can't be held responsible for what you'll look like if you mess up my blueprint."

"Sorry," he said, but spasmed in a sudden laugh again when she went back to her shading. "I'm ticklish there."

"I thought you were an athlete," she said. "I thought you took your conditioning seriously."

"I do, I do," he said. "Keep going. I don't want uneven abs."

She managed to shade all six squares, even though there were a few jagged places where the marker had skipped as he tried to hold back a laugh. When she finished, she reached for the cap, but he grasped her wrist to stop her.

"I should get to draw something on you," he said. "It's only fair."