Chapter Forty-Six

Aiden

“ Y ou need to promise right now. Do it,” Bec pleads, her voice maniacal.

“Okay, I promise I won’t laugh,” I huff. “Can I take the blindfold off now?”

“Not yet, keep them closed while we walk inside.” She tugs on my arm, pulling me into her apartment. I feel Hopper rush past me, and I drop his leash as he presumably makes himself at home on Bec’s couch.

“I know what this is. Is this the VIP room treatment? Am I about to get a special birthday dance, Bec?

“You wish, perv.”

“You bet your perfect ass I do.” I reach my arms in front of me, blindly grabbing for Bec, coming up empty until I feel her shoulder brush against me. I find her arm and pull her against my front clumsily, my arm wrapping tightly around her waist.

“You couldn’t handle a dance from me, old man.”

“Ah right, of course. I’m twenty-eight going on ninety.”

“They say you’re only as old as you feel.”

“And I’m hoping they’re wrong. My shoulders are at least three decades older than the rest of me.”

“Is that what that fun little popping noise is?” Bec asks. One of the glories from living out my dream of becoming a professional athlete. The body takes a beating.

Escaping my clutches, Bec stumbles out of reach, and I hear rustling around her apartment, the flicking of light switches, and the distinct sound of a match being struck.

“Uh, Bec? This was fun, but I should be on my way…ya know…if you found your way into a pyrotechnic-type hobby.”

“Take off your blindfold, smart-ass.”

Chuckling to myself, I do as I’m told, relieved to finally see what Bec had deemed a “top secret birthday surprise.”

My brain couldn’t string two words together right now if I tried. Bec’s apartment is dark, the only light emanating from the candles lining the cake Bec’s holding, casting shadows around her in flickering rays of light from the flames, her expression soft and unsure. Behind her, the couch is wrecked, torn apart with cushions and pillows on the floor, backed by…backed by moving boxes.

The way the furniture is set up in Bec’s living room…it’s exactly how I described my eighth birthday, my favorite memory, when I told Bec about it years ago. When Mom and Evie used boxes, blankets, and pillows to make furniture for our family movie night.

“Wh-what is this?” I stammer quietly, almost to myself, but Bec hears me, her face falling.

“You hate it. Shit, this was so dumb…” She hurries to slide the cake onto the counter and runs her hands through her hair in a frenzy. “I’m sorry, this was so weird. Forget it.”

I take three steps toward her and pull her body flush with mine, one hand on her lower back and the other on the back of her neck. Our kiss starts hungry and after a minute, melts into something gentler, her hands running up my chest. Slow passes of our lips, shared breaths, and the slip of her sweet tongue against mine. I drop my forehead to rest on hers.

“Is this what I think it is? You did this for me?” She nods with a meek smile. Relief evident on her face. “Are you trying to ruin me?” I ask. I let go of the breath I was holding as I bring her against my chest. Holding her here, it feels like finding a buoy in the center of a storm. Secure and safe. I’m in unknown waters now. The risks threaten to drown me. But I’m not scared. Not with her.

“Thought I’d repay the favor. It feels like I’ve been ruined since I met you,” she whispers against my neck.

“Show me. I want to see everything.”

Her face ignites, radiating joy, her smile beaming at me.

“Well, my assistant here is already demonstrating the high-class accommodations we have available for the evening, sir.” She walks backward into her living room and does a dramatic sweep of her arm to feature Hopper, who is licking himself on a pile of couch cushions and pillows thrown haphazardly on the floor in front of the coffee table.

“And here you’ll find a selection of our finest entertainment sure to have you laughing, crying, soaking in nostalgic bliss, the works.” She shimmies to the side while she displays a stack of DVDs like a kid showing off their science project.

“I don’t know the last time I watched a DVD. Do you have a player for these?” I ask.

“I had to borrow one from Dom. These are from the library. Only the best on your very special day, of course.”

I walk over to inspect the selections she’s made, and my chest tightens as I read the titles. A weight drops to the bottom of my throat as I try to find the ability to speak.

“Some may look familiar.” She watches my expression carefully, with a smug grin on her face .

My favorite baseball movies from my childhood, the ones I told her about years ago, are stacked on Bec’s coffee table. To anyone else, it’s a thoughtful gesture, but to me, it’s everything. She is everything.

“Admittedly, I had to ask Dom to confirm the titles, because I couldn’t remember them exactly and I was spiraling in the middle of the library frantically googling every known baseball movie I could find. Kids were starting to stare. It took a minute, but we figured it out. But don’t get too excited, we won’t be watching any of these first.”

“What movie won out over these impeccable selections?” I ask.

“You have to watch this first.” Bec reaches behind the pile to reveal a worn copy of A League of Their Own . “I can’t allow you to go one more day without watching this. It’s basically a crime that you haven’t seen this. It’s a classic. You’ll never be the same,” she says, rocking the DVD from side to side with a small bounce in her knees.

I can’t take my eyes off her. I look her up and down, in disbelief that someone like her is even real. “You’re right. I could never be the same after this.” I stalk after her while she retreats backward, never taking her eyes off me as she circles back into her connected kitchen, putting the island between us.

“But wait, that’s not all!” Any nervousness she had from my initial reaction is gone, that lighthearted spontaneity returning. The carefree state I always want to see her in. She may not realize it, but she’s trusting me every day, more and more, little by little. She takes the lid off a pot on her stove with an amused expression. “Only the finest sustenance for the celebration.”

“Is that mac and cheese?”

She nods and laughs. God, what I wouldn’t give to hear that every day for the rest of my life. My eye catches on the counter, the candles still lit from Bec’s reveal earlier.

“And, uh…what happened here, hun?” I gesture to the cake, if you can call it that .

She holds up her hands defensively. “Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve made a box cake and I’m not a great cook. Believe it or not even the mac and cheese was a struggle. It’s not my fault the cake sort of…cratered in the middle? I stole a taste to make sure it doesn’t taste like garbage. I can confirm, the aesthetics are lacking, but the deliciousness is not.”

“Get over here,” I say, my voice low. She doesn’t hesitate and immediately walks into my arms, her chin propped on my chest, eyes on me. “You did this for me?” She answers me with a soft smile.

“Everything you told me about that birthday sounded so perfect. I thought it’d be fun to relive it together.”

“No one has ever done anything like this for me before,” I say quietly, not trusting the shake in my voice. The ache in my chest is sharp as I realize I don’t feel like I deserve it. I don’t deserve her. “That memory was from a really great day surrounded by a sea of terrible ones. My family was in the thick of healing.”

“Did I mess up? Is this too much?”

“It is most definitely too much. But only because I don’t know how I’ll ever pay you back for something this genuinely thoughtful.”

“Relationships aren’t about keeping score, Aiden. They aren’t about tallying up what we owe each other. I did this because I care about you, and I wanted you to feel it.”

“I want to be the man who’s worthy of this…kindness.”

Love.

I want to be worthy of Bec’s love.

“You already are,” she says quietly, her words soft but sure. Bec loops her hands around my neck and pulls me down for a quick kiss.

“But I do have a confession. I’ve seen this movie before,” I admit.

“What? When we met, you said you hadn’t ever—”

“I watched it the day I got home from Dom’s wedding. It’s a good movie. A great movie. You could’ve borrowed my copy. I ended up buying it. Even lent it to a few teammates so they could watch it too.”

“Why did you…?” Her voice tapers off timidly.

“When we met, you understandably had doubts.” I reach up to brush a loose curl behind Bec’s ear. “But I knew. I knew I was ready for you, for us. I was clinging to anything that felt like you…any connection to what I wished we could be.”

A single tear drops down her cheek.

“Hey, there’s no crying in baseball,” I say, before wiping the tear off her cheek with my thumb. She breaks out into a fit of laughter and I join her, my heart so full I can feel it trying to break through my chest just to be closer to her. It’s hers anyway.

“Did you really just quote A League of Their Own ?” she asks.

“I really did,” I say with a smile. “Can I take you somewhere tomorrow?” I ask. She wipes tears of laughter from her cheeks and nods. “Good. There’s someone I want you to meet.”