Page 39 of Running Home to You
Abby nudged Kate’s thigh beneath the table. “Now you really have to do it. Love is on the line.”
“Well, I certainly can’t deny love.” Kate pressed her leg back into Abby’s and let the grin reach her eyes.
By the time Abby dropped her off at the blue house, Kate’s body hummed as if overflowing with the longing she’d suppressed during dinner. They stared, Kate in the passenger seat, Abby behind the wheel, like they’d reached the end of a date, taunted by the anticipation of a kiss. And Kate wanted it. Wanted it so badly that she squirmed. Desperation and fear gathered in her throat.
Abby eased in. Kate gasped and froze. Rather than lips, Abby’s forehead found hers and rested on it. Their breaths mingled, hot and close, so that she didn’t know where her exhales ended, and Abby’s inhales began.
“Sometimes I wish I could have more of you,” Abby whispered.
Kate quivered, shut her eyes, fought a desire she didn’t know existed in her. One that shouldn’t exist in her. She drew back, rested a hand on Abby’s cheek. Her amber eyes shimmered in the dim light. “Good night.” Kate slammed the car door and didn’t turn back.
Mick and Jill lounged on the couch, but she charged upstairs. An unbearable pulse thrummed in her, turning every speckle of skin into a current, the most powerful of which surged salaciously low. She locked her bedroom door and panted.
Kate rarely touched herself, had only attempted a few times without reaching climax, out of curiosity rather than arousal. During a singular puberty talk, her mother correlated it with the devil. When her friends mentioned masturbating or sex, she pretended to scroll on her phone. But this heartbeat begged for touch. The swollen sensation that often filled her heart expanded between her thighs.
Kate dropped to her bed, scrubbed hands down her clammy cheeks, and fought to ground herself. She needed a cold shower. She needed to text Blake. She needed to pray. But her chest rocked, her stomach smoldered, and the throb wasn’t just persistent, but pleasant. It demanded chasing.
With one hand clutching her winded throat, she trailed the other down her abdomen, and dared to plunge beneath the waistband of her jeans. She closed her eyes and sighed in relief at the brush of her fingers. She discovered not only that pulse, but wetness along her opening, so plentiful that it drenched her fingers. She writhed at the slipperiness. She’d never been so needy for touch, never been wet, never been turned on to the point that she considered no other option but to free herself in it, to press and rub and lust for more.
She pictured Abby’s lips. Pictured her hands on her chest. Imagined her whispers. Imagined all three of them on her neck, on her skin, between her legs. She mouthed her name, as if saying it aloud might be a worse transgression than her fantasies alone. She saw nothing else, wanted nothing else, couldn’t stop if God himself demanded it. She came in silence, vibrating, gasping until the static returned to calm.
And that’s when she fully understood the nausea at dinner. The daily fluttering that never freed her. The guilt. She desired Abby not just on the field and in the library and every minute in between, but like this too. She took a cold shower, prayed for forgiveness, and vowed after a sleepless night to never do it again.
Fortunately, Abby never mentioned their exchange in the car. They practiced without awkwardness, too deep in the season, chasing a conference title, to allow anything to stand in the way. And with only a few months left together at Insley, Kate turned to Blake.
Even during the earliest, most enthusiastic points of their courtship, they struggled to make time for each other. Blake’s baseball schedule often interfered with Kate’s softball commitments, and he trained as obsessively as she did. Now he also juggled the pressure of scouts and agents as the MLB draft drew near, and Kate felt guilty for not being more supportive.
Any other girl at church or CAC would drop everything to help him. They fawned over him, told Kate how lucky she was, waved signs for him at the games she couldn’t attend, and found excuses to talk or pray with him. Kate always nodded along unbothered—similar to the way she found their vow of celibacy a relief rather than a challenge. But now she realized her complacency might’ve been because her affections drifted elsewhere.
“I can’t believe this is it,” Blake said as he stopped his Jeep at their favorite viewpoint, a tree-lined cliff they often hiked. They gazed out at the expanse of plateaus that rolled beneath the pink horizon. “I always thought we’d leave Insley together.”
“You could still stay.” Kate couldn’t meet his gaze when she said it. She stared at his hand, wrapped around hers instead, wishing she knew what would fix the guilt gnawing at her gut—him leaving or him staying. “Finish senior year. Finish your degree.”
“And risk getting hurt? It’d be a waste.” He scoffed. “Plus, if I go now, grind it out in the minors a few years, I could get called up before I’m twenty-five. That’d be great for us.” Blake flashed a grin. “You could come with me. I know you have enough credits to graduate early. You could take a year off before law school, we could get married—”
“And miss my last season here?” Kate furrowed her brow, taken aback at him even suggesting it.
“Right. No. Of course not. I’m just going to miss you.” Blake’s eyes softened. He pecked her hand with his lips. “I’d marry you now if I could.”
Kate’s frustration faded at how gently he said it. At how fully she knew he meant it and how she wasn’t ready to give it. “We can’t.”
“Actually, we could.”
She pulled her hand back. “Is this a proposal?”
“Do you want it to be?”
“Not right now.” Kate chewed her lip. “How about we see how you feel after you get drafted?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No,” she whispered. “I do.”
She kissed Blake more vigorously that night, cradled his stubbled cheeks, allowed his tongue to enter her mouth without flinching. She let him touch her chest and waist, hoping to rouse the same pulse and wetness, because she needed him to be able to. She needed them to not blossom only for Abby.
When Blake grinded against her, Kate didn’t push him away at first, maybe because he was leaving, and maybe because she thought it might make up for how completely she wanted someone else. But it didn’t. Her back tensed, and her lips stopped working, and the rest of her went numb, because all she wanted, all she could think of was Abby in the car. Of how much different it felt. Of how it made her feel everything and this made her feel nothing.
“Stop. Can we stop.” Kate dragged in a ragged breath, and Blake scrambled off her. “I’m sorry.”
