Page 33 of The Score We Never Settled

“You’re wastin’ time, Mrs. Kerrigan. Do us both a favor and tell me how much you want me in your bed. With my hands all over you when you’re tryin’ to cook. Like that one time you attempted to make baked chicken, and we ended up fuckin’ instead.”

Her lips part, and I fully expect some sass thrown back at me for bringing up a veryperfectmemory when she mutters, “You…ruined it.”

“I made it up to you, didn’t I?”

She doesn’t even need to think about it when she slowly nods, finally quiet.

Or maybe exhausted.

I took her to a small pizza joint I frequented, bought us a pie, drove her up to the mountains, where we sat in the back of my truck and watched the stars come out.

I fucked her there, too.

I promised her the world as well.

I wanted to quit the MLB then, too, but she told me no. That I needed to live out my dream, and then I could come home.

But my dream had hazel eyes and smelled like sugar wrapped in a body that I can never get enough of.

Layla was home.

The MLB was always a means to an end when she followed me there.

“I’ve got seven days to make you change your mind, Layla,” I emphasize so that she knows my full intention while I’m here. “You’d better suit the hell up against me because, once I get my hands on you again, I plan on winnin’ the whole damn series of games we’ve been playin’. And, if you think I was a pain in the ass before, wait until you see me put all my weight in it. I score runs when I’m against the grain, baby. Batter up. You’re gonna need to stretch for this one.”

9

LAYLA

Ten years ago…

“When areyou gonna break up with him, Short Stop? You know it drives me fuckin’ crazy.”

My answer doesn’t even formulate in my brain when Briggs’s lips kiss and suck on the column of my neck. His body pressed firmly into mine against the drywall of Stacy Mulligan’s pantry closet.

Some stupid P!nk song plays loudly in the living room, the makeshift dance floor for tonight. The house is already an absolute disaster, littered with red Solo cups, chip bags all over the place, and the boys have started an arm wrestling contest in the kitchen.

They’ve already broken one of Stacy’s mom’s glass bowls, and she’s been frantically trying to clean up ever since.

I was helping her.

Until Briggs pulled me aside, huddled me into this closet that’s big enough for half a dozen people, to have a “chat” with me.

His idea of a conversation, however, is chiding me about Cruz—who’s off doing God knows what—and kissing me to madness while he does.

It’s been the main conversation as of late. He almost ripped a locker door off its hinges the other day when he saw Cruz holding my hand down the hallway in school. They got into a fist fight about a month ago when Cruz was talking about taking me to the Spring Fling, and the boys on the baseball team are pretty hush-hush about the details.

I’ve tried to grill at least three of them already, but they won’t break boy code, and I’ve given up asking more questions.

“Let me talk to your Uncle Ben, Short Stop,” he mutters confidently against my heated skin. “I can make it work.”

Mindlessly, my palms find his chest, shoving him away a bit to look up at him.

Meanwhile, my heart that was once beating rapidly because of his lips and tongue now slams into my chest for a whole other reason.

Him speaking to my Uncle Ben.

“You can’t,” I argue immediately because it’d never work.