Page 26 of Rain Delay

He sighs, tilting his head from side to side. “Sure, but you’ll never know how she feels about everything unless you talk about it. You can’t just avoid the conversation.”

“Since when do you give good relationship advice?” I laughed.

“Believe it or not, there are a couple of functioning brain cells up there.” Liam points at his head before he continues to walk into the dugout.

* * *

I KNEW THAT ROAD TRIPS WERE PART OF THE JOB. They always had been – Nothing’s changed about that. I was used to the same outline, same rhythm. Everything about that felt simple.

Going on road trips now? Nothing was simple about it. Having to travel knowing my ex-girlfriend was traveling with the team as well? That put a bump in my rhythm.

I walked through the hotel, making my way to Eliana’s room. She had finished some content for me and wanted to show me before she posted it.

I knocked on the door a couple of times, impatiently waiting for her to answer.

“Yeah?” she calls out.

“It’s me.”

The door opened a few seconds later.

“Hey,” I stop myself. I shouldn’t be at her hotel room; We should be doing this in public, like at the bar or something.

“Hi,” she stepped aside. “I have a rough draft ready that I wanted to show you before I finalize everything.”

I nodded, remembering why I was here.

For work. No funny business.

“Awesome,” I step inside and follow her.

She moves back to the desk, clicking on something to show me.

“I pulled some footage from yesterday’s game and then from practice this morning,” she tells me. “And I got a couple of clips traveling.”

I lean against the edge of the desk, watching her. “You didn’t waste any time.”

She doesn’t look at me. “That’s kind of the job.”

Her fingers moved quickly over the keyboard, pulling up the video. “Tell me if anything looks off. Timing, angles, whatever.”

She hits play. Clips of practice played. The bus ride. Guys joking around. Me in mid-swing, mid-laugh, mid-whatever moment she decided was worth capturing.

One clip caught me off guard – She said something that made me genuinely laugh, and hearing myself laugh took me back.

It was a really good video. She made everything look effortless. Like this was just some light work for her and it was another day on her schedule.

The attention to detail, the perfecting of the art, everything had a purpose, and she was really good at making sure everything told a story.

“You always look like that when you work?” I ask.

She paused the video, turning her body to face me. “Like what?”

“Like you’re either about to strangle the computer or you’ve just solved the solution to world hunger.”

Her lips twitched slightly. “Depends on the day.”

I smiled before I could stop myself.