Listen, Pitch (There's No Crying in Baseball 3)

I nodded.

“Shit,” he said, surveying the damage. “I saw you fall. You ruined your dress.”

I looked down and moaned. “This was my favorite dress.”

“It’s your only dress,” Alana supplied.

I flipped her off with my good hand, and she laughed.

“I have one dress because this is my favorite, and I don’t like the way any of the other ones feel,” I countered.

My dress was ruined.

There’s no way that much blood was going to come out of my gray dress…

“No, don’t!” I cried, trying to stop him.

But before I could get my hand up, he was shrugging out of his jersey and wrapping it around my arm in a makeshift bandage.

I moaned. “It’s definitely not going to come out of the jersey…”

Rhys grinned. “We have a guy that gets out blood, grass, and dirt stains like it’s nothing. Trust me when I say, he can handle this.”

Then, without another word, he hopped back over the barricade.

But before I could tell him thank you, or even admire his body in that second skin shirt he was wearing that molded to his every bump and curve, I was up in his arms and going with him into the dugout.

“Rhys!” I whispered fiercely. “What are you doing?”

He grunted. “I’m taking you to the trainer so she can fix your wrist.”

Then, he proved that fact as he carried me straight down a tunnel-like hallway, up a flight of stairs, and into a wide-open room where some of the other players were still loitering.

“Whatcha got there, Rhys?” a tall man called out.

“None ya business, Manny,” Rhys grumbled as he passed.

“Hey, do you think you can stay a little late and talk to that reporter about your comeback?” someone called.

“Not right now, Coach Siggy.”

I whispered fiercely to Rhys, “That’s your coach. You really shouldn’t talk to him like that. And it won’t hurt for you to talk to the reporters.”

Rhys’ eyes tilted down to catch my gaze. “They’ll wait.”

I bit my lip, and his eyes watched.

Something flashed in them, and I had a moment of surprise before he banked whatever had just crossed them. “How did you manage to fall, anyway? I was watching you. It was like you just tipped forward.”

I held up my feet and showed him my heels. “I’m better in tennis shoes.”

He snorted. “I think everyone would be better in tennis shoes, to be honest. I’ve never understood why women liked those things.”

I didn’t, either.Chapter 19When the beast went human, I cried. I just wanted to scream, ‘you lost all your gains, bro!’

-George to Rhys when explaining that he was forced to watch Beauty and the Beast

Rhys

The moment I sat her on the trainer’s table, she shifted restlessly, trying in vain to tug the short, gray dress down past her knees.

My dick, which had been hard the moment that she’d walked out with that dress on this morning, pulsed.

She’d been driving me insane for eight hours straight, and I was fairly sure she had no clue.

She also had no clue that that dress had sealed her fate.

She’d been mine for a long time, but today had hammered that point home.

She was mine. The money was ours. And that was how it was forever going to be.

Tonight, I’d make it official—I’d take her, and make her mine in all ways.

“What’s going on?”

I looked up to find Sway, the personal trainer, making her way to us.

I gestured with my head to Henley. “She fell and cut her arm up pretty bad. I was hoping you could wrap it up…I don’t think it needs stitches, but there was too much blood to really tell.”

Sway swiped up a pair of gloves off the rack next to the sink and slipped them on.

Once they were in place over her hands, she sidled up beside me and gently removed the uniform from around her wrist.

Henley hissed in pain.

“Sorry,” Sway murmured. “I’m not a doctor but—”

“But she needs stitches,” I guessed.

Sway winced. “Yeah. I think you’re going to need stitches…unfortunately.”

I was hoping that wasn’t the case.

All my plans for the night were slowly sliding downhill at a fast pace.

“I don’t want to get stitches. Maybe just steri-strips?” Henley asked hopefully.

I grunted. “Negative. We’re going to get it fixed up. Then we’re going home. No arguments.”

Henley sighed, looking so forlorn that I wanted to kiss the hell out of her.

“I really do hate going to the hospital with something that concerns me…it freaks me out.”

“I don’t think you really have a choice,” I apologized.

“Actually,” Henley smiled. “I know a nurse. She knows how much I hate having things like this done to me. She can stitch me up. She had a doctor show her how when she was in nursing school. She’s stitched me up twice now.”

Then she pointed out a place on her thigh, right above her knee, then a place on her chin, right below her jaw.