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

My mind drifted as she continued to talk, but all I could think about was what would happen if there was a fire. If it happened during the day, she wouldn’t hear it. I’d only thought I had to worry about her during the night when she didn’t have her transmitter on. Now I had to worry about her during the day, too?

“Sir, the fasten seatbelt sign just went on.”

I looked up to find our flight attendant glaring at me.

I shot her an apologetic smile, then fastened my seatbelt.

“Why is the fasten seatbelt sign turning on?” Henley turned to me. “We still have two hours until we arrive. It says so.”

She pointed at the screen that was on the back of the seat in front of her. She’d turned it to the interactive map that tells you how far the plane has gone and when we left our previous location. What time it was at our impending destination. The temperature. How fast the plane was going, and where we were currently flying over.

Before I could answer her, though, the entire plane shook, causing Henley to gasp.

I’d found out, about two seconds into our takeoff, that she’d never been on a plane before.

Obviously, that meant she hadn’t experienced turbulence, either.

“It’s okay,” I soothed, making sure she could read my mouth. “Turbulence is normal.”

She looked like she wanted to disagree but decided to keep her mouth shut instead.

I immediately felt awful.

She’d had to remove her transmitter when the plane’s engines started up, and she hadn’t been able to keep it on since.

Meaning she was running short one sense during a brand-new experience.

Luckily, she had me to distract her.

I caught her chin and turned her face toward me, and away from the interactive map in front of her.

The moment her fearful eyes met mine, I immediately softened.

I also knew just what to ask to make that fear go away.

“How many babies do you want?”

“If a man like Rhys Rivera asked me how many babies I wanted, I’d melt into a puddle on the floor,” someone whispered a little too loudly behind us.

I ignored them and then decided that the rest of this conversation would take place with me not actually saying the words.

“Uhhh,” she hesitated. “Is this a test I can fail?”

I snorted. “No.”

I still held my hand on the corner of her face, keeping her eyes pointed toward me.

But it wasn’t because I thought she might look away. It was because I liked having my hand on her.

Touching her where no other man would ever get to touch her again.

“Okay,” she hesitated. “Then, my instinctive answer is one. I mean…what if that one is deaf? Would I want to subject another person to this existence?”

She waved at herself in a breezy, uncaring way, but I could tell that she was upset.

I narrowed my eyes. “You. Are. Not. Defective.”

Due to the stiltedness of my words, she could easily read that I was putting force behind the words—words that I forgot that I was supposed to say silently, not out loud.

“Seems like she’s defective to me.”

I stood up so fast that I was doing it without actually planning on it.

I glared at the woman over my seat, gave her a glimpse of the real me, and saw her pale.

I didn’t say a word—didn’t have to.

I’d made my point perfectly clear.

Don’t mess with my woman.

The woman winced, and I smiled, showing a row of top and bottom teeth that looked more like a leer than a smile, then regained my seat.

Henley was looking at me with a raised eyebrow.

“She was kicking my seat,” I lied.

Henley studied me for a brief moment, then shrugged. “Anyway, if our first arrives without problem then I want to try for another. As long as we keep having healthy, happy children, I’ll keep producing them.”

I grinned. “So, we’re gonna be Rivera, party of twenty-eight?”

Her eyes widened, and she spoke louder than she’d intended. “No!”

I chuckled and leaned forward, dropping a kiss onto her mouth.

Pulling back before it could get too heated, I leaned back in my seat but kept my head pointed in her direction.

The plane shook again, and I felt her soft hand take mine.

I looked down at it, studying the difference between her hand and mine.

Mine was big, scarred, and rough while hers was small, delicate, and soft.

But her tiny hand fit into my big hand perfectly, as if it was meant to be there.

I curled my fingers around hers and didn’t let go.

Not when the plane shook again, and certainly not when the plane jolted so hard that one of the oxygen masks in the seat in front of us descended.

“Please make sure that your seatbelt is fastened. The staff will now be taking their seats until we can get through this rough patch that we’re about to go through. I’ll also be dimming the cabin lights,” the captain suddenly came over the air.