Page 78 of The Strike Zone

She turned around to face the bed, though it was more like the elephant in the room, then back to me. “I don’t want you on the couch, it’s not fair.”

“I’m fine on the co?—”

She held her hand up. “Let me finish. I was thinking the bed is so big, that we could just build a line of pillows down the middle then it’s like we’re in separate beds. My brother and I used to do that when we were kids.”

I pointed to the bed. “You want me to sleep in there? With you?”

She must have sensed the nervousness in my voice, or seen it all over my face, because her tone became way more assertive than it had been two minutes ago.

“Yes. We’re both adults, right? Nothing’s going to happen. And it would make me feel a whole lot less guilty.”

“Okay…sure, we can try your pillow line.” My eyes flicked to the bathroom, thank fuck it was a proper bathroom with a closing door and not one of those all-access area type ones without walls. “You get it ready, and I’m going to hit the shower, and I’ll see you back here in five…no, ten.”

I’d probably only need thirty seconds for what I had planned.

“Sure.” She smiled, her fresh pink cheeks reflecting the downlights. “I can do that.”

I snatched up my overnight bag and marched into the bathroom.

“Which side do you sleep?” she called out as I locked the door, staring at myself in the mirror, still trying to find any clue as to what I thought I was doing but it was nowhere to be found.

“Doesn’t matter. Whichever side you don’t want.”

I didn’t bother to add it was unlikely I’d be getting any sleep at all.

Turning the shower on full blast, I stripped off. The baseball gods must have taken pity on me because as I waited for it to reach that scalding temperature I really loved before bed, I rummaged through my travel bag and found some workout shorts and a T-shirt I didn’t remember packing.

The second I stepped under the water my dick hardened, a Pavlovian response to a nighttime routine. I reasoned for both our sakes it was better to follow through with jerking off than risk Scout being nudged awake in the night if I rolled too close.

Pillow fort be damned.

As predicted, it took me less than a minute—thanks to the very real fantasy in my bed and one flimsy hotel wall between us—before the force of my orgasm punched me so hard that I needed to prop myself up. Almost immediately, tiredness took over.

I’d been awake for eighteen hours, played an intense game of baseball, flown across three time zones, and tried to extract a Labrador-sized bird from Scout’s bed.

I was done.

Scout was scrolling on her phone over the far side of the bed beyond a wall of pillows so high I could barely see her in the dim light. She’d even taken the cushions from the couch.

“Are you okay over there?” I chuckled, setting my phone to charge on my side of the bed.

“Yes, I’m good. Any water left?”

“I left you enough,” I replied, sliding between the sheets, and switched off the light only to immediately flick it back on again. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, you can turn it off.”

There’s something about having a conversation in the dark, whispered, reverential almost. Even the most trivial topics become memorable—I knew I’d never forget this, anyway.

“What time do you have to be at practice tomorrow?”

“We report at one p.m. I’ll sleep late, what about you?”

“I’m meeting the team at ten thirty.”

“Do you need the alarm set?”

“No, I’ll wake up. I’ll move back next door so I don’t wake you, the cleaning crew came in. The bird is gone.”

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