Page 38 of Cross-Checked

I knock twice before I enter, and when she spins around, it’s clear why she’s in pain. She’d insisted on sleeping in her clothes last night because she didn’t want me to help her get undressed, and now she’s decided to take matters into her own hands. As a result, she’s got her good arm out of her sweater, but her splint has snagged inside it.

“Can I help get you untangled?”

“I’m freaking undressing. Why are you barging in here?” She’s annoyed and feisty, and I don’t know why, but I really like that. Still, I don’t want to be a creep and make her uncomfortable.

I hold up my hands and look at the ground. “Because you’re not supposed to be doing that by yourself. It’s why you’re here, and not across the hall in your own place.”

She makes a sound that’s like a growl rattling around in the back of her throat. “I hate feeling helpless like this.”

“You’re not helpless,” I say with a sigh, “you’re injured. Come here. I’ll help you get out of that sweater, and I promise I won’t even check you out while I’m doing it.”

“Oh yeah, because you’re such a gentleman.”

“I am, actually,” I tell her, not even chuckling at the slicing glare she sends me in response. “Come here, let me help.” I don’t move toward her. She needs to make this decision because she’s willing to accept my help, not because I’m standing over her and demanding it.

“Fine.” Her chest deflates with a big sigh as she steps toward me.

Reaching inside the arm of her sweater where it’s tangled around her shoulder and biceps, I spread the knit fabric enough that she can pull her splinted arm out without snagging it. Then I reach down and grab the t-shirt I’d offered to help her put on last night where it sits on the dresser, and hold it out with my fingers spreading the shirt sleeve so she can slide that arm in first, before I pull it over her head and she slides her other arm through.

“You going to put the shorts on too?” I ask.

“Yeah. I hate hard pants.”

“You...what now?” I ask with a laugh as I grab the pair of boxer shorts off the dresser.

“Hard pants. You know, like with zippers and buttons and stuff.”

“As opposed to soft pants?”

“Yeah, like leggings and sweats.”

“Huh. Yeah, me too, I guess.” I never thought about it that way, but it makes sense.

She reaches down with her good hand and lifts the front of the t-shirt to undo the button and zipper of her navy-blue dress pants with her other hand, while I stand there wondering why she almost always wears trousers to work if she hates the feel of them.

“Can you pull these off for me, please?”

Squatting, I grab the fabric at her knees and gently tug down until the pants pool at her feet. It’s not until I look up at her that I notice my face is right at the level of her crotch. I know I said I was a gentleman and all, but that doesn’t mean I don’t imagine this scene playing out differently—me lifting that t-shirt and sliding her thong down her legs before tasting her.

But because I’m not a creep, and because I can hear Abby babbling away in the next room, I hold the boxers out at AJ’s feet so she can step into them, and then pull them up to her knees, letting her take them with her good hand.

“I’m going to finish feeding Abby breakfast. Are you hungry?” I ask, turning away so she can get the boxers on under the t-shirt without me watching.

“I don’t eat breakfast. But I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”

“All this talk of killing people last night and this morning...I didn’t know you were so violent,” I tease.

“That’s because you don’t know me, McCabe.” Her voice is hard, and I can feel her trying to put distance back between us...the kind of distance that should exist between a general manager and her players, yet seems to disappear when we’re alone.

I should let those walls go back up. Nothing she told me the other day about her reasons for trading me changes anything. I still missed out on the last couple of weeks of my grandma’s life because of her.

By the time I got the call that Grandma was sick and I needed to come home, she was already on a ventilator...and she never came off. I never got to tell her how much I loved her. How she saved my life and gave me a future, all because she was so wonderfully selfless.

I should have been there for her at the end, when she was sick but still lucid. And I would have been, if I’d still been playing in St. Louis. I would have been able to stop by every day we weren’t on the road. But instead, I was in Boston.

And yet...I can’t bring myself to blame AJ anymore. Because she’s right—I’mthe one who beat the shit out of her husband right before the trade deadline, and there was no way I was going to play for him after that. I didn’t leave the team much of a choice but to trade me.

I turn back toward her, happy to find that she’s managed to get those shorts on under the t-shirt. Not that she even needed them, since my shirt comes down to her mid-thigh. “I’ll go get you some coffee. Still like it black?”

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