Page 17 of Naked

Hunter was right. I hadn’t been paying attention.

Ash came into the game in the fifth inning and Marissa lost her mind screaming. He was a utility player who was frequently called up and sent back down to the minors as needed. Every game he played for the Mantas mattered. He adored Marissa and constantly leaned on her exuberant belief in his abilities.

Joachim started at third base today. He generally played one out of every three games. He hadn’t quite earned the starting third baseman position yet. When Emily was away for work—usually to Nashville or LA—he moped around like a sad puppy.

I’d never seen either of them flirt with another woman. Maybe an appreciative glance, but at no point did I ever think one of them might cheat on their girlfriends. Like Hunter, they were driven by their careers and fiercely loyal to the people they loved.

Even the goofiest, most exuberant guy on the team—catcher Wes Allen—was infamous for dropping his player ways the minute he married his wife.

None of them fit into my box. How did I not see this?

“Hey.” Marissa nudged my shoulder. “You’re coming to LA with us, right?”

I nodded aimlessly. “Why is dating a ballplayer hard?” I was so sure that Hunter was incapable of dating anyone, let alone me. Now that I understood how wrong I was, I had to wonder whatrealproblems I was ignoring.

“Well they travel all the time, they work almost every day, and they never know if they’ll have a job.” She ticked those off on her fingers quickly. “Add in the fact that they could get hurt any time and none of them know what to do when they have free time, and it gets complicated quickly.”

Complicated.

Verycomplicated when my career has all the same issues. On the one hand, I felt like I was finally seeing Hunter and all the possibilities for our future.

And on the other, how impossible it seemed.

Even if we had amazing sex, how could we betogether? We didn’t even live on the same side of the world.

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