“It made me stronger in the end.” She pulled away, worried their time together might be drawing to a close and unable to think how to salvage a relationship without hurting each other more. “I shattered my hip and had to relearn how to walk. But it made me appreciate every second. I learned to appreciate my own worth.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He studied her as if he’d never seen her before and she realized maybe he hadn’t. Javier had been so forthright about who he was and what he wanted from life, but she’d grown more guarded than that. She wasn’t used to baring her secrets. Exposing herself and her fears.
“I have a hard time—” She cleared her throat and wondered how she would walk away from someone who truly understood her and cared about her. His tender concern made her eyes burn for what they might have shared. But how could she allow him to sacrifice his place on the Flames for her sake? “Listen, maybe it would be best if I go.”
He did a double take that was so overt it would have been cartoonishly funny if it hadn’t been a heart-wrenchingly awful moment.
“Leave? You want to leave after what we shared?”
Guilt pinched her, but not as much as the guilt she knew she would feel if he got booted off the team because of her.
“Do you really want to lose out on your baseball career after all your brother’s sacrifices?”
He shook his head. “My God, Lisa. You can’t seriously hold that over my head.”
The tears behind her eyes built until they threatened to spill over at the slightest movement.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t imagine that you’d be happy without the career that’s meant so much to you. It’s one thing to walk away from the risk taking, but it’s another to walk away from baseball.” Just saying the words aloud reassured her it was the right thing to do to leave. “You’re too talented for that, Javier. You deserve a place in the stat books and a long, lucrative career that will entertain fans for years to come. I would never want to give your team a reason to release you after how hard you’ve worked to get here.”
He watched her for a long moment before he shook his head. The stark look in his eyes cut her to the quick.
“When we met, it was me who was trying to send you running and now that I’ve succeeded, it’s the last thing I want.”
“I never meant for this to happen,” she assured him, swallowing past the lump in her throat. She reached for her clothes near the bathroom door. “Goodbye, Javier.”
Closing the door between them, she dressed quietly and left the room, knowing she’d never seek him out again.
5
LISA DIDN’T TAKE ANY satisfaction from the hitting slump Javier fell into after she left him that day.
His slugging percentage took a nosedive over the next five games, a fact that was front page news in the Tribune’s sports section after their last home game. Not that she was obsessed with the man who got away or anything. Javier’s stats were just common public knowledge since Chitown loved its sports heroes.
A love she was afraid she might share.
In the last week, her heart had experienced a worse pain than that prop plane crash eight years ago. She had renewed understanding for what it felt like to be broken and vulnerable, except these hurts were all on the inside, too deep for any therapy she knew.
She entered the Flames’ training facility on an off-day, knowing the team was traveling for a road game the next afternoon. She’d been putting off the chore of cleaning out a small locker at the center, not wanting to run into Javier after the way things had ended between them.
Thankfully, interest in her had died down when the media failed to snag any other photos of the two of them together. The Flames had come out in support of Javier despite the earlier insinuations in the press that Lisa was a daredevil who wanted to lead him even further astray. The flap had ended after a few days and she’d wondered if she’d been overcautious to take the allegations so seriously.
Since then, her former supervisor had asked her to come in for an exit interview and to pick up her things, and he’d been glad to let her do the first over the phone and the latter during off-hours since the Flames wanted to low-key her involvement with the team after the news coverage. She’d turn in her key before she left today and then her last tie to the sexy third basemen would be broken.
It felt odd to be in the training facility alone. Some of the staff traveled with the team and those who didn’t had already left for the day. She passed a door for the club house and tried not to think about Javier.
“Lisa.”
A man spoke her name from the shadows of what she thought was an empty conference room and she yelped in surprise.
Slowing her step to see who was inside, she saw a heart-achingly familiar silhouette.
Javier.
“I didn’t think you’d be here,” she said, realizing too late how revealing that statement must be. Since when did she sneak around trying to avoid someone just because he had the power to break her heart? Straightening, she ignored her galloping heart rate and walked on. “Excuse me,” she murmured.
“Wait.” He stepped out into the carpeted hall behind her, his tall frame flanked by historic posters advertising old games. “I’ve been trying to see you.”
He tucked his hand around her elbow lightly enough, but it was a touch she felt in every fiber of her being. She hoped he didn’t feel the small, bittersweet shiver that trembled through her on contact.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” She’d be throwing herself at him in no time.
“I shouldn’t have let you have the last word the other day.” He gave her a rueful grin. “That’s truly unlike me and it should tell you how much I value your opinion.”
She clutched her building keys tighter in her fist, needing to exit the conversation before her heart melted like ice cream at the ballpark.
“I appreciate that, but—”
“But you were dead wrong.” He silenced her with his words, calling the shots in a way that made her smile despite her misery.
“How do you figure?” She avoided his eyes, staring instead at the whiteboard where the trainers scheduled the therapy rooms ahead of time. She noticed her old schedule with Javier had been erased, though no one else had taken the slots with him.
“We shouldn’t end this.” He reached for her shoulders, approaching her slowly, giving her time to object.
She remained silent, longing for something she had told herself all week she couldn’t have.
“We belong together, Lisa.” His hands landed gently on her shoulders. “Before you left to take a shower that morning, I was already making plans for taking you sailing and diving. Then when that phone call came about our pictures in the press and your past—” He clutched his chest. “I was just caught so damn off guard.”
Seeing this big, strong man hold on to his heart like it was a fragile thing warmed her insides like no amount of words could have.
“I should have told you about the accident—”
“No.” He shook his head. “You would have told me in your own time. Being in the spotlight the way I am—it puts my life under the microscope and forces things onto center stage that don’t necessarily deserve to be there. I think the only reason I let you leave that day was my own fear that we’re so alike that you’d hate living in a fish bowl in the long run as much as I do so maybe us being apart was for the best.”
She tried to follow his train of thought, confused but liking the direction of the words very, very much. A spark flared over the ashes she’d been stomping for nearly two weeks.