After months of therapy, Garrett Delko is still struggling to cope with his brother's suicide. The only time he finds peace is on the pitching mound and with a mysterious girl he's been obsessed with since the first week of college. One night, he se...
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Her mouth formed a small "o" as his words registered. Her shock didn't surprise him. Her confidence had been stripped to the bone, so she didn't see what he did—a tough girl who'd been put in an impossible situation. She could have made a big fuss or had a pity party, but no, she handled it with grace and a mental fortitude that would have put grown men to shame.
God, he craved her like an addict in need of his next fix. It was probably the wrong response to her confession—no probably about it, buddy—but her strength shone like a star in the abyss. Beautiful but simpering girls had always been a turnoff. He wanted a girl to take charge and make life happen for them, not to them.
His whole body shuddered with anger as he thought about Arianne's mom. She sounded like a real piece of work. That type of betrayal was worse than being right or wrong. It went against the very fabric of values a family holds dear. He didn't care how resentful or persecuted Arianne's mom felt. What she did was criminal.
And that ex-boyfriend...Garrett would love five minutes in a room alone with him. But what he didn't understand was the relationship with her dad. Why had it deteriorated when Arianne had done nothing but try to protect her family?
There was more she wasn't telling him, but he didn't want to push. Not when she appeared fragile like a porcelain doll he could break with the gentlest touch. He'd never seen her so vulnerable. Or small. And it made him angry all over again. He squeezed the back of her neck and cupped her cheek with his other hand. "I mean it. You're amazing. And I get why you're distant, but I'm not like those people." They put their needs, their wants above everything else. He wouldn't do that to Arianne.
A sheen of tears brightened her face as she covered his hand with hers. "I know you're not. You're on a different planet than my ex."
His heart quivered with hope as she leaned into his touch. He wanted to lower his mouth onto hers, feel the sweet brush of her lips. "Let me in, Ari. Give me a chance."
His stomach sank as her face dimmed. "I don't see how we can work when we're so wrapped up in our own issues."
He clutched her closer, refusing to let his hope die. "But don't you see? We are the cure, or at least you're the cure for me. I used to think it was baseball, but that changed when I met you."
"And when all of a sudden I don't work like baseball anymore? Will you move on to the next 'cure'?" she asked, air quoting the last word with a touch of cynicism.
He hadn't thought of it that way. But move on from Arianne? His mind and body rebelled at the sheer thought. Yes, she calmed his mind, but he'd been attracted to her long before that.
Arianne dragged his hands off her, and he felt the loss like a knife to the gut. "I don't want to fix someone, and I certainly don't need them to fix me."
He could feel her mentally pulling away and scrambled to make her understand. "I'm not trying to fix you. I'm trying to...to..." Silently, he moaned with frustration. He felt like a bumbling lawyer trying to plead his case with a stone cold jury. "Look at it like this. I'm a piece of cheese with a lot of holes. Yeah, you heard me right. A piece of cheese. Life has been rough and taken its bite out of me. And you're the same way. But when we're together, we overlap, so we fill each other. And yeah, this went real dirty, real quick, but you get what I'm trying to say."
