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“Why do I have the oddest feeling that was your doing?”
All I could do was give him a smirk and a quick shrug of my shoulders. “A true mastermind never reveals her ways.”
“You’re amazing,” Tommy breathed, his hand wrapping around mine as a quick squeeze was the only thing that wouldn’t draw any attention from his teammates around us.
It was weird that we had gone from making sure we were seen holding hands by someone to not wanting anyone to see. These small moments felt even more special than anything the two of us had done before, like they were too important to share with anyone else.
Maggie
Tommy and I showed up to his house about an hour later. His parents were parked out front, waiting for us. The four of us walked inside together, Scott and Tommy chatting back and forth about the game. They were dissecting Tommy’s at bats and discussing what had worked for him tonight that he should practice on replicating. It was a completely different experience watching him interact with his dad than what had happened the first time we traveled to California.
Linda and I left them to continue chatting while we headed toward the kitchen to start dinner. I dug through Tommy’s cabinets to find the pasta and ingredients for the garlic bread. Linda began heating up a pot of water. The two of us let Scott and Tommy’s conversation fill the space, just enjoying the camaraderie between the two men.
Scott pointed out all of the paraphernalia that Tommy had kept and displayed proudly on his shelves in his living room. I watched the two of them as I helped Linda roll the dough out for the garlic bread and begin cutting them into shape.
“I feel like I owe you more than a simple thank-you.” Linda broke the silence that had filled the kitchen. Her eyes were also locked on the two men in the living room. She had barely taken her eyes away from them since the stadium.
“I don’t know about that,” I told her as I dumped the pasta into the now boiling water. “All I did was say what Tommy needed.”
“I’ve been telling Scott to be more vocal about how he feels about Tommy for years. He’s listened, but ultimately, he’s always fallen back on tough love. His father did it with him, and then Scott thought it was what he needed to do for Tommy. I had tried to break that generational pattern, but with very little luck.” Linda slid a sheet pan full of the garlic bread we had made into the oven.
“How was what I did different?” I asked.
“You are clearly someone Tommy cares about very much and I think hearing it from you, Scott felt like he was hearing it straight from Tommy. You are the first girl that Tommy has ever brought home to us, so we knew it was serious with you.”
I stared at Linda incredulously. “He’s never brought anyone else home?”
Linda shook her head.
“What about Sutton?” The two of them had dated for over a year. I found it hard to believe that Tommy never brought her around his parents when they were all in San Diego at the time.
“We never met Sutton and probably for the better. I don’t think that girl wanted to hear what I had to say about her choices when it came to my son. She never put him as a person first, only his money.”
I glanced over to Tommy as I thought about what Linda had told me. I found it hard to believe that the first girl he would bring home, after never having brought anyone home before, would be a girl that he was fake dating. He hadn’t even brought a girl that he had been seeing for over a year home to his parents. Why me?
Tommy caught me looking at him over his shoulder, and he flashed me a quick smile before rejoining the conversation with his dad. Part of me wondered if he had wanted Monica’s contract to work so badly that he would toss his previous morals out the window. Or maybe there was something more that I was missing. Because Tommy didn’t seem like the type of guy that would forgo everything he stood for simply to fix his past wrongdoings.
“It’s like I’m watching my son morph into who I knew he always was. But I would be naive to think he had done that all on his own.” Linda’s voice brought my attention back to the kitchen. Her eyes were flitting between me and Tommy, taking in the way I had been looking at her son.
“I’m sorry?”
“You don’t seem to fully believe that you are important to Tommy in the way that I have been saying. Tommy knew he would have to change some of his habits when he moved to Chicago, but I don’t think he knew how to at the time. He’s grown up and has become more of a man. A man’s strength is in how gentle he loves a woman. And he treats you like you are the most precious gift this world has given him yet.” Linda wrapped a hand around my forearm. “A mother can tell when her son’s in love.”
Love?
My mouth grew dry as my brain tried to process what she had said. Linda thought her son was in love with me, and her evidence wasn’t the press photos or when we were staging for the cameras. Her evidence was moments that were for the two of us, with no expectations or obligations making us do anything.
Was she right?
Did Tommy love me?
It felt like there were too many obstacles in play for that to matter, even if it were true. Tommy was trying to regain control over his life and his career. I was trying to pick up the pieces of mine. We were both under contract for the rest of the season to publicly be linked as a couple. Meanwhile, I was getting paid to do so. The idea of us loving each other—despite all of it—felt impossible.
I looked back at Tommy, who was now walking over toward us with his eyes locked on mine. He gave me a small smile, one that was for only us. I couldn’t help but return it as he and Scott joined me and Linda at the kitchen island.
Even if the possibility of a relationship with Tommy felt doomed from the start, that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the time we had left with each other before everything would go back to normal. Because wasn’t that what was going to happen? When the contract was over, he would move on with his career with a shiny new image and I would go back to trying to make a name for myself in my career.
“We could have helped!” Scott exclaimed, making me want to chuckle. It was the ultimate dad catchphrase after having missed all of the work while they were off doing something else.
