Page 26 of Caught Offside

“How’s the knee?” Patrick asked.

“Fine. PT cleared me. It only complains when it’s cold, which in Appleton is⁠—”

“Always.”

“Almost always.” He turned the mug in his hands. He hadn’t planned to get into this. “Delgado told me before I left Arizona that the org’s been talking about me. Not the development stuff. It sounds like there’s a real shot I’ll get some time in Milwaukee if Navarro needs a break.”

“That’s good.”

“It’s just speculation. Navarro’s a vet with shot knees, grinding to prove he’s not done. A guy like that doesn’t hand over the job. Somebody has to take it from him.” But Delgado had also said the rest of it, and Asher wanted to say that part too, wanted to say it to the one person who wouldn’t turn it into a pep talk. “He said my numbers this spring were the best he’s seen from a catcher at this level. And the Mavericks had me come down and work out with the big-league staff, catch their bullpens. I’m trying not to get ahead of myself. But you don’t get those reps unless somebody upstairs is paying attention.”

Patrick almost smiled. Asher caught the corner of his mouth lift and pull back, half a second, the pull slower than it used to be.

A cushion away, he could feel the heat off Patrick’s skin, hear him breathe, watch the give of the couch when he shifted his weight. Asher set his hand on the cushion between them, palm down, fingers a few inches from Patrick’s leg. He left it there a second, then picked up his coffee.

“I watched your last game before I flew home,” he said. “The stream was garbage. I got it in five-second chunks.”

“We won.”

“I know you won.” Asher set his coffee down. “Wasn’t really watching the game though.”

“No?”

“You. The whole time.” He let his gaze go where it had wanted to go since Patrick handed him the coffee. “You took a hit in the second, and your jersey rode up, and I’ve been thinking about that strip of you ever since. Sue me.”

Patrick went still. It wasn’t the closed-off still.

“It’s a bruise,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of them.”

“Show me.”

It came out lower than Asher meant it, and he left it there. None of it was about the bruise, and they both knew it. He watched Patrick decide, watched his face do the thing it did right before he gave something up.

Patrick reached back and pulled his shirt off by the collar. Stomach, chest, shoulders, the shirt landing on the cushion beside him.

Whatever Asher had been about to say went quiet in his mouth. There was a bruise low on Patrick’s right side, yellow-green and healing, and he barely clocked it. Six weeks of a screen, and here was the rest of him, close enough to touch, and Asher had run clean out of reasons not to.

He laid his hand flat against Patrick’s side, careful, fingers spread. Patrick’s stomach pulled tight under his palm. Neither of them moved.

“That hurt?” His voice had dropped without his permission.

“No.”

His thumb slowly moved over the warm skin below Patrick’s ribs, nothing to do with the bruise now. Patrick’s breath caught and came out of him long and uneven. Asher could feel the heat building under his palm, could feel what it was costing Patrick to sit there and let it happen. He was in real trouble, the good kind, the kind he had no plan for.

He spread his fingers. Patrick’s hand came up and caught him by the wrist.

He wasn’t pushing it away. He was holding it there, like he hadn’t worked out yet which way he wanted this to go.

So Asher leaned in. He couldn’t have said when he started moving, only that the cushion between them was gone, his free hand on the warm line of Patrick’s jaw, Patrick not stopping him. They were close enough now to feel each other’s breath go ragged, close enough that one more inch would end the argument they’d been having since February without a word of it spoken.

Patrick’s gaze dropped to his mouth. His grip on Asher’s wrist tightened.

For one second, Asher had him. He knew it the way he knew a pitch was coming before the wind-up, knew it in his hands. Patrick was a half-breath from giving in, his control down to the last thread.

And just like when the pitcher stumbled at the last minute, Patrick leaned back and the moment was gone.

Patrick reached for his shirt and pulled it on. The room stayed charged. Neither of them trusted the couch after that. Patrick stood and reached for his jacket. Asher was already up. Nobody said why.