Chapter 8
Damon
The thing about baseball is, you can’t fake confidence at the plate. You step up there second-guessing yourself, and the pitcher smells it. They’ll eat you alive.
But with Alicia? I felt like I was stepping up to bat blindfolded.
It wasn’t that she was cold exactly though, God knows, she could turn her voice into a scalpel when she wanted. It was that I couldn’t read her anymore. One day she’d laugh at my dumb urgent-care jokes, the next she’d act like I was one concussion away from getting blocked on her phone.
And lately? She’d been distant. Not gone, not shut down, just… holding something back. Like she was protecting a part of herself from me. I hated it.
Evan didn’t help. Every time I showed up at their place, he gave me that “hurt my sister and I’ll bury you under the bleachers” look. It was fair. Expected, even. But it didn’t stop me from wanting to push harder, to prove myself faster.
Problem was, I couldn’t rush Alicia. She wasn’t built for games. She wasn’t built for empty words. She needed proof. Consistency. And for the first time in my life, I wanted to give someone exactly that. So I waited. I showed up. I listened. I even shut up once in a while, an Olympic-level achievement for me but one night, sitting across from her in Evan’s living room while he snored on the couch between us, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“You’re quiet,” I said softly.
She didn’t look up from her tea. “I’m always quiet.”
“No, you’re… measured. Controlled. But you’re not quiet. Not with me. Not until now.”
That got her eyes on me and damn it, even when she was tired, even when her hair was messy and her patience was thin, she was beautiful.
“Maybe I just don’t have anything to say,” she murmured.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “Or maybe you’re carrying something and you don’t trust me with it.”
Her throat worked like she was swallowing words she didn’t want me to hear. For half a second, I thought she might actually spill whatever it was. But then she shook her head.
“Not everything is about you, Damon.”
That one stung. More than I wanted to admit.
“Yeah,” I said finally, leaning back. “But I want it to be. At least when it comes to this.”
She blinked at me, caught between rolling her eyes and softening. It was the same war she’d been fighting since the night we first collided, trust versus self-protection.
And the sick part was, I didn’t know which side I wanted to win. Because if she picked me, really picked me, I’d have no excuse left. No exit strategy. I’d have to be exactly the man she thought I couldn’t be.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure if I was up to bat or about to strike out.
Something was off. Not the usual Alicia-off, where she shut me down with one arched eyebrow and a cutting remark that still somehow made me want to kiss her. No, this was heavier. Different. Like she was carrying a weight and deliberately keeping it from me and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s being benched without knowing the play.
I told myself to be patient. To wait her out. But patience was never my game, and by the third night of her dodging me, I snapped.
I showed up at the hospital.
Bad idea, I knew. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I didn’t go, I’d lose whatever ground I’d clawed my way to.
The automatic doors whooshed open, and there she was, leaning against the nurses’ station in her scrubs, hair pulled back, exhaustion written all over her face. She looked up, and froze like I’d just walked into the wrong scene.
“Alicia,” I said, voice lower than I meant.
Her eyes flicked around, like she was making sure we weren’t being watched. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“You can’t just… show up here, Damon. This isn’t your stadium. People are sick. Dying. This is my job.”
“I know that.” I took a step closer. “But something’s wrong. You’ve been off with me, and I’m not leaving until you tell me why.”
Her jaw tightened. And for a second, I thought she’d finally give me the truth. But then—
“Damon?” a voice purred behind me.
I turned.
And there she was. Sabrina.
In the middle of the ER, dressed like she was on her way to a rooftop bar, a smirk on her lips like she’d just hit a walk-off home run.
“Of course,” she continued, eyes sliding past me to Alicia. “Of all the places to find you…”
Alicia’s face went pale. Not surprised, guilty and that’s when it hit me. She’d already seen Sabrina.
I turned back to Alicia, searching her face. “You knew.”
Her lips parted, but no words came out.
“You knew she was here. You didn’t tell me.”
The room tilted, my chest tightening in a way no fastball had ever managed.
Alicia stepped forward, her voice low but fierce. “Because it wasn’t your fight, Damon. She came to me.”
“To you?” I laughed, sharp and bitter. “And you just...what? Kept it quiet? Let her waltz into your life and plant landmines in your head, and didn’t think maybe I should know?”
Her eyes flashed, hurt colliding with fury. “What was I supposed to do? Throw her out like some jealous girlfriend? You think that’s who I am? You think I’m going to play that game with you?”
“It’s not a game!” I snapped, louder than I meant, drawing stares from every corner of the ER. “It’s my life. And she’s part of it whether I like it or not. But you? You’re supposed to be the one I can trust.”
The silence after that was deafening.
Alicia’s hands shook, just barely, but she crossed her arms tight over her chest like armor. “Then maybe you trusted the wrong person.”
And just like that, I felt the ground shift under my feet because for the first time, it wasn’t about Sabrina. It wasn’t about baseball or headlines or habits I couldn’t kick.
It was about Alicia and whether she believed in me enough to fight for this, fight for us.
The worst part? In that moment, looking at her guarded eyes, I wasn’t sure she did.
