Gavin carried the trash downstairs and threw it into the bin in the garage. Butter followed forlornly and flopped onto the kitchen floor.

“She shut you out too, huh?” Gavin crouched and scratched the dog’s ears. Butter thumped his tail and sighed. Yep. Just a couple of dudes licking their wounds after the alpha in the house let loose a vicious bark.

Gavin whistled for Butter to follow him to the front door. At the sight of Gavin reaching for his leash, Butter started bouncing on his front paws and yipping. Gavin tugged a wool skull cap over his hair, grabbed a pair of gloves, and headed out. He thought briefly about going back in to tell Thea where he was headed, but he was still just pissed enough to know they both needed some space.

Outside, the crisp air was a slap to his lungs and forced him to take his first deep breath in hours. He followed his normal route, hating life for the first ten minutes as he always did when running. Just because he was a professional athlete didn’t mean he actually enjoyed running. It was a necessary evil. But his body finally adapted to the punishing pace and fell into the zone. Tension eased from his shoulders with every stride. Butter kept pace, tail wagging, tongue flopping, and apparently forgiving him for shoving him outside earlier. At least someone forgave him.

Gavin ran for two miles until he came to one of the city recreational parks. He slowed to a walk and stopped at the baseball field nearest the parking lot. A chain-link fence encircled the diamond, and two dugouts flanked home plate. The lights over the field were dark now, but streetlamps from the parking lot illuminated the dusty infield and the worn, eroded hill of the pitcher’s mound. Gavin sat down on the cold bleachers, which, come summer, would be filled with parents and grandparents who all thought their kids were the cutest and most talented to ever play the game.

He’d spent most of his youth at fields like this, and it was at those dusty fields where people first started to notice and whisper about him for something other than his stutter. Where coaches began to gather and say, “Is that him?” Where scouts eventually began to show up in college sweatshirts to introduce themselves to his parents and watch for proof that the kid from an Ohio suburb was as good as everyone said he was.

One-in-a-million chance. That’s what they always said. It was a one-in-a-million chance that he’d get to the Majors someday. But once the dream was planted in his head, Gavin wanted nothing else. Nothing was going to stop him. He would work harder than anyone else because out there, on those grubby fields, he was more than the kid who couldn’t read aloud in class. More than the boy who was too nervous to talk to girls.

Butter flopped to the ground at Gavin’s feet with a pant. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw a text from Thea.

Did you leave?

Fuck. He should have told her. He thumbed a quick answer. I went for a run.

Seconds passed before the dancing dots indicated she was responding. Don’t lock the door when you get back. Liv won’t be home until late, and Butter will bark if she has to use her key. I’m going to bed.

The cold unspoken message was clear: Don’t even think about a good-night kiss.

He was fucking this up.

Before he could change his mind, Gavin called up his recent calls list and scrolled to find his parents’ number. His father answered on the third ring, voice heavy with sleep.

“Hey, old man,” Gavin teased. “Sleeping off the turkey?”

“Just dozing,” his dad said. “Waiting for your mom to get home.”

“Where is she?”

“Your brother talked her into going to a movie.”

“Ah.” Gavin bit his lip.

“Everything OK?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

Gavin cleared his throat. His dad knew instantly something wasn’t right.

“Christ, Gav. What’s wrong?”

“There’s, uh, there’s something I haven’t told you and Mom.”

“Oh, shit. Is it one of the girls? Are the girls OK?”

“The girls are fine. Just . . .”

“Are things OK with Thea?”

Fuck. He sucked in a breath and let it out. “No.”

Gavin heard the creak and snap of his father’s old recliner. Gavin could picture him standing. “Tell me what’s going on, son.”

Gavin let out another shaky breath and gave his father the basics—they’d been having trouble, had a big fight, he moved out for a couple of weeks; he was home now but things weren’t going well. He left out the most humiliating aspect, obviously.

His father let out a heavy breath. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to worry you, I guess. It’s not like you and Mom ever went through anything like this, so—”

His father’s boom of laughter caught him by surprise. “Is that what you think?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Wow. We were better at hiding it than I thought.”

Gavin sat up straighter. “Wh-wh-what are you talking about?”

“Son, you can’t be married to someone for almost thirty years without going through hell a couple of times. If you asked your mother, she’d tell you there were times when the only reason she didn’t leave me was because she couldn’t afford to raise you boys alone. And I know because she told me that to my face.”

A noise pounded in Gavin’s ears, something that sounded a lot like the crumbling of the illusion that was his childhood. “But you guys never fought.”

“Not in front of you, but we fought plenty. Still do.”

“About what?” Gavin felt like he’d just been told Santa Claus wasn’t real again.

“Hell, you name it. She gets pissed at me for walking past dirty dishes without putting them in the dishwasher, and I get pissed at her for not writing down her debit card expenses in the check register.”

Gavin snorted. “Dad, nobody uses a check register anymore.”

“Ah, Christ. Don’t you start in on me too.”

Gavin stared blankly at the dark field in front of him. He wasn’t sure if he was devastated or relieved to learn his parents weren’t perfect. “Look, Dad, I get what you’re saying but you and Mom apparently fight over stupid shit. Thea and I have bigger problems than that.”

“You really think your mother would threaten to leave me over dishes? We struggle with the big stuff too.”

Gavin scuffed his shoe in the dirt.

“Son, there’s something I never told you, but I’m going to tell you now. But you gotta let me finish before you react.”

Gavin tensed. “OK.”

“When you first told us about Thea, that you’d met a woman, we were so happy because you were happy. Finally. But when you told us just a couple of months later that she was pregnant and you were getting married? Well, we weren’t real happy.”

“Wh-what? Why?”

“I told you to let me finish.”

Gavin grumbled an apology.

“You were a sure thing for the Majors, Gav. We knew that by the time you were a senior in high school. But you were also, well, naïve about girls, let’s just say that.”

Oh, great. Even his parents thought he was a fucking loser.

“We worried that it would make you easy pickings for some girl to take advantage of you somehow because of the money you were going to make someday.”

Swift anger stiffened his spine. “Thea isn’t like that.”

“I know, son. As soon as we met her, we knew. And you know how we knew?”

“How?”

“She didn’t ignore your stutter. She didn’t pretend it didn’t exist. All your life, you thought you needed to find a woman who would love you despite the stutter, but you should have been looking for a woman who loved you because of it, because it was part of who you are. Thea is that woman.”

Yes, she was. And Gavin was on the verge of losing her.

His father suddenly broke off, and in the background, Gavin heard the telltale squeak of his parents’ back door.

“Your mom’s home,” his father said in a hushed tone.

Shit. “Don’t tell her about Thea.”

“I won’t.” Then louder, he said, “Hey, I’m talking to Gav.”

His brother shouted something in the background that sounded a lot like you owe me. Or it could have been blow me. Either was possible.

His father came back on the line, but a moment passed before he spoke in a low voice. “Listen to me, son. Whatever you did wrong, you fight like hell to fix this with Thea, you hear me?”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

Then his own goddamn father hung up on him. He was officially batting zero lately.

With a short whistle, he urged Butter to his feet and started a slow jog back down the park path toward home. The house was dark and quiet when he walked in the front door. Butter made a beeline for his water dish and managed to slobber half of it on the floor. After wiping up the mess, Gavin walked upstairs. He needed a shower, but he found himself drifting to the door of her bedroom.

Their bedroom.

He raised his hand to knock, fighting against the resentment that he had to request entry to his own bedroom. She didn’t answer right away, and the second-long delay was just enough to make him sweat.

“Come in,” she finally said.

The door creaked softly. The bedside lamp was the only light source, painting everything in a soft yellow glow. The room smelled like her lotion. Thea sat on the bed, back against the headboard and her computer on her lap. Her hair was wrapped in a twisty towel thing that she always wore after showers, and she’d donned one of his T-shirts as a nightgown. His heart thudded a heavy beat. What would she say if he admitted that all those times he’d sought release on the road with his own hand, he’d been picturing her just like this—warm and soft and unintentionally sexy?

Butter bounded into the room and leapt onto the bed. Little bastard actually smirked as he lay down and settled his head on Thea’s bare legs.