Did I Mention I Need You? (The DIMILY Trilogy Book 2) by Estelle Maskame

back from the door and waits for me to join him in the living room. He reaches for my hand, his skin warm against mine, and slowly he places the baseball onto my palm. He wraps my hand around it, his fingers over mine. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he tells me. “I’m not gonna go easy on you.”
    “I don’t need you to.”
    “Good.” He squeezes my hand, then lets go. He walks over to the door casually, like he hasn’t just touched me again and as though my breathing isn’t hitching. I think he does these things on purpose, like brushing our hands together and grasping my waist. I’ll bet he knows it’s going to drive me crazy. I’ll bet he knows how much I love it. “So, you coming?”
    I look over at him and in that moment I decide that his hair looks slightly longer than I remember. More styled, less tousled. Somehow, I manage not to stare for too long. I grin instead. “Let’s go.”
    Tyler checks the apartment before we leave—he’s even cleared away the empty beer bottles while I’ve been getting ready, it seems—and then we head out to the elevator, leaving a sleeping Stephen behind. We’re joined by a woman and her screaming toddler, so there’s no room for conversation as we suffer through its relentless tantrum for the time it takes to descend twelve floors. I try not to make eye contact, so I stare at Tyler’s boots instead. I’ll bet he’s staring at my Chucks. Neither of us smiles.
    Awkward elevator ride over, we make our way back through the main lobby and over to the main doors, with me close behind Tyler. I can’t move my eyes away from the back of his neck and he holds the door open for me using the baseball bat, earning him some hard looks from passers-by on the sidewalk.
    “You might wanna give me that ball back so that it doesn’t look like I’m about to commit a felony,” he says, laughing. He waits for me to brush past him before letting the doors slap shut again.
    “Hmm,” I say, hesitating on the sidewalk. I tilt my head and narrow my eyes, playfully scrutinizing him. The bat is swinging from his left hand. “Yep, you definitely look like you’re about to beat the hell outta someone. Maybe I’ll just hold onto this ball for a little while longe—”
    Before I can finish teasing him, he nudges his shoulder hard against mine and snatches the ball from my hand, somehow without our hands even touching. “Funny,” he says dryly, but he’s smirking as he tosses the ball up into the air and swiftly catches again. “So,” he says, his voice deeper than it was a second ago, “baseball. Our nation’s favorite sport.”
    He starts to head west along Seventy-fourth Street as I match my pace to his, crossing over Third Avenue and continuing straight along the narrow streets. The city is heaving again with traffic, both vehicles and pedestrians, and it makes me wonder what New York would be like if one day it was ever completely still. It’s impossible to imagine these streets without the cars and the people and the noise. It’s impossible to imagine this city without the buzz.
    I weave my way around people as we walk, trying my best not to bump into anyone, though everyone seems determined to nudge shoulders with me. I drop back a little and focus my attention all on Tyler. “Isn’t our favorite sport football?”
    “I’m not even going to answer that question,” Tyler shoots back. He holds up the baseball between his thumb and forefinger, studying it intensely, like he’s never seen one before. “Okay, Eden, here’s the deal. Baseball is simple.”
    “Hit the ball and run?”
    “Yes, but no,” he says. He shakes his head and lets out a sigh. “It’s not that simple.”
    I expect to have to force myself to keep listening as he goes on to tell me the rules, but surprisingly I don’t have to pretend that I’m finding it interesting. The more enthusiastically Tyler talks about baseball, the more I want to play. He informs me that there are nine innings, each