Hardball (36 page)

We breathed.

I’d seen a hundred games that year. Nine hundred innings. When the fielder caught the final out of the side, he tossed the ball on the ground or to the ball boy and trotted over to the dugout. Dash looked at me and tipped his hat every single time. Every single time, I waved.

He didn’t this time. He just stayed on the field. His teammates started back, but he stood there, tossing the ball, catching it, tossing, catching.

The PA system shuddered with the announcement of the seventh-inning stretch. Usually they played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and did some scoreboard games.

“What’s he doing?” Dad asked. “Is he losing it?”

“I don’t know.”

The scoreboard went black, and the announcer’s voice blasted out of the PA system.

“Number nineteen, Dash Wallace, has a request.”

“Uh-oh,” Francine muttered.

I knew she wasn’t talking about the game. She’d come because the World Series was fun, not because she cared.

“Uh-oh what? Do you know something I don’t?” I asked.

Steve Youder ran out to the field and tossed Dash another ball and something black I couldn’t see. Dash caught them both and juggled. He’d tried to teach me how to keep those balls in the air, but I just dropped all of them and we laughed.

“All I know is I was supposed to make sure you stuck around for the seventh-inning stretch.” She put her arm around me and squeezed as if keeping me in place, and I looked up.

My face was huge. On the stadium monitor, my hands flew to my mouth to cover my blushing cheeks but not my eyes because Dash was looking at me.

He came toward the section I sat in, and words scrolled over my face in billion-point type.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,

He got to the rail, and Francine pushed me forward while holding me up.

“He’s crazy,” I said, clutching her forearm.

“Hell, yeah.”

The field was five steps down, and she made sure I got there.

Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

Then, flashing under my big, blushing moon-pie face:

Say yes.

He waited for me at the railing, and when I got there, he caught the two balls and a little black box. He was sweating and dirty, holding out the open box with scrapes on the heel of his hand from sliding into second in the fifth.

The ring was stunning. Three diamonds across, as clear and perfect as his eyes.

“Marry me, sweetapple.”

I was too stunned to utter a word.

Francine elbowed me.

“It’s gorgeous,” I said.

“You’d better answer. I have to get on deck.”

I paused, not because I didn’t know what to say but because I wanted to run this moment over my tongue and teeth, have my senses give it form. But though baseball fans were terribly patient with balls and fouls, in matters of marriage, they apparently had no time for delay.

The chants of “Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!” started in the centerfield bleachers and rolled to the first base line until I couldn’t put it off another second.

“Yes, Dash. Yes. Without a doubt, yes.”

He plucked the ring out and tossed the box over his shoulder. The crowd went wild in a deafening roar, and after he’d slipped it on my finger, he kissed me over the railing. We held each other, one of us on the field, one off, locked at the lip and heart as Los Angeles cheered us on.

THE END

Thank you for reading.

If you enjoyed this book, you might like
Shuttergirl
.

If you’ve already read all my stuff, Margie’s story—Fix— is up for preorder on iTunes, as is Marriage Games, which will be out in October. Other retailers will have preorders up four days before release.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact
[email protected]

You can join my fan groups

GOODREADS:
bit.ly/1klDF9g

FACEBOOK:
www.facebook.com/groups/songsofsubmission/

Or get on the mailing list!

There are people I always thank in this section. My family, my street team, my core authors. But I want to dedicate this entire section this time to my fans, who make it all possible. And by all I mean EVERYTHING. Every word. Every minute I spend writing is because they (you – yes you) buy my books despite towering TBRs and family responsibility. Your support keeps me going on bad days and the income keeps me focused on the task at hand – stories.

So thank you, you tireless bitches.

If you like swoony heroes and Hollywood love stories, check out the USA Today Bestselling
Shuttergirl
.

I never forgot her. Not for one minute. Not from the last time I saw her, at seventeen, to today. I measured all women against her and all women came up short. But being with her was unfeasible in high school, and it's taboo now. I see her sometimes, but I've never spoken to her. She runs, or I run. We're in the same town, on the same block, in the same building, and the gulf between us is just too wide to cross.

Until tonight.

***

He was my high school crush, back when I lived in a world that didn't want me. He was the perfect boy, and I was the outcast kid from the other side of town. And when he held my hand I thought I could fit in, just a little. I thought I could be his and he could be mine. Then he left, and my life fell apart. Now we are the king and queen of opposite sides of Hollywood. And we haven't spoken a word to each other.

Until tonight.

Buy
Shuttergirl
here.

Fiona Drazen's life as a celebutante and submissive slave is told in
Forbidden
.

You know what a celebutante is. It's a Paris Hilton. A Kim Kardashian. Someone who's famous for existing. That's me, and in case you were wondering what it's like...trust me, it's the best shit ever.

I like coke and I like sex. I have the money to buy the first and the looks to get the second. No one needs to know where I am for days at a time and no one gives a fuck. That's just the way I like it.

You got issue with that?

Good.

Because you think I have problems, and I don't. A problem would be defined as some situation in my life I didn't arrange. Like having no money. That's a problem, and I don't have it. Like having a ton of sex I don't totally enjoy. Also not my problem.

Now that we understand each other, you and me, and we understand that my life is exactly how I want it, you have to know that you don't have the right to hold me here.

Right?

Right.

Have you read the
Submission Series
?
No?