Espresso, some tunes and writing requests this morning. 💖
I probably won’t start posting fics again until July after this month runs out. To give everyone a break as well as give me time to work on fics and the like.
"I never stopped loving you." Maybe at a future wedding??
been away for so long
Mike didn’t RSVP and come to the wedding just to see Ginny—he’d been to Stubbs’ last wedding and remembered the cake fondly—but it was at the top of his list. A year out from retirement, a year he’d spent getting his head on straight, and he was ready. Ready for a real life outside of the game. Ready for what was next.
Ready for Ginny.
And now that he’d seen her, wearing something yellow and floaty and perfect, he wasn’t willing to wait much longer.
He’d gotten through the ceremony and cocktail hour and even sat through the entire dinner, but that was the extent of his patience. So, when she got up from her seat two tables away and headed for the doors to the patio, Mike followed after.
Outlined by the setting sun, Ginny glowed. All Mike could do was stare, even when she sensed him and turned to look back. With the light behind her, he couldn’t quite make out her expression, so he approached, stopping close enough to catch the scent of her perfume and her gauzy dress to billow against his legs.
She looked down and fixed her skirt. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Wouldn’t miss it. I’ve been to all of Stubbs’ weddings.”
A grin stole across her full, pink lips as she peeked up at him. But the teasing he expected—”Doesn’t that make you bad luck, then?”—never came. Ginny just straightened and turned back to lean against the railing and stare out over the golden water. “Well, it’s nice you could make it.”
Mike grinned back, wanting her to look at him again. She didn’t oblige. Still, he joined her at the rail, angling to keep drinking her in.
“I never stopped loving you.”
He didn’t mean to say it, not so baldly and not so abruptly, but once the words were out, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. He’d bit back that confession for two seasons and the past year; he was done keeping them inside.
Finally, Ginny turned, lifting wide eyes and a wrinkle between her brows to him. On bated breath, he awaited her response.
“When did you even start?”
All the oxygen rushed out of him. “C’mon, Gin,” he rasped, practically begging, needing to believe he hadn’t been wrong about this. “You know.”
“I don’t!” she insisted, backing away when he reached for her and twisting her fingers into the fabric of her skirt. Mike let his hand drop, too busy breathing through the punch to the gut. “Three years, and you never once said what you actually feel about me!”
“Because you said we weren’t talking about it!”
“While you were a ballplayer! My teammate. My captain. Of course we couldn’t talk about it!"
“So I didn’t!” Mike could hear his voice rising, and tried to swallow it back, but the anger was still there.
So was Ginny’s if the hard set of her jaw was any clue. “And then you kept on not saying anything this whole year. Can you really blame me for thinking I’d imagined it all?”
She tried to hold it back, but her voice broke, and then nothing else mattered. All Mike wanted was to take Ginny in his arms and assure her that she hadn’t. He loved her and wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.
But when he reached for her, she pulled back again, shaking her head.
“Gin, I’m sorry,” he tried. “I’m an idiot. I never should’ve—”
“I’m seeing someone.”
Those three words hung heavily in the darkening air. Mike’s brain refused to process them for a long moment, but in the face of Ginny’s flat, stony expression, his denial withered and faded.
“You are?”
Something in Ginny’s demeanor fell at the break in his own voice, but she didn’t it, and she wasn’t lying. “Yeah.”
“Oh.” Mike swallowed down the shattered pieces of his heart, hoping they’d fall back into his chest in roughly the right order. “Uh, great. That’s great.”
“Mike—”
He shook his head and backed away. “It’s great,” he repeated. “I just want you to be happy, Gin.”
This far away, he couldn’t tell if it was doubt or acceptance in her eyes, but it hardly mattered. The image of Ginny Baker, the sun dying in the Pacific Ocean behind her, would be etched into his memory forever. Somehow, he doubted that it would ever hurt less than this.
