Prologue
Grant
My five-year plan didn’t just happen. It holy fuck happened.
When I was twenty-two, I had big dreams and nothing but hope to back them up.
Now, at twenty-seven, I’ve won a World Series, started in three All-Star games, and enjoyed my pick when it comes to endorsement deals.
My career hasn’t left the upswing.
I’m still playing the game I love for a living, so it’s hard to want for anything else. I know far too well what it’s like when life isn’t good, and I appreciate the hell out of every moment on and off the field.
Since my last five-year plan worked better than expected, maybe it’s time I laid down a new set of goals. After all, my world has changed so damn much since I made the first one.
Changed for the better.
The next plan will include these existing ground rules—live well and play hard. But I’m adding a third.
Love big.
I’m determined to let those principles guide me through the next phase of my life. I intend to savor each day, leave it all on the field, and give my everything to the man I love madly.
That’s what I didn’t include in my original plan—finding the big love of my life.
I have him now, and that means I have more than I ever dreamed of when I was growing up, when elusive things like happiness, safety, and comfort felt far out of reach.
They’re here now, big time.
But then, that old enemy, doubt, swings by.
Pokes me on the shoulder.
Whispers darkly in my ear.
Asks me if my life is too good to be true. If it’s going too well.
Maybe doubt knows something I don’t. Since one fine evening, when I’m out with my man at a club, I learn that finding love isn’t necessarily the hardest part.
Keeping it is.
Prologue
Declan
Once upon a time, I could compartmentalize anything.
Baseball, dating, men. They all went in separate drawers.
I kept love and sex on opposite sides of my life, separated by sky-high walls.
That seemed like a good idea at the time.
Turned out to be the worst. I was so used to wearing blinders I nearly missed a second chance with the love of my life.
But I got my act together, learned my lessons, and opened my heart. Now, my guy is back, and I’ll do just about anything to make Grant Blackwood happy—because he makes me happier than I’ve ever been.
Happier than I ever thought possible.
The trouble is, the closer we get, the more Grant challenges me in ways I never expected. He pushes me past my comfort zone and straight into the public eye, where the lights are much brighter than the ones at the ballpark at night.
As our life together stands in the spotlight, I’m coming face-to-face with hard choices. What I’ll give up. What I won’t. I finally have the peace and freedom I never had when I was young. But I want my life to be mine. I want ours to be ours. I want to shut the door at night and just . . . be.
But the more time I spend with Grant, the more I learn that the man I love does more than rock my world—he rattles it out of orbit.
After far too long with too many people knowing my secrets, I’m not sure I want everyone knowing my un-secrets.
Somedays, I just want Grant all to myself.
Trouble is, I don’t know if that’ll be enough for the man I love.
1
Grant
Life is full of dilemmas.
Some are big. Some are little. The key is to know how to handle both.
I’ve tackled the super-size dilemmas. Hell, the path I’ve traveled the last few years has been marked with tons of them. After navigating roadblocks and potholes, I can say with certainty I’m finally living my best life.
Not because it’s free of predicaments.
Because it’s full of little ones.
Would I rather have a hand job or a blow job from my boyfriend when I wake up in the morning? Or is today going to be one of those epic days when we can go all in and bang each other like crazy in our king-size bed? Full on, no-holds-barred, trade-on-and-off-and-on-again sex till we are both wrecked?
Hell, who’s on top is my favorite quandary.
Unfortunately, choosing from the fantastic options at my favorite sex buffet is neither a big nor a little dilemma today. With Declan out of town, I’m a sex-camel on desert rations.
When I park my car in the players’ lot at the San Francisco Cougars ballpark one Thursday afternoon in July, I grab my phone and the opportunity to text my man. That’s how we make it through the season’s away games—message, Zoom, FaceTime . . . all the usual suspects.
It’s not ground-breaking, maintaining a long-distance relationship through technology. These routine textual check-ins with Declan are so damn relationshippy, but that’s what I love about them—every day, I remind him that I want him and miss him, and every day, I feel wanted and missed in return.