My gaze collides with Cole’s somewhere along the third baseline.

I stop walking. Stop moving. Nearly stop breathing as I get my bearings.

I’m sure he’s both used to my reaction—as he must get it wherever he goes—and wondering if it means I’ll say yes to his dinner invitation.

But what he can’t see is the knot in my stomach that refuses to unwind.

Maybe he didn’t notice that I liked his old post on social media. He might be the kind of guy who doesn’t check those things. I bet he has a million notifications anyway. It could’ve gotten buried.

The line of thought that I finally settled on around three this morning rolls through my brain. Not an hour has gone by today that I haven’t rested on this—the one plausible way out of the potential humiliation.

Cole says something to the man in the visor. The man nods and goes back to raking the dirt around the pitcher’s mound . . . and Cole walks toward me.

He saw it.

A smirk develops. It starts as a twitch of his lip and settles so deeply that I’m sure if I leaned too close to him, I might fall in.

Damn it.

I shift my weight from foot to foot, knowing I’m about to be called out for my mishap. My cheeks flush before he even gets off the field. There’s time to flee. I could absolutely walk back the way I came or even power walk behind the concession stand, where I might, if I’m lucky, be out of sight.

Before I can choose, his arms are draped over the fence and we’re three feet apart.

My focus immediately goes to his hands. I shiver at the mere thought of how his fingers felt pressed against my back at the last practice.

“Hey,” he says, his voice thick and gooey like warmed-up Nutella.

“Hi.”

Our gazes lock. Together, our lips pull toward the bright sky and into full smiles.

“How have you been?” he asks. “Busy?”

“Me? Always. You?”

“Never.” He stretches his arms over the top of the fence, wincing ever so slightly as he rolls his shoulder around. “Had a lot of time on my hands, actually.”

“Tell me what that’s like.”

I don’t know what shit I’ve stepped in, but I know I have. His eyes grow dark and fill with mischief.

“Well, let’s take last night, for example,” he says.

Oh no.

“I was lying in bed,” he says, grinning. “And I thought I’d check my social media to see if there was anything that I needed to respond to.”

No. No, no, no.

My insides wither like a flower during a freeze, and although I don’t do it intentionally, I find myself a couple of feet farther away from him.

This does not deter him. It only encourages his behavior.

He pulls his arms back over the fence. “Do you know what I found lurking in my notifications?”

“Couldn’t tell ya.”

“Someone by the name of Palmer Clark liked a photo of me from three years ago.” His chest puffs out with an apparent shot to his ego. “Can you believe that?”