Cut and Run 4 - Divide and Conquer

game.”
    Zane turned his chin to look at her. “Does he wash them?” he
    joked. He tried to remember if Ty had put on the same socks Zane had
    stripped off of him last night.
    “Mommy tried once, but he saved them and made her promise not
    to. He locked himself in the bathroom.”
    Zane laughed and glanced back at Ty. “That sounds like him.”
    “He also taught me that you never cross your bats in the dugout,
    you never touch the lines or home plate before a game starts, and only
    pansies wear batting gloves.”
    Zane laughed again. “I guess he would know,” he said with a
    shrug. “I never played baseball. Or softball.”
    Elaina looked at him askance.
    “I can play football though,” Zane offered in a conciliatory
    attempt.
    She shrugged off that news and looked back out at the field
    excitedly as the FBI team took the field to a smattering of applause,
    boos, and catcalls from the crowd. Zane joined in the clapping as most
    of the players jogged to their positions, but Ty and Alston, who was
    pitching, both waltzed out as if they had all the time in the world.
    Ty had his head down, his glove in one hand and his mask in the
    other, and somehow he‟d already gotten his face and short hair dirty. It
    wasn‟t easy for him to saunter in the bulky gear, but he managed to pull
    off the attitude anyway. The gear fit his frame well, and it only added
    to the illusion that he was larger than he really was. Zane knew that in
    most rec league softball games, the catcher didn‟t bother to wear gear.
    But this wasn‟t your average slow-pitch softball league. The pitchers
    threw overhand, and they played with a regulation-size baseball. The
    women who were involved were athletes, not out there for show, and
    there was certainly no one drinking beer in right field.
    64 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

    Ty had sent Zane a text one night earlier in the month, joking that
    it was srius bizness .
    As Ty got closer to home plate, he looked up into the bleachers,
    his eyes almost immediately settling on Zane.
    Zane felt his heart beat hard a couple of times, and he had to draw
    a breath, because for a second, he was short on air. Then Ty smiled that
    half smile of his, the laugh lines at his eyes and mouth appearing,
    before he gave a quick wink. Then he ducked his head and slid his
    mask on, turning his back on the crowd as he stopped behind home
    plate.
    Zane swallowed hard. That wink had been for him .
    Crystal-clear revelation struck Zane like a bolt of summer
    lightning sizzling through the chill February air.
    He wanted Ty with him, wanted him badly. Needed him as a
    partner, and not just at work. Craved him as a lover more than he‟d
    ever jonesed over heroin. Connected with him in so many ways that
    Zane couldn‟t see a way to untangle himself and didn‟t even want to
    try.
    Ty loved him. Zane believed it. Zane had also believed he didn‟t
    have it in himself to love Ty like he deserved. It wasn‟t Ty‟s fault.
    There was so much pain connecting Zane to the past, a tenuous
    lingering link between Zane and Becky, his wife years gone now, that
    Zane had skipped right over the obvious signs. He‟d been too busy
    grappling with letting go of what was gone and wondering if he had
    any right to grab hold of what was in front of him.
    It was important to Zane to understand when craving Ty had
    become needing him, and when needing him had become caring for
    him, and if it was possible for that caring to truly become even more .
    Because Ty deserved nothing less.
    Zane could see it now. The craving he worried about wasn‟t an
    addiction. It was far more wrenching. Something significant enough
    that Zane was changing his entire life to be worthy of it, and there just
    wasn‟t any other possible explanation.
    Divide & Conquer | 65

    He loved Ty Grady with all there was to give of his heart, and in
    the end, all it had taken was one wink for Zane to finally come to terms
    with it.
    As he sat dealing with the sudden realization, the world continued
    on without him. The players continued warming up. Alston had taken
    just one warm-up pitch, feeding into the cocksure, evil empire image
    the Feds team cultivated. The fans in the stands around him continued
    talking and eating and fussing with their various seating options, and
    Elaina jabbered on beside him.
    Ty stood talking with the umpire, his body language clearly
    saying he was joking around with the man. He was loose and at ease,
    having battled past the