He shook his head. “Nobody is, honestly. Some people might be able to fool you into thinking they’re good at it, but… they think it sucks too.”

  I turned to face him, giving him a tired look. “Why don’t you just say his name, if you’re going to be that obvious?”

  He grinned, running a hand through his hair. “Well… then I wouldn’t have the pleasure of confirming that you know exactly who I’m talking about, would I?”

  “If you’re trying to torture me, I can assure you I’m already full up on my torture quota for the year, so...”

  Toby at least had the humanity to look guilty. “Okay, I’m not trying to torture you. I just… hate seeing you both miserable, you know? Diego’s a pretty good friend of mine. I like to think you and me are friends too.”

  “Sure,” I said. It’d be a lie to say that we were close, but I’d never had a problem with Toby before. Far from it. “But if you’re friends with Diego, surely you know he’s a wizard at all that bullshit.” I paused. “Except for… you know. That time when he told a reporter about the one thing I was hoping he would not talk about.”

  “He really didn’t mean to do that,” said Toby.

  In truth, I knew that was the case. It had been a while since I bore any active resentment for the slip-up, and yet… here I was feeling a little frosty about it again. Maybe it was because I’d never spoken about it before. I had never given myself a chance to vent. I sighed, leaning back against the wall alongside Toby. The room was nearly empty now. Nobody seemed to be listening to us.

  “I’m serious,” Toby pressed. “He feels terrible about it.”

  “I know that,” I said. “It’s just… a lot to deal with. I guess I hoped I’d never be in the center of a storm like this. I hate it and it’s not even my goddamn fault.”

  The aggression came out without my permission. Without even my understanding that it was brimming. I felt my brow furrowed without realizing that it had done so; I could see the surprise in Toby’s expression. His patience as he stayed in position, not backing off an inch.

  “I understand,” he said. “I haven’t been there, but I know it must be frustrating. I know you’ve never been that guy to talk to the press, but… things change, you know? We don’t have control over that kind of shit. You want to play in professional sport, you have to accept that people are going to be interested in your life. It’s just one of the prices you pay for doing a job you love. For being paid so fucking much to do it. We’re lucky, you know?”

  “Very lucky,” I agreed. “I know that.”

  “Does it make it okay that they invade our privacy like that? Fuck, no. But if we spend our lives thinking we can guarantee that it won’t happen, we’ll only fuck ourselves up. Just breathe through it. Look for the light at the end of the tunnel. And if you can’t see it, then… look for somebody else who can.”

  His eyes were fixed in a strange position. I turned to follow his gaze and saw that Diego was standing only a few feet away from us. We locked eyes for a second, then he turned back to Toby—and then he left the room. Maybe he heard what we’d said. My cheeks flooded red. I hadn’t meant to yell at him, or to make him think I was angry. I swallowed—turned back to Toby, mouth already open to speak without any comprehension of what I was going to say.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll let you go after him. Just… listen to one last thing. Okay? And take me seriously when I say it.”

  I nodded. My instinct was just to run, but something else pinned me to the floor to listen to Toby. To what he had to say.

  “He likes you,” he said. The words hit me hard, like an echo through a valley. “I mean… not like a kid at high school likes another kid. There’s something serious there. He really cares. So… you know. I know it isn’t easy. I remember coming out to myself more clearly than I remember coming out to my mom. It’s hard. But he’s a good guy, and if anybody can help you through the entire heap of bullshit, both with the press and the introspective shit...”

  He trailed off. We both knew what he was trying to say. He nodded at the door, a thin smile on his face.

  “Go on,” said Toby. “Deep breath. Stop thinking. Just… go.”

  I’d been trying to tell myself similar things for a while now, but hearing the order from Toby directly somehow gave me the power to follow it. I picked up my bag and left, footsteps heavy and loud against the changing room tiles. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go far. The place was empty, and I could hear him walking through the building; I could follow that sound until I came across him in a corridor, almost leaving the changing room area. I stopped to call out.

  “Diego.”

  The last time I chased after him, he had turned around immediately. This time, it took a little effort. When I caught sight of his face, I saw concern there. Tension. Uncertainty. A little hurt.

  “Can we talk somewhere?” I asked, halting and unsure. “Maybe?”

  “I didn’t mean to tell her,” he said. His voice was rougher than usual—not angry, but certainly emotional. I felt a pulse of guilty pain in my chest. “I really didn’t.”

  “No, I… I know that. I was just venting. I’m sorry; I didn’t think you would hear.”

  I took a few steps towards him—slow, like I was trying not to startle a wild animal. He did seem wary of me, but he wasn’t running yet. I held his eye contact, though there was something bizarrely intimate about that look. It wasn’t as though we hadn’t looked one another in the eye before. Why should this time feel different?

  “So. Can we talk?”

  He nodded, glancing off to the side and pointing loosely at the door. “This is empty…?”

  “Sure.”

  I had been so focused on actually catching up with him and having him agree to talk that I barely knew what I wanted to say now. My heart pounded as I headed into the room, flooded with possibilities and overwhelmed at all the different directions this could go. I had been alone with Diego so many times now, but to be alone in a private place felt somehow different. It was what I had longed for after our meeting with coach a week ago.

  Now that I had it, my whole body was flushed with adrenaline.

  “I owe you an apology,” I said, for lack of anything more flashy. “I just… I guess I wasn’t ready for any of this. It’s a shame that it had to come out the way it did. You’ve just been kind of hanging around for me, and I get that, and… it’s not right.”

  “You didn’t ask me to,” he pointed out.

  “No. But you were still patient—and… and you tried your best. And all this time I’ve been moping around wishing this wasn’t happening and forgetting that maybe you needed somebody to support you through this bullshit, too.”

  Diego blinked, taking a pause before he shook his head. “I… no, I’m fine.”

  “You sure?” I asked, skeptical. “Because you’re only human, you know. And Toby just told me you feel terrible about Alicia, which… you shouldn’t, ‘cos you didn’t mean that, like we already said. And...”

  I trailed off, shaking my head. I had so much to say, and I didn’t have the words to put it in. Frustrated, I just said the first thing that came to mind.

  “And I really like you. I just don’t know what to do about that.”

  That… was not what I had imagined would come out of my mouth. I looked up at him, as startled by my own words as he seemed to be. But he recovered quicker than I did. The smile grew on his face, stretching right up to his eyes. He was tired, sure—but it was good to see him happy.

  “Well. That, I think I can help you with.”

  He stepped closer to me, and foolish though it was, it took a moment for me to realize what was about to happen. My heart pounded and I had to fight not to flinch back. It felt like letting him do this would change my life forever, and not in a good way.

  Then he reached me, and he cupped my face in his hands, and he kissed me.

  Suddenly it all didn’t seem so scary anymore.

  “I know you said you wanted to talk,” he said, uncertain. “But...”

  “This is fine,” I answered, cutting him off right away—breathless, but for the first time in a long time, completely sure of what I was saying. “Yeah.”

  His eyes tracked over me, checking for some detail I couldn’t be certain of. Then, a moment later, he stepped away to the door.

  “Better lock this,” he said. “Wouldn’t want anybody to interrupt.”

  Chapter Eight

  Diego

  Connor looked nervous. Frankly, if he looked any more nervous than this, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near him—but alongside the nerves was something resolute and desperate. When I turned around, having locked the door to this private changing room, I saw the hunger in his eyes. He wanted to be close to me again.

  I let my eyes drift down to the seat of his sweatpants. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was already half-hard… and at this point in my life, the chances of me being mistaken about something like this were pretty slim. Unlike Connor, I had already known myself for a long time, and been with a bunch of men. I knew that sight just as well as I knew that look in his eyes.

  “Alright,” I said. “We can take it easy. We don’t have to do anything.”

  “I think maybe we do,” he disagreed, face flushing. Connor was such a handsome guy. He always was, but right now there was something especially appealing about the unmasked lust in his eyes. I grinned, stepping closer again and lifting a hand to cup his neck—teasing my fingertips through the hair on the nape of his neck. His eyes were fixed on me, flicking between several different places. He was shy, but not too shy to speak. “I think I’ve just got to suck it up.”

  “I want you to want it,” I told him. “I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow wishing you hadn’t.”

  “You know,” he said, voice quiet and crackly. “With all of this. The entire crock of shit over the past few weeks. The one thing I don’t regret is getting married. Isn’t that fucked up?”

  And it was, really. We hadn’t dated. Despite the string of fate tying us together, we didn’t really know each other. All that we had was the kind of chemistry that only sparked between people that were made for each other, and the promise of something special a way down the line. It was heartening to hear that he felt it too. Thrilling to know that he was taking the same wild leap of faith as I was.

  Him saying it first made it so much easier to admit: “Me too.”

  He swallowed, tongue flicking out to wet his lips. I could tell what he wanted, even if he couldn’t verbalize it yet—so I leaned forward to kiss him again, soft and careful but eager, too. Insistent.

  I didn’t want to wait any longer.

  “Let me blow you,” I murmured against his lips, swallowing up the gasp of desire that followed. Still, I waited for something more substantive than that, pressing kisses along the line of his jaw as he pulled his words together.

  “Yes.”

  My hand strayed down to feel for him. Sure enough, he was hard as stone now, and standing fully to attention. He was big, too, but that didn’t surprise me so much as thrill me. If I had spent a number of guilty nights fantasizing about what he’d feel like in my hand, then it hadn’t spoiled reality. I stroked up the length of him with my palm over the front of his sweatpants, letting myself imagine what it would feel like to take him in my mouth—relishing in the knowledge that I only had seconds to wait before I would know the truth of how it felt.

  “You trying to make me burst?” he asked, tipping his forehead forward against mine. His breath was hot; even up close, I could see the warmth in his eyes. Whether it was lust or playfulness or a combination of the two, I didn’t know. “C’mon, man.”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  I slipped down to my knees, for now ignoring my own hard cock. I didn’t want anything to distract him right now; I didn’t want to scare him off before he came and understood how good it was. How right it was.

  I smoothed my hands over his ass, and down his thighs. When I looked up, I could see his desperation—his open mouth and half-lidded eyes, and his breath coming in heavy pants. I couldn’t make him wait any longer. I leaned closer to kiss the inside of his thigh before I pulled down his sweatpants, tortuously slow to make him savor every moment. When they hit the floor, I moved back up to his boxers, my eyes greedily fixating on the tantalizing tent in the fabric. I could see almost every bit of him. I couldn’t wait for that ‘almost’ to disappear.

  I pulled the waistband down over him, not looking away or blinking for a second as the hard length of his cock emerged. When it finally sprang free, I let the fabric fall to the floor, no longer of any interest, and bobbed closer to taste the head of his cock, already salty wet with the anticipation.

  His groans could only mean one thing. He couldn’t wait any longer; he didn’t need me to tease. Already, this was the defining sexual moment of his life so far. The point in time when his body learned that what he needed was a man.

  I let myself savor the honor of being that man he trusted as I leaned forward to take him in my mouth. I had always loved giving head, especially to ‘straight’ men. They always seemed surprised by the way it felt—how different it was to be sucked off by a man instead of a woman. Already, I could hear him groaning out into the empty room, and I hoped that there was nobody listening outside the door… or if there was, then it was only Toby come to feel triumphant over his matchmaking abilities.

  He landed back against the wall with a thud as he leaned for it, and I followed with pleasure. If he needed the support, then… by God, I’d make him use it.

  I took him deep into my mouth, as far as it could go, and took the base of him in my hand to make up for what I couldn’t take. There, against the wall of the changing room, I gave him a taste of everything I had wanted to do to him since that morning in his car. Since that night we drank together, and decided—for reasons lost to history—that we should get married to one another.

  He groaned again, gripping my hair with a hand, but otherwise he stood quieter than I might have expected. Maybe he, too, was worried about potential listeners. If so, I’d have to take him home and fuck him until he forgot to keep quiet. I wanted to know what he’d sound like when he lost all control. Right now, when I looked up at him with his cock in my mouth, I could see all that restraint—how he bit his lip, and scrunched his eyes up tight against the sight of me.

  Despite all that tension, it didn’t take me long to make him come. At first, it started with his thighs tensing up—then his body arching back into the wall, and a little strangled gasp as his hand slipped from my hair to my shoulder. I was ready even if he didn’t announce it, and swallowed around him as he came.

  By the time he started paying attention again, I was already beside him on the wall, and leaned to kiss his breathless mouth. His hand wound back into my hair, fingertips twitchy and desperate for contact. It was like fucking a virgin. Maybe he really was a virgin. So far, we hadn’t had that conversation. That was exciting, too; there was so much that we still had to learn about each other.

  “You okay?” I asked, pressing kisses to the corner of his lips once he seemed to have his fill of kisses. He was leaning into me as though I was better support than the wall, and let his head fall to my shoulder as he answered.

  “Uh-huh. Yep.”

  I grinned, and lifted a hand to muss up his hair. I could feel his heart beating where he leaned against me, and when I leaned to kiss the top of his head, I could feel the heat radiating from him. I didn’t want to move away.

  “I think it’s your turn now.”

  He mumbled it against my shoulder, hands sliding down my torso. I didn’t want him to feel pressured. Far from it. In fact, the idea that he was somehow forcing himself to try this made me uncomfortable. I reached down to hold his wrist—just gently, but firm.

  “You don’t have to. You know that, right?”

  I moved away so that he could lift his head. Looking into his eyes, I could see all the uncertainty that I had expected—but also determination. Fondness. If he was nervous about this, it was because he hadn’t done it before. Not because he didn’t want to.

  “I made my mind up,” he said. “Not just about… this. But all of it. Me and you. I want this. You don’t have to keep asking.”

  It evidently wasn’t easy for him to say those things. It took a while for him just to form the words and to get them out; he couldn’t meet my eyes as he spoke. Still, I was immensely proud of him for fighting against his instinct to hide away. It had been keeping him under control for years of his life, gripping so tightly that he hadn’t even known the truth about himself—and now he wasn’t afraid anymore.

  He reached down for my cock again, lips connecting with mine. This time, I didn’t move my hands to stop him.

  Chapter Nine

  Connor

  A couple of days later, I was approaching the kind of press conference I had always hoped to avoid. Walking down the corridor towards our PR room, I knew that I only had the strength to keep walking because of the man standing beside me. Because of the hand I was gripping a little too tightly in mine.

  Diego and I still had a lot of ground to cover, but over the past few days, we’d managed to sort a lot of different things out. For one thing, we had agreed not to divorce for the time being. It was early days in our relationship, and things were delicate. Being married wasn’t necessarily a good idea—but working through the paperwork and the red tape of a divorce, we figured, would probably kill any romance that there was left. At the same time, it felt like there was something weighty and important in this relationship that kind of warranted the rings we wore on chains around our necks.

  Was that stupid? Probably. But of all the stupid things it was possible for a famous person to do in this day and age, at least this one was proving healthy for both of us. At least for now.

  He squeezed my hand as we walked down the corridor, and I turned to smile at him. “Is it that obvious that I’m nervous?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7