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“Well, play me after then? It’s been a long time, but I think I remember the rules.” Kurt put his hands on his hips and surveyed the table.
Evan passed his pool cue to Kurt. “Fuck it, he can play you now. He’s kicking my ass anyway.”
Garrett felt a pang of resentment that the man had unknowingly thrown Garrett into the jet engine before Garrett could figure a way out of the situation. He did not want to play Kurt Buck. He did not want to be around the man at all. He glanced at Maxwell to see the smaller man with his eyes on the dartboard, but his hands wrapped so tightly around his glass that his fingers had gone completely white.
“You want first strike?” Kurt asked, and Garrett quickly dragged his eyes back to him, but Kurt glanced at Maxwell too, and Garrett cursed himself for being so obvious.
“I wouldn’t dream of it after what you’ve been through.” Garrett shook his head and started plopping the balls into the rack. He shouldn’t berate himself about being so obvious with his feelings for Maxwell. Kurt already knew and had Garrett in his sights. After all, Garrett had been the one to stand in his way that first night. A man like Kurt—obsessed with Maxwell, manipulative, clever—could probably see Garrett’s feelings for Maxwell more clearly than Maxwell could.
Kurt laughed a warm, belly laugh and went to the top of the table to line up his first shot. “Well, then, don’t you go using it as an excuse when I beat you.”
“You’re very confident.” Garrett crossed his arms as he watched a ball roll into the pocket.
“Didn’t you ever wonder where that first table back at the Libha base came from?” Kurt dropped in another ball and straightened up with a crooked grin.
Garrett’s mouth dropped open. “Did you get it?”
Kurt nodded.
“I learned to play on that table,” Garrett admitted with a pang of nostalgia. Leon had taught him, which seemed absurd now since Leon had been so busy for so many years that Garrett could no longer even picture him with a pool cue and a beer in his hand.
“Good.” Kurt missed his next shot but didn’t seem phased at all, standing back up with a sentimental look of his own. “People needed something nice to do between all the horror.”
“Still do.” Garrett took a drink of his beer and circled the table to find his shot.
“You sound like a country boy.” Kurt backed out of his way and perched on a stool.
“So do you.” Garrett paused in front of the cue ball and tilted his head back and forth as he weighed his options.
“Jute,” Kurt said after a swig. Jute. Same place Maxwell was from. They really had known each other for a long time.
Garrett decided this shot was as good as any and bent over the table. “Thule.”
“Thule.” Kurt drew out the name as he nodded slowly. “The Klah’Eel were talking about expanding that mine out there when I got shot down. They ever do that?”
Garrett spliced the ball, and it shot off in the wrong direction and hit nothing. “Yeah. They did.”
“Sorry.” Kurt grimaced, set his beer down, and picked his cue back up. “Did it go as badly as we were afraid it would?”
“Something like that.” Garrett took a larger-than-necessary gulp of beer and then another one. He glanced over at Maxwell again to see Maxwell watching them. Garrett saw naked fear in his eyes before Maxwell looked away again.
What was he so afraid of? Did he think Garrett was going to start a fight after all? He didn’t have to worry. Garrett wasn’t about to go back on his word to him no matter what the asshole did.
Kurt struck the ball with a hard clack just beside him and then muttered darkly, “I can’t believe that fucking collaborator is here.”
Garrett dragged his eyes from Maxwell to the man just beside him—the human man in a Klah’Eel uniform. “Smith? Yeah. You and me both.”
“What kind of human betrays their own?” Kurt rounded the table to take his next shot.
Garrett knew exactly what sort of human. He knew better than most. “The worst kind.”
His eyes flickered back to Maxwell—his hands white, his jaw set. Was he really only afraid that Garrett would start a fight, or was there something else?
Kurt chuckled, and Garrett felt him lean next to him to speak more quietly, “Except that traitor isn’t who you’re looking at, is it?”
Garrett tore his eyes away again and, this time, turned his back to the dartboard. He had enough to focus on right now without trying to read Maxwell, who had almost never given away anything that he didn’t want to.
Kurt leaned against the pool table with a knowing glint in his eye that Garrett didn’t deny. “I don’t blame you.” Kurt shook his head and then stepped away from the table so Garrett could take his turn. “He’s impossible not to like, isn’t he?”
