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The disbelief in that room was so thick you could spread it on your bread.
“A horse?” Greck said because he had to be Greck. “The kid is what, eight months old?”
“Yep, a horse. Pony actually, I fibbed.” Liam stared at me openly, not buying one word, his brow furrowed with worry. “But it was too expensive, and my sister doesn’t have room for a stable.” I shrugged and pushed some hair from my face. Man, I really wanted a shower. “So yeah, that was that. My phone died, which is an everyday thing, and so I just crashed at this two-star hotel where the bed was hard and there was no hot water, so I’m just going to wash up.” I jerked a thumb at the door to the bathroom, grabbed my suitcase, and made a move to exit stage left.
“Baskoro, we’re only trying to help,” Bean said, moving another step closer, then holding out his hand for me to shake. I took his massive mitt and shook it. He held onto my fingers tightly. “Please, if you don’t want to talk to all of us, which I can see would be intimidating, would you talk to Liam?”
I chucked a look at my bestie slash tandem goalie buddy, nodded, and rushed into the bathroom to catch my breath and text Marcus. There was about ten minutes of serious texting that took place, high speed, with all kinds of expletives. Then finally we hit the end of the panic texts.
Go ahead and tell Liam. ~ M
You sure? ~ B
Yeah. Then we’ll figure out how and when to tell the teams. ~ M
Okay. I’m sorry they’re such nosy asses. ~ B
Nah, they love you. Like I do. We’ll sort it all out. ~ M
He sent a row of heart emojis and then left to get his daughter off to school. Feeling like a flea on a louse on the backside of a hyena, I climbed into the shower, scrubbed until my skin was red, shampooed twice, and cranked off the taps. I stretched out dressing for as long as possible. When I stepped out of the steamy bath, Liam was opening a brown lunch bag.
“I ran out to get some breakfast from this bagel shop that had about seven hundred five-star reviews. I know you can’t go without coffee, so I stopped at Starbucks to get you whatever they had that might come close to the Thai coffee you IV drip into yourself all day long. Closest I could get was a quad—”
“I’m in love with Marcus Newley,” I blurted out as I stared at the breakfast buffet and massive cup of coffee he had run out to get me on a blustery winter day. “We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months now and we’re having sex, so yeah, no drugs or anything bad is happening. I’m not hooked on anything. Guess you could say that I’m addicted to his love.”
The bad pun died a miserable death. Robert Palmer was probably rolling over in his grave…the poor man.
“Wow.” He sat down on his bed, his cup of hot chocolate in his hand, stunned to the core. “I did not see that coming at all.”
“Us either.” I grabbed my cup, dropped down beside him, and slowly filled him in on everything that had taken place since that stupid party in college. He sipped his cocoa as I verbally flooded him with words.
“But you guys literally were beating on each other yesterday,” Liam said after a long break where I had run out of words and was inhaling coffee like a fiend.
“It looked like a fight, but nah, it was just us feeding the stupid PR crap,” I huffed, staring at the bottom of my cup with longing. “I mean, it was kind of erotic in a way, but—”
“Holy shit, were you two getting in a public frottage sesh in front of all the fans?!”
“Liam, are you for real here? There were like four cups between the two of us.”
“Right, sure, yeah, sorry. Still, man, that is some freaky shit. So you two are serious?”
“Yeah, we are. We’re in love.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
He blew out a breath that puffed his cheeks. “Okay, so where do you go from here? I mean, you guys are terrible at lying, or you are at least. Everyone close to you knows something is up, and I wager the coaching staff is wondering why you tank when we play the Comets.”
“Hey, they lost the game before last,” I argued before sticking my finger down into the empty cup to try to catch the last drop. Liam stood, padded across the room, and pulled out another cup of coffee from the takeout bags. “I would seriously have your babies.”
“Tarcy might have something to say about that,” he teased as he sat down where he had been sitting and poked at the lid of his cocoa with a finger. “Look, I know how hard this must be for you, hiding things from the world. It’s a lot like being closeted, which sucks so badly. Why don’t you try talking to Coach Miles?” I grimaced. “No, hear me out. He’s still kind of youngish, he’s gay, and he has a husband who is HIV positive. He’s dealt with stigma for a long time. If anyone on the team coaching staff would know what it felt like to be stuck in a bad place like you are, it would be him.”
I thought on that long and hard, then bobbed my head just once. “Okay, yeah, maybe I’ll discuss that with Marcus. If he’s okay with it, I’ll talk to Coach Miles or someone. I just really want this to end, all the hyped-up public relations stuff about our simmering rivalry.”
“I’m guessing the only thing simmering between you two is the sex by the way your neck looks.” He reached up to flick a spot under my ear. It twinged. I felt my face warm. I’d seen the love mark but thought my hair would cover it when it was down. Guess not.
“It’s more than sex,” I piped up. The cup between my hands was warm.
