Rookie Move (Playing for Keeps #1)(70)

“Yeah, okay, and I’m not the best center in the league. Garrett was staring at you with the mopiest damn look I’ve ever seen. I swear it was like watching a movie and the two of you were separated because your families are feuding or some shit, and you really just want to run off into the woods and maybe live with seven dwarves.”

It wasn’t the right time to laugh. The last thing we needed was someone else figuring this out, but I couldn’t help it. “Yeah, well, we’re gonna have to build a second house on the property because I’m not living with eight other people.”

He cocked a dark brow. “That’s all you have to say about this?”

I sighed, dropped my head against the back of the seat, and rubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Tuck. We had a friends-with-benefits thing going on. Coach found out. He specifically asked me to make sure we kept quiet about it and no one found out. Then my dad almost caught us, and we ended it. That’s all. There’s nothing more to it.” The lie tasted bitter on my tongue.

“Nothing more except for the fact that you’ve been miserable for weeks, and now I know why. Also…what the shit? Coach knows? Why the hell am I just finding out? This is bad, Rams.”

“You think?” I snapped. “Damn it. I’m sorry. That’s why it’s over. We need to focus on the team. On the playoffs. It was just temporary sex, and now it’s becoming more difficult than we anticipated. Football is what’s important, not a piece of ass.”

He was quiet for a moment before he said, “Is it? Because looking at the two of you, it seems to me this is more than a FWB thing.”

My pulse jumped, beat through my skin. “It’s not.” It couldn’t be. There was no way. Yeah, I liked him, more than I’d planned. I’d even thought I was falling for him, but it was just a thing, and I’d get over it. You offered to get traded for him. Doesn’t that tell you something? Denial’s a powerful tool, my friends.

“That wasn’t even partway believable.”

“I’m not going to fuck up his career. He’s a rookie. He still has to prove himself. Who the hell knows what would happen if this got out. He’d likely get traded, and while he wasn’t happy about coming to the Rush at first, it’s a good fit for him. You know how much harder it would be for him to get signed if people found out he was fucking a teammate. It would be a thing. You and I both know it would be, just like it’ll be a thing here, and that doesn’t even touch on the shitshow that would rain down on us because it’s me. Mike Ramsey fought with his teammates; Warner Ramsey fucks them.”

“Well, I mean, it’s only one teammate, unless there’s more I don’t know about.”

I smiled. “There’s not.”

“This is big. I don’t even know what the league would do if two players were caught sleeping together.”

“I know.”

“And then there’s assholes like Nance.”

“No shit.”

“And I do think this will be an even bigger deal because it’s you. In some ways, they’ve been waiting for you to fuck up and show them you’re just like your pops.”

A weird déjà vu wrapped around me. First Garrett had given me a rundown of why this was a mistake, and now Tucker. “Yes, I get it.” He was just reminding me of all the reasons we’d made the right decision. It wasn’t even about coming out. I hadn’t planned on doing it now, but I could. It was more everything else that would fuck us, everything else that I worried about.

“Damn it. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to wrap my head around all this. You really are kind of screwed.”

“Still not helping.”

“I’m a shitty friend. If I were you, I wouldn’t talk to me at all.”

“I’m trying not to,” I teased back.

I was quiet for a moment, and Tucker was too. I could feel his stare on me, could feel him dissecting me with his eyes. “You’re crazy about him, aren’t you?”

I hesitated. “Nah, it was just a thing.” Maybe if I kept lying to myself, I’d eventually believe it.





24





GARRETT





There were plenty of things in life that sucked more than not hooking up with Ramsey anymore. Like spontaneous human combustion. Dying rain forests. Getting your toenails ripped out with tweezers. Global warming. Slamming your whole hand in a car door. Never mind that most of these things involved acts of bodily harm or global catastrophe. I mean, sometimes I did feel a physical pang. In my balls or, more troublesome, my chest, when I looked at him. I just reminded myself it could be worse. And most of the time it worked.

Worked-ish.

But we still had our friendship, even if now it sometimes felt like something was missing. Besides the obvious, it was the quieter moments too. The intimate ones where we collapsed in a sweaty heap together, the laughter or talking that followed while our fingers traced idle paths over each other’s bodies. We didn’t hang out together as much either, and I missed that too. Missed working out with him, our banter in the locker room after practices, our in-depth recaps of the games and, hell, talking about life in general.

We just needed to get to off-season. Pressure would ease for a while, and I could reassess. We both could.