Chapter 7
SEVEN
All mornings were evil, but some mornings were more evil than others.
Today was a particularly evil one—Lee didn’t need to even open his eyes to make that call. Maybe it was because the alarm had cut right into a deep sleep phase, or maybe it was because yesterday’s match had encased his bones in lead. Either way? No.
The alarm shut off. Ah, blessed silence.
“Lee.”
He grumbled and rolled away from the annoying voice.
“Lee.”
“Piss off.”
“I know the passcode to your Kindle,” Alex chirped, laughter tucked into his tone. “And I’m not afraid to use it.”
Like Lee cared. At this point, the only reason he refused to share his reading habits with Alex was because a man needed to maintain some air of mystery. “And I repeat, piss off.”
“Now that’s not very nice.” A few seconds later, the mattress shifted as Alex got up and, by the sounds of it, ducked into the bathroom.
Running water, Alex spitting some toothpaste into the sink, then the sound of his bare feet padding back into the bedroom and towards the window.
Lee slid one eye open to check on him—just in time to get a brutal dose of sunshine when Alex threw the curtains wide open.
For a moment, Lee blinked at Alex’s lean silhouette, light flowing around his figure.
With a groan, Lee sat up. “Why do you hate me?”
“I adore you.” Alex’s voice was drenched in sugar. “You are the yin to my yang, the butter to my toast, the Romeo to my Juliet.”
Lee fought a smile. “Meaning we’re obsessed with each other and will die at the end of the story?”
“But oh, the poems they’ll write about us!” Alex fanned himself with a hand, eyes dancing with impish humor. He exuded energy, his bare chest tapering down to a narrow waist, muscular thighs that Lee wanted to bite.
It was too early for this. Lee rubbed a hand down his face. “What time is it?”
“Six twenty.”
“And why, pray tell, did you set your alarm for six twenty?” Given the circumstances, Lee considered his tone remarkably polite. “We were up past midnight and breakfast isn’t until eight. Right now, we’re probably the only two idiots in this hotel who are awake, staff exempted.”
“That’s kind of the point.” For a split second, a crack appeared in Alex’s cheerful facade, granting Lee a momentary impression of something nervous hanging around him. Right—there was something Alex had wanted to tell Lee.
“Oh, fine.” Lee heaved a dramatic sigh. “Let me just splash some water on my face so I feel a little more human, yeah?”
“Course.” Alex turned away when Lee rolled out of bed, as though he wanted to avoid meeting his eyes. He’d said it was nothing bad though.
“I’ll be just a minute.” With that, Lee closed the door to pee, wash his hands, and brush his teeth. The mirror showed that he’d worked up a solid tan from the Spanish sun, and unlike some of his teammates, his Italian heritage let him circumvent the lobster stage.
When he came back into the room, Alex was sitting on the bed, his sheet already folded next to him.
The hotel lay silent around them, and without even meaning to, Lee lowered his voice.
“Y’know, this whole thing feels like being on a spaceship—not just us, but the entire team.
Like we’re in this weird, isolated bubble, floating in space, and once in a while, we touch down to play a match, take a few selfies with some fans, and then we’re off again. ”
Alex flashed him a smile. “I think our food’s marginally better, but, yeah. So I guess that makes us cabinmates?”
“And friends, I hope.”
“Definitely friends.” Alex got up from the bed, then didn’t quite seem to know what to do with himself, curling the fingers of one hand into the hem of his T-shirt. He must have put it back on while Lee had been in the bathroom—a loss in terms of the room’s aesthetic appeal, but such was life.
“There’s something you wanted to tell me?” Lee prompted, and Alex nodded quickly, taking a step closer to him.
“Yeah. Promised myself I would, so…” He trailed off, frowning. When it became clear that nothing else was immediately forthcoming, Lee shot him a grin.
“Let me guess—you are, in fact, Messi’s secret love child?”
Alex snorted, shoulders loosening a little. “He’d have been, like, thirteen. Creepy much?”
“Ronaldo, then. He’s a couple of years older, isn’t he?”
“Still creepy.”
“Well, there goes your chance to renounce your father.”
“Tempting,” Alex said. “Too bad reality isn’t a lunch menu where you get to pick your preferred version.”
“Unless you’re my mum off her meds.” It might be a little too early in the day for jokes like that, but Lee had always relied on humor to dull the sharp edges of a painful subject. “So, anyway. Shoot.”
“Right.” Alex knotted his hands in front of his stomach. “So, yeah.”
Okay, this was getting just a little concerning. “You said it was nothing bad, right?”
“It’s not!” Alex’s gaze slid to Lee and away again. “I just don’t know how to, you know, actually say this.”
“How about an interpretive dance?” Lee kept his tone deliberately light, smiling, and for a moment, Alex stared at him with wide eyes. Then, suddenly, Alex raised his chin and took the three steps that separated them.
“Fuck it.”
With that, he pushed himself into Lee’s space, abruptly close, and pulled him into a rough kiss.
God. It was heat and Alex’s fingers digging into Lee’s shoulder, a warm hand against the back of Lee’s neck and the taste of toothpaste on Alex’s lips.
Lee twisted closer and got one hand under Alex’s T-shirt to grab his waist, running his tongue along the seam of Alex’s lips.
Alex’s fluttery moan brought him back to his senses.
Lee stumbled back. “What the fuck?”
Alex slow-blinked, lips and cheeks red. It very nearly undid Lee, and he took another step back because no, fuck no.
“What the actual fuck?” he asked again.
“I…” Alex swallowed, staring at Lee as though words were beyond him.
“I’m not your gay fucking experiment.” Pun unintended, and bloody hell, Lee needed to think. He wanted Alex, yeah, sure. But that didn’t make it a good idea.
“That’s not…” Alex inhaled sharply. “I’m bi. So.”
“You’re…”
Bi. Alex was bi? Since when?
“Oh yeah?” Lee narrowed his eyes. “Since fucking when?”
“Since… forever. Like, years.”
“Years,” Lee repeated blankly, and did that mean—back when they’d first met and Lee had bumbled through his first attempt at flirting with a guy, did that mean that Alex actually might have been receptive if Lee had got it right? And did it matter?
“Yeah.” Alex sounded slightly more confident now, rolling his shoulders back as he held Lee’s eyes. “Just never acted on it.”
“You’ve been—you’re bi. And you’ re telling me only now.
” Lee crossed his arms in front of his chest, and fuck, he felt naked wearing just his boxer briefs, especially when kissing Alex was something he might have imagined before, just once or twice when he’d been too tired to control the direction of his thoughts.
Not like this, though. “I was so fucking open with you, yeah? And you couldn’t even be bothered to tell me that it’s okay for me to look because there’s an actual chance? ”
“I’ve never told anyone,” Alex protested. “It’s not exactly easy, okay?”
Lee huffed. “Trust me, I know it’s not.”
“Maybe you’re just braver than me.”
“Yeah, maybe I am.”
Alex pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, and Lee hated that his attention got stuck on that, if only for a moment. “Everyone has their own pace, right?”
“Right.” Lee shook his head, anger coating the edges of his vision. “And if yours is stuck on glacial, okay, fair enough. Doesn’t give you the right to just plant one on me.”
“You kissed me back.”
Lee had. Because how could he have resisted?
“I made a mistake.”
“A mistake.” Alex narrowed his eyes, voice tinted with disbelief. “Felt like you were pretty into it.”
Fuck you.
“It’s been months since I got laid. At this point, I’d snog a moderately handsome wall if it had decent oral hygiene.”
“Screw you,” Alex said, and he had the actual audacity to look a little hurt when he’d been the one who’d held back.
All this time, while Lee had slowly unpacked his vulnerabilities, Alex had strung him along, pretending he was oh-so-accepting when in reality, he had no room to judge Lee because they weren’t all that different.
Lee retreated by another step and bumped into the bathroom door. “Get out.”
“Gladly,” Alex ground out.
“Good.”
“Good.”
They glared at each other for a few seconds that twisted through Lee’s blood like some kind of potent poison.
Then Alex’s mouth flattened into a thin line and he turned, grabbing his stuff off the bed before he marched towards the door.
Lee watched him—his perfect body and the way he didn’t spare Lee even a single glance as he cracked the door open, clearly not so affected by what had gone down that he forgot to make sure his little secret, their little secret, didn’t accidentally run into an early-bird teammate.
The coast must have been clear because Alex left without another word and pulled the door shut with enough emphasis to register in the silent morning.
Only then did Lee exhale a long, shaky breath.
Oh, fuck. He’d been right to protect himself.
He deserved better than to be Alex’s default choice based on the simple virtue of being conveniently available, a way to scratch an itch before Alex went off and married whoever Daddy dearest picked for him. Lee did deserve better.
So why did he feel like crap?
Alex made it through breakfast without Jeff buying a clue that something was seriously off. Or, perhaps more accurately, Jeff noticed but gave Alex an easy out.
“Still bummed about the match?” he asked, and Alex shoved some tasteless eggs into his mouth and nodded. He carefully didn’t glance at Lee, a few tables over.