Chapter 1 #5
Opposite the massive flat screen TV, there was a whole row of framed jerseys.
Not hockey, but football.
Even worse, Ramsey recognized the colors on the last one on the right—the blue and white that matched his friend Wes’ team—and the last name.
Bishop.
Wes had mentioned a Nate Bishop more than once. Great defensive player. Leader on the team. Even, once, in a damning memory Ramsey wished he could exorcise from his brain, a nice guy. You’d probably even like him.
Yeah, he sure fucking had. At least until Ramsey had discovered all of this.
His heart rate picked up.
“Ramsey?” Nate asked, poking his head out of the fridge.
When Nate had been nobody, when Nate hadn’t been someone this close to his circle, to something that mattered, it had felt . . .well, not okay to relax his rules, but safe enough.
Nobody would ever know.
And Ramsey could control it.
“Ramsey?” Nate was suddenly right there. Looking at him, while Ramsey stared at the jerseys. The truth of his identity laid bare. But Nate had never lied. Or he had, but not well.
Nate, the hot guy from the bar who’d looked into Ramsey’s eyes like he knew him, was one thing. Nate, who claimed he managed Tim Horton’s for a living and didn’t even eat their donuts.
Nate Bishop, the defensive end for the Toronto Thunder, was something else entirely.
An entity that Ramsey couldn’t control. Smashing into his life.
Except no, he was already fucking there, because Wes knew him, and probably if Ramsey was still around Toronto in the fall—a nightmare that Ramsey couldn’t even put into thoughts, nevermind words—Wes would probably want him to come around the team with him.
He’d expect it. He’d be confused if Ramsey refused.
Panic streaked through him in a nauseating wave.
He’d never be able to keep this guy contained. Not easily. Probably not at all.
“Oh. Well. Yeah. By the way, yeah, I do play football,” Nate said, shrugging awkwardly and then having the nerve to look worried, like this changed something.
He was fucking crazy. It changed everything.
Ramsey knew he should say something. Something easy, breezy. Make his exit. He’d done it a hundred times before. Wes was always marveling at how effortlessly he could extricate himself from a hookup’s place.
But his normal skills seemed to have deserted him, and Ramsey wasn’t sure why. Had it been the unsettling and extraordinary sex? Or the unexpected reveal of who Nate really was?
“Don’t tell me this is fucking you up.” Nate looked like it was half a joke, half a serious concern.
Be easy, be easy, be easy.
“Had a good laugh at my expense, huh?” was what came out instead. Fuck. It was one thing to be affected and it was another to reveal it.
Nate looked surprised. No, shocked. “Uh, no?”
“I should go.” It wasn’t the easy, charming exit he was known for, but at least it was an exit.
“Are you serious? Because I didn’t tell you I’m a football player?” Nate frowned.
Ramsey wasn’t cruel; he’d learned early, so early he couldn’t even tell you when, that you caught so many more flies with honey than with vinegar. But he found himself saying, “I was going to leave anyway.”
He’d never made a secret of it, but no doubt Nate had expected he’d get a chance to change his mind. And maybe if Nate hadn’t been Nate Bishop, he’d have gotten it. Maybe he’d have even conjured a miracle and convinced Ramsey to give him his phone number.
But that wasn’t happening now. The best Ramsey could hope for was that the next time they met—because with Wes in both of their circles it was probably inevitable—they could both pretend casual ignorance.
“I know you said it—” Nate started to say hesitantly.
“I never made any secret of it,” Ramsey retorted. He left the kitchen, going into the bedroom to grab his T-shirt. Find his shoes and socks.
But then the sex had been like that. And when normally Ramsey might have extricated himself from the situation—grabbed a quick shower alone and then left—he’d stayed. He’d agreed to a drink. Would have maybe even acquiesced to a cuddle, a second round, maybe even a sleepover.
Nate trailed after him. Clearly not getting the memo that everything had changed.
“No, but I thought . . .” Nate looked at him, all wounded dark eyes, and Ramsey wanted to yell at him.
Something he never did because what was the fucking point of losing his temper? It never changed anything. Hadn’t changed his shitty childhood. Or what had happened last year.
“You thought, what, you’d fuck me really good and then I’d change my mind?”
Nate reared back.
Ramsey wanted to snatch the words out of the air, because again, what were they going to change? They weren’t going to change those jerseys on the wall of the living room, and they weren’t going to change Nate’s last name.
Finding his T-shirt in the clothing next to the bed, Ramsey pulled it on. Made sure he had his phone and his wallet in his jeans still.
“Is any part of you real? Or is it all just some charming front you turn on and turn off?” Nate asked, so seriously it was like he really wanted an answer. But he didn’t, because he wasn’t going to like it.
Why had he not just played his regular part? Why had he gotten angry? Why had he gotten nasty? Making an enemy was always pointless.
“Oh, baby,” Ramsey said, because he couldn’t stop himself now, “I’m whoever you want me to be.”
Nate frowned. “That’s such bullshit.”
It was bullshit. Total, complete bullshit. Nate had seen further into the real Ramsey than anyone else in a long time, but he couldn’t tell him that. If Ramsey gave Nate an inch, he would want to take a mile.
Ramsey had to get out of here before he was tempted to let him.
“Believe it or not, it doesn’t matter to me.” Ramsey flashed a smile. His patented devil may care smile. The one that always brought all the boys to the yard.
The moment he did, he knew it was the wrong kind of smile, because hurt flared over Nate’s face.
“You’re right.” The last thing Ramsey had actually expected was to be believed. Nate had seen through him from the first. But not now, apparently. “You’d better go if that’s how it is.”
Protests and denials crawled up Ramsey’s throat like heartburn but he swallowed them back down. Gave Nate one more of those smiles, like he didn’t care after all, and walked out.
It wasn’t ridiculously late, and Ramsey felt like he needed a minute to get his shit together as he walked back to Wes’ building. It wasn’t far, and he’d genuinely believed he’d marshaled his wits about him by the time he made it back to his friend’s apartment.
But the moment he let himself in and Wes looked over at him from his spot on the couch, it was obvious he hadn’t.
Wes was watching one of those trashy reality TV shows that he loved and Ramsey couldn’t stand.
The Bachelor or Love is Blind or Love Island.
They were all the same to Ramsey. A dozen or so people all pretending to be someone they weren’t.
“Hey, you okay?” Wes asked, actually pausing the show. Which said it all.
Ramsey wanted to escape to the guest room. Get away from his friend. Go back to Buffalo, maybe, but Buffalo was awful. He’d left Buffalo because it was awful.
He just looked at his friend and didn’t say anything. Sometimes saying nothing was better than a lie. It was usually better than the truth.
Wes sighed and patted the couch next to him. “Come ’ere. You have a headache?”
For a second, Ramsey considered arguing, but then he went. “No,” he said.
Wes put his arm around him and Ramsey let himself be pulled in. “You wanna tell me about it?” Wes asked.
Wes would want to talk about it. “No.”
Humming under his breath, Wes tugged him closer.
“You know how I usually complain you’re pathetic?” Ramsey asked. He felt guilty. He’d felt guilty all the way back to Wes’ building. So guilty that half a dozen times he’d nearly gone back to Nate’s place and told him the whole truth. Something he was never tempted to do.
Wes had the nerve to laugh about that. “Oh, yeah.”
“Maybe it’s not just you.”
Same as getting angry, there never seemed to be any benefit to feeling sorry for himself, so Ramsey just didn’t do that.
He always just kept pushing forward. It wasn’t relentless optimism, more like Ramsey betting that something better had to be on the horizon and if it didn’t happen naturally, then he’d figure out a way to make it happen.
“You really don’t want to tell me about it? I didn’t think you had hookups go bad.” Wes said it easily. Too easily. He wasn’t even half the actor Ramsey was, despite all the times Ramsey had attempted to coach him.
The problem was Wes didn’t have any good reasons to hide, so he was never motivated to pretend.
Ramsey didn’t want to talk about Nate. Okay—that was also a lie. He desperately wanted to tell Wes all about Nate, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. So he changed the subject instead.
“You ever think about what would’ve happened if you and Marcus had actually slept with me that night?”
Wes tensed.
Ramsey almost never said Marcus’ name, if he could help it. Same as Wes, these days. If Wes was more like Ramsey, he’d have already figured out that Ramsey had done it to distract him. But Wes wasn’t like Ramsey, which was probably a blessing all around.
“No,” Wes lied, unconvincingly.
“Come on,” Ramsey wheedled. “You do. I know you do.”
But Wes’ eyes were clear when he looked over at Ramsey. Maybe he was telling the truth. “I don’t, actually. It would’ve been a garbage fire, and then we wouldn’t be friends still, because you’d have ghosted us, like you always do.”
Ramsey wasn’t sure if it hurt more because it was honest. Maybe the lie would’ve been easier for him to swallow.
“And don’t even say you don’t,” Wes continued. “I know you, remember? You’re my best friend.”
Ramsey let himself settle back into the couch. Into the comfort of Wes’ arm around him. “Yeah,” he agreed.
“You’re really not going to tell me how it went bad? Did you actually fail at charmingly making your exit?”
“Something like that,” Ramsey said.
“Huh.” Wes looked over at him. “What else?”
“He wasn’t who I thought he was,” Ramsey said, and, of course, Wes laughed.
“Oh, that must’ve been fun. Two of you lying to each other. Was it weird sex, too?”
Except that Ramsey hadn’t lied. Not really. Nate hadn’t believed him, of course, because the shit he’d said had been unbelievable. But it had still been true.
“No,” Ramsey admitted.
“Good sex, then?”
Ramsey was genuinely worried if he started, he’d just word vomit the whole evening up. So he just said, “Why are you always trying to get me to give you the deets, Matthews?”
“Maybe because only one of us is actually having sex,” Wes said wryly.
“You could be having it if you wanted to,” Ramsey reminded him.
But Wes only smacked him on the arm. “For the millionth time, I don’t want to sleep with you. You’re my best friend.”
“Dumbass. Who wouldn’t want to sleep with me?
” Ramsey retorted, though by this point, they both knew there was no way they could ever sleep together.
Wes wasn’t the last person on earth that Ramsey would ever have sex with—that honor went to Wes’ ex-boyfriend, Marcus, who was undeniably attractive, but Wes would kill him slowly with a dull, rusty knife if he ever went there—but still solidly in the top three.
It was because Wes knew him so well. Better than anyone else. Better even than his other best friend, Brody.
Maybe that should’ve been a hint that he should’ve listened to the concerned voice in the back of his mind and not gone there with Nate tonight. Just walked away.
“I’d say you’re an egomaniac,” Wes said, glancing over at him, “but I know better.”
“Ugh, I hate you.”
“You don’t.” Wes was smug. Knowing. “You like that I actually know you. ’Cause if it wasn’t for me and Brody, you’d be even more pathetic than you are now.”
“Maybe I hate that you know that,” Ramsey suggested. There’d been a time that he had hated it. Been equally horrified and fascinated by Wes’ knowledge. With Wes, he’d learned to live with it.
He wasn’t sure he could’ve ever dealt with Nate.
Maybe what had happened was for the best.
“You don’t,” Wes said loyally, squeezing him harder. Wes was too good. Probably too good for a friend like Ramsey, but he’d attached himself like a barnacle, and now that Marcus was gone, the chances of Ramsey dislodging him were close to zero.
He was more than okay with that—at least used to it—if only his proximity to Wes didn’t automatically mean proximity to Nate.
Maybe fate would actually do him a solid and he’d be recovered from his concussion and back in Buffalo by September, playing hockey again. If that happened, Ramsey could put this whole thing behind him—his interminable stint on injured reserve and Nate, both.
He wouldn’t even be in Toronto, and so it wouldn’t matter if Nate was around.
That was the solution: get better and then none of this would matter.