Chapter 4
October
Nate shouldn’t have come to this game. There was no excuse for not realizing that Ramsey would be at a hockey game that Wes was at, too. And he absolutely should have known Ramsey would show up and probably waltz around the suite, charming everyone in his path, hot as shit and knowing it too.
“Nathaniel,” Ramsey said, dipping his head in greeting.
Not caring that Nate’s name wasn’t Nathaniel, even when Levi called him out for it.
“He knows,” Nate said flatly.
But Ramsey only shrugged, an expression on his face that could only be called whimsical. “It suits you.”
It didn’t, because it wasn’t his name. Ramsey didn’t just get to change his name, because he decided to. Ramsey wasn’t in charge here, despite all his feelings to the contrary.
“It does not,” Nate ground out. Tried to hate him more. Tried to hate him at all.
But every time he thought he was making some real progress on that plan, he saw something he knew he wasn’t supposed to see.
Ramsey being affectionate with Wes. Ramsey supporting Dawson.
Ramsey being kind to the rookie punter. Ramsey refusing to sleep with Lane when he’d finally made a half-hearted offer a few weeks back.
He was so busy trying to justify the feelings that wouldn’t come, no matter how much he kept willing them to, no matter how much he kept pretending they already existed, when Ramsey turned to him and asked, “What did you think, Nathaniel?”
Nate hadn’t been paying any attention to whatever bullshit Ramsey was spouting. Or what they’d been discussing. “No clue.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Ramsey said. “Hockey’s too good for you. Or you’re too good for hockey? I can’t remember which it is.”
Nate hadn’t said anything really. But it was easier to pretend he didn’t like hockey players generally than to detail exactly why he didn’t like Ramsey specifically.
“You did say you’d get him here, to Scotia Bank,” Lane pointed out.
“I did. You wanna get out there after the game?” Ramsey asked, innocent expression pasted on his face.
“No,” Nate said flatly.
“I don’t know, I think you’d be okay out there.” And there it was again. Another instance where Ramsey could’ve been an ass, and had pulled back, just enough. Just enough that it was really fucking difficult to dredge up feelings of utter hatred. Profound dislike, maybe.
“Don’t fucking do that,” Nate said, uncomfortably aware they had an audience. Uncomfortably aware that they were edging towards this thing between them that nobody else knew about.
“Do what?” Ramsey asked.
“That look doesn’t work on me,” Nate said.
But it wasn’t the look. Okay, it wasn’t only the look.
Ramsey had the nerve to look momentarily surprised. Like he hadn’t expected Nate to pull them back from whatever precipice they were dangling on.
But Nate wasn’t going to indulge any more of Ramsey’s bullshit.
Before he could respond, Nate turned and walked away, leaving the group to go in search of a beer. Or maybe even something stronger. At least that was what he told himself as he rifled through the mini fridge set underneath the far-side counter.
He spent the next twenty minutes watching the game on TV and trying to avoid getting pulled into the group of Lane, Mo, and Trevor, who were all picking Ramsey’s brain about the game as the second period unfolded.
At the end of the second, he finally got a text from Jordan, who’d said he was coming to the game when Nate had cornered him at lunch, insisting he come along. “Your week ended ages ago,” Jordan had said, rolling his eyes. “Why do I want to go to a hockey game?”
Nate hadn’t wanted to tell him the truth—that the last place he wanted to go was a hockey game, albeit for very different reasons probably—but he’d just shot Jordan his best I’m your captain look and told him to come anyway.
Fifteen minutes before they’d met up outside the arena, Jordan had only sent a, not coming text to Nate, and then hadn’t answered the next three texts Nate sent, or picked up the phone call he’d made as they walked to the suite.
But now finally, he was responding. Of course, it wasn’t like his response made Nate feel any better.
Chill out. I’m cool.
That was not even remotely the kind of answer that made Nate chill out.
He sighed, tapping the table next to where his phone sat as he tried to figure out what to say to Jordan that he might actually listen to.
“You don’t usually frown like that at anyone except me. And I’m right here, so I know it’s not me.”
He hadn’t even seen Ramsey approach, but there he was, a wry smile on his face. Settling in across from Nate like he wasn’t going anywhere.
“It’s not,” Nate said flatly.
More than once, Nate had wondered why Ramsey kept seeking him out, despite him being so clear that he wasn’t interested in playing Ramsey’s games.
He’d eventually come to the conclusion Ramsey did it because he wasn’t used to anyone not liking him.
Wasn’t used to being rejected when he tried to wiggle his way onto anyone’s good side.
Ramsey wasn’t necessarily interested in him. He just didn’t like to lose.
“Come on, you were looking at that phone like you’d like to explode it with your mind. I’ve been told I’m a good listener.” Ramsey deployed the smile that probably made just about everyone else putty in his hands.
It wasn’t that Ramsey’s incredible smile didn’t affect Nate.
It did. Just in a different way than Ramsey probably expected.
There was still a hint of the real smile, the one he hadn’t realized in June was the most authentic part of Ramsey, buried in the showy, flashy version.
Nate didn’t like to think of it as fake, but that was probably a fair-ish assessment when it came down to it.
But every time Ramsey smiled like that, Nate was still reminded of that night. When he’d known everything and nothing, all at once.
“You, a good listener?”
Ramsey shrugged, easygoing and uncomplicated. When hilariously, there was not a single easy or uncomplicated thing about him.
“So I’ve been told,” Ramsey claimed.
“They probably just tell you that so you stand there and they can look at you, uninterrupted,” Nate muttered.
There was another, slightly stronger, hint of the real smile in this one.
“Maybe,” Ramsey admitted. “But I am, no question, probably the best problem solver you’ve ever met.”
Now that Nate could believe. Ramsey would manipulate at least a dozen people while he solved their problems, but the problems would be solved.
“I’d ask if anyone ever put you in charge of something that you’d be shitty at, and then didn’t help you when you started to fail but then . . .”
“I don’t fail?” Ramsey grinned.
It would be mean, but for a moment, Nate considered reminding him that he was currently on long-term injured reserve. But then that hadn’t been Ramsey failing; that had been Ramsey’s body failing.
But before he could decide what to say instead, Ramsey continued, “I doubt anyone put you in charge of something you’d fail at. I don’t see you as the failure type.”
“I fail every day at liking you,” Nate retorted, though these days it felt more the opposite.
“Fair,” Ramsey said, not looking like he believed him for even a second. “But honestly, I’m good at lots of kinds of stuff, and because I am, I can tell you that you are too.”
“That why you can’t leave me alone?”
“You caught me. It’s a competency kink.”
“Be serious.”
“Oh, baby, I am. But to add to my bona fides, I wore the C in college, too.”
“The C?”
“I was the captain,” Ramsey explained. His lips turned into a smirk. “It’s what we call it in that other, real, sport.”
Nate supposed he should be annoyed, but the laugh bubbled out of him anyway.
“Ah. Okay.” So maybe this wasn’t out of Ramsey’s wheelhouse. But telling him would mean telling him, and Nate was already not doing a great job keeping him at arm’s length.
Good enough that Aidan kept shooting him worried looks whenever they were in the same room together, but not good enough that Nate was convinced he could actually keep it up for as long as he should.
“You gonna tell me about it?” Ramsey prodded.
Nate didn’t want to say, Sterling dumped this problem on me and whenever I try to talk to him about it, he just brushes me off. Sterling had more important things to deal with, though it was probably more like, it was his last year and he was tired of dealing with annoying rookies.
Nate sympathized. He’d only had custody of Jordan for a few weeks now, and he was already over it.
“I told you, it’s this problem, and it got put on me, and I’m not . . .it’s not working.”
While Nate might be pissed at Sterling for this, he wasn’t about to expose him to Ramsey.
“You think about asking someone else?” Ramsey asked.
Nate shot him an unamused look. “I’m not going to tell you about it.”
“Dude, calm down. I wasn’t saying me. You clearly don’t want to give me any more details, and it’s hard to help without them. I meant, is there someone else on the team, or maybe another friend you could run this by.”
It was stupid how Nate had never thought of that. He’d tried so hard to make the Thunder his team when he’d been traded, but of course, he had friends still in Charleston, where he’d begun his NFL career.
“Yeah, actually.” He and Deacon Harris, his mentor after he’d been drafted by the Charleston Condors, still talked pretty often.
Sometimes it was just a text exchange after a game.
Sometimes Deacon would call him, give him a heads-up about an opponent he’d just seen on film.
Every time he did that, Deacon’s husband and the owner of the Condors, Grant Green, complained fondly about how he was trying to give Nate—and the Thunder—an unfair advantage.
But Deacon would just look at him, and though Grant was a certified ballbuster, both in the internet security world and the football world, the only one who could get him to stop whining about anything was Deac.