Chapter 5 Beck #2
I jerk back as though he slapped me. “What?” I choke out. “No. What the hell? I’m not into guys.”
One eyebrow inches up, slow and deliberate. Then he leans in again, closer this time, his sweat-dampened curls brushing the back of my neck.
“I don’t believe you,” he whispers, voice dark and smooth. “But don’t worry, honey. You give off very macho, straight-boy vibes.”
The word honey hits somewhere humiliatingly low inside me. I open my mouth to refute him, but I just end up gaping.
“But Lincoln,” he adds, his smile tilting dangerously, “if you keep staring at me like that, I’m going to give you exactly what you want.”
A rash of chills spreads out over my body, and my breath misfires. All of my blood recirculates to pool in the center of my body, to the point that I can’t feel my fingers or my toes.
My tongue feels swollen and too heavy to open my mouth and speak, but I manage to stammer out a weak, “I—D-don’t call me that.”
I’m mortified.
“What? Lincoln? Or honey?”
“Either!”
He lifts his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. What am I supposed to call you, then? You don’t like nicknames. Beck is just for friends. Captain gets you all worked up, and you’re working so hard to pretend you aren’t interested.”
“I’m not.”
“Uh-huh. So what exactly can I call you without you spiraling? Huh?”
I can’t bring myself to tell him that my father is the only one who ever calls me Lincoln. Or that the idea of him calling me anything makes me feel like I’m spiraling.
“What if I just used your last name? Can I call you Beckett?”
“I’d rather you not call me at all.”
“You know what they say about protesting too much, right?”
God, he’s more argumentative than Caty. Let’s hope the two of them never end up in a room together.
I cling to the thought of Caty like a lifeline.
“I have a girlfriend,” I blurt.
He looks entirely unimpressed. “Sure you do,” he says dryly, then leans forward again. “Do you watch her dance the way you’ve been watching me, Beckett?”
His breath caresses the sensitive skin of my neck and makes me shiver. He leaves me sputtering for breath and returns to the dance floor, swallowed by the music and bodies. Every time he moves, the crowd moves with him, orbiting him like he’s the center of their galaxy.
I pull out my phone like it’s a lifeline, typing out a text to Caty.
Maybe I can get her to come by and show him.
It’ll be a good reminder to everyone else, too, of what kind of guy I am.
Caty’s a fucking smoke show. I’ll invite her here to dance and leave Brody fucking Miller swallowing his stupid ideas about who I am.
Before I can finish typing out the message, the bartender leans in over the counter, startling me. I’d actually forgotten he was there.
“Jesus, I almost came from the way he was eye fucking you.” He fans his face. “Are you alright?”
I roll my eyes and turn away from him. “I’m fine. He’s a goddamn clown.”
“Well, if you’re not going to take him home, you wouldn’t mind if I do, right?”
My jaw clenches. “You can do whatever you want. I’m not interested.”
“Riiight,” he says, one eyebrow arching knowingly. “Is that so?”
He rests his elbows on the bar, his grin turning salacious. “So you’re saying that if I disappeared down that hallway,” he nods towards the dark corridor I noticed earlier, “and you happened to find me on my knees, you’re saying you wouldn’t want this mouth?”
He slowly licks his lips, then turns towards the hallway without waiting for an answer.
I stare after him, at the darkness. At the familiar, easy temptation. The predictable script I know I can follow without thinking. The opportunity to escape my headspace for just a short while.
Then, because I’m an idiot, I look back at the dance floor.
Brody is watching me. Not vaguely. He’s blatantly watching me, his eyes alight with mischief, smirking because he knows what I’m thinking about.
The fucker winks at me again.
Something inside me fractures, knowing that he’s in my head. And that even if I followed the pretty bartender, all I’d see are Brody’s bright blue eyes looking up at me.
Two weeks pass in a blur of early morning lifts, long days of classes, and practices where I pretend not to feel Brody’s presence vibrating against my skin like a second pulse.
Ever since that night at the club, I’ve kept my errant thoughts and feelings tamped down hard and him at a distance.
I’ve been nothing but an iron wall of clipped commands and controlled movements, completely refusing to engage with anything resembling friendliness.
As a captain, my attitude spreads through the team like a sickness.
No one says it aloud, but the majority of the team follow my lead instinctively.
Or at least they try to, until Brody’s infectious attitude starts to wear everyone down.
Pierce and his band of minions haven’t let up. The pranks have been small, juvenile hazing type shit that Coach pretends he doesn’t know about.
An extra-heavy barbell loaded before Brody’s bench press.
Which, of course, he takes in stride and shows off his impressive strength by pressing out a few reps before even commenting on the weight.
A shaker bottle filled with protein powder and salt, which he spits out, but laughs about.
His wrestling shoes get tied together and hung from the rafters.
He jokes that they needed to be aired out anyway, then finds a member of the maintenance staff to help retrieve them quietly after practice.
When his gym bag is “accidentally” thrown into the cold plunge, he asks if anyone has any detergent because laundry day came early.
I should shut it down. It’s my job to shut it down.
But I don’t. I let it happen right in front of me, and I don’t even pretend I can’t see what’s going on.
I stand at the center of it all, like I’m not responsible for this team and its members.
Hell, I even make the excuse to the other captains that it’s bringing the underclassmen together, and Brody doesn’t seem to mind.
Roman laughs, but I can tell it bothers Sean.
He’s too quiet of a guy to protest too much, and I notice him checking in on Brody regularly.
To his credit, Brody never snaps or complains.
He never sulks or retaliates. Aside from the incessant empty beer cans that get left in and around his locker constantly, which I don’t really understand, Brody just laughs and moves on like it’s all background noise.
And somehow, that makes it even worse. The team likes him even better for it.
It makes them warm to him. It makes him look good and me look…
Jealous. Intimidated.
It makes me look just as weak and sniveling as Pierce Jamison.
Every day, people gravitate towards Brody a little more.
He jokes with Aaron on the walk to class.
He spots Jay during lifts. He helps freshmen with their stances.
His laugh, the one I pretend grates on my nerves, becomes familiar enough that even the guys who used to follow my lead begin drifting towards him.
Everyone likes him. Except Pierce, of course. Pierce hates him for being everything he’s not—friendly, warm, naturally gifted, and worst of all, unintimidated by people like us.
Despite all that, I hold the line with my hard indifference.
I make sure no one sees or even suspects how hard it’s getting to look at Brody without feeling that same unwelcome shiver crawling up my spine.
The same one that makes me want to bolt from the room before he can see something on my face I didn’t mean to show.
Because the more he doesn’t falter, the more he takes in stride, the more I become just as impressed with him as everyone else.
Except I can’t admit that to anyone, not even myself.
Which is exactly why my head is pounding before this stupid alumni mixer even begins.
Coach McCoy’s wrestling facility has been transformed into a suffocating maze of collared shirts and old money. Athletic donors, former captains, alumni from the glory years, and a host of other insufferable people all clog the room like a wall of expectation I’m destined to climb.
My father is here, wearing a suit that costs more than the catering company and a disdainful expression that suggests he’s been disappointed since the moment I was born.
He’s been talking to Coach, which I’m grateful for at first, because it buys me a few minutes to gather myself and look for Caty, who has always been the best buffer between me and my father.
He might hate me, but he loves my girlfriend.
“It’s good to see you, Chuck,” McCoy says, grinning far too warmly as he claps my father on the shoulder.
“Your boy here is shaping up to be as good as you were back in the day.” I roll my eyes at the way Coach calls my dad Chuck, smiling like they’re old friends instead of rivals who spent four years trying to destroy each other on the same team I find myself struggling with.
The irony leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
My father returns Coach’s smile, but his eyes barely shift toward me, like acknowledging me directly is some tedious formality he’d rather skip.
When Coach moves off to greet someone else, Dad finally turns fully in my direction, expression faintly critical like I’m a building he’s inspecting for structural damage.
“I hear the team’s shaping up,” he says, smoothing a hand over my lapel to remove some invisible lint. “Dale mentioned some new additions. Said you’ve got a transfer this year, you didn’t tell me Broderick Miller found himself on your team.”
I force a nod, my heart rate kicking up.
“Yes sir, a transfer and quite a few impressive freshmen as well. One guy is a heavyweight that played as a lineman on his high school football team. He’s a beast.” My head swivels around the room, hoping to point out the freshman and divert my father’s attention.
I should know better.
“I recognized that boy the second I walked in here,” my father continues, tapping a finger against his drink, a metronome that betrays his frustration.
My dad’s gaze travels across the room, and I know he’s looking at Brody’s messy blond curls and stocky build. I swallow, jaw tight, pulse loud in my ears.
“Imagine my surprise,” Dad says lightly, “when I find out you’ve been paired up with the boy that took the championship from you your senior year. The very one that embarrassed you, and me by extension.”
My throat closes, and I refuse to look up where my father is staring at Brody like he’s something he stepped in.
“I expect you’ve shown the little upstart where his place is.”
I say the thing I know he wants to hear, because that’s what I always do. “Yes. He’s not had it easy since arriving here.”
My father’s approval isn’t warm. It never is. But there’s a sharp, mean gleam in his eye. “Good,” he says. “I raised you to be a winner, Lincoln. Winners don’t let humiliations like that go unchecked.”
The way he says humiliations like that makes my stomach twist. Like that match was a stain on the family name instead of whatever hellish awakening it actually was for me.
My father has never given me any indication that he knows exactly why I ran out of that competition, but I’m not na?ve enough to assume he doesn’t have at least some idea. He was there, after all.
“Yeah,” I mutter through my teeth. “He’s… he’s not a problem.”
“Is he not?” My father glances across the room.
This time, I follow his gaze. Brody is laughing, loud and bright, head thrown back, something warm blooming in his eyes as he talks to Fish and Sean.
One of my best friends and one of my co-captains, who happens to be one of the top Division One wrestlers in the country.
Someone my father has compared me to for most of my time here at Huntston, despite us being in completely different weight classes.
Brody’s smile lights up his whole face. It lights up the people around him too. Something inside me knots.
Dad gives a low, displeased noise. “Clearly you’re doing a good job keeping him in line.” His tone is edged with dry amusement. “Look at him. Carrying on like an idiot. Doesn’t look like he takes anything seriously,” he says, eying Brody’s black slacks and faded tuxedo t-shirt with disdain.
The words slip out before I can stop them. “He doesn’t. It’s infuriating.”
I can feel my shoulders drawing up to my ears, tension crawling up my neck until my temples start to throb. Watching Brody laugh so easily with everyone, watching his arms draped over friends and teammates who used to follow me unquestioningly, makes something sharp and stupid flare inside me.
Dad steps past me, already scanning the room for someone more important to talk to. “Work on it,” he says over his shoulder. “Knock him down properly. He needs it.”
Then he’s gone. And I’m left standing there, seething so hard I can barely breathe, every muscle tight enough to snap.
I look at Brody again and scowl so hard I’m surprised lasers don’t shoot out of my eyes and cut him clean in half. He doesn’t see me watching. He’s too busy being liked. Being natural and effortless as always.
That ugly, tight feeling claws its way up my chest. Something that feels like panic and want and shame all tangled together.
I clamp it down like I’m swallowing down nausea and bury it deep.
Because if anyone—my father, my teammates, Brody—ever saw what was actually happening inside me, it would ruin everything.
And Lincoln Beckett does not get ruined. He ruins whatever threatens him. Because he is his father’s son and that’s who he’s been raised to be.
Or so I tell myself.