33. Arnaz #2
All heads swivel in my direction, except one staring at the floor.
“Problem, Cade?” Coach shoots me a puzzled look.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, staring at our new assistant coach, who’s aged un-fucking-believably well.
“Hey! My office,” Coach demands.
“Wait, hold up, Coach. Let me holla at him.” Sid steps in, gaze gunned on our new assistant coach , who decides then to lift his head and look at me.
“We should tal—” Aiden starts.
“No!” Sid and I bark at the same time.
“Let’s go,” Sid says, nodding toward the door.
I don’t stop walking until I reach the end of the hall, where I kneel and fold my head into my hands. My lungs burn like I’m back in the ocean.
“Tell me what’s going on.” Sid kneels next to me. “Who is he?”
Before I can answer, Sid’s head darts up, and then he’s on his feet.
“Sid, may I have a moment with Arnaz?”
I flinch at Aiden’s voice. Still so fucking polite.
“Yo, walk the other way,” Sid warns him. “He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
I screw my eyes shut and lean against the wall.
“Okay,” Aiden says calmly. “You both should know that I was approached by the Royals for the position. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and I couldn’t pass it up. I don’t mean to stir up any trouble for him.”
I channel power that I don’t feel and stand to face him.
It’s fucking surreal staring into his dark, diamond-shaped eyes.
“I’m sorry if my joining has caused trouble. It’s the last thing I wanted to happen.”
“Why this team?” I question.
“Arnaz—”
I cut him off. “You know where we left things. What did you think would happen if you showed up?”
“Alot of time has passed. I thought it wouldn’t matter as much.”
“It doesn’t!” I bark.
“Alright,” Sid interjects, addressing Aiden. “You said your piece. Bounce.”
“I’m out.” I punch open the double doors. “Tell Coach I’m sick or something.”
“Your team needs you,” Aiden calls out. “You’ve worked too hard to let me mess with what you’ve built here. I’m no one.”
I let out a scoff.
At one point, he was everything.
I drive around aimlessly for hours until Sid hits me up that he’s home.
He’s talking to his bodyguard, Jett, when I pull into his garage.
“You good with grilled salmon burgers?” Sid asks as I trail him into the kitchen.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He reaches into the fridge. “Make yourself a drink.”
“Want one?” I head for his bar, pour a double of the eighteen-year Japanese whiskey, and throw it back, grunting from the burn.
“Nah, just water for—Actually, yeah. Can you grab a wine glass and the buns over there?”
“Yep. Where’s the wine?”
“I have an open bottle of Albarino in the wine fridge outside.”
I follow him out and unload the glass and buns next to the grill.
“You know,” Sid tosses over his shoulder as I climb up his hill and stretch out on the grass, “the furniture is comfortable.”
“I hate patio furniture.”
He smirks, and I hear him mutter, “Who hates patio furniture?”
A few minutes later, I sit up when he brings over the grub. “Good lookin’.”
He made a smiley face with BBQ sauce, remembered that I hate ketchup on anything but fries, and prefer sliced jalapenos over pickles on my sandwich.
“Good to see you smile,” he says, lifting his burger for a bite.
“So, how much trouble am I in?” I ask.
“None. I talked to Coach.”
I stare at him. “Seriously?”
He nods.
I make a mental note to definitely buy him a car.
“Wanna tell me why I was about to throw our new assistant coach out by his neck?”
“You knew he was joining?” Each team has its own dynamic, but there’s no way the Royals would recruit someone for the coaching team without consulting their star player.
“Yeah. They shared their top picks with me a few weeks ago. He was leagues above the other candidates.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
I wait for him to finish chewing, then he answers, “I didn’t think there was anything to tell. You don’t care about this stuff.” He wipes his mouth. “And you never told me about him. You know you keep everything about your past close to the vest.”
He’s right on both counts. I still let out a grunt before taking another bite of my burger.
“So, what’s the deal? Y’all used to date or something?”
My swallow sticks in my throat.
“You good?”
I polish off the whiskey.
“That bad?”
I shrug. “We got close. And I thought he… I made a pass, and he...” I blow out a breath.
“He what?”
“Turned me down.”
“Oh,” Sid says. A beat passes before he asks, “When you say close ?”
“I don’t know.” I clasp my hands behind my neck and drop my head between my knees.
“What you mean you don’t know?” His head tilts as he searches my face. “You weren’t conscious?”
“No, nothing like that.”
For years, I wondered how I got it so wrong.
“I was having a hard time freshman year. I think you’ve sensed enough to know home was trash for me. I always thought if I got out of their house, things would be better.”
“And it wasn’t?”
I huff a laugh. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Damn.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
“I actually missed Carter yelling and dragging me out of bed at night to remind me I’m a piece of shit. Can you imagine that?”
He tenses at my admission.
I can feel the questions buzzing around his head. I also know he’s too patient to force it out of me.
And because I don’t have it in me to talk about Carter and Aiden, I choose one.
“Aiden saw me flailing.” He saw me . Period.
“Started coaching me one-on-one. Helped me strengthen my game. He really believed I had what it took to get drafted.” No other coach invested as many hours in me as he did.
“He invited me to hang with him in the coach’s lounge,” I continue.
“He doesn’t look that much older than us.”
“He isn’t.”
Sid nods.
“I always felt pulled toward him, and for a while I thought it was a one-way thing, but then there’d be moments when I caught him staring at me in a way that made me wonder…”
“Is he gay?”
I shrug. “I, uh, made a move one night.” Even now, I can’t tell whether I imagined him kissing me back, or pulling me into his body, or if it really happened. “Anyway, he stopped it and muttered some shit about not feeling the same. There was an inappropriate power dynamic or whatever.”
“Damn. That must have hurt.”
“Yeah…”
“What happened after?”
“He kept his distance, ended all interactions off the court, and I, uh…didn’t take it well. I pretended like it didn’t bother me, but I was spiraling. But the draft was around the corner, and I just kept my head down and got the fuck away from him.”
He nods. “You lost a friend.”
My only friend. Overnight, I was nothing to him. I had no one.
“Carter?”
I tense. “Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
I roll out my neck. “Pass me that?” I gesture toward the bottle of water he brought over with the food.
He hands it to me, and I unscrew the top and take a long swig.
“After he lost his NFL contract, he started drinking and made our lives hell. I think he always knew I was gay and hated me for it. But the alcohol and mood swings made him vicious.”
“When’d he lose the contract again?”
“When I was young. Really young.”
He hisses. “I knew there was a reason I can’t stand him. He approached me at the ESPYS a few years back, before you and I met. Energy was off. Reminded me of my first boyfriend’s dad.” He pauses, meeting my gaze. “I’m so sorry.”
The clear rage and sadness in his eyes have my ribs tightening, my mouth twisting, and my eyes cutting away.
My phone buzzes, and I lean back to dig it out of my pocket.
I stare at Salem’s name, and a jittery warmth spreads over my body.
“You two are okay?”
I nod as I drop the phone between my knees. “I think…Fuck, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him.”
“Yeah?” He grins.
“Shut up.”
“I knew it.”
“How?” I question.
“How’d I know you’d fall for him?”
I nod.
“Besides him being objectively hot and looking like he’d bury a body for you at Kieran’s house?”
I snort.
“You forgot how to breathe when he looked at you.”
I groan. “Did everyone notice?”
“I mean, it was obvious to me.”
“Yeah, but that’s ’cause you speak Blue.”
His eyebrows crinkle. “I do what?”
“I’ve been meaning to ask…How’d you know Ty was it for you?”
His gaze softens as he leans back on his elbows. “I don’t think it was one thing. It felt like more than friendship with him from the jump. I was also craving something deeper. It had felt empty for a minute.”
“Your bed?”
He grins. “Nah. I mean, yeah, I guess at some point that became true. Messing with people I didn’t want to spend breakfast with got old. But mostly, it became clear that I couldn’t imagine anyone else loving him or loving me, and it feeling so damn good…or right.”
The rage I feel at Josiah, yoga guy, even Salem’s ex…I don’t think rage is what he means, but that’s what I feel when I think about him with other men.
“How’d you know you could love him without hurting him?”
His head tilts to the side. “I didn’t. We had a rough patch, and I hurt him by putting up a wall. He hurt me too. Honestly, I think that’s part of it. It won’t be good times all the time. I just try my best every day, and I see him trying too.”
“It sounds like a gamble.”
“It’s a bond. And it’s work. Anyone claiming it’ll always be easy is lying. But I wouldn’t trade what I have with him for all the world.”
“Three hours of the same drills! For fuck’s sake.” I ripped off my shirt. It landed with a plop against the bleachers.
“Thought you wanted your name etched in the annals of NBA history,” Aiden taunted, sweat plastering his black hair to his forehead. “It’s this. Mastering the boring little things.”
“The principles,” I mocked, on cue.
I set up again and reached in, and his elbow blocked my reach. I tried every maneuver in the bank but came up short. I knew he was doing that thing where he scans every shift of my face to read me. I saw an opening and pushed in, hands swiping the air, as he switched up and got past me to the rim.
“You’re reading what I want you to read instead of anticipating and watching the weak-side movement.”
“Whatever, man.”