Chapter 10
Dawson wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice—or more like a dozen times, at this rate, but who was really counting? Not him. He kept an eye on the rookie all night long. Stuck close, even though that was both an exercise in patience and in torture.
Watched as Cam laughed and chatted with what felt like half the team.
For a while, Lane and Trevor tugged them into their orbit, Lane insisting they take shots while Trevor made a disgruntled, disapproving face.
But Trevor ultimately took the shot when Lane held the tequila up to his lips, giving in with a self-conscious chuckle.
They’d rotated through the various knots of different players.
It was one of the reasons Dawson had liked being special teams—the offense and the defense both liked to claim them.
Maybe before he hadn’t done his due diligence, but celebrating a four-game win streak to kick off the season, everyone was acting like the next guy over was their new best friend.
Dawson didn’t want the bitterness to invade this night, but it was impossible not to wonder absently how it would feel when they were more games in. When they inevitably lost. If they ever lost badly.
He’d been around long enough that he knew some teams weathered those storms better than others. It was still too new to know how this team might ride out a rough sea.
It was almost one in the morning when Cam leaned into him, soft, slightly sleepy eyes blinking up at him, and said, “I think we should probably head out.”
He looked tipsy, but not drunk. Something he’d probably be grateful for in the morning.
“Yeah, you done partying, rook?” Dawson asked, tucking him into his side. Cam might be slightly taller, but it was a revelation how well he still fit against him like this. “I’ll call a cab.”
“No,” Cam argued. “Let’s walk. I want some fresh air.”
“Fresh air, huh?” Dawson pulled him towards the exit, concern rumbling at the base of his stomach. Concern he didn’t want to voice out loud, but he couldn’t not ask. “It’s pretty late. You sure you’d be okay with that?”
Cam blinked down at him, his eyes softening even more. “Well, yeah,” he said. “You’re with me.”
Gooey warmth spread through Dawson’s chest, even as he told himself—insisted, really—that it didn’t mean anything.
“Alright, walking it is,” Dawson said. Not only because he wanted to prolong this soft, sweet bubble between him and a tipsy, pliant, affectionate Cam, but because it might help remind Cam next time that there was nothing to be afraid of. A little bit of exposure therapy.
But when they got outside, it was drizzling. A cold unpleasant kind of rain, where the moisture sank its claws in and didn’t let go.
“Just give me a sec,” Dawson said, fumbling for the phone in his pocket. He was maybe a fraction more sober than Cam, but he wasn’t sober, either.
“Nooo,” Cam whined. “Come on. Let’s walk. It’s not so bad. Barely even raining.”
“You gonna say it’s barely even cold, either?” Dawson asked dryly, shivering even as he pulled up the collar of his jacket.
He checked the directions on his phone and they set off. Even though it was late and the weather sucked, there were still a few people out on the streets.
“Weeeellll,” Cam said, drawing out the word, shooting a sheepish glance in Dawson’s direction.
“Yeah, yeah, this was all your idea. I’m gonna remind you of that,” Dawson pointed out as they turned a corner.
“We should go to the PATH, instead,” Cam said. “I know there’s an entrance in the basement of our building.”
“What happened to fresh air?” Dawson wondered.
Cam shrugged. “It’s cold!”
Maybe if Cam was fractionally less adorable, he could resist doing whatever he said. But so far, his track record of doing that recently was not very good. He wanted to make Cam happy because every time he did, Dawson felt a little warmer from the brightness of his smile.
Dawson knew just enough about the PATH—the underground network of pedestrian tunnels that crisscrossed the city—to be dangerous.
He knew how to take the entrance in their building to the building that housed his favorite Chinese restaurant.
He and Aidan had walked through the underground corridors a few times when he’d first gotten to town.
But he certainly hadn’t been doing it recently, and his memory was more than a little foggy. Or maybe that was the glasses of wine he’d drunk.
Still, he was pretty sure this big skyscraper here had an entrance that if he went the right way would take them to their building.
He tugged Cam’s arm and they hurried in, the security guy at the desk giving them a sleepy half-look as they walked towards the escalator that would take them to the bottom floor.
Cam leaned against the edge of the escalator. Water droplets dusted the top of his hair. And somehow—Dawson couldn’t figure out how—he was still smiling.
“That was a great night,” Cam mused. “We didn’t have places like that in Montana.”
“I’m not sure there’s many bars like Vault,” Dawson agreed.
“But it wasn’t just the bar, though it is pretty freaking cool,” Cam said. “Everyone’s so . . .I don’t know . . .loose and happy. And together.”
“Four-game win streak,” Dawson pointed out.
Cam shot him a look as they hit the basement floor. During the day, this was a food court, with various restaurants and a coffee shop as well as a bookstore, but at night, there were gates over all the storefronts, and it was quiet.
They were alone.
“I don’t think it’s just that,” Cam argued staunchly.
“Easy to be happy when you’re winning.”
He didn’t want to burst Cam’s happy bubble. Dawson never wanted to do that. But he didn’t want him to be caught off guard when the vibes inevitably changed. Because they always changed. Dawson being here in Toronto at all was proof of that.
“The guys have something to prove and I think they’re excited that they have the chance to do that.”
Dawson rolled his eyes. He didn’t want to be a Debbie Downer but this was naive, even for the rookie.
“You don’t really believe that. I promise—we’re gonna lose a game, probably in some kind of extra shitty way.
Either get blown out when we shouldn’t be, or on like the last fucking play.
And nobody will be teasing you about taking a tequila shot and Aidan won’t be buying drinks and slinging his arm around everyone like they’re his new best friend. ”
For a second, Dawson hadn’t realized that Cam had stopped. But when there was nothing to his very blunt declaration but silence, he glanced over. Realized he’d left the guy behind.
No, Cam had stopped, right in his tracks, and was staring at Dawson with an incredulous expression all over his face.
“What?” Dawson wasn’t sure if what he felt was guilt or self-consciousness. “Let me guess—you think that’s bullshit too.”
“It is bullshit. It’s absolute bullshit. And even if it does happen, it doesn’t mean that none of this stuff tonight was real, or true—”
“I didn’t say that,” Dawson said quickly.
Yep, no question about it at all. That was definitely a stomach-churning sweep of guilt gnawing at his innards.
“Yeah, you kinda did,” Cam said, frowning. “And it’s bullshit.”
There was nothing Dawson wanted more than to agree with Cam. But he’d been there last year, when it hadn’t been bullshit, it had been his reality.
When everything had soured, and instead of boosting him up, the team had turned their backs on him.
As beautiful as Cam’s sunshine was, there was something Dawson recognized in it—maybe even how he’d been once—and when those beliefs had been stripped away, it had hurt like hell.
Maybe he could help the rookie avoid that painful realization.
“You believe that everything is just going to work out? Easy? Just like that?”
Cam’s eyebrows screwed together. “I never said it would be easy.”
“But you do. You believe it.” Dawson hadn’t realized he’d gotten so close. Not until Cam stumbled backwards half a step, one of those big cement pillars at his back.
“I . . .well, yeah. I do. I do.” Cam said the last with defiance.
“That’s—”
But Cam didn’t even let him get the rest of the thought out before he was continuing, pressing a palm right against where his heart was hammering away in his chest. “So things don’t work out sometimes.
You got divorced. Your money got stolen.
Your team dropped you. Those were all shit deals, okay?
Nobody’s gonna argue with that. But here’s the thing, I can’t go around believing the sky is always gonna fall.
I don’t think you even want to go around believing that either. ”
Dawson opened his mouth to argue, and then snapped it shut again, because damnit, the rookie was right.
He didn’t want to. Part of why he’d been so angry—why he was still so fucking angry—was that he didn’t know how to go back to that guy.
The one who’d been sure that with time and effort and maybe even a sprinkling of luck, he’d get exactly where he’d always dreamed and stay there.
He was just different now. The whole experience had soured him, and maybe even ruined him, and Dawson fucking hated it.
“See? I told you,” Cam said smugly. His fingers curled into Dawson’s coat. Around the placket. He tugged him closer.
Dawson knew he should be putting some space between them. If either of them moved another inch or two, he was going to be doing something he couldn’t take back. A certified Bad Idea.
“Sometimes,” Cam continued, “we just have to stay the course. Have hope that things will turn around. Even if it seems like they won’t. Maybe the end result sucks, but the journey doesn’t have to.”
“Thanks, Mr. Self Help.” Dawson had meant to say it in a snarky, kind of snide sort of way. But it came out all soft and tender instead. Like he wasn’t being sarcastic at all, but meant every single word.
Cam smiled. “You think I got a future?”