Chapter Twenty-Six
Danny
I was halfway through scrubbing my bedroom skirting boards when I became aware of a knocking on the door, followed by the harsh sound of the doorbell. I looked up, dirty cloth still in hand, and frowned, annoyed at the way my heart leapt.
No, bad heart. Very bad. You aren’t allowed to make decisions anymore because listening to you is the reason I’m in this mess.
Although more of the blame should be levelled at my dick, since that had definitely had a greater say in any of the decision-making.
It wasn’t allowed to have any say in the future either.
“Danny, you in there?” The voice calling me was familiar but not the one I’d expected. Or at least, the one I’d hoped for. “Danny, it’s West. If you can hear me, can you answer the door, please? I promise everything is okay, but I need you to answer the door.”
For a moment I debated staying on the floor in my room and pretending I wasn’t home. But I didn’t want to cause any more problems or send anyone on a manhunt. It was time to face things head-on and get them over with.
Hopefully, I’d still have Charlie by the end of it.
And maybe Ezra, but I doubted it. I’d probably ruined everything by running away. After all, why would he want to be with someone who treated him like that? Especially after what his wanker of an ex-husband had done.
Standing up slowly and shaking out my feet where they’d started to turn numb, I trudged towards the front door. My pulse was so loud I could feel it in my ears, and despite what the quiet, logical part of my brain was trying to tell me, the only emotion I registered was fear.
I’d played with plenty of guys throughout my career who wouldn’t have thought twice about ripping the shit out of me for being gay, and while I desperately wanted the Knights to be different, part of me refused to believe that would be the case.
All the evidence might point in the opposite direction, but I still didn’t know if that evidence applied to me.
West was a really nice guy, but I’d been a dickhead to him in the past. Maybe that would make the difference.
There was only one way to find out.
I cracked the door open a fraction, then pulled it a little wider to see a very concerned hooker standing on my doorstep, his face so pinched with worry I wondered if I should warn him about getting wrinkles.
He put his hand out as soon as he saw me, and I flinched away.
But all that happened was West pushing the door open and grabbing me around the shoulders, dragging me into a hug so crushing it felt like he was trying to break all my ribs.
“Oh thank God,” he said. “I hoped you’d be here.”
“Can’t breathe,” I said with a wheezing breath. “Too tight.”
“Shit, sorry.” He released me gently, putting both of his massive hands on my shoulders so he could look me straight in the eye.
He towered over me, and it felt a little like coming face-to-face with a carthorse or one of the fucking enormous mountain rescue dogs.
“I’m so sorry, Danny. I really didn’t mean to scare you like that. ”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s obviously not.” He glanced over my shoulder. “Can I come in?”
“Er, yeah. Sure.” I stepped back to let him in and realised I was still holding the cleaning cloth. I shoved it into the pocket of my shorts because it was the only place to put it without abandoning it somewhere random.
West took his trainers off while I watched him, still struggling to work out what the fuck was going on.
He’d apologised, but I had no idea why. It wasn’t his fault.
He clearly wasn’t angry with me, just really fucking worried, and that had completely thrown me.
Not that I honestly believed West was going to be angry, but since my brain had decided that was what was going to happen, it was struggling to adjust to the reality it was being presented with.
It was like I was in some fucking alternative universe to the one the loudest part of me had been expecting.
Maybe things were going to be different.
“Do you want a drink?” I asked, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. And when in doubt, it was easiest to default to being polite.
“I’ll take a cup of tea if you’ve got some. If not, water’s fine.”
“Yeah, I can make tea.” I didn’t drink a lot of tea, but Charlie did, so I always had some in. Luckily, he’d always drunk it black, so we hadn’t needed to try and find him a different type of milk to use. “How’d you take it?”
“Milk, two sugars, please.”
“Cool, grab a seat. I’ll be there in a second.”
West followed me as I walked into the living room, taking a seat on the sofa as I meandered through to the kitchen, making tea on autopilot.
There was a bottle of vodka on the counter that I’d bought for Ezra and me to share, and I debated having some to take the edge off.
But I didn’t know how much it would help.
“Here,” I said as I wandered back through with West’s tea and a glass of water for myself.
“Cheers.” He smiled at me as he took it, waiting for me to sit down. Which I did. Slowly. After wondering how easy it would be for me to run away instead.
There was a long pause as West sipped his tea, his enormous hands wrapped around the mug.
“When I first came out to my parents, I was twenty-one and I didn’t think they’d care because I thought they loved me.
Turns out, that love was conditional on me being straight, the same as it was with my brother.
I haven’t spoken to them since.” He nodded slowly and took another sip of his tea.
“I’ve never been afraid of being bi, but it took me a long time to fully embrace it and be unapologetically myself.
It was hard at first, really hard, because I always thought it would be easier to keep the peace and never push back, because rugby’s a team sport and you can’t play on a team if nobody wants you. ”
“I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing hard. “I didn’t make it easy for you.”
“No, but you weren’t the worst by a long stretch. And I’m guessing your questions weren’t meant in the way I took them. And Mason too.”
“No.” I shook my head, my cheeks flushing.
Great, West was gonna know exactly what I liked just from the state of me.
Maybe Devon and I could form some secret club of bottoms. “I’ve always known something was different, but I ignored it, y’know?
My dad… well, he’s a fucking piece of shit.
That’s all you need to know. And I’ve had teammates who weren’t much better either, especially when I was in under-eighteens.
It was all tits this, pussy that, and I tried to pretend it was what I wanted because, like you said, who wants to be left out? ”
I sighed and took a long drink of water, still wishing it was vodka. Or a pina colada. I could really go for one of those.
“I just pushed it all down, all the other feelings, all the wandering thoughts when I saw guys in porn… but then I came here and I met you. You were the first player I’d ever met who wasn’t afraid to be queer, and that was… fuck me, that was fucking life-changing.”
“That’s why I did it,” West said with a tiny smile. “Because I knew I wasn’t the only one. And maybe if I was out, then someone else would have the confidence to come out too.”
“Fuck, do you have any idea how brave that was?”
He shrugged. “Sort of, but I don’t think I really thought about it like that at the time. It was just something I felt like I had to do.” He chuckled and rolled his shoulders. “Besides, look at the size of me. Nobody’s picking a fight with me and winning.”
I snorted. “Fuck no! Not with Mason stood right behind you.”
“Exactly. And then after I started going out with Rory and with everything that happened, I think that encouraged Mason to explore that side of himself too. And Jonny. I don’t know if me being out made any difference to Devon coming here, but hopefully he at least knew we’d be accepting since he was out too.
And Matty… I don’t know, but clearly we made him comfortable enough to tell us about Harper. ”
“And ask for advice when he fucked up.”
“That too,” West said with a wry smile. “And if you have something you want to tell us, I can guarantee we’ll support you too. We love you, Danny, I promise. You may be an annoying little shit, but you’re our annoying little shit, and that’s never going to change.”
“It might. I’ve been kind of a dickhead in the past, still am sometimes. What if… what if I’m too much of a dickhead to support?”
“You’re not. And you being a dickhead has nothing to do with you possibly being queer. You’re a dickhead because you’re an annoying, mouthy brat, not because you’re queer.”
The tiny seed of relief that Charlie had planted in my heart began to sprout, its roots creating fissures in my doubt, crumbling it away as it took hold.
“What if… what if I’m one too many, though?
Like, we’re not a queer team. We’re a regular premiership team.
Do you think people will care if I’m gay?
What if they don’t want me to play anymore?
” It was still a question I needed to hear the answer to, even if West had sort of answered it already.
My palms were clammy against the glass as I waited, blood pounding in my ears.
“Listen to me, if anyone says that to you, fuck them,” West said.
“We’re a team, a family, and I don’t think anyone is going to care whether you’re gay, straight, bi, pan, ace, whatever label is yours, as long as you’re not a complete twat.
And if they do, then you come and tell me, and I’ll have words. ”
“What if it’s Mason?”
“Same thing. Just because he’s my best mate doesn’t give him a license to be a dickhead. You’d say the same if it was Charlie.”
I nodded and let out a long breath, the knot in my chest finally easing to a point when it didn’t feel like my lungs had a rubber band around them. “Thanks. And, er, just so it’s out there, I’m gay. Like, really fucking gay.”
“Congratulations, and thanks for telling me. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”
“Appreciate it,” I said. “Charlie knows, sort of. Ezra, obviously, ’cos we’ve been fucking. But nobody else.”
“And it’ll stay that way until you’re ready. There’s no timeline on that either. If you don’t want to ever come out, you don’t have to.”
“I thought about that, about not saying anything. Thought it might be easier. But I’m kinda sick of the hiding.
Besides, if I don’t then I’ll have to keep coming up with excuses about why I don’t wanna go out with people’s girlfriends’ mates, or why I don’t have a date to Charlie’s wedding.
Apparently, me not wanting to date for a while is as believable as Scotland winning the World Cup. ”
West snorted and coughed, choking on his mouthful of tea. “I mean, I didn’t want to say anything.”
“See, this is what I mean!” I laughed as I slapped him on the back.
“You have got a reputation.”
“It’s all fake. Well, most of it. Easier to pretend I’m a fuckboy than deal with my feelings about dick.”
“Still not sure I want to hear about your sex life,” he said with a grin. “Same as anyone else’s.”
“Then don’t ever go back into the dressing rooms after everyone’s left or you will hear Jonny and Devon fucking in the toilets.”
West stared at me with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth. “Don’t ask,” I added. “Just believe me.”
“I do. Insatiable bastards.”
“I’m looking forward to Jonny finding out Hunter and Bailey have been fucking his brother though. He’s gonna be so pissed.”
“I’m surprised he doesn’t already know,” West said as he took another sip of tea. “It’s really obvious.”
“Right?”
“I think Devon tried to tell him, but I don’t think Jonny believed him.”
“Of course not, Jonny is stubborn as fuck. Look what it took for him to admit his feelings for Devon! And they were obvious as the fucking sun.” I sighed and drained my glass, twisting it in my hand as I thought. “Do you think people will care that I’m shagging Ezra?”
“Just shagging?” West asked, raising his eyebrow as amusement played over his face.
“I mean, maybe. We’ve not really talked about anything else,” I said, my face flushing again.
“Do you want more?”
“Yeah, maybe. Like, when I’m with him, I feel like… like the way you all talk about feeling about your partners, I finally get what you mean now. I always thought all those feelings were fake, but when I’m with Ezra, it’s different.”
I didn’t know how to describe it. I wasn’t that good with words.
All I knew was that I wanted to be with Ezra, and that without him, I’d be so fucking miserable that it’d be like I was walking around under a rain cloud.
One of those winter ones where the rain was freezing and coming at you sideways.
Or where it seeped into your clothes and your bones and made you so cold it felt like you’d never warm up again.
Like you’d be wet, cold, and miserable forever.
“You should tell him that,” West said. “I don’t know how it’ll turn out, but I do know if you feel like that, it’s always better to say something.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe about it. You should tell him.” He smiled and I frowned, because there was something else going on here.
There was another knock on the door, and West’s smile widened as he clapped his hands on his knees and stood. “In fact, you can tell him right now.”
I huffed but couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “You’re a dickhead, West Russell. You know that?”
“Takes one to know one, Wheeler.”