Prologue #6
“Yeah,” Lane agreed. He didn’t know if he should say more; had never wanted to draw a line between Tom and his mom, and hurt their relationship. Didn’t want to ask Tom to keep a secret like that.
But it did help that maybe Tom saw.
“We should probably go in, it’s starting soon,” Tom said, checking his watch. “You good?”
Was he good? Not really. But he’d be good. He could fake it for a little while, at least, especially if he knew that tomorrow he’d be on a plane back to Toronto.
“Yeah,” Lane said.
Tom patted him again, his touch lingering even longer this time, the reassurance of it pulling him into the house, into the living room, where all the cameras and monitors were set up. Trevor was in the middle, dressed in an olive-green button-up and jeans, laughing at something Delia said.
There was no girl there, no future mother of his children waiting to see how much signing bonus he’d make.
For a year or two Trevor had dated a girl at Oregon, and for awhile, whenever Delia brought her up—what a nice girl she was, so smart and pretty—he’d thought, finally, maybe my dick will get the memo that Trevor’s not ours.
But then after his junior year, they’d broken up.
Delia had never said why, but she’d hinted more than once that the girl had been pissed that Trevor hadn’t cashed in the way she thought he should.
The way even Lane had thought he should—albeit for very different reasons.
“Come here,” Delia insisted, gesturing both Tom and Lane over. “It’s starting soon.”
Tom took the spot on the other side of Trevor, and Lane settled in next to his mother. He knew better than to believe he wouldn’t be some kind of draw. He was already an NFL player, and every time the feed switched to the Thompson household, he’d inevitably be included in every shot.
He’d dressed in a plain black T-shirt and black hat. Not wanting to draw attention to himself or to draw attention away from Trevor.
It was bad enough that probably anyone who mentioned Trevor would be inevitably bringing up his stepbrother, Toronto Thunder tight end, Lane Robinson.
Lane had never seen it once bother Trevor, but then maybe he was good at hiding it. Wasn’t like Lane wasn’t hiding some secrets of his own.
The first five picks went by without fanfare, about as expected. Nobody had predicted that Trevor would go in the top ten, but there was always an outside chance that one of those teams would have decided they really needed a tight end, and Trevor was miles away the best one in this year’s draft.
Picks six through ten were a little more nerve-racking.
After the tenth pick, the air in the room grew tighter, closer. Even low-level conversation dropped off, every single person in the room straining to hear the sound of the phone on the coffee table in front of Trevor ringing.
Lane dug his fingertips into the meat of his thigh, trying to keep his expression neutral. After pick fourteen, he glanced over at Trevor, who still seemed calm and smiling.
Lane himself had been picked at sixteen.
The Bills were coming up, at eighteen.
The Thunder weren’t until twenty.
The longer Trevor slid in the draft, the more likely it was that he would end up somewhere near Lane.
But the phone didn’t ring, and it didn’t ring, and it didn’t fucking ring.
Next to him, Lane could feel his mom tensing up every time a new team went on the clock.
Pick eighteen and the Bills came and went with no phone call.
But Lane couldn’t breathe easy, not yet. Buffalo would have been difficult, but it would be nothing compared to the nightmare that would be Trevor coming to Toronto.
He still didn’t think the Thunder would draft Trevor—they had him, didn’t they, and Lane was coming off the best year of his NFL career so far, and they’d already opened up negotiations for a contract extension with his agent—but the thought they could made him breathless with horror and longing.
It would be hell, having Trevor in Toronto. He’d never be able to get away from him. He’d drown in the desire that he’d never been able to extinguish.
Pick nineteen, and Lane’s heart was trapped in his throat.
The phone remained stubbornly silent.
But then, oh God, the Thunder went on the clock.
“Wouldn’t that be amazing?” Delia murmured to him, smile returning to her face. “My two boys, back together again.”
Lane wanted to argue that they’d never been together, not in the way she meant, and definitely not in the way he wanted, but that would only make everything worse. He just needed to get through the next five minutes, and then it would be pick twenty-one, and he could breathe easy.
But that wasn’t how it went.
Four minutes in—Lane knew because he was tracking the time on his phone, next to him on the couch—the phone rang and the whole room erupted.
Trevor picked up the phone and then he looked over at Lane. For a second, their eyes met, and Lane could only think, no no no, yes yes yes.
Then he answered the phone and the moment broke. His mom threw her arms around Lane and he hugged her tight, panic splitting him in two like a lance.
It shouldn’t have happened.
He hadn’t wanted it to happen.
But it had happened anyway.
Trevor Thompson was the newest member of the Toronto Thunder.