Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Alex thrived under pressure.
Oh, he didn’t enjoy it—got nervous beforehand and struggled with temporary insomnia—but when the time came, he was on. If the combined weight of his dad’s mess and the quarter final against France wasn’t pressure, Alex didn’t know what was.
Turned out that all it took for him to sleep through the night was Lee’s body tucked up against his back, a heavy arm slung around Alex’s chest. Miraculously, it meant that when their alarm went off, Alex felt rested, ready to face the day along with the toughest national team he’d ever gone up against.
Instead of making his habitual beeline for the shower, Alex turned in Lee’s arms to kiss him awake, familiar by now with Lee’s slow drift into wakefulness.
While Lee muttered something about morning breath, he seemed all too happy to give in, gently pawing at Alex’s waist without any real intent behind it.
They showered together, a lazy orgasm tricking Alex’s brain into a sated sort of complacency.
Not for the first time, they were the last ones to make it to breakfast, and Alex could tell how much it cost Oliver to swallow a comment when they sat down in the two chairs that Oliver and Jeff had saved for them.
“You’re late,” Jeff told them with a haughty look.
Alex reached for the fruit plate in the middle of the table. “A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early.”
“He arrives precisely when he means to,” Lee jumped in, and Alex sent him a bright grin that Lee returned.
“You know,” Oliver said mildly, “I was joking yesterday at the press conference, about the finishing-each-other’s-sentences bit.”
“No take-backs,” Lee said.
“What’s done is done,” Alex agreed. He looked over just in time to notice Jeff glance at Lee, then back at Alex with a curious tilt to his head.
And… oh, hell. Not only was Jeff Alex’s best mate, no, he also didn’t have a homophobic bone in his body.
Why the fuck was Alex keeping him in the dark?
Sure, he had his excuses, mainly that he didn’t trust Jeff to choose discretion over fighting the good fight. That was an utter load of crap, though.
Alex needed to tell him. He would.
After the match.
Lee didn’t typically get nervous before games—excited, yes, but not nervous. But his mother would be there tonight, and while of course she had attended his matches before, it had all been Premier League, everyday kind of business. This? This was the World Cup.
And in spite of everything, just like any other boy, he wanted his mum to be proud of him.
“If she isn’t already proud of you,” Alex told Lee on the train to Madrid, the compartment all theirs for the moment, “that’s on her, not on you.”
From one son to another, huh? Lee slid lower in his seat and stretched out his legs, one foot bumping Alex’s, seated across from each other as they were. “I’d say the same thing about your parents, except that one’s definitely on them.”
“Yeah, well.” Alex’s gaze skittered away. “Continuously falling short of expectations since birth, I guess?”
“What could they possibly be disappointed with?” Lee gestured at Alex’s general being. “You performed well in school, you’re a great athlete, you’re bloody fit…”
Alex’s face cleared slightly, distant humor coloring his tone. “Well, I was a baby once, which I think came as a bit of a surprise to my parents—you know, the whole crying thing, diapers, demanding attention… Basically all the reasons why the rich invented nannies.”
“Hold your tears of sympathy,” Lee said dryly, and one corner of Alex’s mouth quirked.
“Indeed. Then, after I outgrew the baby stage, I turned into a child—cue getting dirty, falling down, talking too loudly and too quickly…” He waved a hand.
“Then it was this, then that, then that other thing. Like choosing the wrong friends, getting into soccer instead of cricket, like how I don’ t excel in social situations… ”
Uh.
“But you do,” Lee said.
“Now, yes. But it was something I needed to learn, not something that came naturally.” Alex flashed his dimples at Lee.
“Plus—and I’ m sure this won’t come as a shock to you—my political views don’t exactly mesh with my dad’s.
Once I started questioning his perspective at the dinner table…
Let’s just say that critical thinking wasn’t welcome. ”
Yeah, based on how the Duke of Eastwyck carried himself in public, it was hardly a stretch to imagine he wouldn’t be particularly patient with an independent-minded child.
“Sounds like a recipe for some fascinating dinners,” Lee said.
Alex shook his head. “It honestly wasn’t very exciting. I asked something, he answered, and if I then questioned even just minor aspects of what he’d said, I was treated to pointed silence for the rest of the meal.”
“You know what really connects us—you and me?” Lee didn’t wait for a reply. “We both won the healthy family dynamics lottery.”
Alex’s lips curved into a sad kind of smile. “It all seems normal until you realize that it’s not how other families operate.”
“True.”
They were quiet for a moment. Then Alex leaned forward, elbows on his knees as he watched Lee. “Listen, though. Your mum is here. I know it’s complicated, but she came for you, and you said she’s been stable for a while now, so…”
Lee inhaled, exhaled. “You think it’s time I forgave her?”
“That’s not my call to make.” Quiet and even, Alex’s gaze still on Lee, and Lee ducked his head and glanced away.
“Maybe, yeah? It’s like…” He grimaced. “I know it’s not fair, holding something against her that in so many ways isn’t her fault. But it’s hard to just snap my fingers and get over it, what with how it, you know…”
“Impacted you?” Alex offered.
“Yeah.”
“I get that. I do.” Alex seemed to consider his next words carefully. “But she’s making an effort, isn’t she? Sticking to her treatment regimen, regular therapy, and she’s here to see you play. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is.” Lee didn’t know what it meant to admit even as much. It didn’t feel bad, not exactly—maybe even like a relief to let a tiny slice of resentment slip away.
Alex’s response consisted of a quick glance at the empty corridor outside their compartment before he leaned across the gap between their seats, one hand on Lee’s thigh as he brushed their mouths together. He was smiling when he pulled back, and maybe Lee was too.
Alex made him want to smile a lot of the time, and yeah, that meant something—Lee knew it did, also knew what it meant. He also knew that there was no point because Alex’s plans for the future did not include a boyfriend.
Didn’t stop Lee from wanting more than he was entitled to, though.
On paper, England stood little chance against France’ s star-studded ensemble. They were outranked in experience, market value, and individual class, so their only hope lay in working as a team, in coming together as a unit that was bigger than its pieces.
Ninety minutes separated them from the semi-final.
At halftime, they were down by one unlucky goal off a disputable free kick.
Kieran told them he was fucking proud of them, and to keep up what they were doing because they were the better team today, and the gods of soccer needed to sit up and pay attention.
Lee was slumped on a bench next to Alex, the locker room’s air-conditioning blasting them with a cool breeze, and fuck, Lee wished he could reach over and wipe that frown off Alex’s face.
Since he decidedly couldn’t, not with the rest of the team around, he settled for a murmured, “Hey, you’re doing well, yeah? ”
Alex shot him a glance from underneath his lashes. “Thank you. You too—just a matter of time until you score, just a bit of bad luck until now.”
“Yeah.” Lee let his lids drift shut, sinking into the familiar sounds of a halftime locker room for a moment—lowered voices of teammates, the faint hum of the air-con. “By the way, did you see some of those banners? The ones addressed to you?”
“‘The only title that matters is this one’, with a big picture of the World Cup trophy?”
“And the one that’s got ‘Son of a duke’ crossed out for ‘A king on the field’.”
“I didn’t see that.” Alex’s face brightened a little. “That’s cute. Just not sure they’ll still feel that way if we lose.”
“So we win, then,” Lee told him. “Easy.”
“Right, good point. That should have occurred to me.” The lightness on Alex’s face lingered, belying his sarcasm, so Lee considered it a success.
The second half started with a near-goal for England—Alex to Jeff to Lee and back to Jeff, who missed by a hair’s width, the ball bouncing off the post. Try again.
They did. And then again until finally, Alex’s surgery-precision pass intersected with Lee sneaking past two defenders, and then the ball was in.
1–1. Twenty-one minutes to go.
The game was still tied by the time the final whistle blew.
Extra time—two additional fifteen-minute periods, Kieran gathering them in a circle as they swigged water, sweaty and exhausted, breathing hard.
Minor adjustments to the strategy, Alex moving higher up the field, their fullbacks farther up the wings, dial up the pressure.
“Let’s give them hell!” Kieran declared, eyes bright, an expression that said he believed they could.
And so they fucking did.
Lee’s shot, on target but intercepted by the French goalie. Alex was there to net the rebound.
2–1.
2–1.
Lee was the first one by Alex’s side, tackling him in a full-body hug, laughing against his cheek.
I love you, he thought and didn’t say, and then Jeff barreled into them, Declan and Finley and Toby yelling their triumph as they joined the huddle, and somewhere in between, Lee had to let Alex go. So he did.