Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Brayden
Somehow, we’re supposed to play a baseball game today. After I walk away from Adler—cock hard, head spinning—I drag myself toward the cold tubs where guys do their post-game soaks.
I strip off my shirt and get into the tub in my shorts and leggings.
The water is so frigid it stings. Good. I need that pain.
I need something to pierce through this haze of whatever I’m feeling: Adler’s body hard against mine.
The dark look in his eyes as he peered down at me.
How he could have shaken me off any time and didn’t.
How he was unsurprised to feel my cock against him.
How I felt his cock against me and all I could think was more.
I don’t—
I’m not—
It’s just a physical reaction. That’s what I tell myself. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for years. I don’t want him. I can’t want him.
Fuck, I need more: more than this cold tub. More distance between us than the few hundred feet we’re apart on the field. Maybe I should do what Blake did and run away to another city. Maybe I should move to the goddamn moon.
I shut my eyes, trying to push away the feelings of his hands on me.
Am I mad at him for fucking Sav? Jealousy is worrying someone will take what’s yours.
Envy is for wanting what someone else has.
An old church sermon, delivered by a pastor who the girls all made a point never to be trapped alone with.
He had to leave when they’d caught him groping money from the congregation’s coffers.
Am I jealous that Asher, like a snake, snuck into my house and made Savannah come before I even got the chance? Or am I envious he didn’t do the same to me?
Sav said he was good with his hands. Good with his mouth. For a moment, earlier, I wanted to shove him to his knees. Shut my eyes and pretend that he was someone else or I was someone else. But he’d know. You’d know.
If anyone finds out I’m even thinking something like this, I’ll be off the team.
Disowned or worse. I want to dig deep in my chest and gouge this feeling out of myself, to go back to being who I was pretending to be when I woke up this morning.
Someone who could make his wife writhe in pleasure without thinking about the man in the next room.
I’m not like that. I clench my eyes shut, plunge my hands into the water, ignore my own chattering teeth. Pain isn’t anything. Anyone who says otherwise is just soft.
Soft. What Brad called Blake—that he was soft-handed, soft-hearted. A word thrown around so much that I felt its ricochet. I couldn’t be soft. That much was clear. So I rebuilt my body from callus and muscle and drowned out everything else.
I’ve been doing this all my life. What’s a few more hours or weeks or years? Adler will leave at some point. When he does, this feeling will go with him. I just have to hold on between now and then.
Finally, the cold tub does its job. My mind settles. My cock goes back to normal. I rise up, letting water sluice off me, wishing I could shed other things just as easily.