Chapter 20 #4
“If I needed to,” he says, his face serious. “I’m not interested in racing if you’re not there with me.”
I turn on the milk steamer and it screams into the oat milk until it’s nice and frothed, giving me a minute to collect my thoughts. When I turn it off and pull the frothing wand from the stainless steel cup of milk, their heads are close together in quiet conversation.
“I know just the place,” Nate says.
“The place for what?” I ask as I pour the steamed oat milk into each of our mugs and top it with the foam.
“Marco suggested maybe we should get away for a little while, somewhere quiet where I can rehab my back and we can have some time together out of the spotlight.”
“Big Sky?” I ask hopefully and he nods, a smile playing at his lips.
“I love it there.” I sigh as I set his latte on the table in front of mine and pull up my chair close to him.
“And you have plenty of space for the rehab you’ll need to do.
I’ll need to clear it with the team, but it should be fine.
Lots of athletes go home to do their rehab instead of back to Park City.
” Though once his back is better we will need to go to Park City to get him back in shape and get him cleared to race again.
Still, we should get at least a week alone together before that.
“Is it possible for you to keep your location a secret?” Marco asks. “So that no one starts to speculate that you have more than a professional relationship?”
“About that,” Nate says. “We don’t need to publicize what’s happening between us”—he pauses and looks at me for confirmation, which I give with a nod of my head—“but it doesn’t make sense for you two to keep pretending like you’re dating.”
Marco and I glance at each other.
“We’ve already planned to end this,” Marco says, “toward the end of the season.” Blessedly, he doesn’t mention his retirement or me applying for the job at Danforth.
That’s something I need to share with Nate in my own time, and not until I’m one thousand percent sure he won’t share the news with anyone at work.
I can’t risk losing my current job, as that would be a surefire way to not get the Danforth job.
I already have one strike against me because of our proximity at the top of the run in Levi and dating him would be the nail in that coffin.
All the reasons I was resisting him in the first place come rushing back to me in the light of day.
I need to talk to him about this, explain that we absolutely have to keep this a secret until I have that job offer and have signed on the dotted line.
Probably even beyond that, until I’ve left the team and moved on to the Danforth job.
No one can know this started while I was his physical therapist. That’s a nonnegotiable.
“End of the season is way too far away,” Nate says. “I’m not watching you and Jax pretend to be together for the next four months.” He looks at me, asking for me to understand.
“He’s right,” I say, and Marco nods, a concession if not an outright agreement. “We can have an amicable split. Maybe if we spend the holidays separately, it’ll be easy enough to say that we’re still friends and on good terms but no longer romantically involved.”
“That’s fine, but you two need to be very careful in the meantime,” Marco says, and Christian nods along. “If someone catches you two together in the next few weeks, it will ruin our plans and it will look like you’re cheating on me.”
Christian and I both burst out laughing over how ridiculous that is, since for the last year Marco’s been the one “cheating” on me.
“We’ll be careful,” Nate assures him.
“I don’t mean you,” Marco rolls his eyes.
“Everyone knows you’re still in love with her.
But Jackson’s been pretty cold and indifferent to you since you joined the team.
” He turns his head toward me, “You have to keep that up even though it’s not how you feel.
Otherwise, people will start speculating, and if you remember, that’s why we started this whole thing in the first place. ”
Nate’s eyebrows raise in response to that.
“No, we started this because you needed cover for your relationship with Christian. I agreed because I was sick of people speculating that I still wasn’t over Nate.”
Nate almost chokes on his coffee and ends up coughing.
“What?” I ask him when his shoulders shake with laughter.
“Well obviously you weren’t.”
I want to wipe that stupid smirk off his face with my lips. Because, in the end, he’s right. I wasn’t over him, no matter how much I told myself I was. No matter how much I wanted to be. And now I can’t even imagine why I ever thought I could resist him.
“I need to start making some phone calls,” I tell them as I stand with my coffee mug.
“Me too,” Nate says, but makes no move to get up.
“Let me know when we’re leaving,” I say and kiss the top of his head before heading back to my bedroom. I’m not sure how my boss and Nate’s coaches are going to take this news, but somehow, we’ll make it work.