Chapter 1 #2
If Ramsey said football, then he knew.
But Ramsey didn’t say football. “Hockey,” he said instead. “I’m a hockey player. Up here for summer training. With uh . . .McDavid. And um. Auston Matthews.”
Nate shot him a pitying look. “Auston Matthews? He doesn’t train here, you idiot.
He’s from Arizona.” He wasn’t going to tell Ramsey this, but he’d met the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs a handful of times.
Once on the sideline at a game. Another time at a club.
Once, in passing, at a restaurant. He was a solid dude, and most definitely did not train here in the summers.
If he told Ramsey that, though, he’d reveal his own lies.
“Right, okay.” Ramsey looked bashful. It didn’t sit right on him. “Not Auston Matthews. Uh, how about Elliott Jones?”
“Their new forward? You’re training with him?”
“Gotta keep up with the new blood.”
“Yes, and you’re Willy Nylander’s dog sitter, too.”
“Guess the hockey player wasn’t very convincing either,” Ramsey admitted, shrugging.
“Neither of them were very good,” Nate said. “But I’ll give you credit for trying, at least.”
It wasn’t surprising when Ramsey challenged him back. Nate hadn’t sensed he was the kind of guy who took a loss for very long. “Well, what are you doing in Toronto?” Ramsey asked.
Obviously, Nate couldn’t tell him the truth, but he’d never wanted to be anything else, other than what he was. Even worse, he was a shitty liar, with a distinct lack of creative flair.
He went with the very first thing his mind grasped. “I’m a manager at Tim Horton’s.”
Ramsey shot him a look. His eyes lingered, up and down Nate’s clearly athletic form. “Seriously?”
“I don’t eat very many of the donuts?”
“They must pay Tim Horton’s employees more than I expect.” Ramsey’s gaze drifted down, to the watch on Nate’s wrist. And yeah, it was a Rolex. Whoops.
If Ramsey had noticed that, maybe he really was over here because he’d scoped Nate out as an easy, rich mark.
“Uh, I manage a whole bunch of Tim Horton’s?”
Ramsey laughed. “Committed to the role. I like it.”
“Yeah?” Nate leaned in. “What else do you like?”
An alarm bell was clanking noisily in the back of his mind, but Ramsey looked even better up close. Flecks of gray and darker blue in his eyes. The faintest hint of blond stubble along his flawless jawline. His hair looked impossibly soft, and Nate’s fingers itched to bury themselves in it.
“Thought that was pretty fucking obvious,” Ramsey teased.
“Still wondering what your angle is.” It was the most honest Nate had been, but he couldn’t keep the confession in.
“Maybe I’m just, what was it you said? A professional eyelash-batter.”
Nate didn’t know much, but he knew that Ramsey wasn’t. He was too smart for something as simple as grift. Relieving grateful marks of their valuables would be tedious for him.
Of course, that didn’t mean he was willing to hand his Rolex over either.
“Nah,” Nate said. “You’d get bored in a minute.”
“That’s it, right there.” Ramsey said it casually, but there was the ring of truth there, lingering between his words and in his intent blue eyes.
“What?”
“Why I’m over here. I saw you watching me, and saw you look right through me.”
“Doesn’t happen very often?”
“Almost never.” Ramsey paused. “Happened only once, actually.”
“How come you’re not with him then?” It was a guess, but Nate figured it was a pretty good one.
Ramsey hummed under his breath. Took a long sip of his drink. “Who says it’s a he?”
“Come on,” Nate said, rolling his eyes. “Again, you barely noticed that girl.”
“Fair. But that doesn’t mean I’m into whoever it was.”
Nate flicked his eyes up and down Ramsey’s delectable form in the most obvious way since he’d first spotted him. “You’re joking, right? You’re the type who absolutely wants to fuck what he can’t understand.”
Ramsey didn’t answer immediately. Traced the edge of his glass with a fingertip.
Nate was pretty sure that was calculated too, to drag his attention from what he’d asked to the way Ramsey’s hands looked.
Ramsey was probably hoping he’d get distracted, thinking about those hands on him, later, in some dark room, and forget what he’d said.
It was damn tempting.
But what Ramsey hadn’t counted on was that figuring out what was going on behind those gorgeous eyes was just as intriguing to Nate as the eyes themselves.
“It wasn’t just one guy—it was two. A couple. And no, I didn’t fuck them.” He made a face. “I did try though.”
“Ouch,” Nate said, and Ramsey shot him a hot look.
“It gonna end the same way tonight?” Ramsey asked.
“I don’t know,” Nate said. More honesty. Maybe that was Ramsey’s real superpower—not the eyelash batting, but being a particularly heady dose of truth serum.
“You don’t know?” Ramsey raised an eyebrow, like he could barely believe it. And that was probably true. Nate could assume that rejections came few and far between for this guy, especially when he put the effort in.
But Nate still wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Ramsey’s naked skin felt like against his, especially when it was obvious it was going to be a one-and-done type of situation. He didn’t need to be haunted for weeks or months or years after by someone he couldn’t have.
Someone who wouldn’t even be in his phone as a nuclear option to hit when the longing got too out of hand.
“I don’t know,” Nate repeated.
Ramsey sighed. “Let me guess, you’re the kind of guy looking for someone who sticks around. Who calls two days later. Who goes on dates. Who you can take home to meet your parents.”
“At least one of those,” Nate admitted. He wasn’t going to apologize for wanting more. Not necessarily out of Ramsey, but out of anyone.
“I’ll tell you, when I clocked you checking me out, I didn’t imagine you were the type to have a meet-the-parents kink.”
Nate chuckled. “It’s kind of unfair, don’t you think?”
“What’s unfair? You wanting to drag me behind your white picket fence? It absolutely is.”
Part of him didn’t want to give Ramsey the satisfaction, but it was impossible to stifle his laughter. He didn’t even want to.
“No, you looking like that, and then being smart and funny. You ever think about using your powers for evil?”
“All the fucking time, baby,” Ramsey joked.
“Not surprising.”
“Not doing it now, unless trying to convince you to leave with me is evil.” Ramsey stared at him, like he did have mind control powers.
Nate could feel his heartbeat in the tips of his fingers. The energy between them crackled, not just with sex, but with a hazy kind of possibility. Possibilities that wouldn’t ever come to fruition, but then the chemistry between them didn’t know that.
He could always start his search for his boyfriend tomorrow. Enjoy one last night of what promised to be really great sex.
Ramsey leaned in more. “Come on,” he murmured, his pink tongue peeking out from between even pinker lips. It was unfair. Even playing dirty. Nate should feel gratified that Ramsey was pulling out all the stops to convince him, but he wasn’t.
He was only frustrated.
Because Ramsey wasn’t a normal kind of hookup. He was that kind of guy you talked about years later, when you’d had one too many beers and you got maudlin and sentimental. Wish I could’ve had more than one night, he could imagine saying. Could imagine, too, the memory ruining him for anyone else.
“To be clear, you’re not going to want me to call you tomorrow.”
“Baby, you’re not even going to be able to call me tomorrow.” Ramsey actually smiled, like he knew what a boon that was. Like Nate was like all the other guys who were looking for hot anonymous sex and not for any kind of strings.
It was the first thing Ramsey had fucked up since he’d appropriated Nate’s table and brought him a beer.
“Sorry, then, no.”
Ramsey’s smile didn’t waver. Not exactly.
It just got more forced. More artificially charming.
Nate wondered, before he cut the thought off hard and fast, if that was the kind of smile the other guys got.
If this was Ramsey’s normal mask, and maybe Nate had seen behind it.
If he’d been one of a very select few. The exception that proved the rule.
But if he thought like that, then Nate might change his mind, and he wasn’t going to.
“You’re serious,” Ramsey said flatly.
“Yeah,” Nate said.
“You already have a boyfriend,” Ramsey guessed.
Nate shook his head.
“Ah, you want a boyfriend. And I’m . . .” Ramsey waved up and down his body. “I’m going to fuck that up.”
“Something like that.”
Ramsey sighed. “What if I told you a boyfriend was overrated?”
“Like you know anything about that,” Nate said. He wasn’t going to say it—that might be more honesty than Ramsey deserved—but it came out anyway, thanks to the frustration, sexual and otherwise, curdling in the base of his stomach.
“Not me, but . . .yeah. It is. Boyfriends fuck you up.” Ramsey had the nerve to look sincere about this confession.
“And you wouldn’t?”
“But the trip would be so good.” Ramsey slid around the table, and Nate stupidly didn’t take a step back. Couldn’t get his feet to move. “We’d have so much fun. All night long. I want to pull you apart. See what makes you tick. Turn you inside out.”
There wasn’t anything particularly interesting in Nate’s innards. But he didn’t say that. Instead he said something much stupider. “Would you let me see, too?”
Ramsey tilted his head. “What makes you think you don’t already see?”
“I’d want to see it all.”
Nate could imagine them lying next to each other, Ramsey’s head pillowed on his chest, blue eyes sleepy and languorous, all his truths laid bare. It was the most appealing image yet, and Ramsey had been nearly irresistible from the first moment.
Nearly.
Ramsey drummed his fingers on the table. Looked away. Like he was afraid Nate already saw. “I don’t do that,” he said quietly.
“I know,” Nate said. He’d never be able to parse the truth from the lies. Not all of them, and he’d drive himself crazy trying to untangle them.