Chapter 14
Rhys — Past
A couple of months go by and Marcus waits for me at my car after every single practice.
At first I thought it was coincidence. Then I thought it was the captain thing — making sure the newbie felt included, doing his due diligence.
Then after about the eleventh time in a row I stopped making excuses for it and just let myself think maybe. Just maybe.
Because Marcus made everything better.
After that first lunch the team started warming up. I got included in more plays, got invited into more conversations, got nods in the hallway that hadn't existed before.
The ice was thawing.
But that wasn't even the main thing.
The main thing was that I had become the sole object of Marcus Hale's attention. And I wanted it the way you want something you know is probably going to wreck you — completely, immediately, straight into the vein and into my bloodstream.
Every practice, every film session, every team dinner — I could feel his eyes on me. Searing. Any time I looked over he was already looking back, and he never looked away when he got caught. Just held my gaze and smiled. Like he wanted me to know.
Then he started bringing me coffee in the mornings. Then he started asking me to eat with him after every practice like it was just what we did now. After the millionth hangout I was going insane trying to figure out what this actually was.
Why hadn't he made a move?
Months of texting all day, finding reasons to be wherever I was, looking at me like that — and nothing.
It was confusing as fuck. I wasn't going to risk it.
This was the only happiness I had at Eldridge, the only thing that made it feel survivable, and I was not going to be the one to blow it up.
If Marcus wanted to be best friends I could learn to want that too.
I could probably learn to want that.
If not, he would have to make the move.
I was lying on my bed working through this exact crisis when my phone buzzed.
Marcus:
wanna come over? I have Chinese food
He'd never invited me to his place before. I knew exactly where it was and how to get there — not in a creepy way, just in a I've thought about it more than once way — and I stared at the message for four seconds before typing back.
Rhys:
be there in 30
I took an everything shower. Just in case. Like a girl going to her first Jonas Brothers concert. Then I made the walk over, took a breath outside his door, and knocked twice. It opened immediately. Like he'd been waiting right on the other side, just as excited.
"Rhys." He pulled me in and closed the door behind me, already crowding the space, coming closer. "I'm so glad you're here." He reached into his pocket and produced a single shooter of tequila, pressing it into my hand with great ceremony. "I have something for you."
"Tequila."
"Our best friend."
"The old trio." I looked around. "Where's the Chinese food?"
He had the decency to look slightly guilty.
"I ate it all. You took so long."
"I was here in thirty minutes like I said—"
"It felt really long." He grabbed my wrist and dragged me to the couch, pushing me onto one side before dropping onto the other. Close. Closer than the couch required. I caught the smell then. Already in the air before the shooter.
"Marcus. Have you been drinking?"
He brought one finger to his lips. Then to mine.
"Shh. Yes. But that's not important."
I tried to talk around his finger. "What is important?"
"Okay so." He pulled his hand back and turned toward me fully, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Very serious. "You ever needed a little extra help to feel brave?"
"Not really."
"Well, I do. Right now." He held up the empty shooter. "And tequila has me feeling like everything is about to work out perfectly."
I stared at him. "That's not how tequila works."
"It is tonight."
"Marcus—"
"No, seriously. Tequila has me convinced this is a fantastic idea."
I laughed. "You drank one shooter."
He pointed at me. "See? That's the kind of negativity tequila has freed me from."
"The tequila has been in your system for twelve seconds."
"You're missing the point."
He scooted even closer on the couch. Close enough that our knees were touching. "The point is I needed it because I have to tell you something. Something important. And I need you to take it seriously."
He reached out and took my face in both hands. Tilted it up so I had nowhere to look but directly at him.
"Rhys." All the act dropped out of his voice, so it was just Marcus.
Just my name, just him, just this small dorm room and his hands clinging to my face and those caramel eyes unguarded.
"I really like you. I think you're — god, I think everything about you is—" He stopped.
Started again. "The best parts of my days are the parts with you in them.
Every single day. That's it. That's what I've been trying to say for months. "
I was freefalling through the floor.
"I—"
"Absolutely not. I'm not done." His thumbs pressed slightly into my chin, keeping me there, keeping me with him.
"I don't know how you feel. I think I have an idea, fuck, I hope I have an idea, but I don't know.
And if I'm wrong, this is going to be the most embarrassing moment of my life.
" A breath. "But I needed you to know. I couldn't keep not saying it. I couldn’t keep looking at you and feeling like that and not say it.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
Marcus who the whole world came easy to — the team, the ice, the room always organizing itself around him without him asking.
None of that was here right now. Right now he was just a person sitting on a couch having said the terrifying thing and waiting to find out what happened next.
He was doing it, being brave, for me. We both knew I wasn’t going to.
"Marcus." My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "I like you so much it's been making me insane. Like embarrassingly, a completely unreasonable amount. For months." I held his gaze. "I thought I was going to have to just live with it forever, or at least until one of us died."
The breath that left him was shaky. He dropped his forehead almost to mine, eyes closing for just a second, like something in him finally released. "Okay," he said. Almost to himself. "Okay. Good. I'm a little tipsy by the way, I was nervous, I needed the liquid courage—"
"Marcus."
"You have my full consent—"
"For what?"
"For—"
He grabbed me.
Both hands back in my hair, pulling me in, and his mouth found mine and every careful, measured, sensible part of my brain just — stopped. Months of it in the kiss — every coffee, every meal, every look held a second too long, every time I'd talked myself out of reading into it.
All of it hitting at once.
He kissed me like he'd been thinking about it for a long time and wasn't interested in being gentle about it now that he finally could.
Deep and certain, his hands cradling my face like I was something he'd been afraid to want and had decided to want anyway.
I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him closer and kissed him back with everything I had — all the lonely months of it, all the wanting, all the careful distance I'd been keeping from the one thing here that felt like mine.
He made a deep sound against my mouth and pushed me back into the couch cushions without breaking the kiss, one hand sliding into my hair, tilting my head back, taking his time like we had all of it.
Like neither of us had anywhere to be ever again.
His mouth was warm and he tasted like tequila and just him, just Marcus, and I thought distantly this is what I've been waiting for, and then I stopped thinking entirely.
When we finally pulled apart we were both breathing too hard for how little had technically happened. Foreheads pressed together. His hands still in my hair. Both of us smiling like complete idiots in this small, dark room.
"Fuck," he said, breathless.
"Yeah," I said. "That was—"
"Amazing."
"I was going to say that."
He laughed — and pulled me back in.