Chapter 6
“You gotta tell me what he’s like to live with,” Jordan said, leaning closer and dropping his voice, like Lane was at the next table over in this restaurant, and he was trying to keep his interest a secret.
Well, if it ever had been a secret, it was definitely not a secret now. Just a few days ago, he’d wondered if Jordan had been flirting with him, but now he’d seemingly moved on to Lane, and it was making Trevor want to tear his own hair out.
Or possibly punch Jordan in the face, which was not going to be very good for rookie bonding.
“Um,” Trevor said, unsure what to say. Unsure if he could say back the fuck off, because why would he, unless he was hooking up with Lane? And that was a whole issue that he wasn’t prepared to discuss.
Even worse, Trevor was pretty sure that Cam knew about Jordo’s sudden crush, and that was at least part of the reason why he’d arranged this get-together in the first place.
So Trevor could help Jordan hook up with Lane.
“Come on,” Jordan wheedled.
Trevor picked up his drink and took an even larger sip. The Moscow mule was tasty—a delicious combo of pomegranate and ginger and lime—but what he really liked about it was that it gave him something to do with his hands other than wring Jordan’s neck.
And that was unfair. Of course Jordan had a crush on Lane. Lane was hot. Lane was good—at football and well, at a lot of other things too. If Trevor thought about all the things Lane was good at right now, he was going to say something he really shouldn’t.
Cam must have realized he was at least partially uncomfortable with this conversation, because he changed the subject. Well, sort of.
“Anyone you’ve got your eye on, Trev?” he asked. Bless him, Cam probably thought he had been changing the topic.
“Maybe,” Trevor said, because he was a shitty liar.
“You gotta tell us, bud. Who is it?” Jordan asked.
Maybe he could be at least partially honest without destroying Jordan’s hopes—though Trevor actually really wished he could.
“It’s um, a guy,” Trevor said quietly. Cam nodded encouragingly. And that was another reason why Trevor had hoped the three of them could be friends. Cam was gay. Jordan was like Trevor, currently exploring. “It’s not serious, though. We just . . . we’re just messing around, I think.”
Cam raised an eyebrow. “You think? You haven’t talked about it?”
Jordan elbowed Cam. “Why would you waste a question on if they’re talking? Dude, I wanna know who it is.”
“You might not know who they even are,” Trevor said, sipping his drink again.
They’d decided to splurge and order a big plate of the restaurant’s truffle parmesan fries, and Trevor hoped they’d get here soon, because one, he was hungry and two, he was going to polish this drink off on an empty stomach, and if he did, he might tell Jordan absolutely, totally on purpose, who he was hooking up with.
“But we might,” Jordan said slyly.
Trevor rolled his eyes. Jordo would definitely not be so into his hookup’s identity if he knew who it actually was. “Anyway, no, we didn’t really talk about it. Besides. Like, uh, him offering to be the person I experimented with.”
“Oooooh, hot,” Cam said, giving him an approving nod. “And how has the ‘experimentation’ been?”
“Really good.” Trevor couldn’t keep in the happy sigh that punctuated that admission. The insanely good blowjob Lane had given him yesterday was at least seventy-five percent to blame for it, but Trevor would give at least twenty-five percent to the Moscow mule he’d nearly finished.
“Must be,” Jordan said, sounding a little envious. “How do you get someone to suggest that? ’Cause I’ve been trying, man, and it’s like nobody’s picking up the signs I’ve been laying down. Girls are so fucking easy, like, you just look at them, and they fall all over you.”
“You idiot,” Cam said fondly, “that’s ’cause you’re a fucking football player. Rich and famous. And probably also ’cause you’re already paying them.” Everyone on the team knew about how much Jordan liked strip clubs.
“Not strippers,” Jordan argued.
“I’m siding with Cam on this one,” Trevor said, and it wasn’t a mystery at all why he would. That was one hundred percent a healthy dose of preemptive jealousy.
“You guys suck,” Jordan muttered. “I’m serious though, how am I supposed to do this?”
“Well, who have you been trying to hook up with?” Cam asked.
“Besides Lane?” Jordan’s eyes gleamed, dark and interested, and Trevor sucked down the rest of his drink.
“Besides Lane,” Cam said.
“I tried with Mo—”
“What,” Trevor squawked.
“You can’t tell me he’s not hot,” Jordan said.
“Nobody is going to tell you that,” Cam said, so reasonably.
Trevor wanted to pull Cam to the side and say that the sweet, friendly act was getting old. When normally he was the sweet, friendly guy, and he hated it when other people didn’t appreciate how he tried to get along with everyone.
“He doesn’t even swing that way,” Trevor pointed out.
The fries arrived at the table then, and Trevor grabbed a handful, cursing under his breath as they singed his fingertips.
“Dude, those are hot, but not as hot as Morris Jeffries,” Jordan said, smirking.
At least it was Mo Jordan was currently and probably temporarily fixated on, and not Lane. Small mercies.
“Actually, not the rumor I heard,” Cam said.
“What?” Trevor nearly screeched.
Cam just shrugged, like this wasn’t brand-new fucking information. “I heard it from Dawson, who’d heard it from someone else.”
“From who?” Trevor demanded.
“He wouldn’t tell me. But yeah. Pretty sure.”
“Damn it, and he wouldn’t even bite,” Jordan complained. “Am I not hot? I thought I was pretty fucking hot.”
“Trev, you’re going to have to tell him, because I can’t see anybody but—”
“But Dawson,” Jordan finished for him. “Man, we know, you’re like crazy in love. The dick cannot be that good.”
Trevor had never seen Cameron Greene look smug, but he sure as fuck looked smug right now. “You wanna bet?” he said.
Jordan groaned under his breath. “That’s not fair.” He turned to Trevor. “Your bro is always down to hook up, you gotta help make that happen for me.”
“Uh,” Trevor said. Oh hell no, was on the tip of his tongue, but he managed to swallow it back down.
“Just download Grindr like a normal gay,” Cameron said. He reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “You’d do great on there.”
“Or find a male strip club,” Trevor said, a little bitchily, unable to hold it back any longer.
Jordan picked up a fry and popped it into his mouth. “You know, that’s not a bad idea, Trev.”
“Then do that,” Trevor stressed. Maybe if Jordan hooked up with some hot male stripper, he’d forget all about Lane. Leave him to Trevor. The way it should be, his uncooperative, Moscow mule–addled brain added.
Jordan’s eyes narrowed at him. “You got some issue with me hooking up with your bro?”
Shit.
“He’s not my brother, you know. Not really.” Which was basically the worst thing that could come out of his mouth besides, keep your fucking hands off.
Trevor took it as a win, because there was a worse thing he could’ve said.
Cam raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“Come on, you know this,” Trevor blustered.
“We’re stepbrothers, right? But not even that.
He was eighteen and I was sixteen when our parents met.
Before the Thunder drafted me, we’d never really lived under the same roof, even.
When they got married, Lane was heading to college, and he spent his summers there. ”
That was still a bit of a sore, sensitive spot. How Lane had always avoided coming home. Trevor knew Delia always put a positive spin on it—how hard Lane was working, how he was preparing for the next football season—but they’d all known, they just never said it out loud.
“Huh,” Jordan said. “So you’re not like . . . close or anything?”
“I mean, we are now,” Trevor said, though he wasn’t sure that was actually true, either.
Physically, sure, more than ever. Geographically, for sure.
He knew how Lane liked his coffee and how he never failed to put the toilet seat down after using it, but it still felt like Lane was full of secrets that he didn’t want to share.
“Crazy that you weren’t until you came here,” Cam said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have ever guessed that.”
“Yeah, you two are practically in each other’s pockets,” Jordan pointed out, and he sounded a little envious of that situation.
Trevor shouldn’t puff up about that, but it was hard not to.
“Yeah,” Cam agreed. “They went from nothing to the demon twins. I love it.”
“That’s a stupid nickname,” Trevor complained, because it was. He’d thought it was kind of funny, at first, but lately, he hadn’t been able to find the humor in it. He and Lane weren’t that bad together.
Sure, they bickered some, but didn’t everyone? Though, the more Trevor thought about it, they’d bickered less recently, ever since they’d started hooking up. Lane had been way less prickly, he realized. More pulling Trevor in and less shoving him away.
But Trevor didn’t have any time to really consider that conundrum, because Jordan was talking again.
“So you don’t have any issue with me hooking up with Lane, then?”
“I’m not here to pimp Lane out,” Trevor said. Tried not to grind his teeth together.
Tried not to look murderous. Tried to remind himself that he liked Jordan. That he didn’t want to punch him in the face. Not really.
Just when he smirked like that, like he was so fucking sure that he could get Lane exactly where he wanted him.
“Of course not,” Cam soothed, like he was aware of how close to the edge of actual temper Trevor was. Trevor, who couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever actually gotten mad about anything. What had he ever had to get angry about?
Maybe Trevor could be chill about this, if he thought that Jordan actually liked him, but he was just horny and wanted someone. Lane was just hot and convenient.
Trevor ignored the voice in his head that tried to claim that for him, that was exactly what Lane was supposed to be. Hot and convenient.