Chapter 10
Lane expected that after his confession—could he even call it that, when it felt like Trevor had wrenched it out of him, one unwilling word at a time?—things between him and Trevor were going to get, at the very least, awkward.
But everything felt normal. Normal at least in that they woke up next to each other, and Lane was treated to Trevor’s warm, sweet smile first thing in the morning and the quiet intimacy of the way they moved around each other in the kitchen as Trevor made eggs and Lane blended up their protein shakes.
The way they flopped on the couch and ordered pizza as a last cheat hurrah before the playoff work began in earnest as they watched the Piranhas beat the Bengals, finally defining which opponent they’d be facing next week.
Trevor hadn’t hesitated to lie right against him, and Lane wasn’t stupid, so he hadn’t pushed him away.
Had, in fact, because it was allowed now, pulled him in even closer.
Made out sleepily on the couch after the game.
The soft kiss Trevor leaned over and pressed to his mouth when they climbed into Lane’s SUV to head to the practice facility the next morning.
“Is this okay?” Trevor murmured against his lips.
Like he was actually concerned that Lane might push him away. Lane wanted to laugh, maybe even cry a little about it.
How did he say, I’ve only wanted this for five-plus years? without freaking Trevor out or scaring him away?
Dude, you already tried that and it didn’t work, Lane chided himself.
“Yeah,” Lane said, equally as soft. Cleared his throat.
What he wanted to do was take Trevor’s arm and pull him back into the privacy of his apartment, taste the banana and frozen berries of his protein shake on his tongue.
What he needed to do was drive to the practice facility.
They had meetings. They had workouts. Practice. Video study.
“Good.” Trevor returned to his side of the car, grinning over at Lane. “Because I’m going to keep doing it.”
“In . . . in public?” Lane regretted his words the second after they came out of his mouth, because Trevor’s smile dimmed a little.
“Not necessarily,” Trevor said, shrugging. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Well, you don’t have to. Not right now.”
Lane wasn’t going to cry about it if Trevor hadn’t considered being serious yet. He’d spent five years waiting for Trevor and also never, ever expecting to get him. So he could be patient. In fact, patience was the one thing he had in spades.
“I did tell the rookies about us,” Trevor said. “I wanted to, and well, I wanted to.”
Lane reached over and squeezed his knee. It was still a revelation to him that he could do this now—touch Trevor this way, unbidden without permission, because Trevor liked it, too. “That’s good,” Lane said, meaning it. “I’m glad you did.”
“Right, it’s good.” The sunny, confident smile was back, in spades, and it was so good to bask in it as Lane drove them to the practice facility.
Good, too, to spend the drive discussing their first opponent, the Piranhas.
“They’re having a bit of a down year, but they took down Burrow and the Bengals pretty easily,” Trevor said.
“Yeah, from halftime on, they controlled that game,” Lane agreed. “Coach Dawson’s a threat, no matter what the rest of the season looks like.”
Trevor nodded as Lane pulled into the parking lot.
Before climbing out of the car, Trevor glanced back at him, and Lane swore the look on his face felt the same as when he’d kissed him only forty minutes before.
The same kind of look; the same kind of feeling.
And it stuck with Lane all through the morning. Through their workouts. Through lunch. When Lane nudged Trevor’s knee under the table as they ate their chicken wraps, listening to Mo gently poke Aidan about Riley and the Condors losing in the first round.
“Bet you wanted to face them again,” Mo teased. “Best your little bro again.”
Aidan made a face. “Actually, no. He’d probably just beat me again.”
Levi stepped into the middle of it and volunteered that Landry had texted him after the game that he and Riley were probably coming to their next game.
“Our parents are probably coming to the AFC Championship, if we make it that far,” Trevor volunteered.
Aidan shot him a steely look. “We can’t look past the Piranhas. They’re a really tough opponent, and I don’t expect them to go down easy, or to show up next Sunday with their regular setup. They’re gonna find some new wrinkles—and you know what that means.”
Levi groaned dramatically. Aidan smacked him on the side. “That’s not the right attitude.”
Shooting his boyfriend some certified and absolutely lethal puppy dog eyes, Levi said, “You wanna get me alone and teach me about how wrong I am, Flynn?”
Aidan rolled his eyes. “You’re the worst.”
“You love me,” Levi said.
And the look they exchanged after was enough to prove to anyone witnessing it that he really, really did.
“Seriously, though, it’s film time,” Aidan said, pushing his chair away from the table and standing. “I expect to see you all there.”
“Like I’d be anywhere else,” Levi reassured him.
“Is that ’cause of what I did to you last night or because it’s the right thing to do?” Aidan wondered.
“What did you do last night?” Cam wondered and then made an ooph noise as Dawson must have shoved an elbow in his side.
“Your job to imagine,” Levi said, winking at their punter.
Lane liked studying film—otherwise he wouldn’t spend so much of his free time, unbidden, doing it, but that didn’t mean he was prepared for watching Aidan go over every play, every frame of the Piranhas and Bengals game with a fine-tooth comb.
By the three-hour mark, it felt like his eyes were glazing over.
“Babe,” Levi begged, slumping over at the table dramatically, “you’re a fucking machine. You gotta remember that the rest of us are human.”
“There’s just a few more plays—this one in particular I think is good,” Aidan said, fast-forwarding and then letting the video play at half speed.
Burrow, down ten points and needing to make a serious fourth-quarter comeback with only five minutes left in the game, dropped back and made a pass right down the middle of the field, clearly hoping to get the ball to Ja’Marr Chase.
The rookie safety, who’d replaced Sebastian Howard when he’d retired at the end of last season, had sat right in the middle of the zone, right in front of Chase and had managed to bat the ball away before he could catch it.
It looked like a great play, and Aidan seemed to think so, too. When they finished watching it, he talked about how they needed to avoid throwing in his direction, he was having a breakout rookie season, etcetera.
Lane actually thought he’d nearly fucked that play up, and he and Trevor had talked about it, at length, after it had happened. Trevor’s head had been in his lap, and he’d been ruffling his hair, as they’d discussed the positioning of that rookie safety.
It was so easy to flash back to that conversation, not just the content of it but the particular feeling of bone-deep contentment. Like he’d been running and running for ages, for as long as he could remember, and now he could not only slow down but actually relax into this feeling.
He did, for a second, consider saying that he’d had a totally different impression of that play, and of that rookie safety’s play on it.
But he was so used to not speaking up, and besides, who was he to argue with Aidan Flynn?
Aidan had been doing this for eleven years.
Lane wasn’t a rookie anymore, but he’d still only been on this team for three years.
But at the same time, if him speaking up could help the team, wasn’t it his responsibility to do it? To say something just in case it could be helpful?
Lane was in the middle of internally debating when the decision was snatched neatly right out of his hands.
“That’s not how we saw it,” Trevor said calmly, like he disagreed with Aidan every day and it was no big deal. “Well, not we necessarily. Mostly Lane.”
Aidan’s gaze latched on to Trevor and he raised an eyebrow. “No?”
Sometimes Lane wondered if Trevor actually listened to everything he said, especially about the games they watched together, but it turned out that not only was Trevor listening, he was absorbing it all.
“Play it again,” Trevor said, still seeming confident. He glanced over at Lane, not like he was asking permission, but more like he was inviting him to contribute. Well, Lane still didn’t know if he wanted to.
He didn’t know whether he was annoyed or grateful that Trevor was just freaking volunteering him and his opinions in the middle of twenty of his teammates, including the king of film study himself, Aidan.
“Alright,” Aidan said. He let it play once and then twice, and Lane shouldn’t have been surprised when Aidan turned to him instead of Trevor when it finished the second time.
“Well,” Lane dragged out, hesitating. “I just noticed that he was further up, closer to the line of scrimmage initially.” He went through the progressions that the rookie safety had done, and how he compensated for making the wrong read at first with his speed, and how he almost hadn’t gotten there in time.
When he finished, Aidan just frowned and then rewound the video, watching it for a fourth time.
“Anyone disagree with Lane’s take?” Aidan asked, glancing around.
But instead of anyone arguing, Lane was surprised—maybe stupidly, because he did know what he was talking about, even if he didn’t love sharing it—to see a lot of slow nods of agreement.
“I’m with you guys.” Aidan shot Lane a look that told him that he absolutely remembered the conversation they’d had at the hockey game on Saturday night, and that he knew now that everything Lane had said was total bullshit.
Great.
It wasn’t Trevor’s fault, not really anyway, because Lane had never made it clear to him that his private film study was just that: private.
He’d said he didn’t want to talk about it, but he’d never explicitly told Trevor not to tell anyone.