The Jock (The Team, #1)

by Tal Bauer

Justin started, and he looked from the coffee to Wes then back to the coffee before he smiled back. It was a slow thing, like the unfurling of a sunrise, first his eyes and his cheeks crinkling, the hints of dimples appearing, and then his eyelids fluttering before his lips parted and curled, revealing perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. “Thank you.” He cupped the mug in both hands and sipped. Wes’s heart thump-thumped.

It was Paris, and it was summertime, and it was the wrong place and the wrong time. He wasn’t ready for this yet, wasn’t ready for his heart to catapult out of his chest and chase this man, crave him. He wasn’t ready to fall in love. But there was this guy named Justin, and it seemed Wes didn’t have a choice in the matter, because he was already on the way.

He kissed Wes as if he’d wanted to kiss him from the moment they’d met, the moment Wes had walked through the door and seen him in the slanted sunlight. And Wes held him tight, held him like he was precious and perfect and everything Wes had ever wanted. Because he was. In that moment, beneath the lights of the Eiffel Tower, Paris under his skin and inside his veins, Justin was everything he’d waited his whole life for.

Justin laid his hand over Wes’s, squeezing before taking the flowers. He inhaled, grinned, and swayed slightly with his eyes closed, a look of bliss on his face that melted every one of Wes’s neurons. Had he made Justin smile that way, look like that? Had he, somehow, made Justin that happy, so joyous he seemed like he was about to float away? Like Wes had to hold on to his hand to keep him tethered to the earth?

Wes slid inside him then, kissing his way up his spine and the back of his neck to whisper in his ear, “Mon amour, tu as mon coeur pour toujours.”

“I think I could spend the rest of my life with you, and you’d still surprise me.” Justin’s gaze was equal parts searching and adoring, like he was appraising a fine piece of art, a priceless wonder they’d stumbled on in the museum. “I think there are whole oceans inside of you.”

Waited, tapping his foot, forcing his mind to go blank. Blank as the hum of the starting line, the whoosh of his own breath, inhaling, exhaling. Forced the world to narrow until all he could see was the rectangle of the world through his helmet and the bars of his face guard. He was back in his truck, pointed west on the highway, when the tears started to fall.

“I’m fine.” Fine. Like a nuclear meltdown was fine. Like the sun about to go supernova was fine. There was so much raw fury in Justin’s eyes it made Wes’s guts clench. I’m not fine. I’m very, very not okay. But Wes swallowed. Nodded.

Justin reached for Wes’s pillow to help prop up his knee when Wes tried to bunch the blanket beneath him. Too late, Wes realized what Justin would find. “Wait, don’t—” Justin froze, pillow in hand. There, in all its glory, was the rumpled photo of the two of them, crease lines, ragged edges, tearstains, and all. Wes grabbed the photo and hid it beneath his thigh.

“I love you,” he called after Justin. “I loved you in Paris, and I still love you. You’re everything to me. You’re the first thing I think of when I open my eyes in the morning. You’re in class with me, you’re on the field with me, you’re in the gym with me. I talk to you when I’m alone. When I’m driving in my truck. When I’m jogging or working out. You’re on my mind every minute of the day. And you’re the last thing I see every night. That photo…” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I love you, and I’m not ashamed of that.”

“Wes, the only person so far who has hurt me because of your football career is you. Why don’t you think about that before you go imagining some phantom attacker waiting for me in middle of the night to avenge your lost heterosexuality, okay?”

“I don’t know how to be all those men at once. It’s like I have to put on different faces every hour, when the only face I want to wear is my own. The guy I was in Paris. The guy I am with you. Wes, who loves Justin.”

“I’m not. I’m not a good man. I broke your heart. And all I want to be good at is loving you.”

“Is there any epic love story that isn’t tragic?” “Ours.” Wes smiled. “It’s not gonna be tragic. It’s gonna be epic.”

Wes began the arduous process of disentangling himself from the inside of Justin’s car. When he finally bear crawled out onto the pavement, Justin said, “Congratulations. You’ve just been born again.” “That’s exactly what it felt like.” Wes stretched and popped his back. “Let’s take my truck if we ever need to go on a road trip. That’s not a car. It’s a jack-in-the-box.”

A bundle of lavender and baby’s breath, the biggest Justin had ever seen, rested on the pillow, tied with twine, like the little bundle of buds Wes had bought him in Paris. His breath hitched, and he turned to Wes, gasping. Wes pulled a single red rose from behind his back. He twirled it in his fingers and smiled. “Tu es mon plus grand amour.” You are the love of my life.

Everything he’d ever dreaded, everything he’d feared, had arrived at sunrise on a Friday morning, on the biggest game day of his career. Well, not his career anymore. Not after this. He pitched sideways, falling into Justin’s lap as he screamed again, as his tears started to fall. Justin wrapped his arms around Wes and held him as his heart shattered, and the tattered pieces of his soul ripped fully apart, and the crushing weight of failure rolled over him like a wave, sweeping him out to sea.

Justin smothered an open-mouthed cry as his fingers dug into Wes’s chest. “Je t’aime de tout mon coeur.” Stubble grazed his forehead. Lips ghosted over his hair. “Tu es mon plus grand amour…” Wes’s voice was broken, fractured and catching on his words, but it was there. His shaking fingers curled around Justin’s hand. “Justin…”

“I thought about what it would be like if people knew you were blowing a kiss to me, not to your adoring fans.” Colton coughed, his cheeks darkening. “Oh, you just realized that?” Justin grinned. “I was at every game. All those kisses to the stands were for me.” He and Wes smiled as Colton’s flush grew.

It still left Justin breathless sometimes, how the love of his life had simply waltzed into his life in the middle of Paris. He’d gone around the world to find adventure, and he’d found a football-playing cowboy who stole his heart and ran away with it.

He frowned when he saw Justin arm in arm with another man. Then his eyes widened and he stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Nick Swanscott. Justin’s father.” “Graham Van de Hoek.” Graham shook his hand. “It seems our boys are in love.” His dad laughed. “They are very much in love.”

Wes curled into his dad’s hold, and Graham held him, wrapping his hand around the back of Wes’s neck as he whispered into his ear. Justin saw the shape of his lips, saw Graham tell Wes he was so proud, and that he loved him, and that Wes had grown into the man he’d always dreamed Wes would be. And again, that he was proud, so damn proud, of who Wes was.

Wes dropped to one knee in the grass. “I promise you, Justin, that I will love you and cherish you as hard as I play this game. Harder, even.” He grinned. “I want to spend every day for the rest of my life loving you. What do you say? Can I be yours? And will you be mine?” He dropped to his knees in front of Wes and kissed him. “Bien sûr, cowboy,” he said, beaming. “Forever.”