The Quarterback (The Team, #2)

by Tal Bauer

Colton downed the rest of his beer, holding Nick’s gaze. He dropped the bottle on the table, cleared his throat, and held out his hand. “Let’s do it,” he said. “Fuck ’em.” “Colton, I don’t want—” Colton waggled his hand in front of Nick. “Fuck the haters. It’s just for fun. And I’ve got my fifth-grade reputation to uphold.” Nick laughed again and took Colton’s hand, letting the younger man lead him to the dance floor.

Colton and everyone else were clapping for the band. The lights were twinkling, and the world was a roar in Nick’s ears, a head rush from the dance and the heat of so many bodies making his heart race and his skin flush. Colton was on his left, Justin and Wes were on his right, all of them smiling, the air humming with their joy, so powerful he could feel it all over him, could breathe it in and hold it inside himself. This is all I want for Justin. All I ever wanted for my son. Pure, perfect happiness.

Sometimes a year changed a man in ways that couldn’t be measured in hours and days and weeks. Sometimes a year became the cornerstone of a life.

Had he already found the camaraderie he’d hungered for? He’d never been on a team so close-knit. With Wes as captain and him as starting quarterback, they’d been on fire. Their successes had bonded them all.

When they had collapsed, broken apart beneath the crushing weight of a predatory news article published to destroy them on the morning of their biggest game of the year. When someone outside the team had taken Wes’s secret and splashed it across every website, sports blog, newspaper, and radio show nationwide. That reporter had used Wes’s love for Justin like cheap bullets fired at the rest of the team.

They’d thought Wes had used them for his own glory, had kept his secret about Justin and his sexuality so he could take everything he could from their team on his path to stardom. They were so, so wrong. Wes had given up everything in his life for the team time and again, but Justin was the only thing he couldn’t give up.

The secret to why Wes had leveled the fuck up last season wasn’t protein powder or special supplements or a new training regimen. He was in love, head over heels, and he played his heart out for Justin each week. He gave everything he had to the gridiron and to the man he loved in equal measure.

Colton liked Justin a lot, more than he thought he would. Justin was sharper than Wes was, harder edges and more bite. He shoveled the shit he’d been dished daily, flinging it right back at the world without blinking.

Was there something about building a life with another person that made you change, broadened and deepened your perspectives in life, made you aware of the larger, fuller picture of the world? What would his own life be like if he weren’t thinking about whether the NFL draft was the right choice for him alone? What if he were making a decision for we instead of me? Yeah, that would pull a guy from being a boy to being a man.

There was something more he wanted, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t put words to it, but it felt like something that moved inside him when he was in the locker room, or when the team was practicing, or when everyone was smiling after a great practice. The buzz he got in his veins when he and Wes and Justin and even Nick all went out on Thursday nights. It was the way the world seemed perfect when he wasn’t alone. When he felt like he was part of something wonderful.

No, there was more here. He was sure of it. More to find, more to become.

Not yet. He wasn’t ready to let go yet. One more year.

Beers tonight had become their shorthand for the four of them going out: Justin and Wes and Nick and Colton. Wes only went out with Justin, which made sense, and Justin only wanted to go out if they were meeting up with his dad. He never said why, but he didn’t have to. Colton understood that bone-deep yearning for a father, the poignant prickling of pain when you wanted and hoped and tried so hard, but all you heard was silence.

Maybe they made a weird foursome of friends. Wes and Justin, Colton the third wheel, Nick the dad. If Nick had been boring or a douche, it wouldn’t have worked. But he was surprisingly easy to be with. Like Justin, but without the hard edges. Solid, with a different kind of life experience grounding him. Justin was a survivor, while Nick was accomplished, similar personalities shaped by different lives. Why wouldn’t Colton like Nick if he liked Justin, he’d said once when Orlando asked him why Justin’s dad hung out with them so often. “He’s cool. It works, man.”

Colton grabbed Nick’s hand and curled sideways, slumping over as his heart, with all his fears inside it, fractured.

When Wes was attacked, Colton had stayed at his side in the hospital for days, from the moment visiting hours began until he was kicked out. The nurse had told Nick she would come in the mornings and find Colton pacing in the waiting room until he could be let up. Now the shoe was on the other foot, and Wes and Justin were just as devoted to Colton as he’d been to them.

His first real friends in he couldn’t remember how long were his son, his son’s boyfriend, and their best friend, and that sounded like a midlife crisis in the making. So he didn’t think about it. He’d moved to be close to Justin, and, well, this was what that looked like. It worked, and he was happy, and Justin was happy. That was all that mattered.

“You don’t have anyone else visiting you? No girlfriend to come and wait on your every whim?” Colton laughed and looked away. “Haven’t had a girl in a while.” He picked at blanket fuzz and shrugged. “And my friends are all on the team. ’Cept Justin and you.” Translation: when he was injured and confined to bed rest, there was no one else in his life.

Colton especially had seized on to Nick’s pronouncement that Wes was in the hospital and repeated it like it wasn’t real. It took some balls for Colton to ask the guy who had tried to choke him out to drive him to the hospital. Nick had to give Colton that.

Nick meant it when he said he’d be there every day as long as Colton needed company. Colton wasn’t his son, but he was… special.

Colton had never been to the ranch, though he’d seen pictures Wes had sent in previous summers. He didn’t know the first thing about ranching or what to do if someone told him to get on a horse. He would barely know which end to approach. And cattle? The closest he ever came to a cow was a burger or a piece of rare steak. He had a cowboy name and a pair of cowboy boots, and every Texas boy had a hat in his closet, but if he was dropped in the countryside, he’d die in a ditch before he managed to unfuck himself enough to go the right way down a dirt track.

“My dad playing video games, you going to work in an actual office.” Justin shook his head. “What is the world coming to?” “Don’t you guys have to leave?” Colton squinted at them, shading his eyes. “Can’t stand around insulting me all day.” “But it’s fun.” Justin grinned.

He and Nick had hung out together on their own plenty since his injury, but Justin and Wes were always a phone call or a text message away, or they were on their way back home or would be there in a few hours. Hadn’t Nick even said once that he’d stayed as long as he had with Colton just so he could see Justin? With Justin away, he didn’t expect their time together to last, but there was a flicker of hope burning inside him, as tiny as a birthday candle.

One day, Nick was a part of their lives, and it was something Colton had just taken as fact, like Wes being gay and Justin moving in.

“I left her for him.” Was it his imagination, or was Nick stabbing the vegetables and chicken a little more violently? “For Justin. She became intolerant. No, that’s not accurate. She always was, but I didn’t let myself see it.” He sighed. “It came to a head, and I had to make a choice. Her or him.” Colton’s jaw dropped. His fingers curled on the countertop, nails digging into the pads of his palm. He chose his son. Justin is so fucking lucky.

He looked soft, warm, and comfortable. Like the word home turned into a person.

Nick grinned, and it was like an arrow going right through Colton. That effortless care, that kind regard. It was so easy for Nick to be awesome, like he was kind and thoughtful and caring so often that he never had to think about it. The right thing, the perfect thing, just came to him. His affection was like a star, and Colton was caught in his gravity.

Nick was depositing little nuggets of wisdom in his life left and right, from how to treat people he worked with—maybe Coach’s bellowing example wasn’t exactly the best—to how long to sear a steak on the grill before letting it rest to finish cooking. And how to be a good—truly good—man.

“Are you sure?” His voice was quiet, and he twirled his Popsicle as he tried to catch the melting syrup. “You’ve got a Fortress of Solitude thing going on up there. Don’t you like the peace and quiet?” “It’s nice to have quiet now and then, but I was also married for a long time. I know how empty a home can feel after a few days, especially when you’re used to something else.”

Inside him, a little boy was jumping up and down, screaming, running wild. I want, I want, I want so badly. But he wasn’t a kid, and Nick wasn’t his dad, and this had an end. It always had an end.

Could he stand it if Nick vanished? If he wasn’t in the stands or in Colton’s life? What if Nick was just another missing face he searched for game after game after game? If he ever played again. He kicked a rock into the lake. Say no. Go home and stare at the walls. Toughen the fuck up. Like Wes. He’s tougher than you’ll ever be.

What was better? Suffering in silence and hardening your heart against the world? Or owning what you wanted, what you needed?

He took a tentative step on the tightrope strung between his hope and fear. “Are you sure you’re cool with that?” he asked again. “’Cause I don’t want to say no, and if this is one of those life tests where I’m supposed to say no because that’s the polite thing to do, I think I’m gonna fail.”

Nick held out his hand for Colton’s duffel and the football under his arm. “Got everything?” “Yep. All the essentials. Porn mags, beef jerky, Tic Tacs—” Nick froze. Colton laughed as he brushed by Nick and held open the front door. “Dude, you should see your face! Oh my God, I should have been filming. Jesus, no, I didn’t bring any of that.”

He had the football in his hands, and when Colton slid into the passenger seat, Nick passed it to him. “I’m glad you brought this.” He tried to toss the ball to himself with his left hand. He bobbled, and the ball bounced off his knee, smacked his chin, and hit the dashboard. “That’s Division I football right there.”

Congrats, Colton texted. You guys make it look easy. His breath hitched after he sent the text. Damn, they did. Even with all the bullshit they’d faced, even with what felt like the whole world against them sometimes, Wes and Justin made falling in love look effortless.

Justin and Wes and their love had stunned them both, not just into silence, but into smallness. Who were they next to the sun and moon of Justin and Wes’s love?

“Nick, you are one smooth son of a bitch, I’ll give you that. You ever get tired of slinging cell phones and mobile networks, you come work with me. You could sell Jesus to the pope.”

“The day I met my wife, I thought I had been shot. No damn reason to think anyone was shooting at me. It’s just my heart stopped and I couldn’t breathe, and all I could think about was how I never wanted to let this woman go. I wanted to be her mister for the rest of my days. I was a praying fool for the next two weeks, begging God to let her think I was a decent kind of guy. He must have put in a good word for me, ’cause I couldn’t do a damn thing right in front of her for the first year we were together. She turned me into a damn fool, I was so struck with love for her. She still can make me stupid with just a look.”

Your hearts didn’t beat together. That’s the hardest damn thing about growing with someone: you gotta make sure you keep your hearts beating together and that you really know each other. It’s too damn easy to go spinning off on your own and leave each other behind.”

“Wes has a different personality than Brad, though. And there’s a difference between being friends with someone who is gay and being hit on.” “It doesn’t bother me. None of that bothers me.” He took another sip of his beer, then frowned. “Actually, you know what does bother me? How come Wes never hit on me? Aren’t I a catch?” Again, Nick laughed. “I don’t think you’re Wes’s type.” “Okay, that’s true. Wes only has one type: Justin.”

What the fuck was that? He’d been dreaming… about Nick? No no no no no— Something opened inside him, like a drain plug pulling loose. He tried to breathe, clawing at the bed as he gulped for oxygen that wasn’t there. It was like he’d been sacked, like he’d taken a linebacker to the center of his pads. He was free-falling, about to slam into the grass.

Nick setting his wineglass down, taking Colton’s hand. Their fingers sliding together— Nick’s breath on his lips as he stepped into Colton’s arms, Colton’s hand resting on Nick’s shoulder. Nick’s body against his own, pressed so close, head to toe, Colton’s arms wrapped around him— He groaned as his cock jerked. Fuck, he was going to come. He was going to come from just thinking about Nick, never mind touching himself.

He rolled his face against the sheets and stared across the divide between their beds. Nick was still snoring, oblivious to the earthquake that had ruptured Colton’s world. The hurricane bearing down on him. I’m not gay. But Nick.

How had this happened? How had he fallen for Nick Swanscott?

Why had this never happened before? Why now? Because he liked Nick. Goddamn, he liked Nick. He liked who he was. Nick was the best person he knew, and he’d had more impact on Colton’s life in six months than anyone else ever had.

He stayed facedown on the bed as the truth settled inside him like a new set of bones, a new network of muscles and veins and ligaments laid over the old, facing a truth he should have recognized long before. How much of a fool was he that he hadn’t realized what he was feeling for the man until right now?

His eyes blurred until he couldn’t see Nick through the kaleidoscope of his tears. He stayed on his side, facing Nick, catching watery glimpses of the man every time he blinked. It wouldn’t happen. It would never happen. Nick was the worst possible man in the world for him to have fallen for. Not only was there no chance, there wasn’t even a sliver of hope. Nick was straight. Nick was older and more experienced than him. More refined. Nick had the world in the palm of his hand. Nick was Justin’s dad.

Sometimes he cried. Cried boiling, frustrated tears, furious at himself for falling for someone impossible. Not impossible like falling for a movie star, or the girlfriend of one of his buddies, or a chick so far out of his league it wasn’t funny. He’d fallen for his friend’s dad. His friend’s straight dad. The best guy he’d ever known.

Colton was here for Nick. He was ready whenever Nick was. So far, he’d followed Nick like Nick was a mother duck and he was the baby chick waddling after him with a bum wing.