The Quarterback (The Team, #2)

by Tal Bauer

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.

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

your future lies with someone else. 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.”

me up.” Nick shook his head as he sipped his beer. Brad was pouring

his—finally, fucking finally, oh my God—and

That was like trying to hold his hands up to the sky and push falling raindrops back into soaked thunderheads.

there was something in the air that was making him dizzy, like he’d taken a deep breath of helium. The lights were bright, glittering in time with the laughter of the other groups and cozy couples.

Something rustled inside him, heavy and empty, like huge wind chimes moving on a dusty wind. His thoughts were discordant, off-key. They didn’t sit right inside him, ran against the grain of things he couldn’t change deep within him.

There was too much looming beyond the summer’s sunset. Colton’s exuberance at getting back into football shape was the first step on a long, painful road toward goodbye, and there were a dozen heartaches forming on the horizon. Their tiny world was going to expand. Colton

Colton leaned back and spread his arms across the backrest like he was getting comfortable. He was, but a bonus—or maybe the real reason—was that he could wrap his arm around Nick without anyone thinking twice. He let his hand hang down and his fingers trail over the curve of Nick’s shoulder blade, out of sight. Nick pressed his knee against Colton’s and left it there through the second half.

Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up. I want you to show everyone that no one in this world tells you who you are.

“I didn’t want the rest of the world, Nick. I only wanted our world.”

He only wanted to be loved, and cherished, and needed by one person in the world. And he was.

away to Vegas, just the two of us. Or we can