I turn back, holding open the door as Oliver sweeps up his bag and bounds across the yard up to my porch. Stopping right at the threshold, he hikes the bag higher on his shoulder. Like me, he’s still in practice gear, sweaty, his hair mussed, sunlight sparkling on the scruff of his beard. “Thanks,” he says tightly before stepping inside.
I stare up at the sky, knowing I’m tempting fate. That more than one threshold is being crossed, and none of them are wise.
Oliver walks carefully into my house as I shut the door behind me. I drop my bag and kick off my shoes, watching him take in the place.
“So…” He glances around, toeing off his shoes. “Apparently, you’ve got a thing for grayscale.”
I glance around my house, seeing it from his perspective. Dark wood floors, white walls, cool metallic finishes on the white kitchen cabinetry and modern light fixtures. Black-and-white photographs, charcoal sofa, heather-gray club chairs. A silvery area rug. I shrug. “It’s calming.”
He points to Wilde, my black and white cat, who jumps off the couch and, like a traitor, slinks across the room, curling around Oliver’s legs. “You even got a cat that matches. Would a little color hurt ya? Maybe just a splash of green to match…” He nods toward the cat.
I swallow, watching him crouch and scratch my cat’s chin. “Wilde,” I tell him reluctantly.
He smiles as the cat purrs. “Wilde. How about a little mint green to match Wilde’s eyes? Some rose pink like his nose. What do you think?” he asks Wilde as the cat presses up on his knee and meows as he reaches for a harder scratch of his head. “I don’t know what the color wheel ever did to piss him off either, but clearly, he has not gotten over it.”
Wilde purrs louder. Traitorous bastards, cats.
“Not all of us want our homes to look like the inside of a Fruit Loops cereal box.”
Oliver shakes his head and sighs like I’m hopeless. If it weren’t for his phone, which has started buzzing, he’d probably pet Wilde and flat-out ignore me until his locksmith came. Standing reluctantly, he unearths his phone and mutters something under his breath that sounds distinctly not-English. As I watch him, something awful snags inside my chest.
Cheeks flushed, jaw tight, thumbs dancing across his phone screen, he stands framed in the archway, his bright-yellow practice jersey and gold hair lighting up the space like spilled sunshine.
I stare at him, panicking as everything turns kaleidoscopic—colorful, off-kilter, dizzyingly bright—and I have the frantic urge to throw open my door, then shove him out until my world is once again small and monochromatic and manageable.
He catches me staring. I look away, turning toward my cabinets and banging one open like a scrambled fool.
“I’ll be able to get back into my house in about two hours,” he says. “But I really can go let myself in at my brother’s place. I don’t want to impose—”
“You’re not.” I find a glass, smack on the water to fill it. “You, uh…want a shower, I imagine. We left before we showered—you showered, that is—”
Fuck me.
I drag in a breath. I cannot look at him.
Oliver clears his throat. “I mean, yeah, I wouldn’t mind a shower.”
“Help yourself.” My voice is gravel. My blood is on fire. My traitorous imagination can’t stop picturing him stepping under the water, rivulets slipping down his lean, suntanned body. The ridges of his stomach, that tight angular V at his hips. His long legs with their fine golden hairs.
“Sorry?” he says.
“I said help yourself to a shower. Go on.”
After a thick beat of silence, he says, “Okay.”
When the water turns on, I slump forward and bang my forehead into the cabinet. “I need to get laid.”
My lust-soaked body is in no better shape when Oliver reemerges, clean, wet hair slicked back into one of those tiny little ponytails, wearing a white T-shirt and bright-red joggers that are snug on his long legs.
Heat rushes through me. This is what I get for being abstinent since I moved here, for not taking advantage of the ample interest that’s a given when you’re a decent-looking celebrity athlete. I’m a miserable beast when I’m sexually frustrated, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being wanted for what I’ve felt slipping through my fingers every time I walk onto the pitch any more than I could stand the vulnerability of trying to find someone who’d want me for who I am otherwise, given I don’t even know what the fuck that is.
I stare resolutely at my phone, which has zero messages from anyone except my PA, Angela, badgering me per usual to actually show my face at the nonprofit I founded, publicly share relationship to the nonprofit, and consider whether I’d like to take a more hands-on approach, should The Event Which We Do Not Name Involving a Jersey Being Hung Up for Good happen to occur. To which, I reply, No, no, and fuck no.
“Your water pressure is better than mine,” he says.
“The things money can buy.”
He steps closer into my field of vision. “Listen about what happened—”
“I’m answering an email.”
A pause. “And here I thought you were just trying not to acknowledge my existence.”
“Pretty hard to do that when you’re standing in my kitchen, looking like a human ketchup bottle.”
He rolls his eyes. “You wouldn’t know a ketchup bottle if it slapped you in the face. You probably put salt and pepper on your fries and call it a day because God forbid you enjoy something bright and delicious like the wondrous culinary mystery that is ketchup.”
Fuck, he’s aggravatingly funny sometimes. I don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing my annoyed amusement, though; I stare at my phone, refusing to look up.
I will not do this, lust after someone whose capacity to piss me off is unparalleled, whose very existence grates and rankles and reminds me that the best part of my life, the part that awaits him, is almost gone for me.
“Hayes, seriously though, we should talk about this,” he says, sitting at a stool on the other side of the counter, which serves as a breakfast bar. His stomach growls loudly.
I point to the bowl of fruit in front of him and the basket of protein bars. I’m not cooking for him. That’s a bridge much too far. “Go on,” I tell him.
He snatches a banana and peels it.
“Thanks,” he mutters around the bite, his throat working in a thick swallow that makes my body heat.
“Mhmm.” Doing everything I can to not focus on him, I stare at my phone again.
Already, the banana’s gone. “So about that meeting,” he says, setting the peel on the counter, then folding it into neat thirds, like a weirdo.
“What about it,” I grit out.
He leans in a little, sending that sunshine-and-sea-breeze scent my way. “Well, I was under the impression you were there and heard us threatened with losing captaincy if we don’t get over our…differences.”
“There’s no getting over our differences, Bergman.”
He tips his head, curious. “I’m not following.”
My jaw sets. I glance up at him and immediately regret it, because our eyes lock and I can’t look away. “We’re not getting over our differences. We’re not being friends.”
He folds his arms across his chest. “No.”
“Excuse me?”
He lifts his chin. “I said, no. That doesn’t work for me.”
My eyebrows lift. Slowly, I stalk my way around the counter. Oliver pivots in his seat so he’s facing me as I close the distance between us. I tower over him, standing as he sits, but Oliver looks entirely unfazed.
“I meant what I said in the locker room,” I tell him. “I’m not riding in your car. I’m not picking up coffee with you. I’m not even going to acknowledge you beyond as a teammate on the field that I send a ball to, if you get your ass where it’s supposed to be and earn it. You will smile your flashy smile and make sure Coach knows everything’s fine. And I will tolerate sharing that armband with you. That’s how this is going to go.”
Oliver’s pale eyes flash and darken to blue flames. He stands, placing our bodies once again nearly flush, our faces millimeters apart. “You seem to be forgetting one small thing, Hayes.”
“And what is that?” I growl between clenched teeth.
He smiles, but it’s different. New. In fact, it might just even be…sinister. He leans so close our mouths almost brush before he pulls back, his eyes meeting mine. “You’re not the only one calling the shots anymore.”
I stand, stunned as he steps back, sweeps up his bag, and strolls right out the back door.
6
OLIVER
Playlist: “Let It All Out (10:05),” COIN
Two days. I’ve spent two days fuming. Being civil with Gavin, who’s watching me like I’m a bomb that’s both about to go off and that he’d like to punt into the next universe. I’m seething. And I’m done. I’m done being shit on by someone who needs me as much as I need him. Gavin loses his captaincy if we don’t smooth things over, and I’m almost angry enough at him to sabotage us both.
But the bigger part of me loves this honor too much, cherishes this opportunity too deeply, to ruin it simply to spite him, knowing what it would cost me, too.