Relay

by Layla Reyne

  Ryan laughed as Bas groaned. “Definitely no rum for you.”

  Alex couldn’t decide which was worse—donning his one thrift store suit in hundred-degree heat, or sitting on a panel with Dane, no doubt dressed in a four-figure getup, answering the usual inane questions and pretending everything was grand. Not that he hadn’t expected it. Dane, with his sponsorships, his looks, and his world record, was the big draw. And truth be told, Alex would rather it be Dane than him facing the reporters, but it had to be both. Resentment bubbled, just beneath the surface.

  Shushing Ryan as an excuse, Alex glanced up the bleachers, surprised to see Dane anxious, looking as if a spot on the dais was the last thing he wanted. Surely it hadn’t come as a surprise to him either. Worried blue eyes clashed with his, but only for a second. Dane ducked his head, hiding the worry away, and resumed tapping at his phone.

  Before Alex could further consider Dane’s strange reaction, Coach sprung on them the welcome surprise that they’d have the Sunday after Media Day off. “Take a break and rest, see the sights, but stay out of trouble. Be back here bright and early Monday morning, ready to work.”

  Coach dismissed them to a round of applause, and Bas hauled Alex up and out into the aisle. They waited on deck for Ryan and Jacob, Bas pulling the youngster into a chokehold. “Don’t worry, Pup.” He knuckled the shaved side of his head. “I’ll protect you from the big bad reporters.” Said in jest, but a strategy Alex had worked out with Bas. They would shield Jacob as much as possible from the media, for their own advantage and for the pup’s well-being.

  “Start by fixing his hair,” Alex ordered. “Tonight.”

  “Party pooper,” Ryan said, then jutted his bottom lip out in a mock pout. He got over it fast, turning excitedly to Jacob. “You going to show us around town on Sunday?”

  Jacob deftly slipped Bas’s hold, heading off with Ryan to the locker room, reciting a litany of places to visit and things to see here in his hometown.

  Bas started after them, then turned back when he realized Alex hadn’t followed. “You coming?”

  Alex’s gaze drifted to Dane again. Head down, attention still focused on his phone, Dane hadn’t budged, even though the sun was shining directly on him now, lighting his hair that was turning more amber-gold than copper each day. It had to be hot and uncomfortable. Yet . . .

  He was waiting for everyone to leave.

  “Cantu,” Bas said.

  “Go. I’ll catch up.”

  Once Bas left, Alex cleared his throat, and Dane’s head shot up. “You’re getting as bad as Mo with that thing,” Alex said, nodding at the phone in Dane’s hand. “You that popular?”

  Dane hesitated, obviously reticent to leave his perch. Alex leaned a hip against the cement stair post and crossed his arms, making it obvious he wasn’t budging either. Caving, Dane rose with a sigh and descended the stairs. “No idea,” he said. “I haven’t checked my email since we got here.”

  “Games, then?”

  Dane shrugged and sat the device facedown on the post. “Something like that.”

  “Your lap times are getting better.”

  “That’s the point of training, isn’t it?”

  Impassive, Dane gave away nothing, and Alex’s hackles rose, frustration challenging his nascent peacekeeper. He battled the warmonger back, reminding himself why he’d stayed behind. “Listen, I’m so—”

  “Now you want to act like a captain?” Dane’s eyes flashed, anger seeping through the cold shell. “When everyone else is gone?”

  “You’re never at meals or meetings.”

  Hurt crowded anger in his icy glare. “Because no one wants me there.”

  Alex’s chest clenched, like it had in the med facility when he’d wanted to go to Dane and comfort him. Dane was trying to pull off an air of indifference, but between the worry Alex had glimpsed earlier, and the hurt and anger on display now, something more was going on.

  “Dane,” he said, taking a step forward.

  Dane lifted a hand, and Alex froze. “Say what you have to say, Alejandro.”

  “I’ll speak to the team.”

  “No, you won’t,” he snapped. “I don’t need you fighting my battles for me.”

  Alex stepped closer, meeting him snarl for snarl, hackles rising the rest of the way. “Tomorrow’s Media Day. We have to at least appear to be on the same team.”

  “So that’s what this is really about?”

  “We’re representing Team USA, together.”

  Dane scoffed and turned away again. “You just want to pull the strings too.”

  Alex grabbed him by the arm and forced him back around. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t worry about me tomorrow. I’ve been dealing with this my entire life.”

  “Oh, poor you,” Alex spat and rolled his eyes, hard.

  Dane wrenched his arm free and bellowed in his face. “You have no idea!”

  “About how good you’ve had it?” Sure, the team and he had been hard on Dane this week, but life was harder on the rest of them. Anger, frustration, jealousy all unleashed, he stalked Dane back toward the stair post, arms flailing as he shouted. “The media wanting to talk to you. Sponsors making sure you get the spotlight. Riding off in Mommy and Daddy’s air-conditioned limo while the rest of us sweat it out.”

  Dane grabbed his wrists, holding him back. “I didn’t ask for that.”

  Gazes locked, chests heaving, Alex’s voice came out a hoarse whisper. “You still got in that fucking car.”

  Both times.

  Unsaid but said, thick in the space between them.

  Space that grew narrower when Dane’s grip became a caress, his eyes strayed to Alex’s mouth, and his voice cracked on a strangled “Alejandro.”

  For an interminable second, Alex considered giving in to the tension—stepping over that thin line from hate to what they used to be, indulging in a kiss he missed more than any since—but then the fear, the absolute certainty, Dane would get back into that car a third time drove him out of his former lover’s grasp.

  “No,” Alex said, rocking back on his heels. “You made your choice, and you keep making it.”

  “What about tomorrow?” Dane asked. “How are we supposed to act?”

  “Keep on pretending. Nothing new for you.”

  Keep on pretending.

  No trouble there. Dane’s life was one giant pretense, and the frightening accuracy of Alex’s indictment continued to ring true over the next twenty-four hours.

  After Alex had left him there on the pool deck, he’d grabbed his cap and goggles and dove back into the water, swimming hard laps and pretending their conversation had never happened. The words spoken and not.

  Through the night, he’d pretended to sleep, but each time he’d closed his eyes, Alex’s words, the nearness of his body, and the kiss Dane had dreamed about for years only a breath away, had kept him awake. Regretting. Wanting.

  Despite his lack of sleep, he’d pretended to be on his game at the open practice, smiling wide, chatting with reporters and sponsors and standing close enough to his teammates not to raise any eyebrows. No schism to see here.

  Yes, Dane was good at pretending, but after twenty-six years of it, he was so damn tired of it. And fuck his father’s no-cursing rule too.

  By the time he returned to his room to change for the press conference, all Dane wanted to do was stop pretending for five minutes and collapse facedown on his bed. An impossibility, he quickly realized, when he crossed the threshold and found his father practicing a sermon, his mother on the phone by the balcony door, and her stylist fussing over a makeup counter’s worth of crap spread out across the king-sized bed.

  Dane let the door slam shut behind him. “How did you get in here?”

  His father paused midscripture and tore his gaze from his own reflection in the mirrored closet doors. “Who do you think paid for this single room? It certainly wasn’t the team.”

  “Did you pay for the
one in Colorado Springs too?”

  “One of your sponsors,” his mother answered, hand cupping the speaker end of her phone. “Shower, dear, then Nicole will fix you right up.”

  Nicole, in her early twenties, gave him the same schoolgirl heart-eyes she always did whenever they were in the same room. She was pretty enough—blonde and blue-eyed, his “type,” according to the rags. Another deliberate pretense on his part. He didn’t have the heart to tell her she was as far from his type as possible, and even if she were his type, she didn’t meet his mother’s bank account or last name standards.

  Dane escaped to the bathroom, standing under the shower’s hot spray and letting his father’s familiar rise and fall cadence, his practiced fire and brimstone, lull him to near standing sleep. So much for only being here to support Dane and the team. He was clearly rehearsing for a sermon tomorrow, on pride and team unity. Two things Dane sorely lacked at the moment.

  He hid from the truth in his steam-filled bubble as long as he could, until his mother’s every-five-minute countdown reached twenty. He toweled off and slathered on sunscreen, shooed his father out from in front of the closet long enough to retrieve boxers and an undershirt, then surrendered to the emasculation he’d avoided earlier in the week.

  His mother finished her call and gestured for him to take a seat on the end of the bed. “We’ll have to trim that awful beard,” she said to Nicole. “He’s too sunburned to shave it.”

  Nicole went to work, first restoring his dreadfully pale skin above his play-off beard in progress, while his mother grilled him from over her stylist’s shoulder.

  “Who else is on the panel?”

  “Coach—”

  “I meant swimmers.”

  He resisted the Let me finish on the tip of his tongue. “Alex and Bas.”

  “Not the kid?”

  “Jacob?” Dane asked, and she nodded. “No,” he replied. “They’re keeping him under wraps, for now.”

  She hummed, satisfied. “Good, he’d steal too much of the spotlight, and between those other two, you’ll look the most professional.”

  He jerked his chin out of Nicole’s too-tender grasp and glared up at his mother. “Those other two are also world record holders.”

  “Yes, but they don’t compete with you for the camera. The one’s a tattooed California hooligan and the other wears a perma-frown.”

  Because, as Dane was coming to understand, Alex carried the weight of the world on his broad shoulders.

  “Shame too,” his mother carried on, while Nicole trimmed his beard into revolting hipster fashion. “He’s quite attractive. I could use him to connect with the Hispanic audience. Then again, he’s gay, so that wouldn’t do.”

  No, it wouldn’t do for her Bible-thumping legion of home shoppers. His father strolled in from the hallway. “Didn’t you go to developmental training with the Cantu boy?”

  Nicole noticed his physical jolt, even if his parents missed it. She patted his cheek, probably assuming his father’s booming voice, right behind them, had surprised Dane, but Nicole’s gentle touch did nothing to calm his racing heartbeat. He’d never mentioned Alex to them. How did his parents know they’d been at camp together? In the next second, he answered his own question. Of course they knew. They’d probably paid someone for a roster of all the attendees. He didn’t go anywhere without them knowing the who, what, when, where, and why of it all. If it didn’t suit their purposes, they’d find something else that did. That summer, his father had been on a televised global ministry tour and his mother had gone with, to be by his side and to pitch international rights for her shows. They’d needed a summer-long babysitter for him, and developmental training camp had fit the bill.

  With his parents an ocean away, Dane had thought himself safe to be with Alex, at least within the confines of their four cinder block walls. Outside of their room, they’d been discreet, never appearing to be more than friends and roommates. And once home, he’d taken steps to protect the only tangible proof they’d been more, storing his photos of them together on an encrypted drive he updated regularly. Despite all his diligent efforts, had his parents still found out about him and Alex somehow?

  He hoped his voice didn’t crack when he answered, “Yes, we were roommates.”

  “Use that,” his father said. “Turn him around to God’s path. Lead by example, son.”

  A wave of relief crashed through him, followed by an even bigger one of anger. He shoved his hands between his knees. Cracking his knuckles would be a dead giveaway. As would grabbing any of the makeup items beside him and hurling them in a fit of rage.

  He forced his voice level, diplomatic. “I don’t think Alex would be interested.” He didn’t specify whether about an impossible change in his sexuality or an equally impossible change in his anticamera stance. His father didn’t care either way, no longer interested in the conversation and returning to his rehearsal.

  His mother clicked her nails to refocus his attention on her. “Your answers are ready?”

  The same answers he always gave. “Yes.”

  Nicole set aside her scissors and stood, stepping out of the way so his mother could inspect him, like a fucking show dog. Her nails bit into his skin as she rotated his chin, checking both sides of his face. Back to center, she leveled him with an imperious glare. “And don’t deflect so much this time. I saw the footage from the airport presser we arranged.”

  Alex jerked out of her grasp. “You set that up?”

  “Of course,” she said, as if what they’d done hadn’t caused a hassle for his team and days of hell for him. “We leaked the arrival times to the national media, and they leaked them to sports and local.”

  “You wanted them to see you there?”

  “And you. Now, don’t waste the opportunity today. Don’t deflect, and don’t be so deferential.”

  “Alex is the captain.”

  “Yes, but you’re the star. Act like it.”

  Act like it.

  AKA, back to pretending.

  Dane was so good at it he doubted his teammates, the press, or the average viewer at home had any idea how much he hated Media Day. Practiced smile and lines, all lies that made his stomach churn.

  Never more so than today, sitting on the dais between Alex and Bas and pretending to represent the US men’s swim team. He was a team member in name and job only, a pariah in every other way. Part of him resented Alex for allowing the team to cast him out, but he couldn’t blame them or him. He’d given them every reason to believe he was the privileged ass Alex claimed. Or rather, his parents had, but Dane hadn’t said no. Just like he hadn’t said no the other time he’d turned his back on Alex.

  Bas nudged his shoulder, and Dane snapped back to the present. Coach was finishing his introductory remarks, preparing to open the floor for questions.

  Once he did, questions flew. The most at Dane, some to Coach and Alex, and a few for Bas too. Dane didn’t want to give the impression of hogging the spotlight, but he also didn’t want to raise any more red flags with his parents. He deferred when the question obviously called for Coach or Alex to weigh in and answered diplomatically when it didn’t.

  “Dane, how’s the team gelling after losing its eldest member?”

  “Alex can answer that one on behalf of the team,” he replied.

  Curls tamed and dressed in an attractive if well-worn suit, Alex leaned toward the mic. “Morris Mayfair was our senior statesman, that’s true, and it was a tough loss, but we’ve got a lot of other repeat Olympians on the team. We miss Mo, but we’re managing fine without him.”

  Managing.

  Fine.

  Dane smarted at the backhanded insult. That’s the best Alex could say about him? They’d already shaved several hundredths off their relay time.

  “Dane, why weren’t you swimming in the medley relay to begin with?”

  Alex’s shoulders tensed, and had he not been tilted forward, Dane was sure he’d have seen those brown eyes piqued with aggr
avation. Dane’s position, or not, in the relay lineup had never been confirmed, despite the scene in the locker room. Someone had leaked it. His parents, presumably, seeing as they were a virtual information sieve these days.

  “That was my call,” Coach answered. “I wanted Ellis in the best possible shape for the five other events we have him slated for.”

  “Dane, how are you adjusting to the extra event?”

  I swam eight in college was on the tip of his tongue, but he withheld the remark. While indignation lingered over Alex’s insult, Dane’s anger over other matters, over the mistakes of his own making, outweighed his anger at Alex.

  “Coach and Alex are working us hard,” he replied. “We’ll be ready for Madrid.”

  “Coach, why wasn’t Dane captain? Not the best outing for Alex so far.”

  Beneath his jacket, Alex’s shoulders jerked, tension radiating out and down his spine, his entire body noticeably tightening, and Dane shoved his hands between his knees for the second time that afternoon. The question was rude and patently untrue. Anything that had gone wrong to date was his fault, not Alex’s. He shifted forward to address the slight, at the same time Coach pulled a mic closer.

  Bas beat them both. “The captaincy was voted on by the team,” he said, tossing loose dreads out of his face. “Alex was on the Olympic team four years ago, so he knows the drill. He also works for USOC and is the steadiest guy most of us know. If we didn’t have Alex at the helm, things could have gone a lot worse after losing Mo. He’s held us together.”

  It was an impressive front by Bas, even if it wasn’t entirely true. But decked out as he was, in a tailored gray suit that accentuated his huge upper body and a blue paisley tie that brought out his striking blue eyes, the fly swimmer smiled wide and effortlessly charmed the crowd. Dane bet his mother was seething.

  “Any response to the rumors you two are involved?”

  Dane jolted, harder than he had in the hotel room, as fear lanced his chest and stopped his already racing heart. But then Bas laughed, and Dane realized the question was directed at his teammates. He prayed no one had noticed his reaction.