by R. J. Scott
“It doesn’t matter to me where it was, just that it was.” I turned my face into the water, smiling at the tickle of bubbles washing down over my face, chest, and back. Sebastian kissed me right under the spray. I blinked and opened my eyes to look at him.
“Yes, you’re right. All that matters is that it was you and it was amazing for you.” He cupped my face, using his thumb to flick off a bit of lather. “You are incredibly special. To me, that is, and I would be proud to be known as your boyfriend if and when the time comes. You’re such a passionate, loving, devoted man.”
I threw my arms around him, kissing him hard, wiggling my leg between his. His hands found my ass, mine found his shoulders, and before I knew it, we were rutting against each other, once flaccid dicks now iron hard again. He jammed me back into the corner of the shower, took both of us in his hand, and worked us into a hot, wet frenzy. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sight of our dicks pressed together, slipping and sliding and bumping. With a growl, I placed my hand around his. We both came again, our mouths fused, water washing the semen down the drain, my hand on his buttock, his planted to the shower stall by my head.
“Well, that was unexpected.” He chuckled, then dropped a kiss to my chin. “We had best stop faffing about in here. The hot water is growing tepid.”
I grinned like a goof. “I really like the way you talk.”
“I like the way you talk as well. Now be a good lad and soap my back.”
We rushed through the shower because, as he had noted, the water was growing colder. We dressed out in the bedroom after locating our clothes, which had been flung all over the room. He opted to go commando since he’d come all over his underwear.
“I’ll just toss these into the bin when I get home. I refuse to rinse cold cum off of underwear. Life is too short.” He wadded his briefs into a tight ball, then crammed them into the front pocket of his trousers. They hung out a bit, but who cared? The prostitutes in all the other hourly rated rooms wouldn’t look down their noses at us, I was pretty sure. That made me giggle internally. Then sigh, which got a curious glance from Sebastian, who was seated on the bed, sliding his feet into his Italian leather loafers.
“I was just thinking how the hookers on either side of this room wouldn’t give two shits about your underwear hanging out of your pocket or even that we’re two guys who just got each other off, twice.” I held up two fingers, then went back to buckling my belt. “But if my mother saw us coming out of here looking like we do, there would be epic end-of-the-world level judgery.”
“I’m not sure ‘judgery’ is a word, but I’m going to leave it because it fits so well,” he tossed out as he stood. “Have you ever spoken with your family about how they feel about gays?”
“Pfft, no, I see how my cousins are. You don’t know the Latino culture well yet. Trust me. When you get to experience it firsthand, you’ll be like ‘Ah okay, now I see what Alejandro is talking about!’”
“I wasn’t referring to your cousins. All young males are idiots, present company excluded, of course, so you can lower that brow. What I meant was have you ever talked about gays with your parents or your grandmother. Maybe they’d surprise you.”
“Yeah, no, I doubt it.”
“Well, perhaps you should broach the subject someday, just to test the waters.”
I shrugged, slid my arms into my jacket, and picked up my bag. It was untouched, the stuff I’d stolen from Ryker not used, which was disappointing but not really. What we’d done, the talk followed by the loving, had been perfect. Someday we’d work up to other stuff, stuff that needed stuff, but for now, I was happy. So damn happy. Sebastian opened the door and stepped out to the sidewalk. I rushed him, grabbing him around the waist and plastering a steamy kiss to his sexy lips.
“What the hell?” he asked, his question thick with laughter, as he caught me and pinned me to the dirty brick wall between our room and the room next to ours.
“I’m just happy,” I confided. His lips found mine. I clung to him like Mamá’s pink clematis.
A door to our left opened. I stopped kissing on Seb long enough to glance to the side. All my joy vanished.
“Small world, huh, Garcia?” Coach Carmichael asked, his arm draped casually over Mark Westman-Reid’s shoulder.
Twelve
Seb
For some reason, I moved fast to put myself between Coach and Alex. As if that was going to make any difference to the fact that the person responsible for Alex’s position on the team was standing there with an inquisitive gaze and whisker burn on his neck. Mark’s mouth fell open. Then he shut it deliberately and began to shuffle back, tugging Coach with him.
“Let’s go, Rowen,” he murmured, but Coach Carmichael was not to be moved.
“Alex?” Rowen asked, all kinds of gentle and encouraging, but Alex stayed behind me, and I heard a whimpered Spanish curse. Coach sighed. “Thirty-four, front and center,” he said, this time his tone was firmer.
Alex moved, and this time it was him standing between the coach and me. “Coach,” he murmured miserably.
I couldn’t for one minute think of the panic in his head. He had to be imagining the worst here. Everyone stood there saying nothing for way too long.
“What are you two doing here?” I blurted, even though it was obvious, because I hated silences with a passion, and they weren’t saying a damn thing to each other.
“Anniversary,” Mark mumbled and couldn’t quite meet my eyes. Given the two men were in a committed relationship, I would have thought an anniversary could have involved something a lot more exciting than a room in this dump.
“This is a personal and private matter,” I said, loud enough to catch Rowen’s attention. “Let’s go, Alex.” If I thought that was going to work, I didn’t know anything at all.
Alex tensed, Rowen shook his head, and Mark made a face that said I’d just spoken out of turn. Who the hell knew how this player/coach relationship worked, but me suggesting we leave wasn’t going down well.
Rowen moved away from Mark and came close to Alex, who to give him his due, didn’t move a muscle. In fact he tilted his chin.
“Alex?” I asked under my breath, “Do you want to go?”
“It’s okay, Seb,” he said, and I mentally took a step back. This was a vital moment for Alex, and maybe he didn’t need me getting in the way.
Rowen reached out for Alex, cupped him behind his head, and I tensed, waiting for them to get into it, but all Rowen did was touch his forehead to Alex’s and sigh. “It’s okay,” he said and then backed away.
“It’s not,” Alex blurted. “I can’t do this. I can’t be this.” He threw me a frantic look.
Fuck. What did I do? What could I say that would make this any better? We were all shocked, Mark quiet, Rowen thoughtful, Alex stiff as a board, and me, flapping inside like a demented bird but outwardly calm.
“Let’s get coffee,” Mark finally said. “Follow us.”
They reached their car, a sleek Maserati parked outside this shit motel, hidden behind the large bushes where we would never have seen it. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been stolen. Hell, it was a fucking Maserati among ten other cars, most of which were rentals or old models barely hanging together. We moved as well, but any hint of closeness or connection was vanishing. All I felt was Alex’s shame, and it made me ache. He belted up, and I pulled out after the Maserati, wanting to say something clever and important, one sentence that would make the tension leave my boyfriend as if this morning’s unfortunate meet-up had never happened.
“You want me to follow them?” I asked after a while.
“Sure,” Alex murmured.
“We don’t have to, you know. You’re not at the rink, not in uniform, Rowen isn’t your coach on your downtime.”
He shot me an incredulous look as if I’d just suggested something heinous. “You don’t understand shit,” he snapped. So that was why we were silent for the rest of the journey as I contemplated the unfortunate ending o
f things. I pulled into the driveway of a modest detached house surrounded by grass and flowers. I didn’t know whose house this was, but it seemed we weren’t going to get our coffee in Starbucks.
I wanted to make him see I was on his side and made the unfortunate choice to carry on with the last thing he’d said. “Maybe I do understand some of what you’re feeling—”
“What? I bet you had a perfect fucking family who probably accepted you being gay like you’d just casually told them to pass the fucking potatoes. I bet you didn’t have a mom who worked her fingers to the bone for her family and who prays every night for your eternal fucking soul. Or a dad who works every hour God sends to feed his kids, and wants you to be half of the next hockey power couple with the perfect fucking blonde woman on my arm. I bet no one judged you as stupid if you got a B on a fucking report on the implications of Revelations in the Goddamn Bible! Not to mention, you probably didn’t have siblings who have you pushed into a fucking box labeled superstar heterosexual hockey player. Oh, and I know you can’t have a cousin who hired a prostitute for your fourteenth birthday to show you the fucking ropes! They all want so much for me, and it’s killing me, and I’m nothing like you. So tell me, how you can understand any of the stress I’m going through?”
“You’re right. My mum understood when I told her I was gay,” I said and switched off the engine. He didn’t face me. “But she told me right there and then that it didn’t matter what I was as long as I made something of myself. The pressure to be perfect, even in a house filled with love, can be stifling. Also, you know what. I never knew my dad. He was posted back to the US when my mom was pregnant, said he would marry her and bring her over. What actually happened was that he abandoned her with her unfortunate pregnancy. The fucker. Actually, my mum lived on a sofa at my aunt Olivia’s house, but when I was born, we actually got our own council flat, sandwiched between members of rival drug gangs.”
He turned to look at me then. “Seb—”
“You think I had it easy? I stole the uniform for my first school from Tesco. I was five. I don’t have siblings or cousins that I know of. Just me, Mum, and Aunt Olivia. No one prays for my soul, no one got me a prostitute, but I worked fucking hard to get where I am now, worked my ass off for all the A grades to get a scholarship to university. So yeah, I understand what it’s like to have pressure, and no, I didn’t have it easy, so don’t let the suits I wear or the perfect English vowels I use fool you.” My voice slipped a little, and as I spoke, I saw Alex’s eyes widen.
“Oh,” he whispered. “When you say your dad went back to the States—”
“USAF. He’s dead now, never met him, didn’t want to after what he did. So don’t think that my life was all roses.” He winced. Fuck, I’m being selfish. What the hell am I doing? “I apologize for that outburst.”
Alex shook his head. “You don’t need to. I’m sorry as well. I know it’s not all about me all the time.”
I gripped his hand. “This is all about you, Alex, and I’m here for you, okay? I understand what you are feeling right now. I know you’re scared, but what is the worst that can happen here? Coach won’t jeopardize the mythical JAR line, and why would Mark, one of the owners of the team, want to rock the boat?”
Alex fisted his hands in his lap and then cursed loudly. I think he would have said more, only Rowen knocked on the window with force.
“Thirty-four, out,” he ordered.
Alex scrambled to comply. I followed at a more sedate pace, anything to give me time to settle my thoughts. Alex needed me on his side, and I’d already considered a couple of lawyers I’d worked with in the past whom I’d call for advice.
All four of us ended up in the large kitchen at the back of the house, Mark making coffee, Rowen sitting at a table, and Alex standing in the doorway as if he was heading for his execution.
“Do I need my rep?” Alex asked, and it hit me then just how messed up this was.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” I interjected before Rowen began whatever lecture he was percolating in his head.
“We should all sit,” Mark interjected and handed me a mug. “I made you a tea.”
I glanced down at the dishwater-colored liquid in a mug. “That’s an insult to tea,” I said, attempting to lighten the tone. When I glanced at the others, they stared back at me, and I drew myself tall. “Never, ever, make tea for a Brit,” I added with a smile, then tipped it away and poured myself a coffee instead before taking my seat at the table. They’d waited for me, but I hoped my humor insertion, plus the whole coffee-pouring thing, had lightened the mood a little. Alex was no longer mutinously defensive but scared, and Rowen was less thundery.
Rowen cleared his throat. “Garcia, who you see on your own time is up to you. I’m with Mark, and also young Ryker is visible in his relationship. This team is supportive, and anyone who gives you shit will be shown the door. So, my first real question is actually for Sebastian and how he is managing this.”
I blinked at him. Managing what? Sex?
Mark interjected again. He was good at that. “What Rowen is saying, is that Alex is pivotal to your campaign.”
Oh. That.
“Actually, he’s only one of many angles we are working,” I began.
“I’m not coming out,” Alex interrupted and stood so fast from the table his chair scooted back and hit the wall, and coffee spilled over the edge of his full mug. “No one can make me do that or manage it for me.” He stared at me in horror, as if I’d agreed somehow that we did a poster campaign with unicorns, rainbows, and Alex in the center.
“I know—”
“What happens—?”
Rowen and I spoke at the same time, and I gestured for him to go first.
“What happens at The Gila Monster Motor Court stays at The Gila Monster Motor Court.” Rowen was calm. “Sit down, Garcia.” Alex did as he was told and scooted the chair closer to the table. “Who you sleep with is your choice and no one’s business but your own, but a word of advice here. You were in a public place. You’re known around here to some, and it only takes one person to take a photo, and the message you get out to fans becomes something twisted and toxic. Add in the fact that your poster is on a billboard not more than a quarter mile from the motel, and you have a situation here. Understand?”
He stopped then and sipped his coffee.
“Yes, Coach,” Alex mumbled, but I thought it was more a reflex than anything else.
“Also, I want to talk hockey. Alex, look at me.” He glanced up as Rowen continued. “Do you want Mark and Seb to leave?”
Alex was pale, glancing at me and shaking his head. I could see the pain in his expression. He thought the one thing he had right now was going to be taken away from him, and I hoped to hell he didn’t send me packing right along with hockey.
“Coach?” he said as a prompt when Rowen went quiet. “Please don’t scratch me. I won’t let this change my play. I’m giving everything right now.”
Rowen pushed his mug to one side and steepled his fingers, staring at Alex.
“Thing is, Alex, you are, and you aren’t. You make some amazing plays, but you’re easily distracted, and in the same game you score a goal, you’ll make a turnover that the other team uses to their advantage. You’ve got skills off the chart, your speed, your accuracy, the way you so effortlessly work on the line with Ryker and Jens. When you make any kind of magic move, you get cocky, and your focus is gone. Want to tell me why?”
“I didn’t think I…” He stopped and scrubbed at his eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Okay, then answer me this. Who do you play for?”
“The team, you, coach.”
Rowen nodded. “But do you play for yourself? Do you love the game? Is it what you eat and breathe?”
I waited for Alex’s answer with fear. Of course he loved the game, but right now, what he and I had going on was a distraction, not to mention all the stress he felt for hiding his secret.
“No,” Alex a
dmitted after a pause. “I mean, I love the game. Of course I do. It’s everything to me…” He stopped, then visibly deflated. “No, it’s not everything. There’s too much inside me, and when I score, all I can think…”
He was a strong, determined hockey player, but right now, he seemed vulnerable. Was I doing that to him? Should I just back away and leave him be? I didn’t want to. I was falling hard for him, and if I ignored the fact of visas and hockey, I could even imagine a future that was him and me. A few years at least, just until he was ready to go out and find his soulmate.
Of course, it would kill me when we were done and he moved on, but he didn’t have to know that. He had a whole life to live, and I was his experiment and had a time limit because I’d be going home. I wasn’t going to confuse the situation, so I stayed quiet.
“What do you think?” Rowen pushed.
“That I make people proud of me, that I show everyone that the Latino from San Luis can play in the NHL and make a difference. Fans, the team, even my family, who doubted my obsession with ice in a goddamn desert state.”
“Are you proud of yourself?” Rowen asked gently. “That is all you have to ask. Yes, you play for the team, the fans, me, your family, but you have to be proud of yourself as well.” Silence. “My door is open at any time if you need to talk because I know for sure that a player is only as good as the determination and pride they feel in themselves.”
Alex stood again. “Can I go now, Coach?”
Rowen stood and extended a hand, which Alex shook. Then Mark came around and hugged him, and we all carefully and politely moved apart.
Alex was quiet in the car as we drove back to his place, and I didn’t push him, just rested a hand on his knee in silent support. When we arrived, he didn’t invite me in, and why would he? Instead, he squeezed my hand and nodded. “Thank you for everything,” he said and left.
