Riptide Publishing
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Straight Shooter (Rear Entrance Video, #3)
Copyright © 2014 by Heidi Belleau
Cover Art by L.C. Chase, http://lcchase.com/design.htm
Editor: Sarah Frantz
Layout: L.C. Chase, http://lcchase.com/design.htm
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].
ISBN: 978-1-62649-089-5
First edition
April, 2014
Also available in paperback:
ISBN: 978-1-62649-090-1
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This macho jock has a crooked little secret.
College hockey player Austin Puett is in trouble. Unless he starts treating his flamboyantly gay roommate with respect, he’ll lose his room and his job at Rear Entrance Video. But Austin’s got a not-so-straight secret of his own: nothing turns him on more than insults implying he’s gay—even though he’s definitely not!—and all his old coping methods have stopped working.
Pure desperation drives him to rent a Mischievous Pictures porn flick about straight men tricked into servicing Puck, a male dominant. Instead of letting off steam, though, it just leaves him craving more, more, more, and suddenly, Austin finds himself at Mischievous Pictures studio for an audition. After all, you can be Gay for Pay and still be straight . . . right?
But meeting Liam Williams, the real person behind Puck, confuses Austin even more. Liam really seems to like him as a person, and Austin likes him back. And while Gay for Pay’s okay, what does it make Austin if he still wants Liam when the cameras aren’t rolling?
To everyone who supported me throughout the writing of this series: my editor Sarah Frantz; my beta readers Hannah, Sam, and Julio; the staff at the various local coffee shops I camped out in; and of course my husband and my mother, who took on my neglected parenting duties. This is it, folks! The end!
About Straight Shooter
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Dear Reader
Acknowledgments
Also by Heidi Belleau
About the Author
Enjoyed this Book?
Austin hated playing goalie. Actually, when it came to the otherwise well-loved PE 11 floor hockey unit, Austin didn’t know if anybody in his school really liked being the goalie, but today it was him stuck in the helmet. He stomped around morosely in the net, drowning in too-big pads stinking of all the gym classes that had gone before.
Meanwhile, all his teammates ran free across the floor with sneakers squeaking and sticks clacking and not a single pad or helmet between them. Nothing burdened them but the red flags of their pinnies hanging out of their back pockets.
Being the goalie, Austin actually had to wear his pinny over his T-shirt. Fucking rank.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered, watching that asshole Timber Durston barrel right through the other team’s defence with the ball. How he wished that was him, soaking up the glory, scoring on the other team even though he was pretty positive the teacher wasn’t keeping score so much as making sure nobody snuck out the side door of the gym.
But no, Austin was here, on the empty half of the floor, standing around fucking useless, tapping his stick on the ground while Timber Durston showboated and everybody in pinnies gave him pats on the back and everybody in T-shirts glared jealously and then regrouped.
Lame.
The ball dropped. The shouting and clacking and squeaking started up again. The teacher resumed her hawkeyed watch of the side door. Austin continued to stand around like an asshole, sweat dripping down his face inside the hot old helmet. Too much to ask that the side door be propped open to let some air in. Too much to ask that he didn’t have to wear this fucking helmet, be the only one in a fucking helmet, as if a little plastic ball was going to do the kind of damage a puck could. Fucking stupid, especially since nobody else had to wear one.
On the other hand, could be pretty great to see Timber Durston go down with a plastic ball–related brain injury . . .
“Austin!” one of the girls on his team shouted, and Austin looked up in time to see the crowd of his classmates now turned toward him, stampeding down the floor with Gene Tremblay at the head of the pack, shoulder to shoulder with Timber Durston, sticks cracking together as the ball skittered between them.
Austin blinked the sweat out of his eyes and hunkered down, spreading the surface of his body out. Left or right? High or low?
Why the fuck wasn’t Durston passing? He and Gene were knocking the ball back and forth between them like they were two kids playing fucking hot potato. Even with the helmet, Austin could see at least three openings on their team where Timber could get the ball away from the beeline it was making for the net, maybe even get it back into the other team’s defensive zone and out of Austin’s hair.
All Timber had to do was pass.
“Pass, damn it!” Austin yelled.
Well, somebody listened, but it sure as hell wasn’t Durston. As soon as Austin shouted, Gene shot the ball hard to Austin’s left and oh, shit Alison Greyeyes was right fucking there, nobody covering her, and tap went her stupid plastic stick, and Austin fell to his knees and shot his left foot out for all it was worth, but still the little plastic ball rolled happily into the net like this was a game of fucking minigolf and Austin was the windmill.
The stampede slowed. Alison’s teammates shouted encouragement while she fixed her ponytail.
Timber Durston, meanwhile, went straight for Austin. He was look
ing pretty pissed for the guy whose inability to pass had almost single-handedly cost their team the goal. Austin was about to say so when Timber beat him to the punch.
“Whose fucking team are you playing on, Austin?”
Oh, fuck you, Timber Durston. Austin ripped the sweltering helmet off his head. “Uh, yours, ya shithead?”
“Funny, because it looks to me like you just fucking gave that goal away to your boyfriend—”
“Austin! Timber!” the teacher snapped, rising from her seat to enter the fray. “One more word and I’m writing you both up.”
Austin’s face burned hot. Gene wasn’t looking at him, and he didn’t know if that made it better or worse. Alison had been the one to get the goal, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to point that out aloud. Pussy.
Timber snarled and turned, and the teacher went back to her seat. Alison had retrieved the ball and was carrying it out for the next face-off, and Austin thought that was the end of it, was about to put his helmet back on, but then Timber cast a look over his shoulder and said under his breath, “Sweaty faggot.”
And what the hell did Austin do about it?
Here’s what Austin did about it: he popped a boner.
“Time to come out, Austin.”
Austin shot a look at his locked bedroom door, curled his lip in disgust, and returned to his biceps curls. He had nothing to say to any of his roommates right now, not even last-straight-man-standing Noah. And if Noah didn’t like it, he could put on his landlord panties and hand Austin his eviction notice, because otherwise Austin wasn’t doing shit.
“Seriously, Austin. Open the door.” This time, Noah’s knock was distinctly landlord-like.
Okay, so Austin wasn’t expecting things to get this serious this fast. He gulped, dropped his hand weight with a dangerously heavy-sounding thud, took a second to check that the thing hadn’t busted right through the floorboards, and finally clambered to his feet.
He still made sure he had his arms crossed and a suitably surly expression before the door opened. “What?” he barked when he and Noah finally came face-to-face for what felt like the first time since the big gay art show.
“You know what.” Noah gave him a dad face. “Can I come in?”
Austin didn’t make any move to get out of the way, ignoring the way Noah kept doing these abortive little trying-to-slip-around-you dekes. “Do you have to?”
“Well, I don’t want to have this conversation in front of Bobby—”
“Rob,” Austin corrected.
“—and I’m not sending him out for something that’s your fault, so it’s either in here, or on the lawn. Your pick.”
Austin rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He stepped aside, and Noah made his way into Austin’s room, shutting the door carefully behind him. “Does the door have to be closed?”
“Yes,” Noah said. “Now sit.”
Austin found himself plopping down onto his bed before he even had a chance to consider refusing. Damn those deeply ingrained be-a-team-player habits of his and the way they made him respond to certain tones of voice as obediently as a golden retriever.
Noah sat down too. “So it’s been two weeks.”
“Since?”
“You know damn well what since, Austin. Since Bobby came out.”
“Rob,” Austin insisted, but even he had to admit he sounded pretty halfhearted this time.
“Bobby. His name is Bobby now, and this is exactly the kind of shit I need to talk to you about.”
“So talk.” Austin reached for the foot-long novelty Canucks hockey stick propped on his bedside table and gave it a couple of fidgety swings.
“I’m trying. You keep interrupting me. You think you could maybe cut that out?”
“Sure,” Austin said. Whoosh, whoosh went the little hockey stick as it sliced the air.
“And could you put that fucking thing down before you accidentally hit me with it?”
Austin tossed it onto the floor. “Fine.”
“So it’s been two weeks,” Noah said again, “since Bobby came out.”
Austin didn’t say anything, even though he was pretty sure his eye twitched.
He stared resolutely at the floor, refusing to look at Noah as he got on with his lecture: “And look, I’m not blaming you for being a little taken aback by the whole thing. I mean, I’m not sure I really get it myself. The guy wears more makeup than Adam Lambert, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him in high heels, but he says he’s not a girl and he’s not a drag queen and his boyfriend is gay. So I get that you’re confused. I’m confused too. But would it be too much to ask that you take him at face value?”
Yes, actually, it would. Because it’s fucking crazy, and why should I have to change when he’s the one who sprung all this shit on me? But he didn’t say anything.
“He’s too shy to talk to you about it, but you really hurt his feelings when you stormed out of his show. And now it’s been two weeks and you’ve pretty much stopped speaking to any of us. So I’m going to ask you straight up, Austin. Do you have a problem with gay people?”
“No!” Austin yelped, then squirmed under the pure daddishness of Noah’s gaze. “I mean, no. No, I don’t. Of course I don’t. I was cool with Christian, wasn’t I? Even played along with your whole pretend-him-and-Max-aren’t-screwing act, when he first moved in, didn’t I? And I’m cool with Max, too. And hell, even that Dylan guy is okay when he’s not looking like he’s gonna punch me in the face.”
“You kind of deserve that. But fine, okay. You’re cool with Christian and Max and Dylan. I’ll accept that. So why not Bobby?”
“You’re going to get mad at me if I say.”
“I’m already mad. So spit it out.”
Austin balled his hands into fists. Twisted his lips. Squeezed his eyes shut. The bottled-up feeling didn’t take long to explode. “Because he’s such a fucking fag.”
Noah recoiled, blinking in shock, then took a deep breath. “Oookay.” He cast a quick look over his shoulder, as if the pride police were about to bust down the door and arrest them both. “So, what was that about being fine with gay people, again?”
Great, now Austin felt like an asshole. “Ugh. You know what I mean. There’s gay people, and then there’s fags. I mean, Christian kind of walks the line a little with the sweater vests, but he’s generally pretty cool. He keeps it toned down, you know? Not R—Bobby. He’s right in your face with it.” Austin flapped his hand on his wrist in demonstration. “Like, shit, I don’t want to be seen in public with a guy in fucking lip gloss, okay? Does that really make me a bigot?”
He realized after he said it that he didn’t really mean it as a rhetorical question, even though he’d phrased it as one.
Did it make him a bigot?
Noah sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not an expert on this shit, I just . . .” He scrubbed his face. “Bobby’s my friend, and he’s our roommate, and I’m sick of seeing him sneak by your room like a kicked puppy. So, look. I didn’t want to do this, but here it is. Whatever your issue with him is, you need to fucking sort it out, or you need to find a new place to live.”
Even though Austin had been planning for this exact eventuality, it still hurt like an elbow to the gut. “You’re kicking me out?” he asked, unable to smother the pathetic insecurity creeping into his voice.
“Looks like it.” Noah didn’t make eye contact. His voice was cold.
“But I’ve lived here longest out of anybody here other than you!”
“I know that. You’re also the only one here being a complete fucking prick.”
Really? Okay, so he’d been rude to Ro—Bobby, sure, but was the way he felt really that beyond the pale? Okay, maybe among his roommates. But that didn’t mean it didn’t make logical sense in, y’know, the real world. Anywhere else, most people would agree that the way Bobby was acting and dressing was weird, even if some of them didn’t necessarily approve of Austin’s behaviour. Hell, the guys on his team at SFU would probably have acted wo
rse than him. If anything, Austin had been pretty considerate to make himself scarce over the last couple weeks. “So that’s it, then,” he said, dejected.
Noah didn’t even turn from staring at the door. “Yep. Consider this your one month’s notice. You’ve got until the first of June to either fix your attitude and make things right with Bobby, or find a new place.”
Austin didn’t much feel like looking Noah in the eyes just then, either. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Noah echoed, and stood. “Good talk.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
One month.
One month, one month, one month. Austin recited it to himself as he peeled a banana and dropped it into the blender. He wasn’t even sure what it meant. One month until he was out of this gay hellhole? One month until he was homeless and friendless? One month to clean up his act and get his head on—ha!—straight?
A scoop of protein powder. A big blob of peanut butter. Flax seeds.
Buzz. Pour.
He didn’t know. Well, at least he had a month to figure it out.
His first instinct was to cut and run, hit Craigslist and find a new place to live pronto. A month wasn’t long to look, and his budget was, uh, about a third of the price of even the worst housing Vancouver had to offer, but he might be able to manage it if he got creative. And relaxed his already low standards.
Except that if he cut and run now, he had a feeling Noah wouldn’t be giving him any glowing recommendations.
Stays to himself, doesn’t party, pays rent mostly on time—and he’s a homophobe, because that’s what we’re calling it now.
Well, maybe Noah’s bad review would be good, in the eyes of some.
If Austin felt like rooming with a bunch of Bible-thumper types. He groaned as he grabbed his gym bag and headed out the front door, protein shake in hand. Wasn’t there a middle ground between accepting everything and everyone and being one of those assholes with the GOD HATES FAGS signs? The question gave him something to distract him while he waited for his bus.
The guys on his team, he’d concluded by the time he took his seat. Insulting gay guys was pretty much expected on the ice, after all. Maybe one of them had a room going. If SFU had fraternities like a normal university, this wouldn’t even be a problem. Austin would have been well settled in a frat house by now with a couple peon pledges to do his bidding. Instead, he was about to get kicked out of the gayest house in Vancouver if he didn’t learn how to magically be cool with a dude in lip gloss and a bra.
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