Page 35 of The Play

Okay maybe he’d been running a little.

But when he glanced back, it wasn’t Nate he spied but the last person he should be talking to. Especially alone. Especially after last night.

“What’s going on?” Grant asked as Deacon pushed the bathroom door open. Annoyingly, it was also empty, a whole empty line of urinals against one wall and two clearly empty stalls, their doors swinging open.

Shit.

Deacon crossed his arms over his chest. Even if he’d needed to pee, he was not going to whip his dick out with Grant right here.

Nope, that way lay disaster.

Not that this wasn’t already a semi-fucking disaster.

“What do you mean?” Deacon asked. More belligerently than he’d ever talked to the owner of his football team—or his old statistics tutor.

Grant frowned, but didn’t call him out for it. “You just took off so fast with that look on your face, I wasn’t sure if you were okay. If it was okay that I was here.”

“I can’t deny I’m surprised you showed,” Deacon said. That much was true.

“I wasn’t going to,” Grant admitted. “Seemed like crossing some lines that shouldn’t be crossed, but then Carter told me I deserved to be here, too, to celebrate with you guys. And you know what? He was right. I should be here, letting you know just how much it means that we’re kicking ass this year.”

“Right.” Deacon hated how right he was. Couldn’t quite believe Carter had known to vocalize it just that way to Grant.

But then Carter wasn’t stupid, when he wasn’t thinking with his overabundance of hormones.

“We are, and you should share in that.”

Grant cleared his throat awkwardly. “I didn’t know you and uh . . .Nate were so close.”

Was that the best they could do, then? Dance around what had happened the night before by talking about Nate? Who, surely Grant knew by now, he wasn’t really interested in. Not like that.

Grant had to know what Deacon was like when he wanted someone—because he’d made it so painfully clear who he wanted was Grant.

“We’re just friends,” Deacon said.

A crease had appeared between Grant’s brows. “Oh. Right. Of course.”

“Last night—” Deacon got out only two words, before Grant interrupted him.

It was both a blessing and a curse, because Deacon hadn’t been entirely sure what he was going to say.

But still, Grant didn’t let him say it.

“We’re not going to discuss last night,” Grant said. “But I just want to make it clear. It was . . .it was a mistake. A mistake that’s not going to happen again.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong.” Not technically, anyway. Even Deacon knew that fantasies were just that—fantasies. But what would have happened if Darcy hadn’t interrupted them?

They’d never know.

“But you wanted to.” Grant paused, hesitating. “I wanted to.”

Of course, he’d realized his feelings weren’t just his own. Especially after last night. But it still felt sweet to hear the truth.

Not that sweet, though.

Especially not when Grant was telling him it couldn’t happen again, in that emphatic, declarative tone.

Like he was both saying it and meaning it.

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