Page 61 of Unrivaled

He’d expected a bland modern cookie cutter of a house, with white siding or stucco and grass trimmed within an inch of its life, maybe a boxwood hedge with perfect ninety-degree corners.

He was half right. The housewasa modern monstrosity, bland and flat, though the stucco was gray.

But he’d been wrong about the yard. It didn’t have a lawn at all, but row upon row of planter boxes—mostly empty—with neat brick paths in between. The few remaining plants looked like some kind of squash.

For a few seconds Max stared. This had to be the wrong house. The sensible part of his brain refused to accept the possibility that Grady Armstrong grew his own vegetables.

He does get his eggs from a farm, the horrible, inconvenient part of Max’s brain chimed in.It’s not impossible that he gardens.

The rational part responded with an image of Grady as a grumpy old man, chasing rabbits out of his lettuce with a rake.

Fuck it. Every second he spent sitting there, his judgment of himself grew. He needed to act before his common sense reminded him what an idiot he was.

Max took out his phone.R u home?

Only a few seconds passed before the response came.Yeah. Why?

Open the door

This time the reply came quicker.What? No.Then,How did you even get my address?

Max bit his lip.Uh u gave it to me before that preseason game bud. Remember?

Don’t call me bud.

But the front door was opening, so obviously Grady wasn’t as bothered as he pretended.

That restored Max’s confidence, or enough of it that he could fake the rest. He sauntered up the front steps, smirking. “You really want me to use a pet name, eh? Babycakes? Honey bear?”

Grady rolled his eyes as he let Max into the house. His hair was damp at the ends, and he smelled like the stupidly fancy shampoo he’d bought for Max. “I want you to shut up.”

Max closed the door behind himself and grinned. “Well, you know how to make that happen.”

From the look in Grady’s eyes, he had every intention of cashing all the checks Max’s mouth was writing.

Then he frowned like a grumpy thunderstorm and said, “You’re injured.”

Max blinked at him. “Yeah, but I didn’t break my mouth, so….”

Grady huffed and stomped farther into the house. Max toed off his shoes and followed. The décor was inoffensive and functional, and that was the nicest thing he could say about it. At least the place had good natural light. “I’m not having sex with you when I don’t know what your injuries are.”

Translation—he didn’t know which ways to be careful to keep from aggravating something.

They were in his kitchen now—industrial white, twelve-foot tray ceilings. An herb-pot wall provided the only splash of color.

Max pursed his lips. He didn’t come here to be treated with kid gloves. He also didn’t want to examine his feelings about the possibility that Grady cared enough not to hurt him. “I’m not telling you my diagnosis.” Teams kept that shit to generic “upper-body injury” for a reason—so other teams couldn’t target their weaknesses.

“Then we’re not having sex.”

Oh, come on. “Seriously? Because I won’t tell you where I’m hurt?”

Grady’s nostrils flared. “If you don’t trust me not to hurt you, why thefuckare you sleeping with me?”

Max flinched. He could afford to be reckless with his heart, but not his body. Only, what was more reckless? Trusting that Grady wouldn’t use his injuries against him, or fucking him without talking about them?

Finally he relented. “I strained my neck so it’s hard to turn my head to the right. And I have a partial muscle tear in my left shoulder.”

Grady’s eyebrows doubled in size and volume. “And you were going to let me fuck your face in the foyer?”

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