“That’s why the twins are going to be brutal to beat in the finals, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“They thought they had the Olympics in the bag until you fired them from the team. Now they’ve realized if they want to get there, they’ll have to work for it. It’ll make them hungry.”
I nodded, agreeing with Perry’s assessment. “Or mean.”
“That’s where my money’s going,” Alan said. “And you two, especially, need to be prepared for that. Whether we end up playing them or not, expect them to out us at the very least.”
“We already outed ourselves on the very first day.”
“Subtly, yes. They won’t be subtle. Or nice.” He looked directly at me. “Expect your past to come up.”
“I don’t care about my past.”
“People will.”
I sighed. “Curling Canada will, won’t they?”
“We need to be ready.”
“It doesn’t affect you. If they come for me, I can bow out. Robbie’s ready.”
“No,” Perry said. “Absolutely not.”
I scowled at him. “Of course he is.”
“No. I mean… Yes. He is. If we need him, he’ll be ready. But we aren’t pre-emptively letting those two assholes ruin your shot and you know Robbie would never agree to play under those circumstances anyway.” He turned to Alan. “What do you suggest?”
“Less subtlety, more us. We’ve been scrupulously proper like we never were for other tournaments. Force the questions before the twins can, and we control the narrative.”
I grinned. “So, like, be my usual not-at-all-private self?”
“Tastefully, if you can, precious.”
“Tastefully.” I nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Since there really is no way to tastefully slap my guys’ asses during a game—this wasn’t baseball, after all—I settled for proximity. Lots of it, whenever it didn’t interfere with the games we had left. So that by the time we had won enough games andpoints to be automatically moved on to the finals, the press had as many questions about the three of us as they did about the games.
We were sitting in the main room of our suite after the round robin was over, contemplating the inevitable questions, when Alan sighed. “I know it isn’t fair, Evan, but it’s going to come up. Even though it shouldn’t, and shouldn’t matter, it will, and it does.”
“I am aware how much it sucks, trust me.”
He sat on the coffee table in front of me, taking my hands.
“Talk to me, precious.”
“I can’t help wondering how it will be received. We know my sluttiness is going to come up. The twins will never let it not come up. So how will my brother feel? He’ll be in his hotel room watching with his wife and kids, and he’ll find all this out, and how will he feel?”
“You want to call him first?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should. Ev,” Perry said. “If he’s going to find out stuff he doesn’t already know, maybe he should hear it from you personally and not be blindsided, like you say, with his kids in the room.”
“Perry’s right.”
I knew he was. I knew I had to do that.
