“Danny, you in there?” The voice calling me was familiar but not the one I’d expected. Or at least, the one I’d hoped for. “Danny, it’s West. If you can hear me, can you answer the door, please? I promise everything is okay, but I need you to answer the door.”
For a moment I debated staying on the floor in my room and pretending I wasn’t home. But I didn’t want to cause any moreproblems or send anyone on a manhunt. It was time to face things head-on and get them over with.
Hopefully, I’d still have Charlie by the end of it.
And maybe Ezra, but I doubted it. I’d probably ruined everything by running away. After all, why would he want to be with someone who treated him like that? Especially after what his wanker of an ex-husband had done.
Standing up slowly and shaking out my feet where they’d started to turn numb, I trudged towards the front door. My pulse was so loud I could feel it in my ears, and despite what the quiet, logical part of my brain was trying to tell me, the only emotion I registered was fear.
I’d played with plenty of guys throughout my career who wouldn’t have thought twice about ripping the shit out of me for being gay, and while I desperately wanted the Knights to be different, part of me refused to believe that would be the case. All the evidence might point in the opposite direction, but I still didn’t know if that evidence applied to me.
West was a really nice guy, but I’d been a dickhead to him in the past. Maybe that would make the difference.
There was only one way to find out.
I cracked the door open a fraction, then pulled it a little wider to see a very concerned hooker standing on my doorstep, his face so pinched with worry I wondered if I should warn him about getting wrinkles. He put his hand out as soon as he saw me, and I flinched away. But all that happened was West pushing the door open and grabbing me around the shoulders, dragging me into a hug so crushing it felt like he was trying to break all my ribs.
“Oh thank God,” he said. “I hoped you’d be here.”
“Can’t breathe,” I said with a wheezing breath. “Too tight.”
“Shit, sorry.” He released me gently, putting both of his massive hands on my shoulders so he could look me straight in the eye. He towered over me, and it felt a little like comingface-to-face with a carthorse or one of the fucking enormous mountain rescue dogs. “I’m so sorry, Danny. I really didn’t mean to scare you like that.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s obviously not.” He glanced over my shoulder. “Can I come in?”
“Er, yeah. Sure.” I stepped back to let him in and realised I was still holding the cleaning cloth. I shoved it into the pocket of my shorts because it was the only place to put it without abandoning it somewhere random.
West took his trainers off while I watched him, still struggling to work out what the fuck was going on. He’d apologised, but I had no idea why. It wasn’t his fault. He clearly wasn’t angry with me, just really fucking worried, and that had completely thrown me. Not that I honestly believed West was going to be angry, but since my brain had decided that was what was going to happen, it was struggling to adjust to the reality it was being presented with.
It was like I was in some fucking alternative universe to the one the loudest part of me had been expecting.
Maybe things were going to be different.
“Do you want a drink?” I asked, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. And when in doubt, it was easiest to default to being polite.
“I’ll take a cup of tea if you’ve got some. If not, water’s fine.”
“Yeah, I can make tea.” I didn’t drink a lot of tea, but Charlie did, so I always had some in. Luckily, he’d always drunk it black, so we hadn’t needed to try and find him a different type of milk to use. “How’d you take it?”
“Milk, two sugars, please.”
“Cool, grab a seat. I’ll be there in a second.”
West followed me as I walked into the living room, taking a seat on the sofa as I meandered through to the kitchen, makingtea on autopilot. There was a bottle of vodka on the counter that I’d bought for Ezra and me to share, and I debated having some to take the edge off. But I didn’t know how much it would help.
“Here,” I said as I wandered back through with West’s tea and a glass of water for myself.
“Cheers.” He smiled at me as he took it, waiting for me to sit down. Which I did. Slowly. After wondering how easy it would be for me to run away instead.
There was a long pause as West sipped his tea, his enormous hands wrapped around the mug. “When I first came out to my parents, I was twenty-one and I didn’t think they’d care because I thought they loved me. Turns out, that love was conditional on me being straight, the same as it was with my brother. I haven’t spoken to them since.” He nodded slowly and took another sip of his tea. “I’ve never been afraid of being bi, but it took me a long time to fully embrace it and be unapologetically myself. It was hard at first, really hard, because I always thought it would be easier to keep the peace and never push back, because rugby’s a team sport and you can’t play on a team if nobody wants you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing hard. “I didn’t make it easy for you.”
“No, but you weren’t the worst by a long stretch. And I’m guessing your questions weren’t meant in the way I took them. And Mason too.”
“No.” I shook my head, my cheeks flushing. Great, West was gonna know exactly what I liked just from the state of me. Maybe Devon and I could form some secret club of bottoms. “I’ve always known something was different, but I ignored it, y’know? My dad… well, he’s a fucking piece of shit. That’s all you need to know. And I’ve had teammates who weren’t much better either, especially when I was in under-eighteens. It was all tits this, pussy that, and I tried to pretend it was what I wanted because, like you said, who wants to be left out?”
