“Why me? Why can’t you and Linc sit down and chat about your concerns?” It seemed plausible the head coach should be the one trying to convince a former player to pry into a current player’s life.
“Because the two of you know one another,” Teddy explained. “Trust me, something like this will be better received coming from you. You’ll be able to temper your words in case he’s not as accepting as he seems.”
“Oh, that won’t be a problem.” I offered the waitress a weak smile when she brought back our meals. Burgers and a mountain of fries. Everything the players would kill to get their hands on right about now.
“Glad to hear it.” He smiled, and it took me a moment to realize he’d mistaken my quip about Linc not having an issue with Zach being gay as my agreement to talk to him about it. “If you don’t have a current number for him, let me know and I’ll get it to you. It’d probably be easiest if he knows what he’s walking into. After all, none of us planned on the clusterfuck this show is turning into. I want to whip these guys into shape so we don’t wind up at the bottom of the standings this year, and now I’m stuck playing mediator and therapist.”
“Yeah, well, we all have to do our part,” I grumbled, shoving a fistful of fries into my mouth to shut myself up before I told Teddy how half-cocked his plan was.
Zach was going to be pissed at me for sharing his private business, which he rightfully should be. It wasn’t my place to step in without him asking for help, but Teddy was right; we had a job to do and we needed to get ahead of the chaos if we had any hope of keeping our players focused on the job.
Lincoln was going to be irritated, because he’d feel cornered into opening up about his own past and why perception and reality were two very different things. No way was this going to go off the way Teddy saw it in his mind. But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized it was the best plan, the only plan, we had.
Teddy might have asked because he wanted Zach to find balance in his life, but Lincoln was one of the few men who knew what Zach was going through. He knew the weight of carrying around a secret and pretending to be someone you’re not in the public eye. Maybe, just maybe, Zach could learn from Lincoln’s mistakes without dragging other people down with him.
“Fine. Yeah, I’ll talk to him.”
“Great!” Teddy tucked into his food while I pushed mine to the center of the table. My stomach twisted, wondering why I was willing to torture myself to help Zach salvage his career before destroying his body.
* * *
By the next morning,I’d made exactly zero progress on my promises to Teddy. I hadn’t called Lincoln and Zach had been waiting for me to unlock the weight room when I got in this morning. Teddy wanted me to send him back to the dorms for a bit, tell him to give his body a rest, but instead, I’d ushered him in and shook my head when he headed straight for the treadmill.
As I’d tossed and turned my way through the night, I told myself all Zach needed was a friendly nudge to talk and then I wouldn’t need Lincoln’s help. Yeah, maybe that was the answer.
“Hey Zach,” I hollered, my voice echoing off the walls. “Why don’t you take a break and come in here?”
That’s when I noticed his shadow standing nearby. I had no clue how the players put up with having cameras following them around the campus. Whoever in the league made the decision that it’d be good for the league’s image to base a reality TV show on one team’s pre-season prep each year deserved to be kick squarely in the dick. Those guys were a distraction during the best of times, but this year, they had the potential to completely derail a rising star’s career.
It didn’t help matters at all that the shadow was both the problem and the solution in this case. It seemed way too fucking convenient that his ex-boyfriend happened to get a job working for the show. And, of course, he was following Zach toward my office. Dammit. I waved him off. “Sorry, son, this is a closed-door meeting. You’ll have to wait out here.”
The shadow—Griffin—set down his camera and plopped his ass into a chair. I almost felt bad when his shoulders slumped forward in defeat, but fuck that. His job was to get dirt on the player he was assigned to follow and my job, apparently, was to find a way to scrub that dirt off and make it go away. Or at least figure out how to help Zach hide it.
If he was serious about this guy, no way in hell was I going to try and convince Zach to send him packing. Zach wiped the sweat from his brow. His shirt was already soaked through—another sign he was pushing too hard. An injury right now could end his season. And this early in his career, he could find himself on the unemployment line. “Everything okay, Nix?”
“Good, good,” I assured him. “Please, have a seat.”
His steps were tentative, as though he was gearing up for an ass chewing. And he might be, depending on how our conversation went. The cocksure attitude from last year vanished the moment we gave him a heads-up that he’d been recorded talking to the team captain on the beach.
That was supposed to be a private conversation, but we were all quickly learning there would be no such thing except in league-approved areas that weren’t wired for video and sound. Now, he was constantly on alert, worried that his position on the team was in jeopardy because of what he did on his own time.
“How are you holding up?” I asked. The question felt forced, and I hoped he knew me well enough to know it was because I wasn’t comfortable talking about anything other than football and was doing this under duress, not because I didn’t care about his answer.
“Feeling good,” he responded confidently. “Doing everything I can to improve my start on the forty. Competition’s tight this year.”
“Zach, I can assure you, you have nothing to worry about there.” I cleared my throat, straightened a stack of papers on my desk, wiggled my mouse to wake up my computer. Anything to put off this conversation. “What I mean is, how are you doing after what Coach told you the first day of camp? I know you said you just want to play ball, but frankly, we’re concerned that you’re pushing yourself so you don’t have to face the prospect of the show outing you.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” he insisted, his voice wavering. He dragged his hands through his hair, carefully avoiding making eye contact. “I just…um…you know, I’m trying to focus on what really matters. And right now, the only thing that matters is making sure my ass isn’t called up to Coach’s office next week. You said yourself that people are expecting more out of me this year, and that’s going to get even worse as soon as they find out I’m gay. Basically, I’m doing what you told me I need to do.”
“That may be true, but I don’t believe I told you to abuse your body,” I pointed out. “You’ll be no use to anyone if you don’t take a break to let your muscles heal. I’m going to talk to Coach, but I think it’d be for the best if you sit out practices today.”
“I can’t do that, Nix,” he argued, growing more agitated. This is why I rarely discussed anything other than training routines, injury prevention, and game preparation. I reached out to calm him down, not surprised when he flinched away from me. In his mind, I’d become the enemy. I was the one standing between him and his goals. “I have to be on that field. Aren’t you guys the ones telling us every play matters during camp?”
My head started to throb as my blood pressure skyrocketed. I clenched my jaw as I rounded the desk, trying to hide my frustration over not getting through to Zach. I was on his side here, both professionally and personally. But how did you help someone who seemed so damn set on not being helped?
“Zach, take the break,” I pleaded with him.
If I had to, I’d tell him flat-out that Coach would be pissed off if he didn’t back off a bit.
