“Some of us even talk there.”
He tilted his head. “Dangerous.”
“Extremely.” I started walking but glanced back. “But I’m willing to risk it.”
We sat on the couch, looking at each other.
“I was…” Nix stopped and took a long drink.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
He picked at the label on his bottle. My knee started bouncing, so I pressed my hand on top to stop it. “You’ve had boyfriends since you joined the Condors, right?”
“You heard?” He looked up and grinned. “Were you checking on me?”
“Guilty of curiosity. The league’s rumor mill is shameless.”
“True. Your divorce sounded rough. I’m sorry.”
“She was…” I let out a slow breath. “We had problems early on.”
“She left with Dirksen, right? The football player?”
“Yeah. I found out they’d been fucking for at least a year.”
His eyes blazed. “Goddamn cheaters. I’ve been through it too.”
“At least once it happens, you know you deserve better.”
He clinked his bottle against mine. “You can say that again.”
We went silent, the quiet full of everything left unsaid.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “There’s something I need to say, but I don’t even know how to start without sounding like an idiot. I’m terrible at this.”
“At what?”
My stomach clenched so hard I grunted. “Talking. Feelings. Whatever this is.”
“Pretty sure you just started. Go ahead.”
I stared at my hands and took two slow breaths before I could meet his eyes. “You were my best friend. I never thought about… this. Us. Which sounds stupid, considering how much time we spent together. I noticed everything about you and didn’t know why.”
His brow creased, and he nodded for me to keep going.
“I hated it when we fought. I always hoped we’d work things out, but we never did. Then life happened. We grew even further apart. I used to think I was mad because you never reached out, but I didn’t either. Yesterday I realized I was probably angrier at myself than at you.”
He nodded. “So we both sucked at communication? Shocking, given our reputations for say-nothing post-game interviews.”
I laughed, relieved the tension had eased. “Yeah, we were always real poets. Unless we were chirping, I guess.”
“Maybe that’s our true love language.”
I took a moment before saying, “When they teamed us up for this outreach thing, I wasn’t happy. I thought it would be awkward as hell. Instead, once you were there again, it felt right.” I hesitated, worried I’d said too much. But if he wanted to talk, I had to keep going. “I love what we do in bed, too. Not only the physical stuff, either. It’s you, Nix. That’s what makes it so…”
His lips twitched. “Exceptional? Award-winning? Five-star Yelp reviews?”
