I laughed. Benji was worse than Dean—and much gayer—but we loved him.
“All that, Benj. Definitely all that.”
“This is going to be incredible,” Benji said, rocking on the balls of his feet behind the bar.
“Or a complete disaster,” I said.
“Or that,” Finn agreed. “But we’ll be here either way.”
I looked around at these three men who’d become such an important part of my life through loving Jacks. They’d accepted me into their weird little family without question and were now promising to stand by us through whatever came next. My heart was full to overflowing looking at each of them.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice cracking. Jacks squeezed again, bolstering my strength in ways only he could ever do.
“Don’t thank us yet,” Mark said dryly. “Wait until you see how we handle the media circus that’s about to descend on this place.”
“This place? Barbacks?” Finn’s eyes widened. “You think they’ll comehere?”
“Kid,” Mark said, shaking his head like Finn was being adorably naive, “after tomorrow night, this place is going to be the most famous bar in Tampa Bay, maybe in all of Florida. I hope you’re ready for that level of attention. Shit, I hope we all are.”
“My Insta is going to explode!” Benji hopped a few times, clapping his fingertips together and squealing with glee. “They’ll need a new word beyond ‘viral.’ Oh . . . my . . . gawd. This is going to be amazing!”
I squeezed Jacks’s hand tighter.
“We’re ready,” he leaned over and whispered.
And for the first time since we’d made the decision, I believed it.
Chapter 39
Jacks
Iwalked into Barbacks at two-thirty, three hours before my shift started, because sitting alone in my apartment waiting for tonight’s press conference felt like a form of torture I wasn’t equipped to handle.
The afternoon crowd was thin—a few regulars nursing beers and watchingSportsCenter, while Mark did inventory behind the bar and Benji reorganized bottles with manic energy that suggested he was as wound up about tonight as I was.
“How did it go?” Finn asked the moment I walked through the door. He was supposed to be off today, but apparently he’d decided that moral support was more important than his scheduled day off.
“Better than we could have hoped,” I said, dropping onto a stool and accepting the beer Mark slid across the bar without being asked.
“Out with it. We need details,” Benji demanded,abandoning his bottle organization. “If you don’t start spilling right this instant, I’m going to vibrate out of my own skin.”
I took a long pull of beer, trying to organize the story Skyler had told me when he’d called on his way home from practice. His voice had been shaky with both relief and disbelief.
“Sky got to the rink early and asked Coach if he could have a team meeting before practice,” I started. “That wasn’t unusual until Sky asked for the full team, including the coaching staff, equipment guys, press team, and any front office personnel who could spare the time.”
“Oh, shit,” Benji muttered, his elbows planting onto the bar as his chin fell into cradling palms.
“And he just . . . told them. He said he was in a relationship with someone who made him happy, that it was serious, and that person happened to be a man. He said he was going public after their game and wanted the team family to hear it from him first.”
“How did they react?” Mark asked, with crossed arms and brow furrowed.
“Well,” I said, grinning at the memory of Skyler’s breathless retelling. “Before Sky could finish, Erik and Tyler jumped up and announced that anyone who had a problem with it could discuss theirconcerns with them personally. Erik’s exact words were, ‘We’ll shove you down the nearest toilet and yank you through the whole Tampa sewer system.’”
“That’s . . . graphic,” Finn observed.
“That’s Erik,” I said, chuckling at the mental image of the massive Viking fulfilling his promise. “But it gets better. Coach stepped forward and couldn’t figure out what to say, so he goes, ‘Damn straight . . . I mean . . . shit . . . damn right, not straight. I mean straight is fine if you’re . . . fuck. You know what I mean,’ which shattered the tension and sent everyone into hysterics.”
“Oh, my God. Poor Coach,” Benji said, covering his mouth. “Please tell me someone filmed this.”
