“Soccer was my favorite sport,” Russell said. “I played for a few years in high school.”
I leaned forward. “And which sport did you hate?” I asked.
Russell grinned. “Baseball!” he said, like he was finally admitting a secret. “Unlike the rest of the Youngs. If I ever get to have kids, I’m going to have to pray they’re not obsessed with baseball.”
I could practically hear Blake’s internal thought process. He wanted a family of his own, and he would definitely be happy to be a sports dad. He pretty much never actually admitted how much he wanted that, though, and I wasn’t surprised when he turned the conversation back around.
He grunted into his beer. “Baseball’s great. And football,” he said, but when he turned his eyes up, I saw the smile on his face. “Hockey, though, I like watching, but I never got into playing.”
“He’s just saying that for my benefit,” I told Russell. “I love hockey.”
“That’s why you have so many questions about the athletes I work with, right? And whether I had to touch their butts that day?”
Russell laughed. “Hockey players are hot,” he said, a big smile on his face. I knew he was just out of the closet, and it reminded me how good it felt to be open about yourself for the first time.
“Hockey players are hot,” I agreed. “Can’t argue about that.”
“Maybe you’ll marry one,” Blake told Russell, “and end up with a bunch of little hockey players to raise.”
They both smiled at each other, and the nice tingly feeling in my gut clenched as my heartrate jumped.
There were just too many emotions clanging into each other all of a sudden.
Fucking weird.
Without thinking, I grabbed my beer and jumped to my feet. “Let’s dance,” I said. “Anyone?”
Blake frowned at me. “Why would this time be any different than every other night I spent with you at this club?”
“Because Russell wants you to dance with us,” I said, then smiled encouragingly to Russell. “Right?”
Russell laughed. “I mean, Blake can do whatever he wants. But I’ll dance, sure! It actually sounds fun.”
I turned to Blake and pouted my lips. It was kind of a cheap trick, since I knew he liked that, even though I wasn’t supposed to know it. “One dance?” I asked. “For the hell of it.”
Blake turned his beer glass upside down, gulping down the last of it. “Fine,” he relented. “But you owe me another beer as soon as the song is over.”
* * *
BLAKE
“I’m just goingto run to the bathroom,” Russell said as we all stepped onto the dance floor. “Be right back!”
He hurried away, and Casey and I stood on the edge of the growing crowd of dancing bodies. Casey naturally moved his hips, nodding his head in a way that he was casually dancing and not dancing at the same time, while I stood there, stiff like I always was on a dance floor.
“I can’t believe I finally got your ass dancing,” Casey said, raising his voice over the music. He was wearing a Henley, unbuttoned at the top to show a hint of dark chest hair and tight enough to compliment his muscles. “Or I guess Russell should get the credit.”
I pointed down at my feet. “Who said I was dancing?”
Casey laughed. “You’ll have to if you want that beer,” he said, then stepped closer to me.
My heart kicked. There was some shitty pop music on the speakers and these annoying white lights flashing across the dance floor, but all of that disappeared. It was me and Casey again, just a few inches apart from each other, and the desire flared to claim him as mine.
I sucked in a sharp breath. Between him and Russell, I was feeling a lot of things I didn’t expect to feel that night.
“Here,” Casey said, then took my wrists and swayed them from side to side. “You just have to find the beat and then move with it.”
I grunted as I stepped to the side, then back. “I know the basics.”
