All those questions had existed before Aidan had shone that bright light inside Lane, making it impossible to be willfully blind any longer, but now they hit a lot harder. A boyfriend and a boyfriend helovedshouldn’t be all that different, but turned out, the feelings were the magic ingredient.
“Hey,” Trevor said, behind him, and Lane turned around. Biting his lip so he wouldn’t just blurt it out. Because holy hell, how had he been this dumb?
Of course he loved Trevor.
Too soon for Trevor to possibly return the feelings, of course, but he’d been the one to want to make things official. To stop pretending that what they were doing was friends with benefits. So, there was definite hope for the future.
Lane just needed them to win tomorrow.
Tokeepwinning.
“You okay?” Trevor said, as Lane wrapped a hand around his wrist and tugged him towards the elevator.
Normally, during the regular season, the team had the choice of staying at their own homes the night before games, but for the playoffs, Aidan and Nate had made the executive decision that they all needed to stay in the hotel.
Lane hadn’t worried about it, but now he was convinced he needed to figure out a way to sneak into Trevor’s room.
“Yeah, just . . . you think anyone’s gonna know if you don’t sleep in your room tonight?” Lane asked.
Trevor tilted his head up, grinning. “Oh, yeah, is that how it’s gonna be?” Like it was just like any other evening.
“Well, yeah,” Lane said. Before five minutes ago he hadn’t even really considered where Trevor was going to sleep. Butobviously, Trevor was going to be sleeping next to him. He loved him.Holy shit.
“Maybe you should sneak intomyroom,” Trevor said, smirking. “Since normally, we shareyourroom.”
It had never mattered to Lane less which room it was, as long as it was Trevor next to him in the bed. “Sure,” he said.
Trevor just laughed. “You sure you’re okay? Nervous?”
“No, not at all,” Lane lied. “We have this. We’re gonna get it done.”
Twelve hours later, he wished he’d been a little less confident sounding.
Turned out Aidan had known what the fuck he was talking about when he said he needed to know how to carve through the Piranhas’ defense, because the Piranhas’ defense was carvingthemup.
Sitting there with a big fat zero on the board was one thing at the end of the first quarter.
It was another thing to be sitting there, at the end of the third quarter with the same fucking zero on the board.
With Scott Calloway running the defense, the Piranhas had been focusing on bulking up their line, and they were big and fast and tearing through the Thunder’s admittedly great offensive line, especially Ackers’ spot to the right of Aidan.
By the end of the second three-and-out with almost no yards gained, Zane had semi-permanently assigned Lane to blocking duty, giving the Thunder a little extra coverage to deal with the Piranhas’ insanely good defensive line.
But the problem with that was it fucked up all their great two–tight end formations, and as good as Trevor was, he was still struggling with getting double-teamed and getting out into the flat, working as essentially the second receiver to Mo.
“Shit,” Aidan muttered as he flopped down on the bench midway through the third quarter.
The Thunder’s defense had kept the game close—the Piranhas were only up ten points—but if the offense couldn’t move the ball reliably and then get into the end zone, it didn’t matter how close they kept the game.
“We could run the ball more,” Levi suggested. “With Lane on that side, Jaden’s getting some decent yardage in some situations.”
Lane didn’t say that “decent” meant like three yards, and if they ran even more than they already were, there’d be nothing to keep the Piranhas honest. They’d sell out, pulling in their safeties closer, in order to stop the run even more than they already were.
It might work briefly, but it wasn’t a game-winning solution.
Aidan knew it too, because he made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.
“Maybe a turnover—” Mo started to say and Aidan looked over at him, killing the rest of his sentence.
