Like he wasactuallyconcerned that Lane might push him away. Lane wanted to laugh, maybe even cry a little about it.
How did he say,I’ve only wanted this for five-plus years?without freaking Trevor out or scaring him away?
Dude, you already tried that and it didn’t work,Lane chided himself.
“Yeah,” Lane said, equally as soft. Cleared his throat. What he wanted to do was take Trevor’s arm and pull him back into the privacy of his apartment, taste the banana and frozen berries of his protein shake on his tongue. What heneededto do was drive to the practice facility. They had meetings. They had workouts. Practice. Video study.
“Good.” Trevor returned to his side of the car, grinning over at Lane. “Because I’m going to keep doing it.”
“In . . . in public?” Lane regretted his words the second after they came out of his mouth, because Trevor’s smile dimmed a little.
“Not necessarily,” Trevor said, shrugging. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Well, you don’t have to. Not right now.”
Lane wasn’t going to cry about it if Trevor hadn’t considered being serious yet. He’d spent five years waiting for Trevor and also never, ever expecting to get him. So he could be patient. In fact, patience was the one thing he had in spades.
“I did tell the rookies about us,” Trevor said. “I wanted to, and well, Iwantedto.”
Lane reached over and squeezed his knee. It was still a revelation to him that he coulddothis now—touch Trevor thisway, unbidden without permission, because Trevorlikedit, too. “That’s good,” Lane said, meaning it. “I’m glad you did.”
“Right, it’s good.” The sunny, confident smile was back, in spades, and it was so good to bask in it as Lane drove them to the practice facility.
Good, too, to spend the drive discussing their first opponent, the Piranhas.
“They’re having a bit of a down year, but they took down Burrow and the Bengals pretty easily,” Trevor said.
“Yeah, from halftime on, they controlled that game,” Lane agreed. “Coach Dawson’s a threat, no matter what the rest of the season looks like.”
Trevor nodded as Lane pulled into the parking lot.
Before climbing out of the car, Trevor glanced back at him, and Lane swore the look on his face felt the same as when he’d kissed him only forty minutes before.
The same kind of look; the same kind of feeling.
And it stuck with Lane all through the morning. Through their workouts. Through lunch. When Lane nudged Trevor’s knee under the table as they ate their chicken wraps, listening to Mo gently poke Aidan about Riley and the Condors losing in the first round.
“Bet you wanted to face them again,” Mo teased. “Best your little bro again.”
Aidan made a face. “Actually, no. He’d probably just beat me again.”
Levi stepped into the middle of it and volunteered that Landry had texted him after the game that he and Riley were probably coming to their next game.
“Our parents are probably coming to the AFC Championship, if we make it that far,” Trevor volunteered.
Aidan shot him a steely look. “We can’t look past the Piranhas. They’re a really tough opponent, and I don’t expect them to godown easy, or to show up next Sunday with their regular setup. They’re gonna find some new wrinkles—and you know what that means.”
Levi groaned dramatically. Aidan smacked him on the side. “That’s not the right attitude.”
Shooting his boyfriend some certified and absolutely lethal puppy dog eyes, Levi said, “You wanna get me alone and teach me about how wrong I am, Flynn?”
Aidan rolled his eyes. “You’re the worst.”
“You love me,” Levi said.
And the look they exchanged after was enough to prove to anyone witnessing it that he really, really did.
“Seriously, though, it’s film time,” Aidan said, pushing his chair away from the table and standing. “I expect to see you all there.”
