“He’s in trouble if you return like that tomorrow,” I said when we headed back to our bags to drink and towel down.
“Told you I play best after being railed.” He pulled off his sweat-soaked shirt as he spoke, leaving the gleaming expanse of his chest to hammer those words straight to my dick. “If I win, you’ll have to send Kozel your apologies.”
“I can think of better things to do with my time. Do you do celebratory fucks, too, or just preparatory ones?”
Miles gave me that come-fuck-me look of his and pulled on a clean shirt. “Oh, you’re not the only one who’s versatile.”
The urge to shove him against the wire fence and kiss him was strong, but these were public courts, and even without Miles’s insistence on secrecy, I doubted the women playing on the next court would have been impressed by the sight of us making out. Especially since I would have struggled to keep it at making out. It was like every shred of energy I’d ever put into hating him had been transformed into desire, making keeping my hands off him a monumental effort.
From its place atop my bag, my phone buzzed, and I glanceddown to find Danny had already tried three times to reach me via video call.
“Damn.” I snatched up the phone. “I forgot it was Tuesday. It’s Danny,” I added with an apologetic grimace.
“You’re good,” Miles said. “I’m pretty done for the afternoon anyway.”
I answered the call, and Danny’s face appeared in the middle of the screen, greying hair washed out by artificial light. “Sorry,” I said in greeting. “I lost track of time.”
Danny lifted a hand in something between a salute and a wave. “Hey, I was about to give up on you. It’s getting late here.”
“We can reschedule if you like.”
“We can, but you’ve got less than a week until qualifying starts, so we need to focus. Have you watched those matches I sent through yet?”
Matches I had completely forgotten about. I shook my head. “Not yet, though in my defence you only sent them yesterday morning.”
“True,” he said with a small smile. “But you’ve got to keep building your strategies. Tennis is like chess, after all, you’ve got to practice building those points and thinking as many moves—”
“But that’s not how Mat plays,” Miles interrupted with a scowl.
For a moment, there was no sound but the rustle of leaves and the distantthwackof the ball from the next court. Then Danny’s expression glitched into a frown. “Is that Callahan again?”
“Yeah, he’s here.” I glanced up at Miles, a knot forming in my gut. “We were having a hit.”
Miles leaned into view with a tight smile. “Afternoon, Mr Lovett.”
“Callahan,” Danny said. “I’m surprised you’re not at Queen’s.”
“I was yesterday and I will be tomorrow, but today I needed a good hitting partner.”
“Well.” Danny seemed to chew this over. “If you’re having a hit, we can talk strategy later. Why don’t you set me up on the sideline somewhere so I can watch Mat while you boys play for a bit.”
Boys.Not a descriptor that had ever bothered me before, yet it felt deliberately belittling given what I knew he was presuming about us. Miles showed no sign he thought so and agreed with a shrug, yet when he headed to the other end of the court, he looked bored and annoyed, nothing like the Miles I’d been hitting with for the last hour. Failing to catch his eye, I searched for a way to prop up my phone on the sideline.
“You didn’t tell me Callahan was sticking around,” Danny said as I fetched a water bottle to lean him against.
“It didn’t seem important.”
“Not important that you’re hitting with a top-five player?” The phone speakers gave his laugh a tinny edge. “I’d have given you a different regimen if I’d known he was there.”
I knelt at the side of the court, using the excuse of finding a good angle for the phone not to answer.
With a creak of his office chair, Danny leaned his elbows on his desk, drawing closer to the screen. “Are you boys . . .?”
He left the question to trail off suggestively and I wasn’t sure if I was most annoyed by society’s eternal assumption that any man I spent time with I must also be fucking, or that Miles’s request for secrecy meant I had to lie. Although annoyance at the former certainly made the latter easier. “Are we what?” I asked curtly, turning the phone so he could see as much of the court as possible.
“You know what I mean, Mat. And you know I don’t care, except when it gets in the way of your game.”
“Well, since we’re not, it most certainly isn’t. How’s this?”
