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That as much as I hated Devin for what he’d done to me, I hated myself for the part I’d played in it even more?

I didn’t have the first clue how to say any of that, but I owed it to him to try.

“Okay, umm. Yeah. Lemme just …” I eased down off my knees to sit on the edge of the bed, wincing at the slight twinge in my ass. “Uh, so you asked if I’d ever been with a teammate before, and I said yes.”

Mikey blew out a breath and sat down next to me. “Yeah, I remember.”

“There were two,” I clarified. “The first genuinely does not matter. Like I said before, it was just getting off or whatever. The second one, though …” I dropped my head forward, fixing my eyes on my left thumb as I picked at the skin around the nail bed until it was raw and bleeding.

“We were together—or as much as you can ever be with someone when you have to keep it a secret. And when the other guy hates himself for liking dick.”

That was the root of most of my guilt. As much as Devin desired me, he hated himself for it. And even knowing how much he heated everything about us, I made it so damn easy for him to keep coming back for more.

I let him use me, while I used him in return.

I could admit to myself now I’d made things out to be more than they ever were. There was simply no world where Devin was ever going to accept that he liked men. That, specifically, he liked me. We were always going to have to be a secret.

It occurred to me now that if Mikey and I got through this, we’d have to stay a secret, too.

Bell and Ethan had paved the way for teammates to be in a relationship, but Ethan had been at the end of his career—he hadn’t even gotten to finish out his final season before injury forced him into early retirement. Their relationship had been a scandal, but with Ethan no longer playing, their biggest, most vocal critics soon moved on. The league hadn’t needed to involve itself.

I was under no illusion the same would be true for Mikey and me.

Given my name, my career would survive the fallout. But Mikey? He was a fourth-liner on a two-way contract. If the league decided to punish us, he’d be the one they’d go after.

I couldn’t be the reason his dreams went up in rainbow-colored smoke.

I realized my knee had started bouncing when Mikey leaned over and set his hand down on top of it, exerting just enough pressure to make me go still.

“What happened, Cal?”

I looked down at his hand, my eyes tracing over the bumps of his knuckles and the bones branching down toward his wrist. I just needed five more seconds. Five seconds where I didn’t have to look at Mikey and tell him about the worst moment of my life.

“Cal?” He squeezed my knee, then let go, linking his hands together and dropping them between his own knees.

“Right,” I said, scratching my fingers up and down my thighs, leaving red, raised welts on my skin. On the third pass, I was steady enough to continue. “One night, we were … uh … you know, and I said that I loved him.”

I looked up to find Mikey’s brows pinched, his mouth turned down in a pronounced frown. Then he glanced away, sniffing, clueing me into the fact that I’d hurt him.

Though I couldn’t understand why.

“Gimme a second” he whispered.

I gave him exactly three before I slid off the bed and settled myself between his legs. He kept his face turned away, forcing me to duck into his line of sight. “Please just listen to me for a sec. Let me explain.” With another sniff, he nodded, and I continued. “Okay, this is really bad. But I’m telling the truth. I swear.”

“I think you’re the only person I know who’s physically incapable of lying,” he said, cracking a small, sad smile.

I shook my head. “Oh no. I lie all the time.”

“No you don’t,” he argued.

“I own our apartment,” I blurted out. “There is no landlord. I’m the landlord. It’s mine. I tricked you into living with me.”

His mouth dropped open. “What?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, waving away his concern. This was small potatoes compared to the other thing. “I’ll explain everything later. Right now, I need to tell you why I freaked out. Because if you don’t understand, I think it might break us, and I can’t lose you. So please let me just explain, okay?”

Slowly, Mikey nodded, though I could tell from his expression he was still processing the bomb I’d just dropped on him. God, I was really going for broke tonight, wasn’t I? It would be a miracle if he still wanted me after all this.