Ryder leans in, elbows on the table. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t get even with him.”
“Do it Bergman-style,” Axel says. “Stealthy as hell. You’re sneakier than all of us. If anyone can get revenge on a guy and put him in his place while looking like an angel, it’s you.”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“You can,” Ryder says. “Let off some steam. You aren’t someone made to take bullshit with a smile, Oliver. Give it back to him. Set him straight.”
God, I’d love to. But I can’t…can I?
I look to Ren. “You understand. It’s different, the stakes are higher when you’re in front of all those people, when you know anything you do could end up in some tabloid.”
“I do know,” he says. “So be your sweet, charming self to him when you’re in front of Coach, the fans, the team. But he’s your neighbor. I mean, it’s like God’s handed him to you on a silver platter to do with what you will, O. When it’s the two of you, stop trying to mend fences with someone who doesn’t want to. I’ve had to deal with teammates like that before, and trust me, I kept my cool, but I had to find ways to vent so I could handle it.”
“You did?”
Ren laughs. “Heck, yes. I’m no saint, Ollie. Sure, I carry myself a certain way publicly, and you’ll keep doing that, too. But privately? I’m a loud-mouthed goofball with you guys, you know that. I beat the life out of a punching bag pretty much daily. I nerd out, act like a weirdo with my Shakespeare club; throw back more than a few beers on the porch with Frankie some nights until we’re giggling like fools. You have to blow off steam sometimes. You have to let yourself be a little bad when you spend so much time being so good. No one expects you to be perfect.”
“Except…you,” Ryder says gently.
Those words, they’re like a lock that clicks open something inside me. Something that’s been held back for years. My throat feels thick. My vision blurs with tears that threaten to spill over.
“Ollie.” Viggo sets a hand on my back. “You can’t do this to yourself. And that’s why you’ve got to start doing things differently. Hell, this Gavin guy might be exactly what you’ve needed.”
I laugh emptily, staring down at my hands, which are knotted so hard my knuckles are white. “For what? To drive me off the deep end?”
“Nah.” He leans in, wearing a familiar conspiratorial smile that I know all too well. “To remind you of exactly who you are.”
“What does that mean?”
Viggo throws a sly glance toward our brothers, then back at me. “It means, you, my dear Oliver, are long overdue for some mischief-making.”
7
GAVIN
Playlist: “Personal Jesus,” Johnny Cash
“Any time you want to tell me why I’m really over here, I’m all ears,” Mitch says, staring up at the stars from my back porch. “I’m not getting any younger, sitting around, waiting.”
I sigh before taking a sip of seltzer. “Can’t a man take pity on his neighbor who won’t nourish himself properly and feed him a home-cooked meal?”
Mitch throws me a withering glare. “I’m seventy-eight. Whatever damage I did, living a good life, drinking, smoking, eating delicious high-cholesterol foods, is done. Let me eat my Lean Cuisines in peace.”
“They’re pure sodium. They’re a heart attack wrapped in plastic.”
“You’re worse than my wife was!” he says, crossing himself, then blowing a kiss up at the stars. “Miss you, baby.”
“You’re here because you couldn’t say no to my chicken piccata.”
Mitch scoffs. “Sure. Okay.”
My chest tightens. It’s worse today, the crushing weight bearing down on me, expanding inside me, to the point that I feel like I can barely breathe. “I’m fucking losing it,” I blurt out.
Mitch glances my way, one silver-white eyebrow arched. He shifts his chair until it faces me directly. I decide to inspect the inside of my seltzer glass.
“Go on,” he says.
Clearing my throat, I give the stars an inspection next. Just as I left them last time. “The guy I was… The other night, the guy I was frustrated I had to team up with…”
Mitch is quiet, waiting for me.
“Coach made us co-captains, and she said we have to get along.”
“And?” he says after a beat.
“I can’t,” I mutter. “I can’t be friends with him.”
“Why not?”
Because one moment, that disturbingly honest voice inside me says, of letting down my guard, and I nearly crashed my mouth to his, to shut him up, to wipe the wounded, stricken look off his face and replace it with pleasure.
“Because he’s intolerable.”
Mitch rolls his eyes. “Let me guess. He’s happy. And good-looking. And kind.”
I glare at him. “If he was, that would be irrelevant. Seeing as we work together. And we’re fucking teammates. And he’s ten years younger than me.”
“And you like him. And it scared the shit out of you. So you bit his head off.”
“He’s fucking irritating! He whistles like a goddamn Disney character. He smiles all the time. He’s unnervingly upbeat. Biting his head off is all I can do.”
“Not true. You can apologize.”
I tug at my hair. “Fuck’s sake, Mitchell. It’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, it is,” Mitch says while hacking one of his wet, former-smoker coughs. “You’re just so used to making things complicated, Gav.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you’re lonely, but you won’t let anyone close. You’re miserable, but you won’t open your arms to happiness. You’re scared—”
“I’m not scared.”
“—and you won’t let anyone comfort you or help you figure out how it’s going to be okay.”
Because it’s not going to be.
I swallow roughly. “Bit harsh, Mitchell.”
He shrugs. “I’m too old to prevaricate. Now listen here. I don’t know much about you beyond what you let me see. I know your folks never come around. I know you left an entire life in England—friendships, a home, maybe a relationship—that you’d built for over a decade. I know you’re hurting in more ways than one, and you hate for people to see it. So you snarl and growl and put up your big cold walls to keep them from getting too close, from seeing the cracks in your armor.”
My throat thickens.
“But I got news for you, Gav.” Mitch sets his folded hands on his belly, his wedding ring that he’s never taken off glinting in the moonlight. “And I hate to sound like a Hallmark card, but the cracks are where the light shines through. You can deny it until you’re blue in the face, but everyone wants to be loved somehow, some way, for their little bit of warped, jagged light, for those cracks that have shaped who they are—not just their joy but their pain. Everyone wants to be seen.” He pauses, smoothing down his mustache. “Some folks are just very good at denying themselves that. And you are an expert.”