by Layla Reyne
His emotional crutches propelled him to his feet. He wasn’t nearly as good a man as Alex, but he was still a better swimmer. “Bet I can beat you,” he said.
Alex’s eyes shot to his, and Ryan’s head whipped around. “At backstroke?” Ryan said.
“At all the strokes.” His gaze never left Alex’s, which turned dagger-sharp.
Bas sat up from where he’d been splayed out across the adjacent starting block. “IM?”
“That’s right.” He glanced at Bas, then back to Alex. “You’ve been practicing with the other swimmers, and you’ve been swimming free in the mornings.” Alex’s eyes widened before narrowing, irate surprise at being caught and called out. Dane added fuel to the fire. “Two hundred meters; you’re good for it.”
Bas stood and inched closer. “Except for the fact he just swam three two hundreds, on top of two fours.”
Two-handed, Alex pushed out of the water and onto the deck. “I’m good. Let’s do this.”
“Hey.” Ryan slapped Dane’s shoulder. “Is this just the two of you or can anyone play?”
They’d all finish behind their individual medley specialist, but that wasn’t Dane’s concern. He only needed to beat one person. He donned his cap and goggles and held his arms out wide. “Come one, come all. It’s open IM day.”
“What are you fools doing?” Coach hollered.
“Just a little friendly race,” Ryan shouted back.
Coach waved them off and returned to his books.
Bas stepped to Alex’s side, whispering something Dane couldn’t hear. Alex nodded and Bas slapped his ass, sending a bolt of jealousy searing through Dane. After three days together, Dane knew there was nothing more than friendship between Alex and Bas, but the casual touches and easy bromance was something he could never get away with. His parents or sponsors would find out, they’d put two and two together, and he’d be finished.
“We gonna do this?” Alex said, claiming the Lane Five block.
Dane shook out his arms and took the block a lane over, Bas and Ryan on either side of them, and Sean and Mike in the outside lanes.
“Two lanes open,” Dane said to Mo, who stood off to the side next to Jacob. “You want in, old man? Pup?”
Mo rolled his eyes, while Jacob, looking like a deer in the headlights, furiously shook his ridiculous, half-shaven head.
“Your call, then,” Alex said to Jacob. “Grab my whistle.”
In his starting stance, Dane glanced right, catching Alex’s gaze through clear goggles. Fiery anger stared back at him. Better than the other kind of heat.
Dane refocused forward, the whistle blew, and he reacted on instinct, diving off and hitting the water clean. Arms in a V, legs dolphin kicking, he surfaced fifteen meters later, his head, chest, and arms lifting out of the water, mouth gulping in thin air as he swam fly. He didn’t have to look right to know Bas led after the first lap. In his periphery, he spotted Alex ahead of him too, and his lead grew in the backstroke lap. But Dane pulled even in breaststroke, and by the splash of water on his other side, Ryan was right there with him. Ryan understood the pacing of this race best, whereas he and Alex were running on rage-fueled adrenaline. On his last lap, Dane zoned out everything but the curl of his arms overhead, the alternating kick of his legs, and the gulp of air every fourth stroke. When his fingers hit the wall, he broke the water’s surface, every muscle burning. Ryan was a half breath ahead, Alex and Bas a half breath behind, and the rest of the field was still hitting the wall.
Entertained applause filled the natatorium, but Dane only had eyes for Alex. He ripped off his cap and goggles and grinned smugly. “How’s third place feel?”
“How’s second feel?” he shot back, that beautiful tanned chest heaving.
“I wasn’t racing Ryan.”
Alex tossed his cap and goggles on deck. “Then I’m happy with the silver.” His flashing eyes, however, told a different story. He’d only deferred to tick Dane off.
Dane rubbed the unspoken truth in. “Victory lap?” he said to Ryan.
They leisurely swam to the other end of the pool and back, cooling down. Alex was nowhere in sight when Mo gave him a hand out of the water. “I said get your shit together. Not stir more up.”
“Needed to get it out of my system.” The anger, the resentment, the jealousy, and most of all, the boiling desire.
Dane was merely simmering as they entered the locker room, his emotions dulled by the adrenaline of the win. “How about we continue the victory lap back at the dorm?” he said to Ryan. “I’ve got enough airplane bottles left for a decent celebration.”
“Aww, yeah.”
“Pup?” he offered Jacob.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Dane turned and tried his hardest to ignore the fact that Alex was dripping wet from a shower and dressed only in damp boxer briefs. “Celebrating.”
“By getting drunk? Aren’t you having enough trouble with the altitude?”
“You worry about you. I’ll worry about me.”
“And you just offered booze to Jacob, who’s underage and barely recovered from the last round of hazing. So yes, I’m going to worry about my team, which you are also on.”
Simmer heated to boiling again—anger, resentment, jealousy, and desire blazing—and Dane leaned into his captain’s face, inciting him. “Bet you wish I wasn’t.”
Showing more restraint than he had the other day, Alex pressed his lips together and clenched his jaw, holding in whatever he wanted to say.
Dane bent to pick up his bag. “Ever the self-sacrificing diplomat.”
A strong hand gripped his arm and hauled him back up. “You’re right,” Alex spat. “I wish you weren’t on my team. You might be the fastest, but you’re a privileged ass who thinks he owns this place when all you do is cause trouble. Between the press in our locker room, the sponsors telling us how to do our jobs, and you hazing other teammates, you are not worth it.”
“What’d you say?”
“You. Are. Not. Worth. It.” Alex punctuated each word with a shove to his chest, harder than before, backing Dane into the corner of the lockers.
Dane seethed and a rare curse rolled off his tongue. “Fuck you, Cantu.”
Alex wore a grin smug enough to match Dane’s earlier one. “You wish.”
Truer words had never been spoken. And Dane reacted to erase them.
With a fist to Alex’s face.
Knuckles met jaw, and pain radiated up Dane’s arm. He barreled out of the corner and landed another hook to Alex’s chin before the other man fought back, swinging hard and giving as good as he got. They traded hits and jabs, moving their brawl into the main aisle as shouts echoed around them.
A violent minute later, Bas and Mo yanked them apart. Dane struggled in Mo’s hold, and on the wet floor, with both of them barefoot, they tumbled backward, over the bench at the end of the nearest row.
A terrifying crack rent the din of noise, and once they hit the ground, Dane rolled off Mo and quickly assessed himself for injuries. Feeling no pain, he scrambled up and turned to check on Mo.
And almost lost his lunch.
His mentor lay on the floor, leg at an unholy angle, bone protruding through the skin.
Behind him, Alex gasped out a horrified “Fuck me.”
He couldn’t have been more right.
Eff them all indeed.
The current in the endless pool stopped without warning, and Alex lurched forward, flexed palms slamming the wall. Torso lifting out of the water, he swiped at his eyes and pushed back his hair, not having bothered with a cap or goggles in his haste to forget the scene in the locker room.
It’d taken half a second to realize Mo’s leg was not supposed to be at that angle, and the rest of that second to realize how badly he’d fucked up. Bas hadn’t let him dwell. His best friend had pushed him forward, and with Dane’s help, they’d staunched the bleeding around the protruding bone and arranged Morris more comfortably until the
medics arrived. Coach had entered on their heels, disappointment etched in every wrinkle of his weathered face.
Alex had run from that look and from his teammates to the training pool, punishing himself with endless laps. He’d pushed through the body aches from the fight with Dane and tried to blank his mind with the repeated strokes, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t block out what he knew was his fault. Dios mio, is this what Bas had felt like four years ago, thinking he’d let down the team? Except Bas’s relationship drama at the last Olympics had nothing on Alex’s present mistake. They’d lost focus then, versus losing a teammate today. Four years from now, would Alex be blaming himself for lost medals too? He’d been the one who said their goal was medals, as many as they could bring home, and he’d just gone and cost them as many as four. Four events Mo could no longer swim. Because Alex had let his emotions get away from him, had failed to act like a captain. He’d cost the team their senior member and cost a friend and mentor his chance at more medals.
Squatting at the edge of the pool, Coach looked ready to lay into him too. “You want to tell me what happened?”
Alex levered up and landed like a beached seal on the deck, his jellied arms giving out. Years past embarrassment around Coach, he rolled over and dragged himself upright with his core. “You haven’t heard it from the rest of the team already?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
He prodded his torso and face, checking bruises. “I fucked up.”
“Ryan said you were justified.”
“Dane offered Ryan and Jacob drinks in his room. I told him to cut it out.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re the captain.” He shifted back on his haunches. “How’d it turn into a brawl?”
“I was tired of him prancing around like he owns the place and using his sponsorships to get what he wants. I told him as much.”
“What else?”
“Why the fuck does there have to be something else? He acts like a privileged ass. I told him so.” Alex didn’t check his words or tone, the same anger that drove him to blows with Dane breaking through the cloud of guilt.
“This isn’t like you, Cantu,” Coach said, brow furrowed. “There’s more behind that hair-trigger temper lately, and I think it goes back to our conversation earlier this week. I checked your schedule. You’ve picked up more than a few extra office shifts.”
He tried to hold Coach’s stare, to bluff as he’d done the other day, but Coach was onto him. What was the use now? The damage was done. Exhaustion catching up to him, fight bleeding out of him, Alex fell backward onto the deck, wincing as he scrubbed his hands over his tender face. “I’m gone this summer when they need me most at home. I have to bank the extra money so they can hire someone for the farm.”
“I don’t remember there being an issue last Olympics.”
“Mom wasn’t sick then, and Carla’s only around part-time now because she’s in school.” He waved a hand in the soupy air above him. “And I’m not sleeping or eating much with all the Dane shit going on.”
Coach stared down at him. “The Dane shit? You mean more than the press and sponsors?”
“Yeah, there’s more, and it’s not good. We were at the same developmental training camp as teens. Didn’t end well there either.” While Coach knew about his sexual orientation, it wasn’t Alex’s place to out Dane. But he felt it only fair that Coach understood there was a history of bad blood between him and Dane. And that Dane wasn’t the only one at fault in the fight today. “I baited him in the locker room. It was my fault too.”
“How are you going to make this work?”
Alex righted himself again, groaning as a wave of pain rolled from his head down. “Avoid each other as much as possible.”
Coach shook his head. “Impossible with him on your relay team.”
He whipped his head to the side, making the sledgehammer inside it worsen. His rising voice also didn’t help. “What about Ryan? He beat both of us.”
“Because he was rested and because IM is his event. He’s your backup, not Mo’s. You know as well as I do that Dane’s our best freestyle anchor and our best shot at relay gold.”
Hope circling the drain, Alex clutched desperately for any excuse. “But he’s in five other events already.”
“He can swim one more.” Coach stood. “I’m overruling you, Cantu. I want gold for medley relay this time, not silver. Now, back to my original question, can you make this work?”
Alex pushed to his feet. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”
“Good. Mo’s asking for you.”
“He’s in medical?”
“For about another hour.” Coach clapped him on the back. “Don’t make me sorry for nominating you as captain.”
“I won’t, sir.” The last thing Alex wanted to do was let Coach down.
More than he already had.
Alex rode the elevator up to USOTC’s medical facility. While not a full treatment center, it had everything needed for emergency triage. An injured athlete could be treated, stabilized, then moved to the appropriate hospital or care facility to be seen by a specialist. The elevator doors slid open, and Alex stepped out. Halfway down the hallway, Dane sat in a row of blue plastic chairs, elbows to his knees, head hanging in his hands.
Alex knew the position well, having spent more than a few hours like that outside the chemo treatment room, waiting on his mom. He cleared his throat, making his presence known.
Dane dropped his hands and turned his discolored face to him, looking roughed up and utterly devastated. Alex’s first instinct, despite his lingering pain and anger, was to run to him. To take Dane in his arms and chase away that ravaged look. As the oldest of four kids, Alex was a de facto third parent. Care and protection came naturally, and with Dane, his first love who would always hold a piece of his heart, those instincts were amplified, despite their rocky past.
He’d seen Dane like this once before—the night before summer training camp had ended. Alex had returned to their room and found Dane huddled on the end of his twin bed—shoulders slumped, chest heaving, face blotchy and wet with tears. Alex hadn’t understood or cared why he was upset. He’d just gone to Dane, and they’d spent their last night together lost in kisses and tangled bodies. The next day, Dane had turned his back on him, and Alex had been too hurt and furious to put it together then. The truth had later sunk in, but the rejection still stung.
That remembered burn, and the lingering aches from their fight, throttled down Alex’s instincts. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and approached slowly. “How is he?”
“Tibia’s broken in two places. Muscle damage too, though they won’t know the full extent of it until he’s seen by a specialist.”
“Shit.” Alex collapsed into the chair next to him.
And Dane shot out of his, as if he couldn’t stand to sit next to him. But then he began to pace the width of the hallway, cracking his knuckles, nervous habits of his that Alex had forgotten. “He still won’t get his gold,” Dane said. “All he’s ever done is look out for me, and I just knocked him out of the Olympics and robbed him of the one thing he doesn’t have yet.”
“He has gold medals, Dane. A cabinet full of them.”
Dane stopped in front of him, arms hanging at his sides in resignation. “But not a medley relay gold.” Eyes more gray than blue under the fluorescent lights, they swirled like heavy storm clouds, blame and misery churning.
Weak, wanting to help, Alex looked away. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Go from being a total asshole—”
“I believe the term you used was ‘privileged ass.’”
Alex startled at the curse, even if it was a quote from him. He’d been too riled up to be surprised earlier, but now that things were calmer, the rarity gave him pause. As far as Alex knew, Dane only cursed during sex, when he forgot to be a famous preacher’s son and let himself feel and say anything. Fuck me, please and fuck yeah had
been his favorite phrases that lost summer, growled in a sex-roughened drawl.
“You were saying?” Dane prompted, jerking Alex out of his memories.
Rewinding the conversation, he picked up where he’d left off. “How do you go from being a privileged ass who was ready to fight Mo for the relay spot, to this guy?”
Dane sat back down, angled toward him. “This guy?”
“One who cares so deeply about other people.”
“Problem is,” Dane said, holding his gaze, “I don’t know how to put the people I care about first when they should be.” It was clear in his stormy eyes and gravelly voice that he wasn’t only talking about Morris.
“Then change that,” Alex urged.
As awful as Mo’s injury was, if it was the thing that woke Dane up, that shattered the self-centered shell his egomaniacal parents had built around him, then maybe some good would come out of it.
“I can’t.”
Or he could continue to live in his gilded cage, always too afraid to make a stand against those who’d locked him inside. Were the perks really worth it?
Disheartened, Alex tore his gaze away and stared at the bland white wall across the hallway. “‘I can’t’ is what privileged asses use as an excuse.”
“Cantu, that you?” Mo called from inside the room.
“I’ll be there in a sec,” he shouted over his shoulder into the room, then turned back to Dane. “You’re on the relay team.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Coach. I lobbied for Ryan.”
Ignoring Dane’s sharp inhale, Alex stood and entered Mo’s room. And inhaled sharply himself. Mo’s leg was wrapped in a full temporary cast, held aloft in a sling, and he was hooked up to at least half a dozen monitors and IVs. Painkillers, if Alex had to guess, judging by the glassy look in his eyes.