by Layla Reyne
“Alex is my best friend,” Bas said. “Has been since we roomed and swam together at SC, but he’s not my type.”
“Because he’s gay?” one reporter asked.
“Because he’s Hispanic?” said another.
The opposite of affronted, Bas laughed louder. “Now you’re just being silly. I don’t care about either of those things. I’m bi and live in California where almost half the population is Hispanic. Sexuality and heritage have nothing to do with it. I’d never date Alex because he’s too damn bossy.” Bas playfully shoved Alex’s shoulder, and the crowd laughed with him. With them.
As Dane silently raged.
To be that easygoing, to be that carefree, to focus so little on what other people thought, to live and love as they pleased . . . The jealousy nearly strangled him.
“Alex, anyone special then?”
Rage and jealousy instantly banked, all of Dane’s attention snapped to his captain. He shouldn’t care about the answer—there was zero chance for him with Alex, regardless of yesterday’s spark—but he still held his breath, waiting on the edge of his seat for Alex’s answer.
“No one at the moment.”
Dane exhaled slowly through his nose and clenched teeth, not letting the crowd see his immense relief.
“Any team issues with your sexuality?”
“No, it hasn’t come up,” Alex answered.
Dane was impressed at how much a nonissue it was with the squad. He hadn’t heard or observed a single slur or askance look from team members or coaches. Then again, Alex and Bas had hit the swimming scene together in California, where one’s sexual orientation wasn’t as big a deal as in North Carolina. They’d never hidden their sexuality, and those who’d been on the team last go-round wouldn’t think twice about it. Romantically together or not, Alex and Bas presented a united front that anyone would be crazy to challenge.
“It must be an honor, representing America’s Hispanic and LGBTQ communities?”
Alex was more gracious with his answer than in the locker room last week. “It is.” He smiled and threw an arm around Bas’s shoulders. “We’re going to make this country and all of our respective communities proud.” As much as Dane knew Alex hated the cameras, his captain could turn it on when needed, and the heck of it was, Alex was still one hundred percent real. Same with Bas.
“Dane, how’s it feel to be part of such a landmark diverse team?”
“It’s great.” A practiced line but not a lie. “It’s important for kids, athletes, and adults to have role models who represent them, in all forms.”
“Like yourself?” Not a complimentary tone, nor a reporter Dane recognized. “Living at home with your parents, a serial dater, a broken engagement. Your high school sweetheart, was it?”
Alex’s spine went rigid again as he dropped his arm from around Bas’s shoulders. Mouth dry as the desert, Dane racked his brain for the canned answer. There was often a gossip-mongering pap in the crowd, looking for dirt on him or his family for the tabloids. This wasn’t the first time his abysmal love life had been brought up at a press conference. But it was the first time with Alex sitting by his side. The person Dane had hurt most with that particular lie. Fitting, then, that Alex’s back was to Dane as he answered. And thank God since Dane didn’t think he could deliver the lie if he had to look into Alex’s eyes and do it.
He searched the crowd for the reporter who’d asked the question, gaze catching on his parents at the back of the room. Their faces were calm, not the least bit concerned. They expected him to be the good son, their puppet, and dispose of the problem. He found the reporter, met his eyes, and answered as practiced. “We were young and in love. She went to Harvard, I went to Carolina, and long distance didn’t work out, not with our academic and athletic commitments. With so much of my time and energy devoted to swimming, I’m a terrible boyfriend. Nothing, no one, has ever stuck.”
Except the man beside him, but he couldn’t say that. Couldn’t even look Alex’s direction for fear of giving away the truth.
The pap opened his mouth to follow up, but another reporter jumped in and the conversation moved on, Coach and Alex answering team questions again. Dane, however, struggled in the mire of paralyzing fear, lingering anger, and mounting jealousy for a life he couldn’t have.
Alex’s words rattled around in his brain. “‘I can’t’ is what privileged asses use as an excuse.”
He was right. Dane could have the life he wanted. He just had to cut the strings. Say no to his parents and turn his back on the only life he’d ever known, save for one summer a decade ago when another path, another life, had presented itself.
A life with a boy he’d wanted so very badly then.
The man he still wanted so very badly now.
“This could be the last Olympics for all three of you. What comes next?”
“Swimming professionally and running my tattoo shop,” Bas answered. “I’ve got a tablet full of sketches back in my room, if anyone’s interested.”
The crowd laughed, then quieted when Alex leaned toward the mic. “I’ll swim as long as I can, then it’ll be double duty for me as a coach and teacher.”
“I’m trying to talk him into moving to California and joining my club,” Bas put in. “Get the gang back together more than just every four years.”
They hammed it up for the excited crowd, then looked over their shoulders at Dane, waiting for his answer. Like his parents, their expressions were bored, expecting the same ole canned response. That he’d either join his father’s ministry or his mother’s company. He’d been hocking himself and swimwear for years; nothing new there. Looking out at the press, they wore the same bored expressions. Even his parents had tuned him out—no prideful gleam in his father’s eye, no camera-ready smile on his mother’s face, about an answer that should make them happy.
An answer they already knew.
But Dane didn’t know it any longer. Not with two men beside him who had carved their own paths, who were living the life they wanted. Who were real. By contrast, Dane had only ever followed the path set out for him. He could choose to follow a different one, if he wanted it bad enough. If he wanted to be real, like them.
And he did.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“I’m sorry,” said the reporter who’d asked the question. “What was that?”
“I said, I don’t know.”
His parents pulled an immediate one-eighty, no longer bored. His father fumed, his mother glowered. And Alex . . . Dane didn’t know what that look was on his handsome face—pity, pride, surprise, a mix of things it hurt to even consider.
Dane spoke directly into the mic. “I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. Some role model that makes me, huh?”
A wall of sound hit him, his name shouted from all directions, but the blood rushing in his ears, the pounding of his racing heart, drowned it out.
“I’m sorry. Excuse me.” He stood and bolted toward the stage stairs.
One step down, Alex grabbed him by the arm. “Dane, wait.”
He shrugged out of the grip. “I’m sorry,” he said, not meeting his gaze, afraid of what he might see there. “I gotta get out of here.” As fast of his trembling legs would carry him, he hustled the rest of the way offstage, out of the room, and toward the emergency exit at the end of the hallway.
His hand was on the door’s push bar when his father’s booming church voice rang out behind him. “Son! What in God’s name was that?”
Dane rounded on him, fury lighting. “Careful, Dad. Don’t want anyone to hear the country’s minister taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
“What part of ‘act like it’ didn’t you understand?” his mother admonished, catching up to his father’s long strides.
“All of it,” he snapped back.
“You have a script to follow. One that’s been approved by us, Roger, and your sponsors.”
“I’m tired of living my life according to your fucki
ng script.”
“Language!” his father bellowed, while his mother glared up at him like she was seven feet tall, far scarier than her five-two-with-heels let on. “You wouldn’t have this life, including your sponsorships and trust fund, if not for our script, so you better think long and hard before you go off it again.”
“Some life,” he muttered.
“What was that?”
“I said, yes, ma’am.” There was no use arguing when she was on a tear. He’d seen his father lose too many of those fights.
She stepped back, satisfied.
“Get back in there and clean up your mess,” his father added.
“Yes, sir.”
“Everything okay here?” Roger called from several feet behind them. Without a second’s hesitation, Dane’s parents turned their backs on him and rushed to assure his publicist. Not a care for their son who’d finally acknowledged the life they’d created for him was a lie, the last thing he wanted. He was just another tool in their empire, a puppet to perform according to their script.
Fuck the script.
They wanted to turn their backs on him? Well, he’d do the thing he should have done years ago. The thing they couldn’t even imagine.
He waited for them to make their grand reentry into the event room, so sure he’d follow, then did the opposite of what they expected.
Shrugging out of his coat and tie, he tossed them on the ground and slammed out the exit door, emergency sirens wailing behind him.
Alex hid in the shadowed corner, out of sight, as Dane’s parents stormed past and back into the press room. While Dane had bowed to their wishes, Alex’s old friend fury was tempered, coming to understand Dane’s choices were far from freely made. Given the threats the Ellises leveled against their twenty-six-year-old son, he could only imagine what they’d used to leverage a teenage Dane back into his camera-ready, conservative life. Back into the mold they’d created for him—the script, which it sounded like Dane had grown to hate. Had he wanted Dane to stand up to his parents a decade ago? Yes. Would Alex have done differently, if his family hadn’t been so supportive? He couldn’t say.
When Dane didn’t trail past him in his parents’ blustering wake, Alex poked his head around the corner and was greeted with a familiar sight—Dane’s back, walking away from him. At the same time, the picture was wholly unfamiliar. Spine straight, strides long, Dane hit the exit door bar with startling force, a high-pitched alarm sounding his escape. Outside, his hair gleamed like fire for a few short seconds before being snuffed out, Dane ducking into a cab that peeled away.
Alex shot back around the corner, nearly running into Bas and Ryan who were hustling out of the press room.
“What just happened?” Bas said, as the exit door slammed closed.
“He left,” Alex gasped in shock.
Dane had made a different choice, gotten into a different car.
“Where’d he go?” Ryan asked.
Alex blinked rapidly and gave his head a hard shake, confirming this was in fact reality. When the scene didn’t evaporate like his nightmares always did, he turned his gaze to his teammates. Then over their shoulders, down the hallway, to Dane’s parents making their way out of the press room and through the gathering crowd.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said, words forming before his brain consciously made the decision.
Was there any other decision to make? Maybe this was the start of Dane standing up for himself, for the real Dane Ellis, the one Alex used to know and love. In which case, Alex wanted to be there to see and encourage that man’s return. And if it was the start of a breakdown, one Alex had contributed to over the past week, ostracizing and taking his anger out on Dane? Well then, Alex needed to be there to clean up that mess too. He owed it to his team. They couldn’t afford to lose another teammate because of his poor decisions.
He yanked off his coat and tie, tossing them on the floor with Dane’s. “Can you hold them off?” he asked Bas, side-eying the approaching Ellis army. “Give me a ten-minute head start?”
Wallet in hand, Bas dug out a wad of cash and slapped it into Alex’s palm. “Fare money. Go. I’ll do what I can here. Call me.”
“Thanks.” He folded his fingers over the bills and ran full tilt for the door, Coach’s booming “What the hell is going on?” clashing with Mrs. Ellis’s “Where’s my son?” behind him.
He dove into the first cab in line. “Did you see the tall redheaded guy who just left?”
“Yeah, left in a hurry,” the driver said.
“Can you get that cab’s driver on the horn and find out where they’re headed?” He shoved the wad of cash at the driver. “Please, it’s important.”
“You ain’t gonna attack him or anything, are you?”
“No,” Alex said. “I’m going to thank him.”
The cab stopped at the curb to the River Walk’s main entrance, and Alex cursed under his breath. Either this was the one San Antonio tourist trap Dane knew off the top of his head, or he’d told the cabbie to take him somewhere crowded where he could get lost. Alex was betting on the latter.
Then again, Alex also bet it was easier for him to get lost in the crowd here than Dane. Wrinkled dress sleeves rolled up, tan forearms bared, and hair mussed from running his hands through it the entire cab ride here, Alex looked like any other local out for a weekend drink. Except for his height, which put him noticeably above most. He stopped into a tourist shop for sunglasses and a ball cap, regretfully a Spurs one, feeling like a traitor to his Nuggets the instant he put it on his head. But it did the trick. No one gave him a second look as he reentered the stream of people and let it usher him along the winding stone path by the river. As his eyes scanned for his wayward teammate, Alex thought back over the disastrous week, comparing this Olympics to the last.
Four years ago, he’d garnered attention for being a minority athlete on a predominately white team. This go-round, there was more diversity, but everything else was magnified. Whether it was the captaincy or the solar flares thrown off by Dane’s celebrity, the crush of responsibility, the unrelenting media, and the poisonous team tension had overwhelmed him.
How much of that poison had he injected himself?
He groaned in acknowledgment. He’d fueled the tension from day one. He’d convinced Coach to keep Dane off his relay team, had lobbied hard against Dane when Mo had gone down, and once overruled, hadn’t let up punishing Dane. He’d hounded him in practice and, by his chill toward him out of the pool, recruited others to his cause. Not to say Dane, with his stunts at Trials, then in Colorado, and folding to his parents at the airport here, had done himself any favors. But Alex was just as guilty of poisoning the waters drowning their team. If he’d pushed too far and sunk their chances for more medals, he’d never forgive himself.
He had to find Dane. He couldn’t change the past, but he could try to control the present and maybe change the future. He was the captain. It was his responsibility.
Alex pulled out his phone, opened the list of team contacts, and scrolled down to Dane’s number, typing out a text.
Let’s talk. I want to call a truce.
Thumb hovering over Send, Alex hesitated, the vestiges of past betrayals lingering, but then the image of Dane storming out the exit door, turning his back on his parents today, rooted Alex firmly in the present. He pressed Send.
A ding sounded behind him.
Spinning the direction of the ringtone, he lifted his sunglasses and peered into the late-day shadows blanketing the stairs behind him. There, leaning against the stone wall, poorly disguised in an “I LOVE SAN ANTONIO” hoodie he must have bought on the fly, stood a tall familiar form with bright white teeth peeking out of glowing red scruff.
Dane was unmistakable.
As was the transaction he was about to partake in.
Fuck.
Cash in hand, Dane was about to exchange it for a baggie of joints. The teenage dealer looked like he hadn’t showered in a week, eyes red-rimmed and glaz
ed over.
Alex didn’t think twice, just acted. He crossed ten feet in five and stepped between them, facing the dealer. “He doesn’t want any.”
“That’s not what he said.”
“Alex, don’t,” Dane whispered low behind him.
“He’s changed his mind,” Alex said, ignoring his teammate, focused on the dealer. “He doesn’t want any,” he repeated.
“What are you, his bitch?” the dealer sneered in Spanish, likely thinking Dane wouldn’t understand. Stupid assumption, seeing as the kid was pastier white than Dane. Then again, he was also stoned out of his gourd.
Alex glanced around, making sure they weren’t drawing unwanted attention, then stepped forward, looming over the boy. “So what if I am?” he growled, continuing the Spanish charade. “Or maybe he’s mine. Either way, I said he doesn’t want any.” He switched back to English. “Get the fuck out of here.”
The kid erupted into stoned laughter. “Whatever, bitch. I’ll smoke it myself.” Pocketing the weed, he rolled his bloodshot eyes and stumbled back to the main drag.
Alex waited for the crowd to carry him off before rounding on Dane. His earlier intention to make peace once again took a back seat to rage. “What the fuck, Ellis? You know we have drug testing Monday.”
“It’s not doping.”
“It’s still against the rules, and Coach will bench your ass. I haven’t spent the last week training and running us into the ground, getting you integrated in the relay lineup, only for you to go and blow it for a fucking high.”
Dane slouched back against the stone wall. “You don’t want me on your team anyway. I’m not worth it.”
“Yeah, I said that last week when I was pissed at you for compromising the team,” he admitted. “And even though I came after you tonight to call a truce, I’m wondering now whether I should, because what you almost did, that would compromise the team worse.”
“You what?”
“Check your texts.” Hooking the sunglasses in his collar, Alex waited as Dane read his message.