Down By Contact (Wilmington Breakers Book 1)

by Johnson, Sloan

  It would’ve been easy to tell him I was out, but I still didn’t trust his intentions. If he knew I’d given up on hiding my sexuality, would he think that was a pass to rekindle what we’d had before? Or would it be a slap in his face because I’d been so dead set on staying in the closet when we were together and now I wasn’t? The Griffin sitting next to me was nothing like the guy I remembered sharing a bed with almost every night for a year. He had a jaded edge to him. But the way he promised me he’d make sure I wasn’t exposed because of anything he’d done reminded me of the guy I’d fallen in love with. The man who, if I was honest, I still loved, even if that emotion was toxic. We needed to get to the house so I could take a walk along the beach and call Nate. I needed his advice.

  By the time we passed Benson, chilled silence got the better of me. Griffin stared out the window, a faraway look in his eyes like he was thinking about the trips we used to take every weekend. We’d head to the coast where it was easier for us to blend in and be together. It was still a gamble, but something about the ocean in front of us bolstered my confidence, making me believe no one would recognize me. There, we were just a couple of gay college kids hanging out. I decided to try for small talk rather than tear open every emotional scab that’d never healed. “You been back much?”

  “Nope.” Okay, so maybe he wasn’t in the mood to talk. He turned his shoulders toward the door, basically shutting me out. I wanted to strangle him for giving me the cold shoulder, but I couldn’t when I was the one who’d made it clear I didn’t want to talk.

  I tapped the steering wheel in time to a beat in my head, trying to figure out if this was the time to push him to open up a bit or let him stew in whatever was running through his mind. We were stuck together until the end of pre-season, and I wouldn’t be able to focus at all if I was constantly worried about whether or not I’d totally cocked this up. It was possible to be friends with someone you used to sleep with. Hell, one of PJ’s best friends was a former lover. We needed to get to that point and we needed to do it fast.

  “I’m out,” I said flatly, staring straight ahead. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Griffin’s head whip around to gape at me. “I just figured you should know so you’re not going out of your way to make sure I’m comfortable. Hell, if you try to hide who I am, it’s going to look like I’m trying to hide. Which I’m not.”

  “Wow. That’s not something I thought I’d ever hear you say.” I expected him to grill me about why I’d come out and why he hadn’t heard about it, but he went back to staring out the windows, leaving me to try and figure out what he was thinking about now. Every once in a while, he’d sigh and glance my way, turning back to the landscape as soon as our eyes met. Somehow, it’d been less awkward before I tried to thaw the glacier between us.

  By Wilmington, I’d worked up the courage to try again, this time keeping the focus on what’d brought us together. “Just so you know, my place has plenty of room. If you’d rather not take a cab back to the hotel every night when you’re done, you can crash in one of the spare rooms. I made sure to get it set up in case Nate and PJ wanted a place to escape their own chaotic life.”

  “That’s right, Nate’s dating a baseball player now.” It irritated me that he was more willing to talk about my brother’s love life than the fact I wasn’t a closeted asshole anymore. Then again, it was probably less painful for him to not think about our past. “Your dad must love that.”

  “Eh, it is what it is,” I said. The truth was, Dad wasn’t happy about it. No matter how much any of us told him Nate wasn’t the reason PJ was retiring as soon as possible, he still thought his son was pushing a great player out of the game before he was ready to go. In his mind, Nate was doing the same thing Mom had done years ago when Dad still wanted to play. “He doesn’t talk much about it one way or the other. Way to change the topic, by the way.”

  “What do you want me to say, Zach?” Griffin threw his hands in the air, hissing out a deep breath. “You know as well as I do that me staying at your place is a horrifically bad idea. I’m not supposed to interact with you other than what’s necessary for the show, and I’m pretty sure bunking at your place would be breaking the rules.”

  “Since when have you cared about that?” I scoffed. Griffin used to be the one who loved pushing the envelope, especially when it came to us. “Plus, deShawn told me that dude you were talking to before we left is staying at their house. I figured it’d be easier for everyone if you were there to catch whatever spontaneous moments they want for the show. Which, I have to tell you, isn’t going to happen. I just moved into my new place, my dad refuses to visit because he’s protesting me being out on my own where he can’t watch over me, my brother is down in Florida with his boyfriend, and I don’t have many friends on the team.”

  “That’s not like you,” Griffin said, a bit somberly. “You were always the guy who wanted to hang out with everyone.”

  “Yeah, well, shit changes,” I responded. “I used to do that because I figured no one would ask questions if we were friends. But up here, no one’s out to be buddies. There will be almost a hundred of us at training camp, all fighting for spots on the roster. Being friends doesn’t work so well until cuts are done. And no one trusts the rookies, especially those who go high in the draft. They’re either expecting us to be cocky assholes or waiting for us to prove we can’t hack it as a professional player. Either way, no one wants to kick back and hang out.”

  “Sounds lonely.” Griffin momentarily reached for my knee, pulling back when he realized what he was doing. “Sorry, reflex reaction.”

  “See, that’s what never made sense to me when you left.” Don’t do it, Zach. Shut your damn mouth. You were the one who didn’t want to talk about the past.

  “What’s that?” Griffin shifted in his seat, propping his knee on the console between us. I should’ve known he’d perk right up as soon as I broke my own rule about ignoring anything that happened before this morning. I considered ignoring his question, but I was the one who’d opened Pandora’s box.

  “You walked into the living room, told me you were out, and left,” I told him, swallowing around the lump in my throat. Thinking about that night still threw me for a loop. “You were always trying to take care of me, but then something snapped and you fucking left me. I stayed at your place for a week, telling myself you’d be back, but you never walked through the door. And then your parents showed up and told me you’d moved away and I wasn’t welcome at the apartment. They packed up all your stuff and that was the end of things. Everything was so out of character for you.”

  “Yeah, well as you pointed out, things change.” I’d fucked up and I knew it as soon as I saw his eyes harden. I should’ve followed my own advice and left the past in the past. But no, that would’ve been the smart thing to do. “It wasn’t as easy as you seem to think it was. Hell, I didn’t even make it to my car before I started bawling. And let me tell you, nothing draws attention quite like an effeminate guy sobbing against the side of a building because he feels like his heart’s going to shatter right there on the sidewalk.”

  In all the times I’d relived him leaving, not once had I allowed myself to think he’d been as crushed as I was about the breakup. If it hurt him that much, it didn’t make sense for him to go through with it.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he told me as I turned down the road leading to the beach. He gasped when he saw the expanse of sand and water in front of us. I was surprised it’d taken him that long to realize where we were. “You bought a place down here? Why?”

  “Because I’m a glutton for punishment,” I deadpanned. Nate had been pissed when I’d told him where I was looking for a place. He knew the significance of Wrightsville Beach and tried to talk me out of moving down here. Tried arguing that this wasn’t the type of town where someone of my stature should live, but I didn’t give two shits about status. I’d moved here because being so close to the first place where I realized how much Griffin meant t
o me was a constant reminder of why I had to put everything I had into football. As long as I was the best of the best, him leaving wasn’t for nothing. I turned onto my street, slowing as we passed the ice cream parlor and tattoo shop. Griffin rubbed his chest and I knew he was now on Memory Lane with me. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

  “Not like it matters,” he told me. “And seeing as I had all weekend to prepare myself for seeing you again and you were blindsided, I suppose turnabout’s fair play. Damn, this place hasn’t changed at all.”

  “Oh, it has, but not in ways you can see right away,” I responded cryptically. I turned into the driveway and killed the engine. Tilting my head back, I closed my eyes for a minute. There were so many things wrong with this picture. I pulled the keys out of the ignition and stepped out, refusing to look back at Griffin. I didn’t want him to see how badly I wanted to walk around the back of the car and take his hand in mine. I wanted to walk him around the side of the house and down the beach, but that was something the old us had done and no matter how good those memories were, I needed to remember the last one I had of him. The one where he slammed the door behind him as he left. “Here we are.”

  “Yep.” It seemed neither of us knew what to say about this situation. Griffin grabbed his camera bag and a duffel bag, following me into the house. The next week was going to bring me to life or kill me, but I wasn’t sure which.

  Five

  (Griffin)

  It was a good thing Zach didn’t tell me where we were headed when we left Raleigh. I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out sooner; probably because I’d been so damn caught up trying to convince myself I was really sitting in the car with Zach, driving down I-40 toward the ocean. It was a trip we’d made almost every weekend. And we’d often wound up in a shitty little hotel less than a mile down the road he now lived on. The man was trying to kill me. And it was working, if the constricting pain in my chest was anything to go by. I nodded and hummed as he guided me through a series of empty rooms. Even if he unpacked the boxes lined up against one wall of the dining room, I couldn’t imagine the house would look much different than it already did.

  “Why’d you buy such a big place if it’s just you?” I shouldn’t have asked, but I was curious. Hell, for all I knew, there was a boyfriend who’d be coming home at any moment. And that was what motivated me to open my mouth. He’d admitted to me on the drive down here that he was no longer in the closet, so it’d make sense that he was with someone. It was the only reason I could think of for him to let go of that closely guarded secret. If there was someone, I needed a bit of time to mentally prepare myself, because I had no right to be the jilted, jealous ex.

  Zach led me into the kitchen and tossed me a bottle of water. I wasn’t thirsty, but I figured this was his version of an olive branch. His icy demeanor had thawed a bit, but I knew it’d been a lapse in judgment on his part to delve into the past. As much as it killed me to try and close that box, I would for his sake. I cracked the lid and took a sip of water as he spoke.

  “I’m hoping Nate and PJ will spend part of the winter here,” Zach admitted, his cheeks turning an adorable shade of pink. He’d always been embarrassed about how close he and his brother were, but he’d never apologize for it. I was jealous of their relationship because I’d always wanted a sibling, but it wasn’t meant to be. “Who knows if that’ll happen, but if it does, they need their own space on a different floor and at the opposite end of the house. It’s sickening how in love they are, and let’s just say neither of them knows how to be discreet.”

  Still the king of timing that he’d always been, he blurted that out at the exact moment I lifted the water bottle to my lips. Not only did I choke, spitting water everywhere, but I spilled half the bottle down my chest. Nothing better than a wet shirt to make this just a bit more awkward. “Shit, I’m sorry. I guess I forgot that you have no filter when it comes to over-sharing.”

  I fanned the front of my shirt, then tried billowing it as if that’d help the cotton dry any faster. Zach reached out for my arm, pulling back at the last moment. “Why don’t you take that off and I’ll go find you a dry shirt you can wear?”

  “It’s fine, it’ll dry,” I argued, not wanting to put him out when we were just getting to a point where the simplest interactions weren’t painful.

  Zach waved me off and spun around, already on his way to get a clean shirt for me. With a sigh of resignation, I lifted the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head. When I looked up, Zach held a shirt limply in his hand and he seemed frozen in place. His eyes drifted down to the ink on the left side of my chest. The tattoo that matched the one on his own body. The tattoo I’d half expected him to have removed, but I knew was still there thanks to candid shots of him from over the years. Pictures I may or may not have saved to a hidden folder on my laptop. I reached up and ran my hand over the Celtic knot, wishing I was touching his skin instead of my own.

  Zach cleared his throat, tossed the shirt in my direction, and practically ran out of the room.

  I stood there, wondering what in the hell I was supposed to do now. I decided it was a good time to get some stock footage of his back porch, looking out over the beach. I pulled my camera out of my bag and found the perfect angle. I couldn’t look to the left, couldn’t shoot footage of the end of the beach I still thought of as ours. No one was getting a glimpse of that part of Zach’s life. My life. Our life.

  The sun had set and it was starting to get dark by the time Zach came out to find me. Shit, I hadn’t realized that much time had passed. Giles was going to be pissed when I turned in today’s tape and it was nothing but waves crashing against the shore.

  “That thing running?” Zach asked. I nodded and he cringed. “You do realize I’m probably the most boring player on the team, right? It’s not going to be easy for you to make me look interesting.”

  I powered down the camera and placed it back in the bag. He wasn’t supposed to talk to me when the camera was on, and if he wanted to talk, I’d find a reason for turning it off if Giles questioned me. I sat in the weathered wooden chair next to him, reaching for a beer from the bucket he’d set on the floor. For a while, the only sound was the water meeting the sand, grasses moving in the wind, and our breathing. One of us needed to say something, but I didn’t want to risk pissing him off again.

  “I did some thinking while I was upstairs,” he told me, still looking into the distance.

  “You mean you called Nate and asked him for permission to kick my ass,” I retorted, only half-joking. When he’d stormed out of the room, I had no doubt it was so he could call his twin.

  “Hell no!” Zach’s firm response echoed in the night. “Like I said, he’s busy doing his own thing now, and I wasn’t about to bother him with my problems. They’re on a mini-vacation right now. If anyone needs a getaway, it’s those two, but that’s not my story to tell. Believe it or not, I am capable of coming to my own conclusions without consulting Nate.”

  “I don’t doubt that a bit,” I confirmed. Zach played the dumb jock a lot of times because that’s what everyone expected from him. But deep down, there was an insanely intelligent guy who stupidly thought it was safer to hide behind a facade. “There were times I wondered if you knew you didn’t need to rely on him as much as you did. But that’s probably not what you were up there thinking about, was it?”

  “I suppose in a roundabout way, maybe it was,” Zach countered. “I know I said I didn’t want to talk about the past, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s going to be this big, hairy elephant on my back until we do talk about it.”

  “I think you’re mixing your metaphors,” I teased. Like I said, Zach was smart, so he probably meant the past was weighing on him as though he was trying to carry an elephant across the desert.

  “Yeah, well that’s never been my strong suit.” Self-deprecating Zach pissed me off. No matter how much anyone reassured him of his intellect, no matter his nearly perfect GPA, he clung to t
he words of whoever in his past told him he was just a dumb jock. But there’d be time to argue about that later, hopefully. “So anyway, back to what I was trying to say before you started interrupting me… I don’t think it’s such a good idea for us to not talk. Nate’s the one who’s convinced everything happens for a reason, and after seeing him and PJ together, maybe there’s something to his theory. I mean, even after I accidentally fucked things up for them, they still wound up getting back together. And if I hadn’t missed a message for him, who knows if Nate would’ve been there when PJ really needed him. Maybe this is like that.”

  I tipped the bottle to my lips, wincing at the already lukewarm brew. I wasn’t really a fan of beer, especially not when it warmed up, but I’d needed something to make it seem like I wasn’t as nervous as I was about being so close to him. “It’s an interesting theory. So now you want to talk?”

  I prayed he did, because I was dying to say something to him, but only when he was ready to listen to me. There were no delusions that everything would be perfect after, but he needed to hear me out. And as much as I wasn’t looking forward to it, I deserved whatever he wanted to say to me. He was right that I shouldn’t have left without talking to him first.