“Yep.” He winked at her cockily. “I do whatever it takes to get the job done.”
Oh, he was good.
“Is this Atlanta’s year?” she asked.
“Hell yes,” he replied. “I’m calling it now. Come this February, there will be a new champion in the league.”
She laughed as I asked Jeremy, “Have they ever won before?”
“The Lightning has, but not since Hawkins has been on the team.”
I looked back to the field, but Anson was gone.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here. We’re on the red-eye tonight.”
He was right. I had no business obsessing over a closeted football player anyway.
As it turned out, not thinking about Anson and…well, not being a stalker for the first time in my life, was easier said than done. I looked him up on the internet…a lot. Anson was one of two sons. His dad died when he was young, and his mom struggled to make ends meet. When he was fourteen, his younger brother had been paralyzed in a trampoline accident. He and Anson were close. They lived together, and the brother—Elias—was getting his doctorate. There were videos of the brothers playing football, Elias in his chair, and he had a special kind of bike with a seat that held him in place so he could also ride dirt bikes with Anson.
Anson was a tight end, and while he was great at blocking, as he should be, he leaned a bit more toward being a receiver, as many of the greats did. Apparently his athleticism was insane and he could do it all.
Suddenly, I was a fucking ESPN addict.
On the screen, Anson was being interviewed, and he was saying, “I always knew football was my way out. The way to help my family, to provide for them and for myself. I don’t know how I got so lucky, why I was born with this talent, but it’s something I’m grateful for every second of my life. I’ll never take it for granted. I guess it’s a good thing I love the game so much. Outside of my family, there’s nothing I love more than the game.”
It was true. I heard it in his voice, saw it in his eyes. Anson loved football more than himself. Football and his family meant more to him than being true to who he was. Would his family care? Were they like mine, who had walked away from me, or was it only football that held Anson back? These were the kind of questions I asked myself over and over. I wanted to reach out to him, wanted him to know he wasn’t alone, but I was nervous too. I wasn’t sure it was my place, and the last thing I wanted was to make him uncomfortable or scared I would out him.
So instead, I tried to forget about him. Unfortunately, I wasn’t good at walking away from things I wanted.
Chapter Five
Anson
We were 2–0 so far. We were playing really good football, and while that should have been enough to keep me busy and distracted, my thoughts kept going back to that night at the hotel bar with Weston. Fuck, I wished I knew his full name. What I thought I would do with it was beyond me, and each time I tried to tell myself I would have used it, I usually just worked out harder or watched game film or anything else I could think of to distract my body from what it wanted.
Him.
Well, maybe any man. Just a man.
I was stuck between wishing I’d never met him and wondering what it would have been like to just…say…yes. Only once. I deserved that, didn’t I? To know what it was like. Every time my thoughts went that way, I began to panic because holy fuck, it wasn’t as if I could trust the guy. All he had to do was talk to one person, and I was screwed. That was always the point where I went back to wishing I’d never met him.
“Hawkins! Where the fuck are you right now?” Coach Jones yelled at me, and shit, I’d been spacing out. I was doing that a whole lot lately.
“Sorry. I’m good.” I returned my attention to what I was there to do.
After practice we hit the showers, then got dressed. “What the hell is up with you, Hawkins? Spacing out during practice is more my gig than yours,” Darren teased.
“I was savoring the quiet time away from your voice,” I ribbed him, getting a laugh from a few other guys.
“So you’re funny all of a sudden, huh?” He popped me with his towel.
“Ouch, damn it. You fucker.”
We playfully wrestled around a bit before pulling apart. “Wanna grab some food?” he asked. “I could eat a fucking house.”
“Sure.” I didn’t have anything else going on anyway.
Darren and I went out and grabbed dinner, and then I headed home. Elias wasn’t there. I found my laptop, turned on SportsCenter, and logged in to my email. When I didn’t see anything interesting, I set my computer aside and used my phone to scroll through Instagram. The picture I’d posted of Darren eating a lettuce-wrapped burger that was bigger than his head already had hundreds of thousands of likes and comments.
My DMs and requests were out of control. I rarely checked them, but every once in a while I scrolled through to see if anything jumped out at me. I was just about to close the app when I saw something that made my heart stop.
You have a message request from Senator Weston Calloway.
Weston…Weston. No, it wasn’t fucking possible, was it? His face was there, staring back at me, but maybe this was a sick joke. My hands began to shake, my skin going clammy. I flung my phone onto the couch as if it had electrocuted me, then immediately picked it up again. It couldn’t be him… Christ, how in the fuck could it be him? Still, there he was.
A goddamned senator?
I wanted to puke.
I wanted to open the message.
“Fuck.” I set the phone down again, this time more gently. With my elbows on my knees, I sat forward, hands in my hair. “Breathe, man, just fucking breathe.” I’d told him no. If he said anything, he had no proof. I could pretend he’d been barking up the wrong tree, that there was no way I had ever, would ever… I’d said no…
How the fuck had he figured out who I was?
I paced the living room, shaking my hands out. Blood rushed in my ears. My head throbbed, and the deep ache in my gut spread through my body like some kind of vicious virus.
“No.” No, no, no, no. It had to be a coincidence, but it wasn’t. I knew it fucking wasn’t. Why in the hell would a senator direct-message me, and oh, he just so happened to have the same name as the man I’d spent hours talking to in a bar?
It was ridiculous, so fucking ridiculous, but I felt dizzy, like I was going to pass out. I took a few deep breaths, then grabbed my laptop and my phone, eyes scanning the space like there were journalists behind my couch and the large plant in the corner, all ready to pounce, mics out, and ruin my career.
I stumbled over my own feet as I rushed to my room. Fuck Weston. Fuck this night. Fuck that night two weeks ago. All we’d done was talk. But he’d known, he’d seen it in me, or he wouldn’t have asked me to leave with him.
Once I was behind my locked bedroom door, I set my laptop on the mattress and sat beside it. I stared at the phone for who knew how long before my shaking fingers typed in the code to unlock the screen.
I clicked on Instagram.
My messages.
The one from Weston.
Hey. I don’t know if you remember me. I sat next to you at dinner in DC. I’m the guy who knows how to eat a steak…unlike you. I’m telling you, it’s much better my way. I just messaged to let you know I have your sunglasses. That’s it. No other reason. I just thought you might want to know they’re safe.