“How many years do you and Aidan have between
you?” Landry answered Riley’s question by asking one of his own.

Riley leaned against the counter, clearly at home with
a knife in his hand. Even a big shiny chef’s knife. If Landry tried to use that, he’d probably
accidentally cut off a finger. At the very least, an emergency room trip would’ve been in his
future. But not Riley. And more than anything else, that confirmed what Riley had just
claimed.

They didn’t know each other very well, despite
the fact Aidan had been his best friend forever.

“Almost eight years,” Riley said. “So yeah, when I
wasn’t the annoying little brother anymore, you guys were gone and busy with your own
lives. I get it.” He shot Landry a look. Were his eyes full of heat, or was that just Landry’s
currently overactive imagination? “I guess we’re gonna be making up for lost time
now.”

Landry swallowed hard. “Guess we are.”

“Don’t sound like I’m gonna march you down to the
cliff and push you right off,” Riley said, laughing. “I promise it won’t hurt too much to get to
know me.”

Oh, it wouldn’t hurt at all.

What was going to hurt the most was keeping his
hands off.

“Is that what all the boys say to you?” Landry teased
before he could reel the words back.

Riley fluttered his eyelashes. God, he was temptation
incarnate. “The girls, too. I don’t discriminate, baby.”

“Right.” Landry wanted to say, me too, as
long as the guys look like you, but he didn’t because what if this wasn’t what this was?
What if he was wrong?

Then there was the fact he knew enough about
coming out that it wasn’t necessarily right to do it just because he enjoyed flirting so much
with Riley—and wanted him to keep doing it.

“Though,” Riley said, shooting him another look from
underneath those killer lashes, “I do tend to prefer the boys, so you’re not entirely
wrong.”

Landry swallowed hard. “Is that…is that a thing? Can
that be a thing? A preference even if you’re bisexual?”

“Of course it can. Sexuality is a pretty fluid thing when
it comes down to it. Surely I don’t have to tell you that.” Riley had gone back to chopping
lettuce, like their conversation wasn’t sending shockwaves through Landry.

He means: surely, your brothers explained that to
you. Not that you personally are…well…fluid.

But maybe he was. More than he’d ever imagined he
was.

“Logan and Levi are less on the fluid side of
things,” Landry explained.

“Ah yes, your brothers. The ones who would’ve
apparently found me irresistible.” Riley grinned.

They wouldn’t be the only ones.

Landry flushed. The way Riley was looking at him with
those gorgeous eyes, like he could see right through him, down to the place where he was
questioning everything, and unlike Landry, it was like he knew exactly what all this
meant.

Even if he couldn’t possibly.

“Don’t tell me that isn’t normal for you,” Landry said,
trying to equal Riley’s casual approach to the subject of just how fucking hot he
was.

But Riley just shrugged. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t
love it if, every once in a while, people saw you as more than a pair of pecs and a head of
blond hair? I kinda liked it better when I was that scrawny kid nobody paid attention
to.”

Even if Landry ignored how he looked, giving his looks
the barest attention in the mirror every morning, he knew people still watched him.
Approached him. Felt like they deserved a piece of him.

“Yeah, I get that,” Landry said quietly.

Now, suddenly, it was hard to see Riley as just
his abs and his biceps and those dreamy eyes.

Tristan had nearly found Beau and asked if he could
switch rooms, but the problem with that was that he likedsharing a room with Wade.
He was a good roommate, conscientious and kind, and apart from this inconvenient
attraction stuff, he was becoming a good friend.

And he’d already been around the NFL long enough to
know that friends didn’t exactly grow on trees.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, then, that as
soon as the light went out, after this long-ass day, when both of them should have been
exhausted and immediately falling asleep, Tristan couldn’t help himself and instead of being
safe and smart and careful, like he had been all day, like he’d used all that safety up, he
asked the question himself.

“You ever kiss a guy before, Wade?”

Wade was quiet for such a long time that Tristan
wondered if maybe he had actually fallen asleep.

He found himself holding his breath, barely able to
breathe, his lungs clogging, as he waited for Wade to answer. Listening, way too intently, for
even the minutest change in Wade’s own breathing.

Why did he even need to know?

Why did it matter so much that the answer be
no?

Finally, Wade let out a deep exhale, like he’d been
holding his own breath too. Like he’d made a decision.

“No,” he said. “No, I haven’t.”

Tristan dug his fingertips into his bedding. It was no
less dangerous to kiss Wade in this dark, private room than to do it in the middle of the day,
in the middle of the Piranhas weight room, but it was easier to justify because if they did it
here and now, nobody would ever know.

But you’d know,
Tristan reminded himself. And Wade will know.

It was those two things that kept Tristan in his own
bed, instead of joining Wade in his—and showing him just how great kissing a guy could
be.

“Is . . . is that what that was earlier? You were . . .”
Wade hesitated for so long that Tristan, hanging on every single word, every single syllable
echoing through the darkness, nearly got up and went to his side and demanded to know
what it was he was supposedly doing. Finally, though, Wade finished his sentence. “Testing
me?”

It made no sense. Why would Tristan be testing him?
He already knew Wade was bisexual. Wade had told him himself. Tristan might have tested
Wade if he hadn’t been sure. If he hadn’t been entirely sure how his flirtation would be
received.

But he definitely hadn’t been testing Wade
earlier.

He’d been irresistibly drawn to the man.

It felt unfair to pay Wade’s honesty back with a lie, no
matter how dangerous the truth was.

So Tristan told him the truth.

“I wasn’t testing you. I was . . . if you have to know, I
was . . . I find you attractive, Wade, and I wanted to kiss you. As stupid as that was. I
shouldn’t have been thinking about it. You’re not out, and there were other guys around,
and on top of that . . . it’s a huge, massive distraction that could get us both released. You
know, teams don’t really like their players hooking up.”

Don’t really was
an understatement.

It was technically allowed because it couldn’t be
not allowed but it certainly wasn’t encouraged. All the Piranhas needed was a really
good reason to cut Tristan, and this would be it.

“You wanted to kiss me?” Wade’s voice was full of
wonder.

“I guess you missed the rest of that,” Tristan teased.
“You know, the part where it was—it is—a bad idea.”

“Sorry.” Wade actually sounded apologetic. “I got
stuck on that one bit. I just never thought . . . you and me. You’re so . . .”

It was playing with fire to ask.

Tristan knew it.

He asked anyway.

“I’m so what, Wade?”

“You’re so hot and confident and sure of yourself.
You’re a beacon of hope to so many closeted guys, guys who think that you can’t be gay and
play football. And then there’s me . . . not really ashamed but not open either, and not
experienced . . .”

“None of that matters,” Tristan interrupted him,
because he couldn’t listen to another moment of Wade putting himself down. “I can’t tell
you how much none of that matters.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Wade, you’re fucking gorgeous and you’re sweet,
and you’ve got this smile that lights up . . . well, it lights up everything around you. Including
me, okay?”

Wade was silent for a long time again, like he was
digesting what Tristan had just admitted to.

Like he was weighing the danger of it, the inherent
risk of it, with the reward.

But how could he, Tristan thought, dying over in his
own bed, when he didn’t know what he was really missing? He’d never kissed a guy before.
He didn’t know.

“Why,” Wade said, his voice rough, “are you still over
there, then?”

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