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Rowan swallows hard and licks his lips. He rises to his feet, as wobbly as I feel. Before he can even think about leaving, I pull him against me and palm the tent in his shorts.

Forehead rested on mine, Rowan murmurs, “I gotta shower, baby boy. I reek.”

“I don’t care.” I reach my hand under his waistband and grip his heady cock.

He shimmies his shorts and underwear down his ass until his cock pops free, and I stroke him the way I’d stroke myself.

I look between us, watching my hand pump his foreskin up and down, revealing that plump, purple head with each downstroke. It’s wet with pre-cum, fucking glistening. Swiping my thumb across his slit makes Rowan shiver and his cock throb in my hand.

“Harder,” he breathes close to my ear.

I hold him firmer and jerk him faster until he’s grunting against my cheek and balling his fists in my shirt.

Clear fluid geysers from his tip, spilling over my knuckles as Rowan shudders. I quit stroking and just hold him until he pulls away and fixes his shorts.

Unsteady on his feet, Rowan walks to the barbells and brings back his shirt only to mop my cummy hand with it.

“Rowan.”

He blinks those dark eyes at me, glinting steely grey in the sunshine.

“I have to pick my nephew up from his day camp,” I tell him. “I’m gonna text you tonight. Promise me you’ll text me back.”

It’s not a question, because I don’t want Rowan to think it’s a question. I don’t care what we are so long as we’re something. The two of us. We can’t be anything if he keeps burying me with the silent treatment.

A slight smirk crawls across Rowan’s face. “I’ll text you. Promise. And don’t worry, babyface. We’re going to get you onto second string in no time.”

I nod, and he slips away, leaving me to trust that he’ll keep his word.

Later, five minutes after I text Rowan asking about his weight routine and just as I’m sitting down for dinner, hefulfills his promise by texting me a picture of his swollen cock laid along his hair-dusted abs.

I shove my phone under the tablecloth so quick I hit my knuckles on the table and wince. While Ma busies with carving up Mav’s burger patty, I turn my phone over and study Rowan’s erection long enough for my own to grow in my jeans.

Rowan

Not as big as yours baby boy, but thinking about sucking your cock makes it the biggest it's ever got

A second later, he double texts a link to a Google Doc with his entire gym regimen plotted out with meticulous notations.

My body jitters with excitement and nerves, wondering what sort of worm can I opened today when I kissed Rowan and told him we can be whatever he wants.

For starters, I’m beginning to think Rowan Hughes might be gay.

We’re back.

The Tommy and Rowan show has been officially renewed for a summer season, and now I have to decide if that’s a good thing or not.

It’s good for my game, one-thousand percent. As a trainer, Rowan is half-neurotic drill sergeant and half-mischievous fuckboy. Between runs, weights, and nonstop drills, Rowan runs my ass into the ground damn near every evening. Tears me down to my fundamental parts until I swear I can feel eachone of my muscles working independently of the others. Until I feel more human than I ever have before, and more pissed off. Some nights, the way Rowan rides me makes me want to kill him, but he’s always right there with me. He never makes me do anything he won’t do as well.

Every time we’re together, I dedicate myself to keeping up with him, or at the very least, not letting myself fall too far behind. I realize I desire his approval even more than I desire his body, but the adrenaline and endorphins his workouts illicit in me lower my inhibitions enough that, afterward, I can’t keep my hands off him.

“Push, Tommy!” Rowan hollers back at me, but I’m only trailing him by a stride or two. So easy, a stride or two can turn into a wide valley, so I ignore the ache in my legs and dig.

“To the tree!” Rowan says, and I see the tree. The tree beside the park path where we began what feels like hours ago. I don’t even know the mile count around the perimeter of McKinley, but if I can make it to that tree, I will have run it faster than I ever have. I want to finish with Rowan. This is his pace, and I want to show him I can handle it. That I’m not the little weenie I was when we started this thing almost three months ago.

I push, or maybe Rowan lets up a little at the end. Either way, I swear my right leg crosses that tree at the same time Rowan’s does, and the euphoria eclipses any throb of pain in my muscles.

I don’t collapse or puke. I plant my hands on my knees and laugh as sweat drips from my nose onto the pavement.