Page 7 of Dirty Ruck (Ruck Boys #5)

Chapter Seven

Jay

"Smashers win!"

The whole stadium went crazy, cheering and shouting. The noise echoed through my ears, conflicting as hell.

I loved winning but the sound was overwhelming. Overstimulating.

Music.

Shouting.

Applause.

It was a lot.

Atlas patted my shoulder and followed me as I trotted to the locker room. "Good game. You were on fire tonight."

I took a moment to grin before throwing myself down on the nearest chair and tearing at the laces on my boots. "Thanks, you too."

"Atlas is right." Dallas sat beside me and started to pull off his own boots. "You were on point."

"Thanks," I said awkwardly. I wasn't used to praise. When it came, I struggled to deal with it. Was it sincere? I always wondered, even when I had no reason to believe it wasn't. These guys especially had no reason to bullshit me.

I managed to say, "You too. That try you stopped right before the end of the first half made all the difference."

We were down at that point. If the opposition made that try, coming back would have been that much more difficult. Instead, we stopped beating ourselves up and played harder.

Dallas shrugged modestly. "It made some of the difference.

You know what they say, a team is bigger than one person.

" Like always, he was the first one to strip off and head for the shower.

He was always in a hurry to get back to Chelsea.

If he could find a way to become permanently attached to her, he'd do it.

"Yeah, but sometimes it takes one person to turn the shitshow around.

" I yanked my boots off and grabbed the toes of my socks to pull them away from my feet.

As if they were toxic, I dropped them on the floor beside my boots.

Took a sigh of relief at having bare feet. Sweaty and smelly, but still bare.

"What Jay said." Storm pulled off his shirt and threw it aside. "You did good. You all did good. We're playing better than we ever have."

"Even me?" Atlas teased.

"Let's not go nuts here." Storm rolled his eyes, but he was trying not to smile. He stepped out of the rest of his clothes and grabbed a towel.

I tried to avoid looking in the direction of his nuts. He was an attractive man. I'd never be into him that way, but that didn't mean I couldn't look once in a while. It was hard not to; he was a chiselled, sweaty football god. Of course, everyone here was.

Everyone, as far as I was concerned, except for me. I was just Jay, no one special.

"It's too late," Frost said, breaking through my thoughts. "We're already nuts around here." He grinned and headed towards the showers, behind Storm, giving me a perfect view of his firm ass.

"He's not wrong," Atlas said. "Crazy is the word. Not in a bad way."

I didn't pretend I wasn’t watching him undress. I couldn't have stopped myself if I wanted to. He was in a category all of his own, all hard muscle and firm skin, scarred here and there. Mostly, according to him, from childhood mishaps.

I believed it. We were the kind of guys trouble had a way of finding. Okay, a lot of the time we invited it in.

"Crazy as fuck," Ramsey agreed. He was keeping to himself, off to the side of the locker room. Not really looking at anyone, but always listening. Although, right now, he seemed lost in his head.

"You okay?" I asked him. We had good reason to be on edge, but he seemed particularly off kilter right now.

"Fine." He shrugged. He turned his back and finished undressing before wrapping a towel around himself and walking to the shower.

He'd always been more modest than the rest of us, but more so recently.

Clearly something was going on with him, but if he didn't want to open up, I wouldn't push.

Not now anyway. Maybe later, when there weren't other people around.

I glanced over to see Atlas frowning at Ramsey's back.

"There's definitely something going on there," he said.

"Something to do with Chelsea?" A knot of worry rose inside me. If something was going on with him and it had the potential to impact her, then we deserved to know.

Atlas shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think so. He was like this before her, but now… I dunno, something's different. Maybe she can get him to tell her what it is."

"If anyone can, she can," I said. Ramsey was at least as obsessed with her as the rest of us were.

"Yeah." Atlas didn't seem so sure. He shook his head and said, "We should get clean too. I smell like a week old sock." He gave me one of his boyish grins that always made my heart do somersaults in my chest.

"You'd never smell like a dirty sock," I assured him.

"You say that now, but if you got close to my feet—" He leaned his palm against the wall and raised one of them towards me. He shook it, as though he intended to put his foot near my face.

I held up a hand in front of me. "Okay, okay you smell like dirty socks. I'll take your word for it." Not that he didn't have adorable feet, but I didn't need them that close to my eyes and nose.

"Spoilsport." He lowered his foot to the floor.

I snorted. "You can smell my feet and see how you like it." I pushed myself up off the chair and finished stripping off.

"I'll pass until you've had a shower," he said.

"That's what I thought." I gave him a mock flat stare and rolled my eyes.

He grabbed a towel and flicked it at me.

I dodged to the side, evading the fabric by a couple of millimetres, my dick swinging between my thighs.

"If that's how you want to play it." I snatched up a towel and flicked it at him, catching him in the hip.

"Brat." He flicked me again, catching the side of my stomach before twisting to the side.

My next flick caught him square on his ass. "Brat and proud of it."

We went on flicking back and forth until we reached the shower cubicles. There, we stopped and elbowed each other for the last empty one.

If we were at home, we would have shared, but not here. Not where eyes were still watching and judging. Horsing around was one thing, showering together was another.

"You go first," he said finally. "You're stinkier than I am.

" His tone was teasing, but his eyes said he was thinking of me. He knew I had a lower tolerance level for being sweaty. I could put up with it, to an extent, but I didn’t enjoy it.

Not for too long. Especially not when my skin became sticky.

"Thanks," I muttered. "I'm getting gross."

He whispered, "You could never be gross." His gaze dropped from my eyes to my lips. I knew what he was thinking. If we weren't here, he'd kiss me.

If we weren't here, I'd let him.

"Neither could you," I whispered back. I headed into the cubicle just as Dallas stepped out of his, leaving it for Atlas.

I tossed the towel onto the bench just inside the door and turned on the water nice and hot, just how I liked it.