Page 24 of Perfect Storm (Toronto Thunder #1)

“He left. He had to go, like all of a sudden, for his contract situation. One minute we’re texting about him waking me up in my bed and the next thing I know, he’s signing a contract with the Thunder and coming to Toronto. Living in my house.”

Dawson nodded sagely. “Now I get why you wanted me there when he showed up.”

“I . . .God, was it that obvious?” Aidan winced.

“Only because I know you,” Dawson said reassuringly. “But the vibes that day were . . .not weird, not even close to that, but definitely off from what I expected, coming in.”

“I bet.” He’d been an unexpected nervous wreck. Still wondering how they’d gone from texting with definite sexual intent to not just becoming teammates, but roommates too.

“Aidan, you gotta say something to him.”

“No way,” Aidan scoffed. “No fucking way.”

“He’s waiting for you to make a move, again,” Dawson said persuasively.

“If he is, he’s going to be waiting a whole goddamn year,” Aidan said even though the thought of that sounded like sheer fucking torture.

“I’m just gonna say this once. You know what this last year has taught me?” Dawson said, suddenly looking very serious.

“Don’t trust your father-in-law with your bank account?”

Dawson kicked him under the table, gently but with definite intent. Aidan shrugged, because okay, yes, he’d probably deserved that.

“I mean, yeah, that too, for sure. But also, that life is short. Happiness doesn’t last forever. You gotta take what you can get, while you can get it. Clearly Levi makes you happy. He makes you forget, even for a minute, that you’re Aidan fucking Flynn. And that’s a blessing.”

“Is it?” Aidan questioned, even though he knew it was. Just like he knew that if he’d actually been able to talk to Riley or Landry about this, they’d be saying the same thing.

“Don’t bullshit me. You know it is.”

“I just . . .I don’t know how much I want to put myself out there again. We said a year. I don’t want to make him uncomfortable by pushing him for it sooner. Maybe he’s got other stuff going on . . .” Aidan trailed off as Dawson shot him a frank look.

“Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn’t. But you’ll never know if you don’t ask.”

“I could just wait the year. Meet up with him in the offseason, in Michigan. That’d be a hell of a lot simpler. Keep him in sort of that box, you know? It complicated everything when he came here.”

“You don’t want to do that, though,” Dawson guessed correctly. Annoyingly.

He didn’t. It would have been easier, and absolutely simpler, if Levi had stayed in the Michigan box.

If he’d never come to Toronto. Aidan could have waited the year, no question, and if it had still felt right, hooked up with him mid-summer.

Where there were no consequences and no additional connections.

But that wasn’t how things had turned out.

“I’ll think about it,” Aidan said. Because it was true; he was already having difficulty thinking of anything else. Only football distracted him these days, and not even that. Not that well.

“I guess that’s probably the best I’m gonna get,” Dawson said.

“You know it is.”

Dawson let out a heavy sigh. “You’re a piece of work, dude.”

Aidan knew it. He’d been knowing it for thirty-three years now. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t forget it.

“Does that mean I’m allowed to ask about you now?” Aidan asked.

“Seriously?” Dawson barked out a laugh.

“We talked about me,” Aidan said. And he hadn’t even wanted to.

“Oh look,” Dawson said, gesturing towards the waiter who was coming towards them, arms full of plates. “Our sushi’s here.”

Aidan was nice. He let Dawson get half a roll in before he circled back around.

“We really should talk about it,” Aidan said reproachfully. “I’m here to listen. Anything you want to say.”

Dawson glanced up. “Oh yeah? You wanna hear how much it sucks to find out your wife cheated on you and then, when you go to get divorced, your lawyer figures out that your father-in-law’s been siphoning money out of your investment accounts for years?

And then, if that wasn’t the worst fucking set of events you could imagine, it fucks you up so bad mentally, so you can’t even do the one thing you’re good at and you get fired? ”

“Uh.”

“Exactly,” Dawson said. “It fucking sucks and there’s not much else to say about it.”

“You don’t want to rant about it? I’m happy to listen if you do.”

“Did you want to rant about it when you realized you were in love with Mo and he didn’t love you back?”

Aidan wanted to be annoyed that Dawson had brought that up, again.

It wasn’t like he enjoyed thinking about it.

But then he really listened—repeated back in his mind what Dawson had just said—and realized that no, he hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

He’d railed at fate plenty, sure, but he’d done it alone, after everyone had left the lake house.

A lot of nights out on the patio, in front of the fire, staring at the flames, moodily sending so many fuck you’s to the universe.

“Not really,” Aidan admitted.

“There you go,” Dawson said. “Now eat your sushi and let’s talk about something else. Anything else.”

“How’s Cam handling things?”

Dawson groaned under his breath. “He’s too damn cute. All naive and shit. So fucking young. Were we ever that young?”

Dawson might’ve been, but Aidan hadn’t been. He’d never had that privilege.

“Do I need to give you a shovel talk?” Aidan asked, raising an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected Dawson to say Cameron was “too damn cute.” He hadn’t noticed any non-platonic vibes between them, but then he hadn’t been paying that much attention, either. He’d been too wrapped up in football and Levi.

“Nah. He’s just . . .” Dawson sighed, pushed his empty plate away. “He’s a cool kid.”

“I gotta warn you about using that nickname, unless you wanna get your ass kicked on the regular,” Aidan said.

“How so?”

“I used to call Riley that, and it absolutely came back to bite me in the ass. How many times have the Thunder beat the Condors in the last three years? Zero, that’s how many.

It’s embarrassing. And every time it happens, and we meet mid-field to shake hands after, he gives me this look and calls me kid. ”

“Ouch,” Dawson said, wincing.

“What I’m saying is that we better fucking win this year,” Aidan said. “And don’t call Cam that unless you want to live to regret it.”

“Probably better if I don’t, anyway.” Dawson looked like he was hesitating, and a warning bell pinged at the back of Aidan’s brain. “Might be creepy. Riley’s your younger brother but Cam’s not my bro. He’s my . . .my . . .you know.”

Aidan shot him a warning look. “Your rookie?”

“Exactly.”

It occurred to Aidan then, as they finished up their lunch, that he needed to be paying a little closer attention to what was going on with the team.

He wasn’t the special teams captain—that was actually, ironically, Dawson—but he was the de facto leader on the team.

And if this shit was going on under his radar, that could be a problem.

Cam was young, and definitely on the naive side, and Dawson was not.

While he was licking his wounds, some hero worship and blown-out-of-proportion admiration might look real good to him.

Aidan wouldn’t begrudge him the distraction, but the fallout could be ugly.

The Levi thing had distracted him. He needed to either decide, once and for all, to let things play out next summer, the way he and Levi had originally agreed to, or do something about the sexual tension simmering between them.