Page 38 of Playing Dirty

Theo

January

“There he is, the man of the hour!”

Glancing up, I find Phoenix and Wyatt both dropping their lunch trays down on the table across from me. Wyatt’s wearing a shit-eating grin, looking like a kid in a candy store while he stares at me. Phoenix, on the other hand, simply watches me silently in that assessing way of his while they both take their seats.

It’s impossible for them to know what happened with Madden up in New England just from looking at me—I’m fully aware of that—but part of me can’t help feeling like there’s a flashing neon sign over my head that’s drawing all kinds of attention. Questions I’d rather not answer, mostly because I don’t have any for the ones I’ve been asking myself.

Andthatis exactly the reason I take a long drink of water and completely brush off the comment.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He’s playing coy,” Wyatt muses, looking at Phoenix before moving his gaze back to me. “Don’t do that. You’re too smart to try getting away with that shit.”

Phoenix smirks and glances over at our captain. “Damn, Wy. All this power’s really starting to go to your head.”

Wyatt ignores my roommate entirely, keeping his gaze deadlocked on me like I’m a genie about to grant him a wish. A ridiculous notion only made more ridiculous by me knowing exactly what it is he’s planning to ask me.

“So. Tell us. How was sleeping with the enemy?”

I choke at the wording of the question, coughing and sputtering on the water that never managed to make it all the way down my throat.

I haven’t told a soul about what happened over break: not the bed fiasco, not the hot tub incident,noneof it. So while Wyatt’s word choice was completely his own, the accuracy—in more ways than one—is a little too on the nose for my liking.

“Jesus, Wy. Are you trying to kill him before he can debrief us?” Phoenix chides before turning to me and slamming his palm on my back a couple times. “Don’t go toward the light; we still need you.”

I shoot my roommate a glare and flip him off while still trying to clear the water from my lungs. Of course, it only makes the dickhead laugh even more, and when I glance at Wyatt for a little backup, I find him sporting one of those hellish grins from across the table.

In fact, both of them look pleased as punch while they wait for my coughing fit to subside, and it really grates on my nerves.

“Now that you’ve got almost dying out of the way,” Wyatt dramatizes, “it’s time to spill the tea. I, for one, have been parched.”

Rolling my eyes, I mutter, “There is no tea.”

“What’d I tell you?” Phoenix says, motioning toward me. “I’ve been grilling him since he got back from break, and he’s been saying the same exact thing.”

He has. Incessantly. And it’s starting to wear my patience down.

Then again, maybe because every time he asks, my brain instantly goes back to the hot tub and that entire night I’m desperately trying to forget.

Wyatt’s eyes are hard and assessing, like he’s trying to figure out a difficult math equation, before he pushes again. “You spent an entire week with the captain of Blackmore’s baseball team. You’re telling me you gotnothingout of him? Penny Play or otherwise?”

A lot of sexual confusion, a fuckton of barbs and digs…

“Nope” is all I say, popping the P for emphasis.

Honestly, it’s not exactly a lie. Nothing from the trip will help us with the Penny Play, which is the information they’re asking about. And everything else that happened? Well, it doesn’t involve them. My unwillingness to fess up to the growing tensions between Madden and me is irrelevant.

The sexuality part would be neither here nor there for the guys to know, but the fact that he’s a Falcon? And theircaptain,no less?

Yeah, I think I’d rather walk barefoot on LEGOs for the rest of my life.

Wyatt sinks back in his chair, appearing defeated and too stunned to speak, before he shakes his head. “Damn, he’s good. How is that possible?”

Well, that would be because I didn’t even try. I was too busy having a grade-A meltdown over my sudden desire to make out with my stepbrother, making it clear I’m not as straight as I thought I was.

I glance between my teammates, both of whom are staring at me like I’m about to tell them the cure for cancer. And somehow, I only manage to feel the slightest bit guilty for doubling down on my omission.