Page 10 of Playing for Keeps

Luke.

Luke here.

Panic flooded my body.

Shit.

I wasn’t ready to see Luke.

I’d planned on seeing him for the first time at the Marauders training camp, where I’d have the buffer of all our teammates, guys who had my back.

Instead, it appeared I was seeing him now.

He’d filled out a lot since I’d seen him last, his shoulders broader, his skinniness turned to lean muscle.

I wasn’t completely blindsided by the changes though, because stalking my ex-best friend online had been a hobby of mine for the past six years.

It was a masochistic hobby. Every photo of him smiling had sliced me like a guillotine.

The last time I’d seen Luke, punches had been thrown.

But I was distracted from that thought as the passenger door opened and a guy, slightly shorter than Luke and with light brown hair, got out.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Luke’s boyfriend,” Char replied.

My world tilted on its axis.

“Luke has a boyfriend?” I managed to get out.

“Yep, he’s moved back from Japan with him. Apparently, it’s serious.”

Air particles decided to flee my lungs in the same way smart people flee a zombie apocalypse.

A memory slammed into me with the force of a freight train. The outline of Luke’s face in deep gray light, the light puff of his breath as his hand stroked me, overwhelming pleasure shooting through me because I was sixteen and it was someone else’s hand touching my cock.

Okay, so the idea that Luke was gay made sense in hindsight.

But shit, my mind wasn’t the sharpest at the best of times, and now it was wrestling with two enormous concepts. It was like being in a mud-pit battle, an alligator attacking me on one side and a tiger on the other.

Luke here. Luke gay.

The path from Char’s driveway to her front door wasn’t long, so I didn’t have much time to come to grips with my new reality.

Luke rang the doorbell, and Char went to let him in.

I stood frozen in the living room, listening to the low murmur of conversation grow louder as they came down the hallway.

My heart thudded in time with the approaching footsteps. Shit. I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders.

Luke came into the room, the smile on his face instantly dying when he saw me. He stopped so abruptly his boyfriend almost ran into the back of him. His gaze flicked away for a second to check his boyfriend was okay before snapping back to me.

For a few heartbeats, we just stared at each other.

“Hi,” I finally managed. Shit. It shouldn’t have been so hard to get my vocal cords to produce that one sound.

“Hey.”