For six weeks, I stayed away from CAMP and Lachlan MacLeod. The official pre-season training period had started, so that made it easier than if I’d still been brooding in my apartment. But while time may have passed, I hadn’t forgotten our conversation.

I hadn’t forgotten anything about him or how he made me feel—both alive and exhilarated and small and insignificant, all in the same breath.

I hated it. Sometimes, I thought I hated him.

Instead of obsessing about all the ways he made me feel, I threw myself into impressing my new teammates.

Edinburgh wasn’t a bad team, but they’d gone through several coaching changes, and that showed in their performance. The organization wasn’t sloppy so much as haphazard in their approach to things like fitness, diet, and rehabilitation. The new coaches were working hard to build a cohesive group that played as a team instead of focusing on individual performances. As part of that, six of us were heading to dinner to get to know one another off the pitch.

“The restaurant can’t accommodate a last-minute reservation,” our scrum half Rory MacTavish said, dropping onto the bench next to a tighthead prop named Hamish Burns.

I knew it was a long shot, but I asked anyway. “Did you tell them who we are?”

Rory rolled his eyes. “No one cares who we are, dickhead.”

That was the other difference between Edinburgh and Dublin. The locals didn’t give two shits who we were or what team we played for. As far as I could tell, even the Scottish internationals who played on the squad didn’t receive any preferential treatment. I wasn’t going to lie. I’d enjoyed being a VIP, so the sudden loss of perks was taking some getting used to.

On the other hand, I wasn’t hounded the way I’d been back home either. Once training had started in earnest, the Scottish sports press had run a few articles about what I might bring to the team, but that had been the extent of my notoriety so far. I hadn’t let myself wonder if this lack of interest might also extend to my personal life. I couldn’t let myself wonder, lest I start imagining scenarios that weren’t worth imagining.

And yet …

“Have you guys been to CAMP?”

Hamish scoffed. “If we can’t get a table at Spire, what makes you think we can get one there? You need reservations months in advance.”

“Maybe,” I muttered, pulling out my phone and staring at the screen.

I didn’t have Lachlan’s mobile number, but I wondered if he’d take my call if I rang the restaurant directly. It was after three o’clock so I knew he’d be there, prepping for the night’s dinner service. I could almost picture him standing behind the counter directing his staff.

“He’s serious.” Ed Darcy, the team’s fly half, snickered while elbowing James Cavendish, a blindside flanker.

“Shh,” James warned. “The lad’s gotta learn on his own he ain’t in Dublin anymore.”

I shot them a look, and Hamish and James strolled away, shaking their heads, while Ed and Rory finished getting dressed.

After three rings, a female voice answered. “Hi, this is CAMP. Monica speaking, how may I help you?”

“Hey Monica, this is … my name is Liam. I’m a … friend of Lachlan’s. I was wondering if he’s around.” I winced at how pathetic I sounded. Who was that guy? It certainly didn’t sound like me.

“Do you have a surname, Liam Lachlan’s friend?”

I cleared my throat, my mouth suddenly parched. “Tell him it’s Liam Donnelly.”

“Hold on one sec, and I’ll see if he’s available.” Monica placed her hand over the receiver, but I could still hear the din of the restaurant as she walked from the podium up front toward the kitchen in the back.

It’s someone named Liam Donnelly on the phone. He claims to be your friend, came her muffled voice.

Liam Donnelly? You’re sure?

That’s what he said.

Lachlan let out a long, protracted sigh. Yeah, I’ll take it.

I heard rustling as she passed him the phone and then heavy footsteps as he walked away. “Liam? That you?” he asked, his voice as low and rumbling as I remembered in my fantasies.

I cleared my throat. My heart was thumping out an erratic beat in my chest, and I hoped he couldn’t tell how nervous I was when I eventually spoke. “Hey, Lachlan.”

“You all right? You sound—”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I interrupted, not wanting to know what he heard in my voice. “So, listen. We’re supposed to be doing this team bonding thing, but the guy in charge of dinner reservations fucked up. I was wondering if you could accommodate a table for six tonight?” I held my breath and waited.

Another sigh. “That’s why you’re calling?”

I didn’t misinterpret his tone—he was pissed. He had every right to be, and yet I couldn’t tell him that by trying to arrange our team dinner at his restaurant, I was only trying to see him again. That after denying myself for almost two goddamn months, I’d caved. That I’d gone over our conversation in his office so many times that I could recite it by heart. That I’d walked past CAMP countless times, hoping to catch a small glimpse of him.

“Yes, that’s why I’m calling.”

“Fucking Christ, Liam.”

“Look, forget it. You’re right. I shouldn’t have—”

“No, just hold on.” I heard the rustling paper, and the faint sounds of his swearing before Lachlan came back on the line. “How does eight o’clock work? We had a cancellation this morning.”

I let out a relieved sigh. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

“I’m not doing you a favor, Liam. We had the space reserved, and the food’s already been brought in. It’d be stupid to turn you away just because …”

“Because I’m a confused asshole,” I finished for him, and he chuckled.

“Yeah. Because of that.”

“Still, thanks all the same. You’re making me a hero.”

He paused for a few beats. “Glad I could help. See you later, Liam.”

“Bye Lachlan.”

I slid my phone into my front jeans pocket. “Alright assholes, we’ve got a table at CAMP at 8 p.m.”

“Holy Christ. How’d you manage that?” Rory asked.

“I know the chef,” I said, shrugging and looking away. I didn’t want them to see anything worth interpreting.

“How is it you’ve lived here for all of two minutes, and you’re already friends with the most popular chef in town?”

I shoved my arms into my coat and pushed a knit cap down over wet hair. “I live in the neighborhood, so I’ve been in a couple of times.”

Hamish strolled over. “He got us a reservation?”

Ed laughed and shook his head. “Luck of the fucking Irish.”

I smiled but kept my mouth shut.

“Mandy is going to be so fucking jealous,” Hamish said, pulling out his phone and to text his on-again-off-again girlfriend. “She put him on her list after seeing him on some show, but I’m pretty sure the guy’s a fag.”

The hair rose on the back of my neck.

Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything.

I said something.

“What did you say?” I growled.

Hamish’s head popped up, and his face swiveled between the other four guys as if to ask, “What the fuck is his problem?”

Thankfully, James understood immediately what my problem was.

He stepped next to Hamish to play damage control for his friend. “He didn’t mean anything by it.” His eyes dropped to my hands, clenched in tight fists at my side, and he continued, “It’s just an expression.”

Hamish’s eyes narrowed to slits, but I didn’t let his glare unnerve me. “Yeah, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

I loosened my fingers and tried my best to adopt a relaxed, casual stance. Lachlan is nothing to you, I reminded myself. He’s just some guy you’re occasionally hot for.

These guys, on the other hand, were my teammates; my new brothers.

I couldn’t let my sexual desires override my good sense and risk damaging my tenuous position here. And yet I couldn’t let Hamish’s slur slide either.

I angled my neck to the side, and the bones at the top of my spine popped in a series of satisfying cracks. “I don’t want to hear that word in this locker room again.”

Ed moved to my side and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Relax Liam. Like he said, it’s just an expression.”

My head swung to him. “It’s not just an expression. It’s a disgusting fucking slur.”

Ed’s hands came up, palms facing outward, and he took a step back. “Chill, man. I got no beef.”

“I don’t either,” Hamish said, shoving his phone into his coat pocket before grabbing his bag from the bench and slinging it over his shoulder. “We good?”

Were we? I didn’t know these guys. Would my rebuke put a stop to them using that sort of language? Or, would they single me out and make my life a living hell because I’d called them out on their bigotry? I had no clue, but I felt like I owed them the benefit of the doubt.

This time.

“Yeah, we’re good,” I answered with a tight nod as I grabbed my bag and made my way to the door. “Eight o’clock,” I reminded them as I stepped outside.

* * *

It was like my thoughts had conjured him.

“Is everything okay here?” Lachlan asked, his eyes weary and his posture rigid. I didn’t know when or how I’d become so adept at reading his body language, but I knew Lachlan didn’t like me being here.

Jenny turned to him and notched her head my direction. “He says he talked to you earlier, and you gave him the table the Patterson party booked.”

“That’s right.” His eyes flicked from her to me. “It should be in the computer. I entered it myself.”

Jenny undocked the iPad and turned back to Lachlan with it clutched in her hands. “There must be some mistake then because it says here the Pattersons confirmed their reservation at two today.”

Lachlan peered at the screen over her shoulder and stepped back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he muttered, closing his eyes and sucking in a deep breath.

If it had been just me, I would have told him it was no big deal and walked out. But after the debacle in the locker room, I needed this. I needed to prove that I was one of them, and telling them I’d fucked up our reservation wasn’t going to help with that.

When Lachlan dropped his hand from his brow, his eyes landed on mine. “You can’t book for tomorrow, can you?”

“It’s a mandated dinner, and I only stepped in when one of the lads botched things. We could probably find somewhere else but …”

“But you want to impress them.”

Yes, I did. But he didn’t understand why.

“Something like that,” I agreed, and he chuckled, his eyes alight with pride. Lachlan’s restaurant was the best in the city, and he knew it. He obviously took great pleasure in the idea that when someone wanted to show off, they brought people to him.

“All right,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, making the muscles in his biceps pop from his rolled up shirtsleeves. “I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, but we’ll make it work.”

“But Lachlan, we don’t have space for them. We’re booked solid.”

“We’ll do it upstairs then.”

I didn’t get the significance of that, but Jenny did. Her eyes went wide with surprise. “Upstairs?” she squeaked.

Dragging his gaze from mine, he turned to her, and his jaw ticked. “Is that a problem?”

Jenny’s cheeks flushed pink. “Of course not. We just usually prep for something like that. You can’t just do it on the fly.”

His dark eyebrow arched. “Can’t I?”

Jenny’s cheeks turned even redder as she stammered, “No, of course you can. I’m sorry. I’ll just … just …”

“Why don’t you grab Cole and Dean and bring them here?”

“Yes, of course,” she stammered. “Right away, Chef.”

Once Jenny scampered off, Lachlan turned back to me. “It looks like tonight’s your lucky night.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, trying not to read too much into his words.

He’s not flirting with you. He doesn’t mean what you want him to mean, even though you know you could never take him up on the offer.

He pulled a pen and small pad of paper from the front pocket of his monogrammed apron and quickly jotting something down. “You just lucked into a private chef’s dinner I only do three times a year.” He smiled, a small upward lift of his lips that tugged at something deep inside of me. “And best of all, I won’t even charge you the £1000 reservation fee.”

Holy shit.

All I’d wanted was a table. I didn’t need preferential treatment—much less for free—and I certainly didn’t want to put him out. “No way. I can’t let you do that.”

That sexy eyebrow lifted again. “You’re not letting me do anything. I’m offering. No. I’m insisting.”

“It’s too much.”

He nodded. “It is. But I want to do it anyway.”

“Why?” I croaked.

Lachlan didn’t answer for a few beats as his eyes raked over me. When they landed back on my face, he looked sad. “Because in another world, you’d be mine and I’d get to do things like this for you. I’d look forward to them. Because your friends would be my friends.”

For fuck’s sake. Was he trying to gut me? To flay me raw and leave me standing there a dying, bloodied man? Because that was how his words made me feel. The picture he’d painted with that whispered declaration made me long for the same things. I let myself imagine what it would be like to be his—to be able to stand proudly and unabashedly with his hand in mine—and it made my heart race with anxiety. It also made it pulse with something I’d never felt before, something no one—man or woman—had ever brought out in me.

I didn’t know what it was, but if pressed to give it a name, I’d say it was hope.

But that must not have been what showed on my face because Lachlan shook his head and looked away, his features etched with regret. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d ever been at a loss for words. My granny often said I’d been born blabbering nonsense. And yet, as I stood in the foyer of Lachlan’s restaurant, my limbs went numb and my tongue thickened. Not literally, but that’s what it felt like as I struggled in vain to pull air into my lungs. A cold sweat broke out on my brow, and every sound in the restaurant receded until the only thing I heard was a long, high-pitched hum. In front of me, Lachlan’s lips moved, but I didn’t hear a word he said, the whirring between my ears drowning out everything around me.

And then, without knowing how I’d gotten there, suddenly I was sitting on a stool in a curtained off alcove with my head between my legs and Lachlan’s hand on my shoulder.

“You all right?”

Slowly, I sat up and scrubbed my palms down my face. They came away slick with perspiration. “What the fuck happened?”

“One second you were fine, and the next you were swaying on your feet. When your face turned white, I worried you were going to pass out, so I dragged you in here and sat your arse down.”

I leaned back against the wall and took a few steadying breaths. “Shit. That’s never happened before.”

“What did happen?”

I tilted my head forward and raised my eyes to his. “I think I just had a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe.”

“And that’s never happened before?”

“No. Never.”

Lachlan took a step back and looked away. “Why’d you come here, Liam?”

“I told you—”

“You could have gone anywhere.” He turned to me, his eyes flashing with anger. “Why here?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out.

He huffed and shook his head. “No wonder you had a fucking panic attack. You want me as much as I want you, but you can’t even say the words out loud.” He crossed his tattooed arms over his chest, his biceps flexing. In the muted light of the dark green space, I could barely make out the designs of his ink, but I kept my eyes trained on the swoops and swirls of color. It was easier—safer—than meeting that whiskey gaze and seeing recrimination.

“That’s it?” he sighed. “You honestly have nothing to say?”

I forced my gaze up and then forced the words from my lips. “I’ve walked past here countless times hoping to catch a glimpse of you. Anything to tide me over. Every night, I dream about what it would be like to kiss you. To fuck you. To let you fuck me. You’re right. I want you … but that terrifies me. I told you before, I’ve never done this, and I don’t know if I can do this. If it’s worth it.”

Lachlan’s jaw ticked. “And I told you, I can’t be part of your great gay experiment.”

I sighed and rested my head back against the wall. “I know.” And then again, lower, “I know.”

“So, let me ask you again—why are you here, Liam?” He leaned against the wall, one leg crossed in front of the other.

The team dinner was the excuse I’d used to come here, but it wasn’t what had driven me to seek him out. The desire—no, the compulsion—to be close to Lachlan again was why I’d called him earlier today. I was tired of denying the effect he had on me. Tired of wondering in the cold dark of night when I lay alone in my bed what it would feel like to have his work-roughened hands on my skin. Tired of pretending it was a woman’s soft touch that I craved.

I was tired of denying who I was, and what I needed to be happy. The things I needed to experience in order to lead a rich, fulfilled life.

So fucking tired.

“You’re not an experiment,” I vowed.

“No? It sure as hell feels that way.”

I leaned forward and palmed my knees. “I want you; I do. But I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how any of this works.”

He stared at me for a few silent moments and then his face softened. “How would this work if I were a woman?”

I laughed, but there was no joy in it. “If you were a woman, I would have fucked you by now and moved on. I would have gotten you out of my system.”

Lachlan took a step closer, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose in warning. “And do you think that would work? That if I let you fuck me, you’d be able to get me out of your system?”

He was so close I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to. And I wanted; my god how I wanted. Instead, I leaned back and forced my eyes up. “No, I don’t think that would work.”

He smiled, and a dimple I’d never noticed before split his right cheek. “Good answer,” he said, pushing the velvet curtain aside and disappearing through it.

I sat there dumbfounded, not sure what had just happened—or what would happen next. I wasn’t left with much time to obsess over it though because soon Jenny stepped into the alcove with me. “Your teammates have arrived. Let’s get you upstairs.”

I pushed to my feet and followed her out. I had no idea how this dinner would play out, but I could guess it wouldn’t be boring. I just hoped I could keep my shit together in front of these guys after my outburst in the locker room.