Earning it, Dane knew, wasn’t only about swimming hard. He also threw himself into being a teammate. Alex opened the door with his truce Saturday night. His teammates opened it wider Sunday morning. And Dane stepped through it, coming out on the completely foreign—and welcome—other side.
They spent the day off having fun, a word Dane had to be reminded the meaning of. Lazy laps in the pool, a whale-turn competition judged by Jacob, once he and Bas escaped from film hell, then marathon-watching The X-Files in the hotel lounge with the rest of his teammates. The fact that his hidden geek could guess any episode by name and number from only a few seconds viewing probably earned him more cred than anything he’d ever done in the pool.
And when practice resumed the next day, and Jacob faltered, the first time Dane had seen the remarkably mature kid off his game, he shouldered mentor duties with Alex and Bas, offering encouragement and staying within Jacob’s orbit at all times. Every swimmer had off days, but the rook was putting so much pressure on himself to keep up with the vets that one missed mark turned into two, and compounded until he was spiraling, cursing the weekend off and suggesting his backup should swim the relay instead of him. More like he probably needed another day off, the grueling training catching up to him. If Dane had thought training was tough, he couldn’t imagine what Jacob was going through. Texas was a top collegiate team—sure, Jacob trained hard there—but this was another ten or so levels more intense.
Dane listened, observed, and told Jacob a few of his own worst-day stories, which usually ended with Mo whacking him upside the head. Dane didn’t follow his mentor’s lead there, but he did let the pup know he wasn’t alone in his struggles. Dane hadn’t been oblivious to Jacob in his periphery last week when no one else would approach him. Knowing he hadn’t been totally alone had kept Dane treading water. The least he could do was act as the pup’s nearby life raft now. Which he thankfully only needed for a day. Passing out early that night, Jacob was back to his usual self the next day, pirate quips and all, the wonky day before a blip on the radar.
After that, everything, and everyone, in and out of the pool, clicked. Dane was grateful, and more than that, relieved, to be a part of the solution and not the problem. Press, visitors, and sponsors excluded from practices, he could focus on pleasing his coach, captain, and teammates, taking and, when asked, giving advice, contributing to the overall increased productivity. Coaching Ryan on the freestyle leg of his IM runs. Coordinating the free relays so Alex had one less thing on his plate. Shuffling along the pool deck timing his captain’s backstroke laps, the sight and speed too captivating to miss. And at the end of each day, he declined his parents’ and sponsors’ dinner invitations, not wanting to hear the lectures about Saturday and preferring to finish his day with his team instead. They ate, discussed the next days’ practices, then downshifted in the lounge watching more TV, Dane with his computer on his lap, coding or hacking. He’d even helped Kevin, a crypto master’s student at Michigan, with a summer coding project.
Dane did everything he could to earn his spot on the relay team, the acceptance of his teammates, and the attention of his captain. His and everyone’s efforts paid off. They became a team, Dane included. More so than he’d ever felt at SwimMAC, or even at Carolina under Mo’s wing. He’d always been separate and apart somehow. This was a different, better experience. Knowing that this experience was what Alex loved most about the Olympics, seeing the light in his eyes and upturned corners of his mouth, made earning it even more worthwhile. Dane wasn’t just giving the team his all; he was giving his all to Alex. Having failed to do so in the past, he was making up for it now.
Alex’s regard, his appreciation, were a handsome reward. Warm brown eyes staring across the pool or hotel lounge at him. Hips and shoulders brushing whenever they stood close in the kitchen or sat side by side on the bleachers. Lingering handholds when one pulled the other out of the water. Longing gazes aside, he could explain away the others as teammates and two six-and-a-half footers in tight spaces, but for Dane, the casual touches were more. A past and a future coming into focus.
And with each touch, another memory from Saturday flashed behind Dane’s eyes.
Hands threaded together on Alex’s hips.
Glitter, music, and hot, sweaty bodies.
The ends of Alex’s curls tickling his nose.
His face buried in Alex’s chest, lulled to sleep by the comforting smell.
A kiss dropped softly on the back of his neck.
Most of the night was still a blur, but together with the mess he’d found in his jeans the next morning, Dane was increasingly certain more than a truce had been struck.
He hated that he couldn’t remember every detail and was too embarrassed to admit his memory lapse to Alex.
“What do you think, Ellis?” Ryan asked from halfway down the hall ahead of him.
Snapping out of the fuzzy outtake reel, Dane moved from where he stood, still holding open the locker room door, and caught up with his teammates.
“We challenge the girls to a swim off,” Ryan said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m fucking tired of early morning practices,” Bas griped.
“Maybe if you slept at night,” Alex replied. “Where were you last night anyways?”
Bas waved him off, and Alex slapped down the hand, laughing. The sound warmed Dane’s insides, pooling low in his belly.
His belly . . .
“Let’s totally blow their minds,” Dane said, an idea forming. “How about a challenge out of the pool? A cook-off.”
Ryan shook his head. “Mo was our best cook, and he’s gone. Now, we’re stuck with Disgusting Smoothie King over here,” he said with a jut of his thumb at Bas.
Dane grinned. “Mo was my mentor, in more than just swimming.”
“Motherfucker!” Bas punched his shoulder. “You’ve been holding out on us.”
Us.
Said like he was one of them.
Included.
He shared a smile with Alex, those dark eyes molten, and Dane recalled seeing them like that on Saturday. Up close, so close, swirling with heat under the club lights. If they’d been that close . . .
Ryan’s teasing tone interrupted once more. “Well, you’ve been shoving appetite-killing shakes under our noses every morning. What’d you expect?”
“All right, then.” Bas slung an arm around Dane’s shoulders, a laughable impossibility two weeks ago. Now, it felt right, like maybe Dane had found a place with this team. With Alex and his friends. “Kitchen’s all yours, Big Red. Prove yourself and we’ll challenge the girls.”
“My son does not have to prove himself to you. And he will not be reduced to team cook.”
Dane stumbled at the sight of his father sitting in the team kitchen, one knee crossed over the other, nose in the air like he owned the place. Bas was the only thing that kept him upright, tattooed arm clasping his shoulder tight. The fly specialist also found his words faster, as irreverent as ever. “Your boy offered.”
“Bas,” Alex mumbled low, but loud enough to draw his father’s glare.
Ice-cold. Unnatural. Dangerous.
From the same eyes Dane had inherited. Did his shoot icy daggers like that when he was angry? Had he leveled Alex with those imperious glares? Regret formed a knot in his gut, but the one in his chest, growing out of fear for the reason behind his father’s appearance, his obvious wrath, was magnitudes larger.
Fear for Alex more than himself.
Dane stepped forward, into his father’s line of sight, shielding Alex. “What do you want?”
“The car’s waiting outside.” His father stood, buttoned his suit coat over his vest, and adjusted his tie. “You’re coming with me.”
“We need to eat,” Ryan said, rallying to his side. “Then we have a team meeting.”
His father ignored him, addressing Dane. “I’ve cleared your absence with Coach Hartl.”
Translation: He’d gone over Dane’s head like he was a child who couldn’t run his own life. Like he and his mother always had. Pulling his strings.
Indignation dissolved the knot of fear in Dane’s chest. “But you didn’t clear it with me.”
Bas stepped to his other side, mirroring Ryan’s defensive stance, while a more familiar heat hit Dane’s back, Alex’s body close.
“Dane,” Alex whispered behind him, wary.
If there was a warning there, Dane didn’t heed it. “Unless it’s an emergency,” he told his father, “I’m not going with you.”
“You’ve ignored our invitations every night this week.”
“Because I had more important things to do, with my team.”
“It’s no longer an invitation. Roger would like a word about your sponsorships.”
Dane flung out his arms, branded jammers and track jacket on display. “I’m not wearing enough flair for him?”
A hand pressed lightly against his lower back. “Dane, let’s go,” Alex said, tight and with caution. “You can call Roger from your room.”
“This is serious, son,” his father chided. “Your actions Saturday could jeopardize your sponsorships and the team’s.”
The hand on Dane’s back shook, as did Dane’s insides, fear slamming back into him, heart beating triple time. On the outside, though, he forced himself calm. Did his father mean the press conference or the night out with Alex? “What actions?”
His dad cut another dangerous, icy glare at Alex, before his gaze drifted back to Dane. “I’ll discuss those with you in private.”
“Anything you have to say to him, you can say in front of us,” Ryan fronted. “We’re a team.”
“You stay out of this,” his father snapped, the icy exterior cracking, revealing white-hot anger underneath.
Alex must have seen it too, because his hand curled in the fabric of Dane’s shirt, tugging him slightly back.
Dane glanced over his shoulder, meeting his captain’s wary gaze.
“He knows something,” Alex said. “Stay here and call Roger. See if there’s really a problem.”
The fear in Alex’s eyes was Dane’s tipping point. “No,” he said. “I’m gonna go see what they think they know.”
Bas stepped closer. “You sure about that, Ellis?”
Dane nodded, and the wariness in Alex’s gaze gave way to pride, making Dane’s heart trip for an entirely different reason. Ryan and Bas nodded as well, the both of them puffed up, bodies hard, defensive on his behalf. So this was what it was like to have friends, teammates, who had his back. No matter what his father said, he’d do anything to keep this.
“You’ll fill me in on what I miss at the meeting?” he said to Ryan.
“You got it.”
“And I’ll be sure to make that bet on your behalf,” Bas said, rubbing his stomach. “Look forward to judging that contest.”
His father made a disgusted grunt and stalked out, barreling down the hall toward the exit.
Alex thumped Bas’s shoulder where they stood. “Don’t poke the angry troll.”
Dane chuckled, the joke just what he needed before facing said troll. His laugh died, though, when he met Alex’s concerned stare. “I’m getting in that car for you this time,” Dane said.
“I get that,” Alex said, seeming to struggle for the words. “I’m worried about him, not you.”
Meaning Alex understood he would return. That he wasn’t turning his back on him.
“I’ll be fine,” Dane said. “And I’ll be back. An hour, two tops.”
Alex smiled, small but sure. “We’ll see you then.”
Dane sat across from his father in the limo, tight-lipped and arms crossed, keeping up a defensive front as much as holding his insides together. Retribution for the press conference was long overdue. Closed practice and his phone’s Ignore button had allowed Dane to put it off a few days, but that reprieve was over. Judging by his father’s stern expression and the heavy silence during the car ride, he was in for more than the usual scolding. If his mother and Roger were here, as his father had claimed, she’d have filled the car with idle surface chatter until she could rip him in private. She was a master at filling dead air. His father, however, was a master of creating the void. Whether it was a preacher thing, or an asshole thing, Dane couldn’t say.
Roger wasn’t at the house either, once they reached it. Walking into what had to be the most expensive rental in San Antonio, Dane peered through the gleaming foyer to the family-of-twenty dining room with its massive oak table and crystal chandelier. Only his mother was standing there, on the other side of the table, in front of a wall of windows overlooking a lush, green golf course. Dressed all in black, hair teased out to there, she looked like a harbinger of the devil.
Get on with it, Mo’s voice coached in Dane’s head. He’d made a stand once today already, and while scary, it had felt good. Right. Alex and his team had had his back. Now he had to go it alone, make a stand for himself and them.
Not waiting for his father, Dane marched across the marble foyer and into the dining room. “What’s going on?”
“Sit down, dear.” His mother gestured at the end of the table closest to her, set for three. “Shannon has brunch ready for us.”
“Shannon?”
“The private chef we hired.” She said it like it was a matter of course. Then again, why would she do any differently here than at home, where they also had a personal chef? Dane had only learned to cook for himself in college, at Mo’s insistence. He’d kept up the practice by giving their home cook the night off whenever his parents were out of town, but she still made sure the fridge was stocked for his particular diet. This Shannon person . . . “I can’t just eat anything. I’m in training mode. My diet’s regulated.”
His mother rattled off the list, and Shannon appeared on cue, setting out plates with his usual midmorning fruit and protein blast.
“Sit, darling,” his mother said again.
He took the seat closest to the foyer, closest to the exit. “Where’s Roger?”
His father held out the chair across from him for his mother, pushed it under as she sat, then claimed the seat at the head of the table, his briefcase on the floor next to the chair. “We thought it best to discuss this amongst ourselves first.”
Dane fidgeted against the uncomfortable, ornately carved chair back. “Discuss what?”
His mother held up a hand, gesturing silence, as Shannon entered with the coffee tray. She sat it on the table, then asked, “Anything else, Mrs. Ellis?”
“Leave us,” his father barked in reply.
Dane dropped his fork, the clatter of sterling silver on china ringing in his ears, but not nearly loud enough to drown out the roar of rushing blood his father’s increasingly foul mood set off. Shannon started back to help him, and Dane waved her off. “I’m good, thank you, Shannon.” Once she’d left, he pushed his plate aside and rested his forearms on the table. “Is someone going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“Dane, language,” his mother scolded.
His father leaned to the side, rooted around in his briefcase, and righted himself holding three red file folders. Dane clenched his hands in front of him, to stop them from shaking and to prevent himself from cracking his knuckles. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what was in those folders.
“We know what you were up to the other night,” his mother said.
“Swimming? That’s all I’ve been up to since I got here.”
His father tossed the first of the folders in front of him. “That’s not all.”
The roar in Dane’s ears grew louder. When he was sure his hand wouldn’t shake, he reached for it. Inside were a couple snapshots of him with the drug dealer at the River Walk. “I didn’t buy it. Alex—” He cut himself off. If they had pictures of this, what was in those other two folders?
“Is Alex also the reason you can’t buy your own clothes anymore?” His father tossed down the second folder, and Dane didn’t have to look to know what was in it. His father opened it for him, using his index finger to push pictures under his nose. Half a dozen photos of him and Alex digging through the bags behind the Goodwill.
“We’d had a bad day,” Dane said. “We decided to go out and blow off some steam, but we needed disguises.”
“You should have done a better job.” His father threw down the last folder, open. The pictures were dark, lit by dim club lights, but even grainy and shadowed, disguised in clothes that were not their usual, he and Alex were unmistakable on the crowded dance floor. Their figures taller, more defined than those around them, and fitting oh so perfectly together.
Memories rushed in with each picture he flipped over.
Hands all over each other—dancing, touching, teasing.
In this picture, Alex dancing in front of him, hand in Dane’s hair while Dane’s hand was somewhere low the camera couldn’t see. But Alex’s slack jaw, visible under the lip of the cowboy hat, made it pretty clear where Dane’s hand had wandered.
Palming the length of Alex’s erection. Stroking the curve of his ass through the rips in those secondhand jeans.
In the next photo, his face buried in Alex’s neck.
Alex’s curls tickling his nose. Dane begging for more. The wish granted, Alex turning in his arms, giving him an out, and Dane refusing to take it, sealing their mouths together.
Their make-out caught on another dozen pictures. A particularly erotic one with Alex’s finger in his mouth.
Sucking, wishing it was Alex’s dick in his mouth, and in his ass as Alex pushed a finger inside him, throwing them both into orgasm. Coming together.
Their blissed-out faces after, nuzzling.
Even on dim celluloid, their connection was as unmistakable as their bodies. As their identities. Dane’s cheeks burned.
“Don’t bother denying it,” his mother said. “Your face says it all.”
Dane skated his fingers over the picture of Alex smiling wide, happy. He’d done that; he wanted to do it again. But that look was only for him, not to be captured by some stranger on film. “Where did you get these?”
“We paid the pap from the press conference to follow you,” his father said.
Dane swallowed hard, closing the folder. He thought they’d been careful. Disguised. Not well enough. Because his parents were always watching.
“If any of this got out,” his mother said, “you’d be done. You’d lose your sponsorships.”
“Drug test me. I’ve been clean since before Trials. And Saturday night, Alex put a stop to it before I did anything stupid.”
“That boy,” she muttered, and Dane shot a murderous glare across the table, forceful enough she actually looked quelled, until his father broke the stare down.
“What do you want, Dane?” he asked.
Alex.
But that was the last thing his parents wanted to hear, and that answer, which had so readily come to mind, scared Dane more than a little too. He’d never put another person, much less a guy, at the top of his priorities—ahead of swimming, ahead of his sponsorships, ahead of himself. He’d been infatuated with Alex ten years ago, just acknowledging his attraction to men, but if someone had asked him then what he wanted, it would have been to go back to the life he knew, not the one he was afraid to live. He was still afraid of it, but he was beginning to think he was more afraid of walking away from it again.
He’d protect that truth, just like he’d protect Alex. He fell back on the old answer, hoping to divert his parents. “To swim and be the best. To win the gold.”
“And to please your sponsors,” his mother added.
“Of course.”
“If that’s what you want, then now is not the time to fall back into bad habits.”
Alex, a bad habit? The notion caused Dane to rage. If anything, Alex had been good for him. Helping Dane shave time off his laps, thawing the ice between him and his teammates, saving him from near career-ending stupidity. But his parents didn’t want to hear any of those things.
“Do you understand what’s at stake here?” his mother asked. “Don’t throw away twenty-six years of hard work over a passing phase.”
A passing phase that had lasted his entire life to date and would continue to last the rest of it. Rage boiling over, he shot to his feet, hands slamming the table. “This—” he sent the folder full of club pictures careening across the table at his mother “—is not a passing phase. When are you going to get that? Do I have to call a press conference and officially announce it for it to sink in?” Even as he bellowed, the thought scared the hell out of him. Announcing to the world something he hadn’t even admitted to . . . But he had . . . Words from the cab the other night filtered back to him, words he’d spoken to Alex, the man he loved. He’d fight for him, for them, and for his team that needed them. He split a glare between his parents. “If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” his mother snapped.
“We won’t let you, son,” his father added.
“What do you mean, you won’t let me?”
“Keep your head down and get in line.” Translation: stay in the closet. “If you don’t, we’ll make sure you won’t veer from it.”
“Threats, threats, and more threats. What are you gonna do? Tell the sponsors? They’ll probably love it. A new angle to play. Tell the world? No, because that only hurts your image. God forbid you two have a son who is—”
“You’ve handed us leverage,” his father cut him off, voice as cold as the ice in his eyes. He spread his hands at the pictures strewn across the table. “More than a little.”
Apprehension shot up Dane’s spine, immediately recognizing the trap they’d laid. The trap he’d stepped right into.
A trap his mother confirmed. “We have no intention of ruining you, but him . . .”
Alex was no longer a pretty face his mother wanted to recruit or a soul his father was encouraging him to save. He was the enemy, confirmed as much by Dane himself, by the fact he wanted Alex enough to risk it all. Dane’s rage burst under a groundswell of fear. “If you do something to Alex—”
“You’ll do what?” his mother said, sweet as honey. Deadly as a copperhead hiding in the weeds. “Stay focused, Dane. Don’t force our hand, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
Fuck. He’d given them all the leverage and kept none for himself. They still held all the strings, including, until he was thirty, control of his trust fund, which was the named party on all his sponsorship contracts. They still held all his power and money, everything he’d need to fight them, or leave them behind and live on his own with Alex. Tax benefits, his parents had said. Control, he now realized. And because he was their golden goose, they’d never do anything to burn him or jeopardize his sponsorships or income. Or the family’s reputation. But Alex, he was fair game. As much as Dane wanted him, he didn’t want to be the reason Alex lost everything he’d worked so hard and sacrificed for.
That would be even more unfair than turning his back again.
“Do you understand, son?” his father asked.
For Alex’s safety, Dane needed to get back in the car. Again.
He sank into his chair, defeated. He’d been an idiot to think he could ever beat his parents at their own game. But at least he knew the game now—saw the whole board—and could protect his king, his captain. “I understand. I’ll stay in line.”
“Excellent, that’s done then,” his mother said brightly, brushing off the entire conversation like they hadn’t just blackmailed their own son. “Now, let’s eat.”
It was the same meal Dane ate every day.
It’d never tasted worse.