Dreads loose and dripping wet, track suit sticking to his damp skin, Bas scaled the dorm stairs three at a time, Alex on his heels. They burst through the stairwell door onto the second floor, drawing more than a few startled looks as they ran down the hall to the triple.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Alex asked.
“You think my answer’s changed in the past hour?”
His answer—I don’t know—was ninety percent a lie. Bas was fairly certain Jacob’s no-show at the medley relay heat this morning had to do with their kiss and argument yesterday after Jacob’s medal race. The ten percent he actually didn’t know was if the last-minute text Jacob had sent Terrence, claiming to be sick, was true. He doubted it. Jacob hadn’t seemed the least bit sick last night. Even taking Bas’s idiocy yesterday into account, he was surprised Jacob had missed today’s heat. Unless he really was sick. Hungover, maybe? He wouldn’t need to use that fake ID here to get a bottle of Cuervo.
Outside Jacob’s door, Bas raised his first to knock, but Alex grabbed his biceps first, hauling him around. “What the fuck happened?”
Bas wrenched his arm free and pounded on the door. “Jacob, open up!”
The door swung open, but it wasn’t the swimmer Bas wanted to see. “Dude,” Kevin said. “What’s going on?”
Alex crowded into the doorway next to Bas. “Where’s your roommate?”
Sean appeared behind Kevin. “Right here?”
“The other one,” Bas said, pushing into the room. He knew which bed was Jacob’s on first glance. Military neat, like Jacob had kept it when they’d shared a room. Bas put a hand to the sheets. Cold. Had the bed been that cold and neat all night?
He straightened, turning back around to Kevin and Sean. “When’s the last time you saw Jacob?”
“What the hell’s going on?” Sean asked.
“Jacob didn’t show for the medley relay heat,” Alex answered.
“Oh shit,” Kevin cursed. “Did you guys still qualify?”
“Yes,” Bas grit out. Terrence had subbed in and done the best he could, but he didn’t have Jacob’s speed or hours of practice in the lineup. “Back to my question. When’s the last time you saw the pup?”
Sean bowed his head, hand scrubbing the nape of his neck. “Yesterday.”
“He didn’t sleep here last night?” Alex clipped in his captain-voice.
“He wasn’t here when we got in, and he wasn’t here this morning.”
“And you didn’t think to tell someone?” Bas roared.
“Dude,” Kevin shouted back, stepping to Sean’s defense. “We thought he was with you!”
No, he most definitely was not. Bas had made sure of that. Now no one knew where Jacob was. Gone overnight, in a strange city, and he’d missed his call time this morning. Because Bas had been a fucking idiot. He’d done it again. Just like four years ago. Jeopardized his team and hurt the man he lo—
“Fuck!” He swiped an arm across Jacob’s bedside table, sending his alarm clock and medals crashing to the floor.
Along with Davis’s dog tags.
They tumbled end over end, to the middle of the floor, landing in a ray of sun and reflecting the harsh midday light at Bas.
Wherever Jacob was, he hadn’t taken the tags with him.
He wasn’t safe.
Sean bent to pick them up.
“Don’t!” Bas snapped.
Retracting his hand, Sean backed off. “Look, man, he’s our teammate and friend too. How can we help?”
“Go get Dane,” Alex ordered Sean. “He was a few minutes behind us, wrapping up with the press. Tell him to bring his computer.”
“Burrows!” Coach’s voice boomed down the hallway.
“You.” Alex pointed at Kevin, as he kicked the items Bas had scattered on the floor under the bed. “In the bathroom and make puking noises. We told Coach that Jacob was sick.”
Kevin jumped to it, closing the bathroom door behind him, just as Coach came through the other one. “Where’s Burrows? I saw Sean running out.”
On cue, Kevin made retching noises, and Alex eyed the closed bathroom door.
Coach grimaced. “Does he need to go to medical?”
Alex shook his head. “Ate something bad after his race last night. Can’t be much left at this point.”
More retching noises from the bathroom, and Coach stepped back toward the hallway. “Get food and fluids in him. If he can’t keep it down, get him to medical for an IV. I want him ready for tomorrow tonight. We’re not losing that gold.”
“Yes, Coach,” Alex said.
Once Hartl was gone, Bas grabbed Alex by the arm. “Why didn’t you tell him the truth? Jacob’s missing. We need help finding him.”
“If Coach or the Committee finds out he was an intentional no-show, they won’t let him swim tomorrow. Do you want that?”
Fuck no, he didn’t want that. He didn’t want any of this. He wanted Jacob to have his shot at relay gold, along with the rest of his squad. But finding Jacob, making sure he was safe, had to be paramount. “How are we going to find him?”
“I’m going to track his phone,” Dane said from the doorway, laptop under his arm. “He’s always got it on him, yeah?”
Bas nodded. Jacob never went anywhere without that phone, in case his dad or Josh needed to reach him. Kneeling, Bas retrieved the dog tags and medals from under the bed. He set the medals back on the table and clutched the tags in his hand.
Dane set up on Jacob’s bed, hacker face on and laptop open, while Alex checked the hallway to make sure Coach was gone, before ushering Sean and Kevin out too.
Pacing, Bas flipped the tags over in his hand, like he’d seen Jacob do so many times. First, Jacob had told him his dad had given him these for luck. Then, that night at Martin’s, he’d revealed his dad had meant them as a token of safety. That was what Bas had thought he was doing. Keeping Jacob safe, watching out for him, while Jacob watched out for everyone else.
Bang-up job Bas had done there. He cursed himself as every worst-case scenario ran through his head. Jacob in a strange city, alone, overnight. Jacob hiding from him, from the team, thinking they didn’t need him. Jacob in someone else’s room—Julio’s maybe. That was the worst-case scenario of all, making Bas want to retch for real.
Alex’s sharp tone jolted him out of the spiral. “All right, cut the bullshit. Tell me what happened.”
“We had a . . . disagreement . . . after his race yesterday.”
“He made a move, didn’t he?” Dane said, his fingers not pausing in their sprint across the keyboard. “I encouraged him. It’s not all Bas’s fault.”
Alex’s dark eyes remain locked on Bas. “I asked if you knew what you were doing. Multiple times.”
Sinking onto the end of Jacob’s bed, Bas braced his elbows on his knees and hung his head in his hands, hiding behind his dreads. “Clearly I didn’t.”
He could feel Alex’s hard stare on the back of his head. “Is this about Espo?” When Bas didn’t respond, Alex knelt in front of him and dipped his head, forcing his gaze. “I’m asking as your friend, Sebastian, not your captain.”
Bas dropped his hands, letting them dangle between his knees, tags swinging by their chain. “I was trying to do right by him.”
“Julio?” Dane said.
“Fuck no,” Bas said over his shoulder. “That’s done. I told Julio as much the other day.”
“Good,” Dane replied, and Bas looked back to Alex, who was giving him the spill-it stare.
“You’re not totally wrong,” Bas conceded. “This is about Julio. I don’t want to hurt Jacob the way I hurt him.”
“By leaving him?” Alex said.
Bas cast his gaze aside, out the window.
“How do you know you’ll leave?” Alex said.
“I don’t do commitment.”
“More bullshit.” The certainty in Alex’s voice had Bas whipping his gaze back around.
“How so? Julio is the only serious relationship I’ve had, and I left him when he needed me most. Jacob asked me to stay, and I left him too.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t do commitment,” Alex said. “You’ve stayed by my grumpy side for how long?”
“Because you’re my best friend.”
Standing, Alex rested back against the windowsill. “You don’t think Jacob could be that person too?”
“You can have more than one,” Dane interjected.
“You’re a mentor at your club,” Alex talked over him. “You run a tattoo parlor. You make it to your mom’s house every weekend.”
“And I’m supposed to add a relationship to that?”
“You haven’t already?”
In his head, Bas rewound the past month between him and Jacob—the friendship, the closeness, the caring, the desire, the sex. Alex’s question was a fair one. Bas knew the answer, as sure as Alex did. He was falling for Jacob, fast. The beautiful, strong, observant young man who’d been a constant in his life this summer, no matter how hard Bas had tried to push him away.
And just look at how he’d hurt Jacob already. Would hurt him more.
“Even if he’d have me,” Bas said, “I can’t give this a shot, then leave him. He’s already lost too much.” His mother who’d deserted him, the dates who didn’t get his bisexuality, and fuck all else who’d written chapters of Jacob’s story that had the protagonist looking out for himself last.
Bas had to put Jacob first. Change the story.
Stay away from him and stay away from breaking both their hearts.
But damn if it didn’t feel like his heart was breaking now anyway . . .
“Why are you so sure you’ll leave?” Alex asked.
“Three generations—my father, grandfather, great-grandfather—they all cheated and left. I don’t want to be the fourth. If I never—”
“Did you cheat on Julio, before you broke it off?” Dane asked.
“No, of course not.”
“That right there,” Alex said, jabbing a finger at him. “That’s why you’re not like the other men in your family. Your mother raised you, she never deserted you, and you haven’t deserted her either. Fuck the other half of your DNA.”
Even if Alex was right . . . “I don’t know how to do this.” He spread his hands, a poor encapsulation of their current predicament, but there it was. “Look at the mess I made of things. I haven’t had a relationship since Julio. Four years, I’ve kept hookups casual so I wouldn’t fuck up again, exactly like this. Christ, how much have I hurt him already?”
Alex was quiet a moment, then pushed off the windowsill. Sitting next to Bas, he folded his fingers around the tags and slipped them out of Bas’s grasp. “Are you really afraid of leaving Jacob? Or are you more afraid of Jacob leaving you?”
The notion made every muscle in Bas’s body tighten, including the one at the center of his chest. Jacob’s kindness, his smile, his kiss, his earnestness that had filled Bas’s life, one day ripped away. Bas’s dad had been thirty-five when he’d left, a grown-up who was supposed to have known what we wanted. He’d changed his mind, leaving Bas and his mom behind. Jacob was so young; he still had so many choices to make. “He’s only nineteen.”
“The oldest nineteen-year-old any of us have ever met.”
“He hasn’t had much experience. He’s going to want to explore.”
“Is that why you broke up with Julio?” Dane asked. “Because you wanted to explore?”
“No,” Bas answered without hesitation. “We were both young, immature, and besides swimming, we didn’t have much else in common. He didn’t like that I was bi either, and with him going back to Spain, and me in California, we’d already started growing apart, even though we tried to ignore it.”
“The real reason, Sebastian,” Alex prompted.
Bas rewound his thoughts and words, putting it together. Alex was right. He didn’t want to be the one left behind on the shower floor crying, heart ripped out and future uncertain. “I’m afraid of him leaving me.”
Alex nodded. “You’re scared; not that those other reasons you and Julio didn’t work out weren’t valid too.”
“Even so,” Dane said, “do you regret the two years you spent with Julio?”
“No, never. I cared about him. I regret how I ended it, not that it ended.”
“Then why won’t you give Jacob a shot too? Even if it doesn’t work out, do you want to pass up the chance? Because you’re afraid of what might happen in the future?”
“Honestly, Bas,” Alex said, “he’s more likely to lose you—or you him—in a car accident tomorrow than either one of you is to leave, from what I’ve seen of you two together. You’re like fucking magnets, always gravitating toward each other. The fact you’re fighting this hard to stay apart should tell you something. Maybe you should just be together.”
There was a tablet full of drawings in Bas’s room proving Alex’s point. Jacob was always on his mind. He couldn’t get him out of his head, or his heart. He just had to take a leap. Like he had opening the tattoo shop, which had been a success. Like he had giving Dane the benefit of the doubt when he’d chased after Alex, which had been a success. Could he and Jacob be a success too? Could they make it work? Could his heart afford not to try?
Could Jacob’s?
Jacob, who’d put himself first for a change, who’d asked Bas for a chance, who’d asked him to stay and change his story.
Had Bas been writing it wrong? Could he write a happily ever after for him and Jacob instead?
“I got him,” Dane said behind them, and both Alex and Bas shot off the bed. “Plaza Mayor.”
The very center of the city. In the middle of the day. Between the work crush and the tourist crush, it’d be like hunting a needle in a haystack. “How precise is whatever you’re doing?” Bas asked.
Dane glanced up, one side of his mouth hitched. “Right now, looks like he’s sitting at the base of the light post to the right of the horse’s ass. Precise enough for you?”
In more ways than one. “I need to go,” Bas said, holding his hand out to Alex, palm up.
Alex dropped the dog tags in his hand. “Suspect that you do.”
Bas looped the tags over his neck, tucking them under his shirt, and with the rubber band on his wrist, tied his dreads up high. Go time. “Text me if his location changes,” he said to Dane. Then to Alex, “Cover for us if we’re late getting back.”
“Not too late,” Alex said, opening the door for him. “You’ve got a medal race to win tonight. And we’ve got the big one tomorrow.”
Only Jacob’s words would do. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
Ball cap pulled low, knees tucked to his chest, Jacob made himself as small as possible, out of the way of the tourists and locals crowding the historic Madrid square. The blazing midday sun did nothing to scare away the horde of people. Used to the Texas heat, it didn’t scare away Jacob either. The trails of sweat running down his temples and back felt like home. The colorful umbrellas at the outdoor cafés lining the square also reminded him of San Antonio. He could have gone into one, rested indoors after a night outside wandering the city, but he had zero appetite, the thought of food making him nauseous.
Besides, out here in the packed Plaza Mayor, he could get lost. Dressed in cargo shorts and a T-shirt, with his faded Longhorns hat shadowing his face, no one gave him a second look. Just another American tourist in Madrid for the Games. He wasn’t instantly recognizable like Dane, a familiar face like Alex, or a towering tattooed man with dreadlocks like Bas.
Thinking of the latter made his stomach churn. He was usually so good at reading people, reading situations, but he’d read this one all wrong. He laid his head on his knees and closed his eyes, retreating from the light. Behind his eyelids, the Not-Top-Ten reel that had been plaguing him all night continued to play.
Caught jerking off in San Antonio.
Two embarrassing breakdowns in Vienna.
The room reassignment in Madrid.
Flirting with Bas’s ex opening night.
Faltering in his hundred-meter race.
Winning the two hundred, going after what he wanted, and being told he didn’t know what he wanted.
Jacob seeing something more between him and Bas than was there.
Julio overhearing their argument.
Julio, who was at the top of Bas’s regrets list.
Missing the medley relay heat this morning.
His team hadn’t needed him for that last one. They’d gone ahead without him, Terrence swimming his breaststroke laps. He’d checked the standings on his phone; they’d qualified. Not as fast as they’d been swimming with Jacob in the lineup, but the unexpected change likely had shaken them up. They’d work it out by tomorrow, and with as up and down as Jacob had been, Terrence was a safer bet. Bas wouldn’t have to worry about Terrence—personally or professionally. Terrence wouldn’t cost them their gold.
His phone vibrated for the umpteenth time the past hour. By now, his teammates had figured out he hadn’t come back to the Village last night and were frantically calling and texting. None from Bas, however. Jacob needed to call Alex, tell him he was okay and apologize for missing the heat. Tell him that Terrence should swim in the final tomorrow. Jacob wasn’t ready for that conversation yet. He checked each text, just in case it was Coach. No word from him yet either, which Jacob assumed meant the team was covering for him. He needed to thank Alex for that too. He also checked each text in case one was from Josh or his dad. It would be off schedule, early morning in Texas, but they’d called earlier another time this week.
Which they were doing so again today, his dad’s face filling the screen. Jacob answered, bringing the phone to his ear. “Hey, Dad, how’s it going?”
“Good, good. I took the whole weekend off to watch you swim.”
Jacob reached into his pocket for the dog tags and felt doubly bereft at finding his pocket empty, realizing he’d left the tags in his room. God, how much had he lost in the past twenty-four hours?
“Jacob, you there?”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, sorry, Dad, just loud out here.”
“Where’s that?”
“I’m in the Plaza Mayor.”
“The Plaza what?”
“The big town square in Madrid.” He switched on the camera and flipped the phone around, angling it slightly up and moving it left to right so his dad could see the buildings on the square.
Davis whistled low, and Jacob turned the phone back around to see him smiling wistfully. “They sure do build ’em beautiful over there.”
“Were you ever here?” He rarely asked specifics about his dad’s time in the Marines, the fictionalized story time almost more than he’d wanted to risk, worried about triggering a flashback. But today, on screen, his father looked calm and happy to reminisce.
“No, the base is farther south, near Seville, but the architecture is similar. Unit only got to stay there a week while we resupplied, but it sure was beautiful. And hot.”
“The hot part’s not changed,” Jacob said, taking comfort in his dad’s answering laugh and upbeat demeanor. “You look good, Dad.”
“Thanks, and don’t take this the wrong way, kid, but you don’t. You gonna be ready for tomorrow? Everyone’s coming over for the main event.”
Which he wouldn’t be swimming in anymore. Guilt walloped him, making him rock in place. He didn’t have the heart to tell his dad the truth, not when he looked so happy. Jacob switched off the camera before his dad could read the truth on his face, bringing the phone back to his ear. “You did tell them it’s not a boxing match, right?” he joked.
“Of course I did. We all want to see you swim.”
“I haven’t been swimming so great.”
“Are you kidding me? You’ve got two Olympic medals.”
“One bronze.”
“You’ve got two, kid, and one of ’em’s gold. More than most people. And you’re only nineteen. You’ll get the gold in all the events next time.”
That might be true, if he were even allowed back after the no-show this morning. Regardless of his chances for a repeat, this was likely it for Alex, Dane, and Bas. “There might not be a next time for some of my teammates.”
“Let them worry about that.”
As much as Jacob wished he could, that wasn’t him. He’d always feel responsible, and if he cost his team the medley relay gold they’d lost last time, that guilt would surely knock him all the way over. He couldn’t let them risk the gold on him.
“So, what’s got you in such a good mood, besides the weekend off?” he asked his father, deflecting, but also curious.
“You’ll never believe who and what rolled into the shop yesterday.”
“I got nothing. Tell me.”
“Sixty-four and half, cherry red Mustang convertible. With Darlene Harris behind the wheel.”
“Mona Harris’s daughter?” Jacob asked. “You went to school with Darlene, didn’t you?” She’d been his dad’s prom date, if Jacob remembered the old yearbooks correctly.
“That’s her. She’s a nurse and moved back to help take care of Mona. She’s divorced. Got a boy and girl too, high schoolers. Fans of yours. I invited them over to watch tomorrow night.”
More people he’d disappoint. He rested his head back on his knees, eyes closed, as he swallowed around the lump in his throat.
His dad broke the silence, voice laden with concern. “Jacob, buddy, tell me what’s going on.”
Tears burned his eyes. “I screwed up, Dad. Everything’s a mess, and I’m afraid I’ve disappointed everyone.”
“You haven’t.”
The words hadn’t come from his dad on the phone. They’d come from above, in a deep voice Jacob had wanted to hear more than any other, even if the prospect of what might follow scared the hell out of him. He thought maybe he was hearing things, until a rough hand landed on his shin and a waft of chlorine floated under his nose.
He opened his eyes.
Bas was kneeling in front of him, blue eyes warm and relieved. When he spoke, his words were soft yet firm. Certain. “You could never disappoint anyone.”