Dane was sitting by himself on the bottom bleacher, arms hanging like limp noodles between his legs, goggles and cap dangling from his pruned fingertips. He’d swum and trained with the best, SwimMAC was at the top of every professional club list, and he was the fastest in the world.
None of that had prepared him for the past three days.
Mo had warned him that Olympic training was hell. First, there was the altitude to contend with. While his stomach had finally stopped rejecting food, there was no help for the thinner air. He felt the reduced oxygen in his muscles, legs, and head. Everything hurt and burned, forced to work twice as hard with half as much. Taxing his body further, Coach rode them hard, three times a day. He blew his shiny whistle every time someone missed a start or switch, ordered extra laps if anyone dared make a whale turn, and if a swimmer’s eyes drooped during tape review, he assigned the entire team more tape duty.
And then there was the biggest challenge of all—Alejandro Cantu.
Head bowed, Dane watched through his lashes as Alex’s arms cut through the air, a perfect arc of droplets following each trailing limb, splattering his broad chest breaking the water’s surface. Coach and Ryan shuffled down the deck alongside him, the former timing the run with a stopwatch, the latter shouting and clapping. When Alex tapped the wall, Ryan slapped the starting block and reached out for a high five.
“You just broke your own record, Cap!”
Coach went to mark down the time in his books as hoots went up from the rest of the team gathered around the pool. Victorious, Alex yanked off his cap and goggles, smiling wide. The late-day sun streamed in through the overhead glass, reflecting off the water and warming his deep brown eyes.
Dane’s body tightened, tension rippling out from his chest to his fingers and toes. He still wanted Alex as much as he had the first time he’d laid eyes on him. Only then, a decade ago, neither of them had had their names splashed across the headlines. They’d been tucked away at an obscure little college in an obscure little town, with no prying eyes except their fellow trainees’, most of whom were too wrapped up in their own dramas to notice the quiet roommates who’d become fast friends. And inside their dorm room, more. It’d been the first time Dane acknowledged his attraction to men, the pull between him and Alex too strong to resist. He’d never been happier, before or since.
There’d been another critical difference that summer. Alex had been flipped the other direction, swimming freestyle. He only swam backstroke and relay now, but he used to compete in all four strokes, a gifted all-around swimmer. He’d honed his specialties in college, but here in practice, there were days he gave Bas and Jacob a run for their money swimming laps of fly or breaststroke. Never free, though, at least not when anyone was watching.
Or so he thought.
That morning Dane had arrived early, still on East Coast time. On deck before anyone else, standing unseen in the shadows, he’d timed Alex’s freestyle laps. He was a solid third behind him and Mo. Together with his other times against Bas and Jacob, he could certainly qualify for the second individual medley spot behind Ryan. But he chose not to, sharing the wealth with his teammates instead.
Dane had no frame of reference for such selflessness. He’d only ever been taught the opposite, his parents and Roger shouting in his ear to hog as much of the spotlight as possible. Alex’s easy relinquishment of attention and his effortless team spirit made Dane envy all the things he couldn’t have, Alex most of all. Being around him here, he’d seen the swimmer and man Alex had become. Confident, reliable, a leader, a friend. Dane could have been in his sphere, in his life, and learned from that example the past ten years, if he’d only made a different choice. But there had been so many obstacles, his own fear the biggest, and it was torture, knowing everything he’d missed out on. And that torture bred anger and resentment, two ugly emotions Dane clung to desperately to keep from acting on the desire that wouldn’t go away.
His emotional crutches propelled him to his feet. He wasn’t nearly as good a man as Alex, but he was still a better swimmer. “Bet I can beat you,” he said.
Alex’s eyes shot to his, and Ryan’s head whipped around. “At backstroke?” Ryan said.
“At all the strokes.” His gaze never left Alex’s, which turned dagger-sharp.
Bas sat up from where he’d been splayed out across the adjacent starting block. “IM?”
“That’s right.” He glanced at Bas, then back to Alex. “You’ve been practicing with the other swimmers, and you’ve been swimming free in the mornings.” Alex’s eyes widened before narrowing, irate surprise at being caught and called out. Dane added fuel to the fire. “Two hundred meters; you’re good for it.”
Bas stood and inched closer. “Except for the fact he just swam three two hundreds, on top of two fours.”
Two-handed, Alex pushed out of the water and onto the deck. “I’m good. Let’s do this.”
“Hey.” Ryan slapped Dane’s shoulder. “Is this just the two of you or can anyone play?”
They’d all finish behind their individual medley specialist, but that wasn’t Dane’s concern. He only needed to beat one person. He donned his cap and goggles and held his arms out wide. “Come one, come all. It’s open IM day.”
“What are you fools doing?” Coach hollered.
“Just a little friendly race,” Ryan shouted back.
Coach waved them off and returned to his books.
Bas stepped to Alex’s side, whispering something Dane couldn’t hear. Alex nodded and Bas slapped his ass, sending a bolt of jealousy searing through Dane. After three days together, Dane knew there was nothing more than friendship between Alex and Bas, but the casual touches and easy bromance was something he could never get away with. His parents or sponsors would find out, they’d put two and two together, and he’d be finished.
“We gonna do this?” Alex said, claiming the Lane Five block.
Dane shook out his arms and took the block a lane over, Bas and Ryan on either side of them, and Sean and Mike in the outside lanes.
“Two lanes open,” Dane said to Mo, who stood off to the side next to Jacob. “You want in, old man? Pup?”
Mo rolled his eyes, while Jacob, looking like a deer in the headlights, furiously shook his ridiculous, half-shaven head.
“Your call, then,” Alex said to Jacob. “Grab my whistle.”
In his starting stance, Dane glanced right, catching Alex’s gaze through clear goggles. Fiery anger stared back at him. Better than the other kind of heat.
Dane refocused forward, the whistle blew, and he reacted on instinct, diving off and hitting the water clean. Arms in a V, legs dolphin kicking, he surfaced fifteen meters later, his head, chest, and arms lifting out of the water, mouth gulping in thin air as he swam fly. He didn’t have to look right to know Bas led after the first lap. In his periphery, he spotted Alex ahead of him too, and his lead grew in the backstroke lap. But Dane pulled even in breaststroke, and by the splash of water on his other side, Ryan was right there with him. Ryan understood the pacing of this race best, whereas he and Alex were running on rage-fueled adrenaline. On his last lap, Dane zoned out everything but the curl of his arms overhead, the alternating kick of his legs, and the gulp of air every fourth stroke. When his fingers hit the wall, he broke the water’s surface, every muscle burning. Ryan was a half breath ahead, Alex and Bas a half breath behind, and the rest of the field was still hitting the wall.
Entertained applause filled the natatorium, but Dane only had eyes for Alex. He ripped off his cap and goggles and grinned smugly. “How’s third place feel?”
“How’s second feel?” he shot back, that beautiful tanned chest heaving.
“I wasn’t racing Ryan.”
Alex tossed his cap and goggles on deck. “Then I’m happy with the silver.” His flashing eyes, however, told a different story. He’d only deferred to tick Dane off.
Dane rubbed the unspoken truth in. “Victory lap?” he said to Ryan.
They leisurely swam to the other end of the pool and back, cooling down. Alex was nowhere in sight when Mo gave him a hand out of the water. “I said get your shit together. Not stir more up.”
“Needed to get it out of my system.” The anger, the resentment, the jealousy, and most of all, the boiling desire.
Dane was merely simmering as they entered the locker room, his emotions dulled by the adrenaline of the win. “How about we continue the victory lap back at the dorm?” he said to Ryan. “I’ve got enough airplane bottles left for a decent celebration.”
“Aww, yeah.”
“Pup?” he offered Jacob.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Dane turned and tried his hardest to ignore the fact that Alex was dripping wet from a shower and dressed only in damp boxer briefs. “Celebrating.”
“By getting drunk? Aren’t you having enough trouble with the altitude?”
“You worry about you. I’ll worry about me.”
“And you just offered booze to Jacob, who’s underage and barely recovered from the last round of hazing. So yes, I’m going to worry about my team, which you are also on.”
Simmer heated to boiling again—anger, resentment, jealousy, and desire blazing—and Dane leaned into his captain’s face, inciting him. “Bet you wish I wasn’t.”
Showing more restraint than he had the other day, Alex pressed his lips together and clenched his jaw, holding in whatever he wanted to say.
Dane bent to pick up his bag. “Ever the self-sacrificing diplomat.”
A strong hand gripped his arm and hauled him back up. “You’re right,” Alex spat. “I wish you weren’t on my team. You might be the fastest, but you’re a privileged ass who thinks he owns this place when all you do is cause trouble. Between the press in our locker room, the sponsors telling us how to do our jobs, and you hazing other teammates, you are not worth it.”
“What’d you say?”
“You. Are. Not. Worth. It.” Alex punctuated each word with a shove to his chest, harder than before, backing Dane into the corner of the lockers.
Dane seethed and a rare curse rolled off his tongue. “Fuck you, Cantu.”
Alex wore a grin smug enough to match Dane’s earlier one. “You wish.”
Truer words had never been spoken. And Dane reacted to erase them.
With a fist to Alex’s face.
Knuckles met jaw, and pain radiated up Dane’s arm. He barreled out of the corner and landed another hook to Alex’s chin before the other man fought back, swinging hard and giving as good as he got. They traded hits and jabs, moving their brawl into the main aisle as shouts echoed around them.
A violent minute later, Bas and Mo yanked them apart. Dane struggled in Mo’s hold, and on the wet floor, with both of them barefoot, they tumbled backward, over the bench at the end of the nearest row.
A terrifying crack rent the din of noise, and once they hit the ground, Dane rolled off Mo and quickly assessed himself for injuries. Feeling no pain, he scrambled up and turned to check on Mo.
And almost lost his lunch.
His mentor lay on the floor, leg at an unholy angle, bone protruding through the skin.
Behind him, Alex gasped out a horrified “Fuck me.”
He couldn’t have been more right.
Eff them all indeed.