I take the drink. I take a swallow. I look at his mouth. He looks at mine. We both know the ninety minutes we're about to have.
Then the door opens behind me and I hear Jax's voice.
“MAD DOG.”
I close my eyes for a full second.
I turn around.
The entire Wolves team is filing into the bar. All of them. Even Grayson, who I was sure would go home. Even the kid assistant trainer, who looks terrified. Even—and this is the part that I almost laugh at—Theo, who is behind Phoenix with both hands in his jacket pockets and the most convincingI have been kidnappedface I have ever seen on a twenty-year-old.
Phoenix sees me and raises a hand and crosses toward the high-top. His hair is still damp at the front from the postgame champagne. His grin is all teeth.
“Bud. Post-game.”
“Captain.”
He looks pointedly at Dominic. He looks pointedly at the two drinks. He looks pointedly at me.
“We were not aware you had plans.” He's smiling. He is not sorry.
“I did not advertise them.”
“Well. Merge them.”
The team is already fanning out. Jax has commandeered two pool tables. The assistant trainer is ordering shots for people who did not ask for shots. Theo has taken a seat at the far end of the bar where the light is lowest and has been handed a beer he did not ask for by Grayson, who is making a point.
Dominic comes up to my elbow, carrying both drinks. He hands me mine.
“Your whole team is here.”
“My whole team is here.”
“Wow.”
He has the decency to be entertained rather than annoyed, which is one of the six things I like about him.
“Do I need to leave?”
I look at him. I look at Theo, who is not looking at me. I look at Dominic again.
“No. Give me ten minutes to do the captain thing. Then we're leaving.”
The captain thing takes sixteen minutes. I go around the team. I clink Phoenix's glass. I chirp Jax's penalty for interference until he's crying laughing and has to sit down. I let the trainer take a photo of me with his phone because he's new and it's his first game and I know from experience that a first-game photo with a veteran is something a guy tells his mom about. I stand at the pool table for two minutes long enough to beat Grayson at a shot nobody thought I could make, and Grayson shakes his head at me the way only a man who has lost to me many times can, and I buy him the next round out of residual respect.
I do not go to Theo's end of the bar.
I drift back to Dominic. I put my hand on his waist in a way the room can see. Nobody in this room is going to be surprised by me touching a man in a bar. Nobody in this room is going to be surprised by anything about me. I have been me for five years. I made sure of it.
“Ten minutes out. Bathroom?”
“Classy, Creed.”
“Very.”
He grins. He goes first. I follow in ninety seconds because I'm not an animal.
The bathroom at Vigil has a single-stall at the back with a lock that works. Dominic is waiting in there when I come in. He pulls me in by the belt loops. He kisses me. He is a very good kisser. I have been here before. I know exactly what the next eight minutes look like. The next eight minutes are: I bend him over the sink, I get what I came for, we wash up, we leave, I sleep the sleep of a man whose body is taken care of.
