“I’d ask if anyone ever put you in charge of something that you’d be shitty at, and then didn’t help you when you started to fail but then . . .”
“I don’t fail?” Ramsey grinned.
It would be mean, but for a moment, Nate considered reminding him that he was currently on long-term injured reserve. But then that hadn’t been Ramsey failing; that had been Ramsey’sbodyfailing.
But before he could decide what to say instead, Ramsey continued, “I doubt anyone put you in charge of something you’d fail at. I don’t see you as the failure type.”
“I fail every day at liking you,” Nate retorted, though these days it felt more the opposite.
“Fair,” Ramsey said, not looking like he believed him for even a second. “But honestly, I’m good at lots of kinds of stuff, and because I am, I can tell you thatyouare too.”
“That why you can’t leave me alone?”
“You caught me. It’s a competency kink.”
“Be serious.”
“Oh, baby, I am. But to add to my bona fides, I wore the C in college, too.”
“The C?”
“I was the captain,” Ramsey explained. His lips turned into a smirk. “It’s what we call it in that other,real, sport.”
Nate supposed he should be annoyed, but the laugh bubbled out of him anyway.
“Ah. Okay.” So maybe this wasn’tout of Ramsey’s wheelhouse. But telling him would meantelling him,and Nate was already not doing a great job keeping him at arm’s length.
Good enough that Aidan kept shooting him worried looks whenever they were in the same room together, but not good enough that Nate was convinced he could actually keep it up for as long as he should.
“You gonna tell me about it?” Ramsey prodded.
Nate didn’t want to say,Sterling dumped this problem on me and whenever I try to talk to him about it, he just brushes me off.Sterling had more important things to deal with, though it was probably more like, it was his last year and he was tired of dealing with annoying rookies.
Nate sympathized. He’d only had custody of Jordan for a few weeks now, and he was already over it.
“I told you, it’s this problem, and it got put on me, and I’m not . . .it’s not working.”
While Nate might be pissed at Sterling for this, he wasn’t about to expose him to Ramsey.
“You think about asking someone else?” Ramsey asked.
Nate shot him an unamused look. “I’m not going to tell you about it.”
“Dude, calm down. I wasn’t sayingme. You clearly don’t want to give me any more details, and it’s hard to help without them. I meant, is there someone else on the team, or maybe another friend you could run this by.”
It was stupid how Nate hadneverthought of that. He’d tried so hard to make the Thunder his team when he’d been traded, but of course, he had friends still in Charleston, where he’d begun his NFL career.
“Yeah, actually.” He and Deacon Harris, his mentor after he’d been drafted by the Charleston Condors, still talked pretty often. Sometimes it was just a text exchange after a game. Sometimes Deacon would call him, give him a heads-up about an opponent he’d just seen on film. Every time he did that, Deacon’s husband and the owner of the Condors, Grant Green, complained fondly about how he was trying to give Nate—and the Thunder—an unfair advantage. But Deacon would just look at him, and though Grant was a certified ballbuster, both in the internet security worldandthe football world, the only one who could get him to stop whining about anything was Deac.
“There you go,” Ramsey said as Nate nodded slowly. “You can saythank you, Ramsey, you’re a gorgeous and brilliant man, now.”
“Pass?”
Ramsey made a face. “Come on. I helped you, and I didn’t have to.”
“You chose to walk over here,” Nate reminded him. Reminding him, also, of the fact that he couldn’t seem to leave Nate alone.
Occasionally, Ramsey would make a pointed comment about how Nate couldn’t forget their night together. And despite the fact that it was unfortunately true, he was beginning to think the opposite mightalsobe true.
