Maybe it wasRamseywhocouldn’t forget their night together.
Nate’s neck went hot, and his fingers trembled as he picked up the phone, shoving it in his pocket. He’d call Deacon on his way home, get his perspective on the whole Jordan situation.
“Okay, you could at least saythank you,” Ramsey bitched.
“You came over here,” Nate teased instead, and Ramsey just rolled his eyes.
But Nate could feel the weight of his gaze on him as he went over to Aidan and Dawson and Cam, where they were sitting at the front of the suite, to let them know he was taking off.
Aidan shot him a concerned look. “You’re leaving already?”
Nate nodded, and Aidan frowned. His expression, coupled with the fact that Aidan kept glancing back at where Ramsey was leaning, all easy charm against the tall table in the middle of the suite, made it clear he thought Nate was leaving because of Ramsey.
Well, he wasn’tnotleaving because of Ramsey.
But Nate wasn’t touching that subject with Aidan with a ten-foot pole. He’d tried a few times, but he was still attempting—and failing—to be casual about it, enough that it was still easy enough for Nate to brush him off.
That might not be true forever, but at least it still held true tonight.
“See you at practice tomorrow,” Nate called out to the other guys, waving as he disappeared out the door.
Still painfully aware of how Ramsey’s eyes were still following him.
When he was in a cab on the way home, he texted Deacon.You still up, old man?
Deacon called him a second later. “Who are you calling old?” he grumped.
“You gonna call me an upstart next?” Nate joked, leaning back on the bench seat as the cab navigated the late night downtown Toronto traffic. The game wasn’t over yet, but the streets around the area were still packed.
When he’d first been drafted by Charleston, and he’d met Deacon Harris, he’d been star-struck and dick-struck, harboring the world’s most ridiculous crush on the guy. It had hurt, a little,when he’d realized that Deacon wasn’t looking back at him but had been pining instead for the new owner of their team. But in the end, Nate could acknowledge that everything had turned out the way it should have.
“Maybe,” Deacon teased. “You’d probably like that too much, though.”
Deacon and Grant were meant for each other, and well, Nate hadn’t methisideal match yet, but he still had faith he could be around the next corner.
Especially now that he’d given up hookups and was trying to view the guys he met through a more relationship-friendly lens.
“Not anymore. Not in forever, old man,” Nate insisted.
“Aw, disappointing,” Deacon joked even though they both knew he wasn’t, at all. “You gonna tell me what’s up?”
“You gonna stop claiming I’ve got a secret crush on you?”
Deacon just laughed. “It’s good for my ego, though.”
“Like that needs any more help,” Nate complained. “Yeah. I’m having . . .well,I’mnot having the problem.”
Deacon was quiet for a moment, letting Nate have his space. Something Nate had always appreciated about him.
“It’s this rookie,” Nate finally admitted.
“Let me guess. Atkinson.”
Of course it was obvious. If Deacon had been paying any amount of attention to the Thunder, he’d probably seen it immediately. And that wasn’t even counting how Jordanhadbeen benched for the first series, a month ago, for missing a meeting.
Deacon, who was unofficially on the Condors coaching squad and had been a player in the NFL for almost twenty years, had likely seen that and knew there was more to the story.
“Yeah,” Nate said.
