“But—”
“Keep up,” Ramsey said impatiently. “Don’t play dumb football player with me. I’m predisposed to think that, but I’ve never been able to believe it with you.”
Now thatwasflattering. Maybe even more flattering than Ramsey wanting to get him naked.
“Okay, so you want to . . .” Nate swallowed hard. This was a terrible fucking idea. Of all the insane plans that he’dimagined Ramsey might trot out, them sleeping together—evencontinuingto sleep with each other—was not even on the list. It was so far deep into crazy pants territory that Nate hadn’t even considered it.
“Pretend that we’re fucking? Yeah.”
“You’re insane.”
Ramsey shrugged. “You want them to leave us alone. You can’t pull off being casual friendly. This is the easiest solution.”
Nate’s jaw dropped. “To pretend to be fucking?”
He’d been right before. Talking about sex with Ramsey was horrible. Catastrophically stupid, really. To say the wordfuckingmade him think of all the things he’d shoved down hard into the box. Even if the lid had always refused to stay closed, at least they’d been contained.
They weren’t contained now. Him saying it, themtalkingabout it, had incinerated the box and now they were all floating around his head.
Too many memories. Too many fantasies.
“Yep,” Ramsey said, like this was nothing. Like it was a perfectly logical solution to their problem.
“I . . .that’s honestly the worst plan I’ve ever heard. Nobody is going to believe it.”
“And what, they’re going to believe that we’re suddenly friends, all bloodless and desireless?” Ramsey snapped back.
He’d been keeping a tight leash on himself, Nate realized.
Then he realized, too, that maybe this was getting to Ramsey the same way it was getting to Nate. That made the whole idea even worse, and it had been fucking cataclysmic to begin with.
Nate forced himself to take one deep breath and then another. “They’re not going to believe it, because they’re not going to believe that I’d be okay just casually fucking you.”
“If I wasn’t the king of problem solving, we might actually have an issue.” Ramsey had tightened his leash again, and now he justsounded pleasant, like they were discussing the weather outside. “Also, positively, we’re not back in Portland or in Buffalo, where the easiest solution might be too difficult to prove particularly convincing. But we’re not, so . . .there it is.”
“Therewhatis?” Nate was afraid to ask. The more casual and easygoing Ramsey seemed to get about this, the more totally insane his ideas became.
“We don’t pretend we’re just fucking. We’re . . .I don’t know, what’s the step between just fucking and like, soulmate-boyfriend shit, like Aidan and Levi?”
Nate’s jaw dropped even further. “You want to pretend to bedatingnow?”
“Okay, so casual dating, yeah,” Ramsey said, nodding to himself like Nate had not said anything at all. Like this was all plausible, and not absolutely batshit insane. “That makes sense. I can see that. I’ve not done any of it so I wasn’t sure, but that was probably what I would have suggested.”
“Wait, you’venever?”
Ramsey shot him a look. “This should not surprise you.”
It really shouldn’t. Ramsey had told him everything he needed to know back in June. But then, it was hard to conceive thatthatRamsey—the one who didn’t exchange phone numbers or do second nights or get involved romantically at all—was willing to fake date him. Not only was willing, but had been the one to suggest it.
“Maybe I’m still surprised from everything else,” Nate said.
Ramsey laughed. Not the fake,I’m charming everyone in my aural vicinitykind of laugh, but a real laugh. Nate was cursed, and blessed, to be able to tell the difference.
“That’s me,” Ramsey said wryly. “Full of surprises.”
But Nate wouldn’t have said that, at least not before tonight. In fact, other than the startling reveal that Ramsey was a pro hockey player, nothing he’d done had ever brought even mildastonishment. He’d been exactly the overly-charismatic-and-knew-it guy that Nate had imagined him to be.
It hadn’t been even remotely shocking that he’d wiggled into Nate’s social circle, without seeming to break a sweat. If Ramsey wanted something, he got it. And always, it felt like there was an ulterior motive with him.
