“What?” Ramsey asked innocently.
He could practically hear Brody roll his eyes through the phone. “You know exactly what you did. Don’t fucking change the subject.”
“I didn’t—”
But Brody knew him way too well to believe it. Nobody else, except Wes, knew him better. “Bullshit,” Brody said, laughing under his breath. “You forget that you can’t run me like the way you run everyone else on the fucking planet.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna try,” Ramsey muttered.
He settled down at the island, setting the phone on the counter next to his plate of eggs and putting it on speaker.
“I’m just trying to figure out what your angle is in all this,” Brody said and Ramsey’s mental antenna pinged.
“What do you mean?” he asked carefully while trying not to sound careful.
“Oh come on, you don’t actuallylikethis guy,” Brody said. “You don’t do that.”
Maybe Ramsey had taken Wes’ relatively easy belief in his and Nate’s charade for granted.
“And what, I can’t change?” Ramsey argued.
Brody hummed under his breath.
“Didn’t you change too, when you met Dean?”
“That’s not fair,” Brody complained.
“You told me so many times you didn’t want to get involved with anyone. You were perfectly happy being solo, and then you met Dean.”
“You mean,youshoved Dean into my lap.”
“Well, to be honest, I sort of think of you two as the other way around—”
Brody interrupted him with an outraged noise. “I really don’t wantyouthinking about it.”
“Come on, I’m notthatcold-blooded.” He wasn’t going to tell Brody that he’d only thought about him and Dean objectively, wondering, like he always tended to do, how they might fit together. He’d bet that they’d be exactly what each other needed.
It was always satisfying to be proven right, but then there was being a littletooright. Not that he’d wanted Brody for himself—Brody was too sweet and naive, and afriend, and Ramsey never played around where he ate—but he’d never, ever expected what happened. One of the few times he’d truly been taken by surprise.
“Still don’t like it,” Brody said. “But apparently you’ve got your own football player these days, so now you don’t have to fantasize about mine anymore.”
Ramsey spluttered.
“You didn’t tell me about him,” Brody continued, not sounding hurt, his tone still so casual, “and I can’t figure out if that means he doesn’t mean anything or that you were worried I was going to clock just how much he does mean to you.”
“Stick to what you’re good at, science boy,” Ramsey said, but he was suddenly a little worried.
“Psychology is a science, dumbass.”
“Asoftscience,” Ramsey retorted.
“Are you fucking joking right now? No, don’t answer that. I can see exactly how it is.” Brody paused and Ramsey’s fingers clutched, damp with sweat and sudden nerves, around his fork. “We don’t have to talk about it. So tell me about your physical therapy. How’s it going?”
“Symptom free for three weeks and counting. Feeling good. I feel like . . .” Ramsey wet his lips, not wanting to say it, even though he knew Brody wanted to hear it. But what if he jinxed it?
“Feel like what?” Brody prompted. And maybe he’d let Ramsey go about Nate, but he wasn’t going to ever let him down easy when it came to his health.
“I feel like maybe it’s finally clearing. Maybe . . .”
