Page 57 of Caught Offside

“Being smart.”

“Being safe. Being controlled. Being the version of myself that doesn’t need anyone.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’m good at that version. I’ve been that version for twenty-eight years. It works. It’s efficient. It kept me alive through every trade, every roster cut, every time someone decided I wasn’t worth protecting. And it almost cost me you.”

Patrick stopped. His hand came up, hesitated in the space between them, and came to rest on Asher’s forearm, uncertain, like he half expected to be shrugged off. Asher had never seen him touch him like that before.

“I don’t know how to do this.” His voice had gone low, all the polish stripped out of it. “I don’t know how to be someone’s, not really. But I’d rather figure that out with you than keep being good at being alone.”

The last of the stadium lights went dark. Patrick stood in front of him with his hand still resting on Asher’s arm and nothing held back in his face, his words hanging in the air. Asher felt a joke rising in his throat, the automatic reflex to make it easier by making it funny.

The charm, the ability to walk into any room and have everyone love you and still go home alone because you left before anyone could leave you first—that’s mine. I gave you that.

It was Pops’s voice. It never really went away.

Asher let the joke die. He stood under the dead lot lights and stayed quiet, arms loose at his sides, and let Patrick’s words reach him.

“I don’t know how to be the person someone stays for.” His voice was rough, the words honest and raw. “Every person I’ve been with has left. I know I’m the common denominator. And for the last week, I’ve been waiting for you to finish leaving because that’s what I know how to do.”

Patrick’s hand dropped from Asher’s arm. His fingers opened at his sides.

“But you’re here.” Asher’s breath caught. He pressed through it. “And every instinct I’ve got is telling me to make this into a joke or start walking because that’s what I’ve always done in the past. I’m choosing something different. Aloud, so you can hold me to it. I’m staying.”

Patrick closed the distance. Three feet collapsed into inches, and his hands came up to Asher’s face, both of them, palms against his jaw, thumbs at his cheekbones, and held him. The contact was firm and careful, and something behind Asher’s ribs cracked open.

“You’re not the common denominator,” Patrick said, low and close. “You’re the variable I couldn’t solve for. That’s different.”

A sound broke out of Asher, half laugh, half something rawer, and he didn’t try to sort out which. He put his hands on Patrick’s waist and pulled him in. The kiss wasn’t careful. Weeks of silence and careful texts and willed distance broke under it, hard enough that Asher tasted salt on Patrick’s mouth and the want he’d been rationing for a month.

Patrick kissed him like he’d spent the whole drive up rehearsing this. His fingers threaded into Asher’s hair, still damp from the shower, and his body pressed into Asher’s with a need that registered in Asher’s hips and spine.

Asher gripped the back of Patrick’s neck and held on. The lot was empty. The stadium was dark. They kept kissing, neither of them in any hurry to stop.

“Where are you staying?” Asher asked into the kiss.

“A hotel downtown.” Patrick’s forehead dropped to his, his composure gone. “I booked it before I left the house. I booked to stay through the next two games, however this went. I planned all of it.”

Patrick’s thumb moved along his jaw. “You should be with your family tonight.”

“They’ll keep.” Asher kissed him again, brief and hard. “Take me to your hotel.”

The room was a good one, the kind a man books when he’s trying to say something he can’t say aloud yet, high up with the lake out the window and the city pricked out below. Patrick let them in, and the door clicked shut and sealed the rest of it out, the stadium and the draft and the two days of people who’d want a piece of Asher’s first night.

Asher set his bag down and turned around. Patrick was standing close, watching him with that focused attention, and for once, there was nothing behind it he was trying to manage.

Neither of them said anything. Nothing needed saying yet.

Asher crossed the room and kissed him. Slower than outside. Intentional. His hands moved to Patrick’s face, tilting his jaw, finding the angle that made Patrick’s breath hitch. Patrick’s hands found his hips, pulling him forward, the grip tight enough to register through denim.

“I missed you,” Asher said with his full voice, the words he’d deleted from a text a week ago because they’d felt too exposed. “It killed me to be away from you, to give you the time you needed and trust you’d make the right decision.”

Patrick answered by pulling Asher’s shirt over his head. His hands moved to Asher’s chest, palms flat, fingers spread. His thumbs traced the ridges of Asher’s collarbones, and the touch was reverent and hungry at the same time. Goosebumps rose along Asher’s skin.

“Off,” Asher said, tugging at Patrick’s shirt. Patrick reached back and pulled it over his head, collar first, exposing his stomach and then his chest. Asher’s hands reached for him.

They didn’t make it to the bed. Asher’s back hit the door, Patrick pressing into him. The full-length contact after so long without drew a groan from Asher’s mouth, low and wrecked.

Patrick’s mouth moved to his neck. The hinge of his jaw, below his ear, the hollow of his throat. A route he’d learned in a Chicago kitchen months ago, and the recognition gutted Asher. His teeth grazed Asher’s collarbone. His hips pressed forward, and Asher felt him hard through two layers of denim.

“Bed,” Asher said. “Now.”