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He rolled back his shoulders and straightened his stance, then headed for the balcony. Lee looked up when Alex stepped outside, expression unreadable. Another moment of silence as they looked at each other, and Christ, Lee’s eyes were really very dark, had anyone ever told him?
Alex located his ability to speak at the bottom of a deep intake of breath, hot afternoon air filling his lungs. “All right, look.” His smile felt a little strained, but he clung to it nonetheless. “We should talk.”
A shadow crossed Lee’s face, then the corners of his mouth quirked into a sarcastic grin. “The three words every man dreads to hear.”
Don’t let him get to you.
“Do you disagree?” Alex asked evenly.
Lee’s eyes narrowed before he shook his head and got up. “No. Inside, though.” He grabbed his jersey off the back of the armchair he’d occupied, Alex needing just a second to divert his attention away from the dark dusting of hair that disappeared into the waistband of Lee’s jogging bottoms.
“Okay.” Alex turned to lead the way back into the room—intotheirroom, and bloody hell, that would take some getting used to. Lee followed and closed the balcony door, leaving the heat outside. Blessedly, he put his jersey back on before sitting down on the edge of his mattress.
Alex mirrored him, tucking his hands between his thighs, and silence descended once more as they studied each other across the divide between their beds.
“Go ahead,” Lee said with a small wave. Alex resisted arguing because that would have thrown them right back into a passive-aggressive two-step of faux politeness about who’d go first—notproductive.
So. Where to start?
One of Kieran’s handouts had talked about how openly addressing negative emotions and biases could reduce their power and move a conversation forward. Huh—which had been part of how he’d announced the rooming assignments to them earlier in the lobby. Cheeky bastard.
Well, never let it be said that Alex wasn’t willing to learn from his elders.
“Right. So.” He strove for a neutral tone. “Since we’ll be sharing a room for the foreseeable future, we should probably clear the air, right? Get it all out.”
“Out, huh?” Dark humour edged Lee’s voice. “By all means.”
Right, then. Alex spread his hands. “Okay, so as far as I can tell, you see me as some posh aristocratic airhead who doesn’t actually deserve to be here.”
Lee paused before he answered, his eyebrows drawing together. “Taking a leaf out of Kieran’s book, are you?”
“You noticed?” Alex wasn’t sure why he was surprised—maybe because Jeff considered Kieran’s pre-training conversations an unwelcome delay to one of the few things he truly cared about, namely playing football.
“Yeah, well.” A second as Lee appeared to weigh Alex. “I know you think I’m some dumb, undereducated pleb—”
“Hang on,” Alex interrupted. “What? I don’t think that.”
“Well,Idon’t think you’re a posh airhead,” Lee said slowly. The calculating edge to the way he watched Alex persisted, as though he was trying to work something out.
“You don’t?” Alex didn’t quite buy what Lee was selling. “Could have fooled me, what with the whole pretty boy thing.”
“The whole…” Lee trailed off, and for once, the silence that followed didn’t seem heavy, just thoughtful. Alex let it sit for a few moments before he shifted, and the movement seemed to startle Lee out of whatever it was he’d been contemplating. “So you thought—” Lee paused just long enough that it registered. “When I called you pretty boy, you thought I meant, like…”
“That a pretty face was all I had to offer to the team?” Alex finished. “Well,yeah.”
“Bloody Oliver,” Lee muttered for no reason at all. A slow grin took over his face and changed it from attractive to breathtaking. “Mate, I wasteasing. Just quoting someFourFourTwoarticle I barely remember. Think it mentioned your jersey was very popular among female Liverpool fans even though you’d only just been promoted to the first team.”
“Like you have room to talk,” Alex shot back, and Lee shrugged one shoulder.
“I kind of stopped listening to anything other than myself, the coach, and my goal tally, to be honest.”
Lucky you.
Since Alex didn’t care to be quite that honest with Lee, he didn’t say it. Instead, he opted for a shrug of his own. “Okay, so maybe you were teasing about the pretty boy thing. But what’s your problem with my family background?”
“My problem with your family background?” Lee looked genuinely baffled. “I mean, your father comes across as a conservative prick, not gonna lie—probably thinks even the middle ages were far too liberal for his taste. Guess that’s part of the job description when you’re in the House of Lords, though, so…”
“You seemed quite put off by the idea that I grew up in that environment,” Alex clarified. “As in aristocracy, Harrow School, all that.”
