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Alex didn’t know. It still hadn’t quite sunk in.
All this time, Lee had been waiting for the other shoe to drop—a pointed comment, just enough to start a rumour, or a joke that would dare him to react. He’d pictured Alex luxuriating in how Lee couldn’t be certain of what Alex did and didn’t know, what Alex would and wouldn’t do. Instead, Alex had mistaken Lee’s poor attempt at flirting for aninsult, and Lee wasn’t sure whether that said more about him or Alex.
After years of sharing locker rooms with plenty of half-naked, athletic men, Lee had perfected his ability to ignore his surroundings. So when Alex returned from his own workout just before dinner and stripped down to dark blue boxer briefs right there in the middle of the room, Lee remained resolutely focused on his phone. Only when Alex was heading for the bathroom, clothes in a pile at the foot of his bed and his back to Lee, did Lee allow himself one quick, covert glance from where he was lying diagonally on top of the covers of his own bed.
Yeah, Alex was really bloody fit. Moving on.
Lee didn’t look up again when Alex reemerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam and completely naked, ambling over to the wardrobe where he took his sweet time choosing an outfit. Well, hey. At least it confirmed that Alex truly didn’t suspect any undue interest on Lee’s part.
“You realise it’s not a fashion show, right?” Lee asked after Alex had considered and dismissed three similar jeans-and-T-shirt combinations, and right, so much for Lee keeping his full attention on his phone.
Alex threw him a glance, perfectly at ease in another pair of boxer briefs—rightfully so, with a body like that. “Don’t you ever get tired of jogging bottoms and fitness tops?”
“Not really, no.” Lee looked down at his ensemble in white and blue. “Nothing wrong with the official team outfit, is there?”
“Nothing at all. If, you know,” —Alex’s smirk was far off the sweet smile he tended to flash for the cameras— “you’re into being boring.”
“I’m into being efficient,” Lee countered, sitting up against the headboard of his bed. “Taking five minutes to combine a pair of dark blue jeans with a white T-shirt seems like a bit of a waste.”
“Spoken like a true ignoramus,” Alex said, and Lee strove to keep his focus on Alex’s face rather than let it venture down to Alex’s pecs, defined abs, or the tantalising peaks of his hip bones.
“You’re a lot more sarcastic than you let on.”
“I pick my moments.” Alex reached for the pair of jeans that sat between two others on the bed. Other than a minor deviation in colour, it looked no different than the one on the right or the one on the left.
When Lee said as much, Alex paused in buttoning it up. “First off, it’s a different brand. Secondly, it’s a different cut.”
Lee blinked and filed the visual of Alex’s slender fingers against his partly undone jeans away into a dark corner at the back of his mind. “Still looks the same, though.”
“Lord help me—you’re worse than Jeff.” The words were infused with just a hint of amusement.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Have you ever seen him voluntarily wear anything other than sports clothing?”
“And I repeat—what’s wrong with him?”
Alex finished buttoning up his jeans. “Try wearing a proper outfit to a bar for a change. Women will look at you differently, especially the ones who don’t know who you are.”
Becausethatwas what kept Lee up at night, yeah. “Thanks,” he said dryly. “But I’m good.”
“Yeah, I guess you’d do okay either way.” Alex assessed Lee with a quick look before he tilted his head, his mouth pulling into a thoughtful line. “Okay, how about this—if we win our first match, you let me dress you for the party afterwards. See if you’ll feel differently in clothes that don’t come with a sweat-wicking claim.”
Boy, they’d sure made some progress in the last few hours—unless Alex planned to dress Lee in a clown costume, of course. Lee considered him for a few seconds. “What’s it to you?”
“I like fashion.” When Alex grinned, there was nothing sweet about it. “I also like hearing that I’m right.”
“You know what’s weird?” Lee asked before he could think better of it.
“People who drink English Breakfast in the evening?”
It startled a snort out of Lee. “Yeah, that too. I meant more how you’ve got this reputation as, like … the darling of the Premier League when you aren’t half as sweet as you like to pretend.”
The way Alex’s eyes narrowed suggested he was weighing whether to take offence. In the end, he simply shrugged. “It’s not all fake, you know? I think there is a certain obligation on people like us to model good behaviour. But you were all … standoff-ish with me when we met, so I guess I stopped bothering.”
Standoff-ish? That was not how Lee remembered it. He remembered feeling strangely intimidated by Alex, unsettled by Alex’s polished language and boyish charm, unable to pinpoint the cause of his unease until they’d ended up talking after one practice session and Lee had suddenly realised that he wasattractedto Alex. More than just a passing appreciation for a fit guy that Lee had been able to reason away in the past, but a proper crush, which, bloodyhell. He was pretty sure he’d high-tailed it out of there, although he couldn’t recall the details. Cue some soul-searching and a couple of sleepless nights followed by the infamous pretty boy incident, and here they were.
Not something he could explain to Alex, though.
