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Alex sent him an unimpressed look. “Must have skipped that day.”
Lee knew this was a sensitive subject and he should quit while he was ahead. On the other hand… “All right, fair. Your dad’s a politician, though—shouldn’t he have raised you on a steady diet of political half-truths and flat-out lies?”
“That would have required spending some actual time with me,” Alex said, then seemed to remember that Oliver was listening. He pressed his lips together. “Anyway.”
“Anyway,” Oliver echoed dryly. “Now, come on—whatwasthat? I thought you guys were fine.”
Lee took a sip from his bottle. Alex developed a sudden interest in the hem of his jersey, inspecting it with rapt attention.
“You can talk to me right now” —Oliver inserted a weighted pause— “or you can talk to Kieran at some point tomorrow if you don’t fix whatever’s going on. Your choice.”
“Sounds an awful lot like blackmail to me,” Lee grumbled.
“Sounds an awful lot like a reality check to me,” Oliver returned.
“Um,” Alex said, and Oliver nodded at him.
“Excellent point. Let’s go.”
“Power has changed you, man,” Lee said sadly, but the thing was, Oliver was right. If Lee and Alex didn’t figure their shit out, Kieran would sit them down in the very near future, and Lee didn’t particularly care to get another taste of Kieran unpacking his disappointed father routine. Honestly, the speech after yesterday’s match still smarted a little.
“Cry me a river.” Oliver gestured towards the locker room, about to start walking, when Alex stopped him with a quick touch to the upper arm.
“How about a deal?”
“A deal?” Oliver studied Alex with a quick, assessing gaze.
“Yeah.” Alex rubbed the back of his neck, voice low but urgent. “I know that Lee trusts you, okay? And it’s not that I don’t. But it’s just … personal. Give us a chance to sort it out ourselves?”
“Because we’ve done such a brilliant job so far,” Lee put in.
Alex turned imploring eyes on him. “Let’s try harder.”
That wasn’t fair.Alexwasn’t fair because Lee wanted to hold on to his anger, he did, but how was he supposed to do that when Alex was looking at him with a mix of trepidation and hope?
Lee sighed. “Yeah, okay.”
“Thank you.” It was quiet, sincere.
Oliver’s gaze found Lee’s, a question in his eyes that Lee didn’t know how to answer. After a beat, Oliver nodded. “You have until dinner.”
“Thankyou,” Alex repeated, the tiny upwards curve to his mouth speaking of blatant relief.
“Work it out, lads.”
Brief silence settled in the wake of Oliver leaving to rejoin the other goalkeeper. With a small sigh, Alex raised the water bottle to his face and rolled it against his forehead, condensation leaving behind a sheen of wetness. When Alex glanced over and caught Lee watching, neither of them looked away.
It was Alex who broke the moment. “How about a walk?”
“Kieran told us to cool off.” Lee let his lips tilt into a careful smile. “Not sure a walk in this heat is gonna do the trick.”
Alex hesitated. “Pool?”
That was a terrible idea—Alex was distracting even fully dressed, and Lee didn’t see how that would improve if Alex was near-naked and wet. A bad idea, yes.
So Lee, of course, nodded. “Sounds good.”
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