LOGINSean's POV"You are good at fishing for compliments." He said it with a smirk sitting on his face, looking at me like I had just confirmed something he already knew.I smiled at that in the realest manner I have ever seen. "Maybe I should give you a reminder." I said it quietly and then started moving toward him in the position we were both lying in, closing the distance slowly, the floor between us getting smaller.I got to within about half an inch of his lips.His left hand came up and he pressed his second finger flat against my mouth, stopping me right there. He held it for a second and then said it clearly and directly. "If you are going to kiss me again, don't apologize."I understood exactly what he meant. No redirecting it afterward. And no pretending it had been something else. If I was going to do it, I was going to own it.I pulled his finger away
Sean's POV"See?" I told him, locking eyes with him. "You are natural." My hands were at his waist and I registered them there about two seconds after the fact. I pulled them back and reset myself."Come on." I said, stepping backward and putting some working distance between us. "I will show you how to run some plays so you actually understand what is happening while you are prancing around in your booty shorts…" I demonstrated with a small exaggerated shake of my hips, although keeping it light... "pumping your balls."I grabbed one of the footballs off the nearby shelf and started moving it between both palms… right to left, left to right, keeping the rhythm tight and controlled. It was the kind of handling that had become automatic after years of it. You know, just the way musicians tapped rhythms without thinking. The ball stayed in motion, never dropping, the movement was smooth and continuous while I thought through where to start.Then I threw it across to him without warning.
Trevor's POVThe silence stretched for longer than a silence should. I stood there and watched his face and waited, and the fact that he was taking this long to answer a question that should have had an immediate answer was already telling me something I didn't particularly want to hear.Then he replied. "It doesn't matter." He said it with that particular heaviness of someone who had arrived at a conclusion they didn't like. "Because I am the quarterback. And this town does suck."I looked at him directly. "So this is just you wanting what you can't have.""No!" He snapped, his hand going back through his hair, the movement was all sharp and frustrated this time rather than the thoughtful version. "Goddamnit, Trevor! You don't…"The whistle cut through the wall of the store, sharp and long, and he stopped mid-sentence. Both of us went still for a second. Then the sound of
Trevor's POVI was in the football team store, sitting on the bench with a pump in my hand, pushing air into one of the balls that had gone soft. I was in my waterboy uniform, obviously…White shorts, crop top, WATERBOY across the back. At this point I had stopped registering the embarrassment of it the way I had in the beginning. It had become just the thing I wore to do the thing I was here to do.What I had not stopped registering was everything else…I kept pumping and let the thoughts run because there was nothing else to do while I sat here alone in a store full of football equipment at practice time. Sean had shut me down in that corridor in front of Anna like I was exactly what the waterboy label said I was. Which was someone beneath the conversation, someone to be dismissed publicly while something private existed separately and quietly…and on his terms only. And then he had walked away with
Trevor's POV"Sean." I said it with a straight face the moment I reached him, cutting through whatever Anna had been building between them. "Can we talk?" I added it cleanly, even while her left hand was still sitting on his shoulder like she had put it there specifically to be seen.Sean looked at me for a fraction of a second like he hadn't expected this. Then something shifted in his expression and he moved… quickly and casually… shrugging Anna's hand off his shoulder like it had never been there, now turning toward me. "What's good, Trevor?" He brought his hand out for a shake, easy and relaxed, like we were just two people running into each other in a corridor.I took his hand because I wanted to see where this was going and also because refusing it in front of Anna felt like handing her something to work with.He pulled me in for a brief hug with it… the kind that lasted ju
Sean's POVAnna Parkhill had been all over me since I stepped into the corridor and I genuinely could not work out what she wanted beyond the obvious — which was to be seen, specifically to be seen with me in the kind of public space where people noticed things and talked about what they noticed.I let it go for longer than I should have. I have been doing that a lot lately — letting things go longer than I should have, absorbing things that I would normally have cut off quickly, running on half my usual attention because the other half was somewhere else entirely and had been since yesterday.Then something in me hit a wall and I shoved her arm off my side. Not aggressively though, but with enough intention behind it that there was no confusion about what I meant. "Look, I told you that I don't like when you hang all over me like this." I turned to face her directly when I said it so the words had somewhere







