Chapter 5: Thad

Chapter 5

Thad

The wild look in Kelley’s eyes actually concerns me. He won’t stop pacing the kitchen, won’t return my phone, and anytime I try to approach him, he goes into this rant about “Nothing will ever change” and “the future of baseball.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t use my phone to look up a recipe.” I fold my arms. He can be pissed at the responses online all he likes, but how fucking hard is it to not look?

Kelley shakes his head.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “Do you like the attention?”

Kelley’s wild stare is now trained on me. “Are you fucking serious?”

“You had one job. Stay offline. And the first chance you get, you’re back on there? Is it an addiction thing? Do you want to see what the assholes out there say about you so you can whine about it and get sympathy? Are you really that conceited that you believe everyone should love you?” I’m responding in a way I know I shouldn’t, and I was only lucky Kelley didn’t run to Damon before. After this, I’m probably well and truly out of a job.

Self-sabotage much?

At this point, I may as well move to LA, find my brother, and try to become the next Hemsworth family of actors.

“Do you talk to all of Damon’s clients this way?”

No, because I’ve never been in a position to. Not going to say that though. “Only the ones I have to babysit and confiscate their technology like they’re a child.”

“What is your problem with me?” he yells.

I throw up my hands. “This.” My arms go wide. “This whole situation. Give me my phone back.”

“So you don’t think I have a right to be upset over this?” He taps on my phone. “I quote, ‘I don’t need my kid to idolize someone like that and think that it’s okay.’ Or ‘Why can’t men be real men anymore?”

“They’re assholes.”

“The world is full of them! And I’m just supposed to take it?”

“No, but the best thing you can do for yourself is ignore it.”

“Not all of us were born with that tool in our toolbox.”

What does that even mean?

The sound of the main door to the cabin opening is music to my ears because I cannot handle this guy.

I rush out to where Brady’s entered and mouth, “Help me.”

He moves toward the kitchen, genuine concern on his face. “What’s going on?”

Kelley still has his head in my damn phone. “Have you seen everything that’s being said online about me?”

Brady glares at me. “How did he get access to the internet? We took his phone.”

“You didn’t take his.” Kelley points at me.

Oh, so now he’s going to blame me? “You asked if you could use it to look up a recipe, not go on social media!”

Brady, exasperated with us both, goes into agent mode. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s our boss’s nephew, so he grew up with the great Damon King and learned his ways early, or if I don’t have that agent mode yet, but I’m envious of the way Brady can slip between casual and professional so easily.

Hell, at this point, I’d settle for being professional at all. Not for the first time, I doubt if this job is for me.

Brady tells me to cook dinner—that’s how I know he’s desperate—and then drags Kelley out of the cabin.

At least Kelley finally put down my phone .

I pick it up off the kitchen bench and close down all his browser pages when I come to one of them and pause. A recipe for marinara sauce.

Shit. He really did take it for that. Originally. I wonder how long it took him to search up his name though. Right away?

I glance at the contents on the counter, and he only got as far as pulling out ingredients and pots and pans. He’s going to regret this more than he already does. His punishment will be having to eat the worst spaghetti in the history of spaghetti.

I’m tempted to put everything away and order food from the small restaurant they have on-site, but this is his own fault.

I wish I could say that I didn’t even try with dinner, but even my best cooking is still terrible. And by the time Brady and Kelley come back and we sit down to eat—silently because Kelley hasn’t uttered a word to me since he left—we all force down forkfuls of bland pasta and a very tangy sauce. The recipe had to be wrong. Or I had to have read it wrong. I’d place my bet on the latter.

“It’s getting late,” Brady says after only eating a few bites. “Maybe you two should go to your corners and go to bed.”

Escaping Kelley? Gladly. But there’s something about the way Brady keeps looking at his phone and the way he’s trying to get us to go to sleep this early. Because it’s not late. It’s 9:15.

“What, you got big plans?” I ask.

His face says it all. Guilty. “Of going to sleep? Yup.”

Lies.

Kelley and I glance at each other, almost as if we’re having the same thought.

“All right. We’ll go to bed,” I say.

Brady stands. “You do that, and I’ll clean up, seeing as you cooked tonight.”

I’m still suspicious as Kelley and I shuffle off into our separate rooms. The way the cabin is laid out, he’s in the first room on the left when you enter, then there’s the kitchen, then Brady’s and my room straight ahead, with the living room being the center focus. There are sliding doors leading to a deck to the right.

I have no idea what Brady is up to, but I’m going to find out.

While sitting on my bed, I strain my ears to listen to him cleaning up in the kitchen. The sloshing water, the plates clanging together—he’s definitely doing the dishes.

After a while, I lie down and scroll through socials on my phone. Because Kelley searched himself before, the algorithms now think I want to know everything there is to know about Kelley Afton, and my suggestions page shows articles all about him and his coming out.

And okay, after the fifth post with every preview comment being something derogatory, I’m starting to realize how hard it must be for Kelley to see that day in and day out. But at the same time, I don’t understand how he can’t block all of it out.

It doesn’t take long before I realize the kitchen is quiet, and before I get the chance to jump out of bed, there’s a rap on the door.

“Thad? You asleep?” Brady asks.

I’m interested to see what he does if he thinks I am, so I get comfortable and close my eyes, pretending I’ve fallen asleep while looking at my phone, which is still in my hand and resting on my chest.

The door creaks open, and I hold my breath. Which I realize is a stupid idea because when you’re asleep, you breathe deep and rhythmic.

I feel Brady’s eyes on me, so I stir and roll over to my side as if he’s disturbing me, and then a second later, the door closes with a click.

Without being too eager, I climb out of bed and wait until I hear the main door open and close too, but Brady must be some type of ninja because I don’t hear it.

Maybe he’s not planning to go out. Ooh, maybe he and Kelley are involved, and he’s not so professional after all?

Before I can get my hopes up, I hear the sliding door to the deck open and then close.

There’s a very good chance I’m reading into this, but there’s something about the way he’s been acting that’s fishy to me .

And when I finally move into the living room, I find I’m not the only one who thinks so.

“You pretend to be asleep, too, so you can follow Brady?” I ask.

Kelley screws up his face. “I got up to get water, you psycho.”

“Did you though? Or are you just upset that you had the same idea as me?”

“Hey, you’re the one who has this weird grudge for no reason other than being bitter over having to give up baseball, which has absolutely nothing to do with me.”

“You think that’s why I resent you?”

He points at me. “Ah-ha. So you admit you resent me.”

Oops. Wasn’t supposed to do that. “Are you going to come with me to follow Brady or not?”

“What do you think he’s doing?”

“I don’t know for sure. Maybe he needs a break from all your whining.”

“Or all your bitterness.”

Touché.

I glance toward the sliding door where Brady disappeared. “It was weird how he sent us off to bed like that though.”

Kelley nods. “Agreed. So we follow him.”

“Layer up. It’s frosty out there.”

Kelley heads for where our coats and outerwear are on the coatrack just inside the door. “Careful, that almost sounded like you might care if I die of hypothermia out there.”

“Of course I’d care if you died.”

“Because?”

I can’t help it. I break into a smile. “Because Brady will accuse me of killing you, and I don’t want to face prison time.”

Kelley surprises me by bursting out laughing.

By the time we get into our warm clothes and head outside, Brady’s long gone, but it doesn’t take us long to find him.

Voices filter from a cabin up ahead, and I put my arm out to stop Kelley from walking. Our boots make the gravel and snow under our feet crunch, and if we can hear Brady and whoever he’s with, they’ll probably be able to hear our feet.

I grip Kelley’s puffer jacket and pull him down the side of an empty cabin beside us. I try to pinpoint where the voices are coming from. It’s either the cabin right next to this one or the one next to that.

“What are we doing?” Kelley asks.

“I hear voices,” I whisper.

“You should probably get that checked out.”

“Shh.” I put my gloved hand up to his mouth but am at least in control of myself to stop before I actually touch him.

“Rude,” he says under his breath.

I can’t tell if he means it or if he’s still being snarky.

The voices die down, and the night fills with silence. Kelley and I hold our breaths, and I for sure think Brady has heard us, but a minute goes by, and then the low murmurs start back up.

As if connected by the same breath, we both let out a sigh of relief. We’re standing so close, practically pressed against one another, and I notice the hitch in his breathing as his exhale comes out in a puff.

“Maybe we should go back,” Kelley says, more softly than before.

“We will, but I want to see what he’s up to first. What if Damon’s here to check in on us and he’s filling him in on how we hate each other? Or how you stole my phone and are going against your agent’s advice.”

Kelley’s eyes widen, and I know I have him.

“One peek, and then we’ll go back.”

He relents.

I take careful steps to round the back of the empty cabin so I can get a look at the one that’s next to it. The way each cabin is positioned, they’re not directly in line with each other. The one Brady’s at is situated slightly farther back than the one we’re hiding behind, so there’s no chance of them spotting us unless we poke our entire head around the corner.

But from where I am, I can see through the lattice siding of the deck railing that Brady is sitting on some guy’s lap on the back deck of the cabin next to us. There’s another guy on a lounger next to them, covered in all the blankets the cabin probably possesses .

I’ve never seen either guy before in my life.

“What is it?” Kelley peers around me. He’s pressed against my back, and I hate the way my cock responds to the scent of his cologne or aftershave. Wherever that fresh, woodsy scent is coming from.

It’s the scent. Not the man.

Definitely not the man.

“It’s Brady,” I say. “He’s with two guys I don’t know.”

“Two?” He leans in further.

Fucking hell, it might be the man. Traitorous body.

I close my eyes and count to five, trying to think of all the reasons I don’t like Kelley, but my dick obviously hasn’t got the message. Yes, Kelley’s a diva, but he’s also really hot.

Damn him.

“They’re getting up,” Kelley says. “Do you think they’ve seen us?”

Brady and the two guys stand, but they’re not looking our way. They’re only looking at each other. All three of them have sex eyes. As they make their way inside the cabin, hand in hand in hand, it’s obvious they’re together. Like together , together.

“Huh. Good for him,” Kelley says.

“ Lucky for him,” I add.

I step away from Kelley. “And show’s over.”

I start heading back to our cabin, and Kelley follows.

“I couldn’t think of anything worse. Worrying about satisfying one man in bed is enough for me.”

As if the mere mention of sex coming out of Kelley’s mouth is an invitation, my cock practically tries to break free of my thick, warm pants. It’s as if it’s jumping up and down, screaming, “Yay, sex!”

Down, boy. We’re not allowed to get hard for him.

Even with that self-warning, my mouth jumps on the dick train of thought. Of course it does. I hate myself.

“You worry about that?” I ask him.

I side-eye him because it’s hard to fathom that someone as good-looking as Kelley Afton would need to worry about those things. I’d imagine he’d have men of all types throwing themselves at him and do all the work for him.

If we took baseball out of the equation and I had the opportunity to have sex with Kelley, I think I could come from just staring at him naked. I saw the photoshoot of his coming out article, and damn, even shirtless, he made my mouth water. Reluctantly.

Kelley doesn’t look at me as he says, “It’s why I haven’t had a relationship in years. If you could even call my college relationships relationships . Situationships, maybe. But every time I went home with someone or hooked up, I was always worried about them outing me before I was ready. I didn’t want my career ruined before it could start. And that’s with only one person in my bed. Couldn’t imagine two.”

And now I’m thinking about Kelley and Brady in bed together and how hot it would be to join them.

“It’s understandable Brady’s keeping this a secret,” Kelley says. “Though, one of them might be his boyfriend, and they have a third on the side or something. Either way, it makes sense to be on the DL.”

“It does? It’s not that big a deal.” Am I missing something?

“Think about it from Brady’s perspective. He has these famous dads, a brother in the NFL, and a well-known uncle in the sporting industry. The last thing Brady would want or need is to bring attention to his love life. Any scandal, anything that would play into all those accusations about queer people being sexual deviants, has the potential to not only affect Brady’s career but his whole family’s reputation.”

“Having more than one partner isn’t sexual deviancy, and neither is being gay or bi or queer or whatever label.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“Do you?” I ask. “You give so much weight to what people say about you it’s almost as if you believe it yourself.”

“If I had any control over how I react to those comments, believe me, I’d put a stop to it. You think I don’t know when I’m being irrational? I do, but that’s the thing with the countless anxiety issues I’ve been diagnosed with over the years: knowing it doesn’t stop it from happening.”

I blink at him. And then blink again. “You have anxiety issues?”

It makes sense that he’d have mental health problems with this whole being addicted to the negative comments about him, but now that I know it’s not narcissistic personality disorder, it paints everything in a new light, and I’m realizing how much of an ornery, bitter asshole I’ve been.

Kelley frowns. “Brady said that’s in my King Sports file.”

Well, fuck. I guess I need to come clean. And apologize. And somehow make it up to him for taking my personal issues out on him when he didn’t do anything to deserve it.

I hang my head. “I never read it.”