3. Jason

CHAPTER 3

JASON

"Are we gonna go play, or what?" Jase calls out, eager to meet some of my old teammates for a game in the park.

This morning, I woke up excited to spend the day with my nephew and looking forward to catching up with old friends, some of which I haven't even spoken to since I left the country.

But then I saw him. And I realized that being around him is going to be even more difficult than I thought. And if I'm supposed to be going out to meet my old teammates, he'll be one of them. I'll have to be on a field with him. With all those memories and a tension thicker than the humidity.

He must have realized it too, because I overhear him making hushed excuses to Janel in the kitchen. I move closer to the entrance to the kitchen and watch as Janel places a hand on Mik's chest. I can't see his face or read his body language from here, but I have to remind myself that jealousy is stupid. Mik's been married to my sister for all these years.

I have no right to these feelings. I had him for a week once upon a time, that's all. Never mind that I spent that week imagining our lives together. That life doesn't belong to me, it belongs to her. He's her husband. My sister has the life I wanted. She gave him the family I never could have given him, and she has the love I wanted from him. This is reality. There's no point in pretending it could have ended any other way.

"Don't do this," she says, her voice hushed. "I know there's some bad blood between you and my brother, but Jase has been looking forward to this for months. Do it for him."

I clear my throat, and Mik jumps away from his wife like he's been caught doing something wrong and spins around.

"She's right, Mik." Jesus, why is saying his name so hard? "I think we can be adults and play nice for a few days, right?"

His jaw ticks, but he gives me a clipped nod. "I'll just grab my cleats."

I pull back so it isn't as obvious that I'm watching him walk away. He looks so different from the boy I knew so long ago. I'm having a hard time reconciling that it's truly Mik I'm seeing, and not his father. The Sanders genes are strong, that's for sure.

I see more of the boy I once knew in my nephew than I do the broken-down man in front of me. I can still tell it's him, of course. I can even see a hint of my best friend lingering in his sad eyes. When he was staring at me earlier, huffing and red faced from his run, I thought I saw a flash of the passion I'd experienced before everything fell apart. At first, I brushed it off. Surely, I was making up what I wanted to see, not that anything could come of it.

But as he walked by, I saw his eyes flutter and his nostrils flare. I saw his nipples pebbling under the Lycra fabric of his running shirt. I pretended not to notice the twitch of movement in the front of his pants, or the way my own cock stiffened as I watched his jaw clench. And I let him run past me and upstairs to hide away for the rest of the morning. I feigned indifference, but I felt anything but. Nearly taken out at the knees at the sight of him, I sat down on the porch steps and silently coached myself through several deep breaths before I could go inside and fake a smile for my sister and nephew.

The man I once knew, and still stupidly pine for, walks up the stairs and I take a moment to observe him. The boy I fell in love with is a man now, a man with a career and family and responsibilities that have definitely aged him.

Under the layers of salt and pepper hair, frown lines, and the slightest bit of softness around his middle, I wonder if he's still there. My Mik. The man I've been mourning since the moment my sister said those two words that stripped everything away from me.

I'd been recruited to the Wales Rugby League straight out of high school, thanks to a sports agent my parents set me up with. I'd turned the offer down without a thought. I couldn't imagine leaving my family and everything that I knew to move across the world. Sure, rugby is a much bigger sport overseas, but I could play professionally in the states, too. And I would have been happy to keep it as a hobby and pursue coaching as a profession. Accepting the position wasn't even a thought in my mind.

It was lucky they were still in need when I called them so many months later, when I'd suddenly needed an escape. Then I was on a plane within twenty-four hours of my world being turned inside out. Running from the inevitable.

I've been through all the stages of grief multiple times and have coped as well as I could in different ways each time. Shortly after getting a care package from my mom that included Mik and Janel's wedding photo, I'd fucked my way through most of Wales, trying to find even a fraction of what I felt when I was with him. It didn't work. It did increase my celebrity status, since I wasn't exactly discreet, and I was outed to the world. Not that I cared to be closeted. It didn't matter.

My season as the UK's most eligible gay bachelor was interesting, but it wasn't enough to forget Mik Sanders. If anything, it only made me miss him more. And with every man I touched that wasn't him, I added a layer of guilt and misplaced anger towards the man who stole my heart and didn't even realize the damage he'd caused. I calmed down after that, although to this day I'm still known as being a bit of a playboy, even though it's actually been years since I've dated or been with anyone.

Mik returns with his bag in tow, and I frown at him. Because who the fuck wears long sleeves in this weather? And pants! He was all covered up this morning too, but I was too distracted by seeing him to process what he was wearing. Is he trying to prevent sun exposure? I don't remember Jase ever mentioning any health issues.

Why do I care this much about his stupid outfit? It's his problem if he overheats.

The three of us guys pile into my rental. Jase fawns over the SUV like I'm a ‘real' celebrity. I despise calling attention to myself or having anyone think I'm like some of the pompous windbags that like to show off and pretend they're better than anyone just because we make good money playing a game.

"It was really the only choice they had," I say, my cheeks heating. I catch Mik staring at me, and it makes me blush even harder. His lips quirk, and I return my eyes to the road, hands firmly gripping the steering wheel.

It's not until I pull into the parking lot that I realize what park we're meeting in. I'd been so distracted by Mik watching me from the back seat that I didn't pay much attention to the GPS giving me directions. I park as far from where we parked that day as I can, schooling my features to pretend I don't realize the significance of this place. Mik has his usual deadpan expression that gives nothing away. He was always like that, except with me. Especially those days that we spent wrapped around each other, spilling all the secret desires we'd harbored for years. He was open then, his expression unguarded. He whispered he loved me, and I believed him .

Then again, I was a lovesick idiot. And it's not that I don't believe he loved me. I know he did. But he didn't love me enough to choose me.

Of course, he would choose the mother of his child over me. And of course, I wasn't going to stand in the way of my sister getting the support and happiness she deserved. Getting out of their way was the right thing to do.

Would this be any easier if I hadn't stayed away for so long? Maybe if I'd made it back for holidays now and then, I could have built up a tolerance. But one look at Mik smiling and shaking hands with our old friends makes me think it'll never get easier.

"Reinier! You fucking wanker!"

One of our old teammates shouts, using a terrible fake accent, and runs across the parking lot. He tries to lift me over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, but quickly realizes I'm quite a bit larger than I was when we were teenagers. I was always one of the bigger guys on the team, but all I've done for the past eighteen years is play rugby and workout.

"Jesus Christ, Jason. What do they feed you over there?"

"Spotted dick," another teammate says, the lot of them cracking up. Clearly their senses of humor haven't aged, although it's clear their bodies have. It's weird being back here around all the people that I spent my adolescence with. To come back here and see them all grown up is a mindfuck.

The rest of the team descends, and we spend the next half hour trading jabs and catching up before Clint, our old team captain, shouts for us to all gather around. He splits us up to play sevens, and I end up on a team with Jase, opposite Mik. Jase is good, fast just like his father used to be, and I find myself lost in memories half the game, finding the same camaraderie and partnership on the field that I used to have with Mik.

It's not until we're locked in a scrum, with my shoulders pressed against Mik's, that I'm hit with the realization that all those happy memories were lost. The man in front of me smells clean like my Mik always did, like mint and citrus, but different. It's not the same, but touching him is enough to make my stomach knot. I push back a little too forcefully, giving my team a slight advantage so we can break out of the scrum and move the game along. I don't suppose they really wanted me to go easy on them, anyway.

The harder I play, the harder Mik pushes back. And every time I get the upper-hand, I watch his anger and irritation grow. He manages to ground the ball across the try line a few times, but I'm able to shut down both conversions and turnover the ball. I manage five drop goals over the course of the game, and my team ekes out a win by the end of the match.

Then we're just a bunch of middle-aged dudes standing around a muddy field, aside from Jase, who seems too full of energy compared to the rest of us. Professional or not, I know I've been slowing down a lot in the past couple of years.

We all shoot the shit for a while, and Clint makes cracks about the game being a showdown between me and Mik. Like old times, except that back then it was a game and now it feels like something to prove. There's an animosity there that never was before, and I'm sure it's noticeable on the field. Still, they make their jokes to lighten the tension, and I laugh along. Someone makes a joke about Mik's dad bod keeping up with my more beastly stature. Mik retorts that he can handle me just fine, and our eyes lock.

Yeah, you could handle me just fine.

We're standing on the field, surrounded by a group of people, all talking shit and laughing. But everything gets quiet. Suddenly, I'm standing in the same spot on the field that I did that day, staring back at the same dark hazel eyes that used to ground me. A tingle of awareness fizzles over my skin and down my spine, followed by a heaviness in my chest that doesn't allow enough space for a full breath.

It starts to sprinkle. The cool drops of water are soothing to my overheated skin, and help pull my head out of whatever fantasy or memory I lost myself in.

Before the skies open up, we head to the SUV. Mik and I don't speak on the way to meet everyone at the local sports bar we used to hang out at.

Is he thinking about it too?

Jase doesn't seem to notice our awkwardness. He chatters on about the match and how high I threw him during a lineout. He's hoping to play the wing position on his college team, so we talk about some exercises he can do to polish up his footwork. He's certainly fast enough. I notice Mik doesn't chime in with any advice about the position he used to play, but he hasn't spoken much since I arrived. He never aspired to play professionally, but he was good enough. And I know he coaches Jase's rec team, so I'm sure he's given him plenty of lessons over the years. He probably just doesn't want to talk to me.

I can't decide if I'm glad he's giving me the space to talk about this with Jase, or if I wish he'd join in on the conversation. This used to be our thing. Other than my immediate attraction to him, the game was what we bonded over. We didn't have much else in common. Mik was a book nerd that enjoyed his solitude, while I was more social. He had a moody, almost emo boy attitude and musical taste to match. I liked to think of myself as easy going and liked to make people laugh, and I listened to whatever the popular rock station was playing.

Rugby was what brought us together. Rugby, and lust.

Without those things, we would have been nothing to each other. Because of them, we were everything.