The Endgame (Atlanta Lightning 1)

“No.” He took a drink of his cocktail. “Tim.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tim. Are you a friend of Bobby’s?”

“I am. And you’re close with Jeremy. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Again, I’m at a disadvantage. You know more about me than I do about you.”

“We have all night for you to learn.”

I smiled, but oddly, I had to work to make it happen. Tim was gorgeous, and I was attracted to him, but my smile wasn’t as authentic as it should be. Still, I said what was expected, what I should want to say. “Yes, we do.”

There was nothing quite like waking up to photos of yourself in compromising positions all over the internet. I was used to it, and in some ways, it didn’t matter to me. I was single. I was allowed to date and have fun. The only reason people cared was because I was a man doing those things with another man, and I was a senator—part of the new generation, they always said, speaking about me and the younger crowd cropping up. The photos weren’t of anything too bad—dancing, kissing Tim up against a car, getting into said car with him—but in some ways, the constant media attention was exhausting. I was tired of the stories and headlines that always somehow led back to my father and how much I had to be disappointing the conservative, God-fearing elder Senator Calloway.

I was used to being a disappointment to him. I always had been. I didn’t care.

I closed my eyes. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.

He didn’t deserve it, but damn if there wasn’t a part of me that did mind just a little.

With a sigh, I put my cell down and got out of the hotel bed. That was enough internet for the day. I had a flight to catch back to San Francisco later.

I ordered food, ate, and took care of some work phone calls. I would need to return to Washington soon.

I kept myself busy until it was time to go to the airport. Anson had a game, which I knew because I hadn’t been able to stop following his schedule. He was in Denver, and the game would start while I was in flight.

For the first time in my life, I watched football on a plane.

As soon as he touched the ball, I could tell something was off. He fumbled it, and while those things obviously happened, he’d been wide open, and there was no reason he should have missed the catch. Of course, I wasn’t a football player, so what the hell did I know?

It didn’t get better from there. He was tackled repeatedly, struggled to gain yardage every time he got the ball, and missed numerous blocks.

The flight was short, and I deplaned just before the end of the first half. They were down 7–0, so I found a bar at the airport to finish watching the game. At halftime it was 14–0. They scored in the third, but it wasn’t enough. Atlanta lost the game 21–7. The whole team had been off. That happened, but Anson hadn’t been on his game at all. I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. The commentators were all talking about it.

“Anson Hawkins was a bit of a mess out there tonight, but he’s been on fire the rest of the season,” they commented to Darren Edwards after the game.

“We win games as a team, and we lose them as a team,” he replied. “Tonight, the team didn’t have it. It wasn’t any one specific player. Our chemistry was off. The next game is ours to win.”

The reporter thanked Darren for his time, and he walked away.

Me: Hey…sorry about the game.

Me: Are you okay?

Just like every other message I’d sent him since the night we’d spoken on the phone, it went unanswered.

Chapter Eleven

Anson

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Jesus Christ, I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. I was losing my shit. My whole life, I’d prided myself on being in control, on being stronger than the circumstances I grew up in, stronger than the things I wanted, than my attraction to men. I had football and my family, and that was all that mattered, but I was freaking the hell out and couldn’t seem to do anything to stop the downward spiral.

I’d fucked up tonight, and I’d fucked up big-time. My head hadn’t been in the game. I was thinking about Elias and Carly, Mom and the things she wanted for me, Weston being out with a man when I’d called him, and then, of course, I’d looked him up this afternoon. There were photos of him with another man—kissing, dancing, pressing up against each other.

I closed my eyes and tried to scrub the thought from my brain, but it was imprinted there, stuck to the backs of my eyelids. I saw it every time I closed my eyes. I thought about it all the time.