Right as Raine (Aster Valley 1)

“What was his response?” he finally asked. I could see mixed feelings warring in his eyes. On the one hand, he wanted to assert his independence from his parents, say his dad’s opinion didn’t matter. On the other, he always wanted their approval after decades of being treated like the one who never did anything worth noting.

“He wasn’t happy,” I said, clearly hedging.

Mikey picked at his fingernails. “And did he… say anything about trading you, or…?”

I laughed. “Other than threatening to send me to the losing-est team in the league?”

His eyes flashed to me with worry, so I tried reassuring him. “Babe. He’s not really going to send me to Buffalo. It was just his way of telling me he wasn’t happy.”

He moved away from me to the other end of the sofa and hugged his knees. “You don’t know my dad. He’ll do just about anything to keep me from being happy.”

I wanted to touch him, to hold him and reassure him everything would be okay. But I couldn’t deny he knew Coach V. better than I ever would. “Why?” I asked. “Because you’re gay?” I was still unsure about where Coach stood on it. He’d been very accepting of me these past five years, but I couldn’t deny some of the times he’d seemed to gently discourage me from being public about my sexuality. It was almost done with kindness, like not wanting me to be bullied by naysayers or hounded by the media. Like he was looking out for me.

But maybe I’d been wrong about that all along.

“He doesn’t come right out and say it,” Mikey explained, waving his hands around as he got more heated about the subject. “He says all the right things and is supportive on paper. But whenever Mom talks about me finding someone or mentions wanting to plan another wedding for one of her kids—since I’m the one most likely to involve her in the planning—my dad says things like, ‘There’s no need for a big wedding. Mikey doesn’t need all that.’ Or he’ll say, ‘Can you imagine the media firestorm? Coach’s gay son gets married in lavish wedding? I’m not sure that’s a good idea. It’ll only bring Mikey under attack by those hooligan reporters.’”

That was similar to my own experience with him. “So it’s the publicity factor he’s most worried about.”

He sighed. “Which is why he can’t stomach the idea of me dating a player. What will the media say?”

“He’s not wrong, you know. Not only would the media be all over a gay player with an actual, real-life boyfriend, but they’d also lose their shit over a Riggers player dating the coach’s son.”

I watched him for his reaction, and it was pretty much what I expected. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he said with a pitiful note of pleading in his voice, as if he couldn’t bear to stop and was hoping I’d have the strength to stop it for him.

He was going to be wildly disappointed. I didn’t have the strength to stop it, and moreover, I didn’t have the desire to.

“I strongly disagree,” I said as calmly as possible. “We’re two consenting adults.”

He lifted an eyebrow at me. “We’re boss and employee.”

“You’re fired,” I said between tight teeth.

Mikey barked out a surprised laugh. “You can’t fire me. I quit. And anyway, I’m going to be a famous cookbook author now, so I don’t need no stinkin’ personal assistant job.”

This wasn’t a total surprise. I’d been dreading and hoping for it since he’d talked about his dreams back in Aster Valley.

It was odd that he hadn’t mentioned the job opportunity in Aster Valley, but maybe he didn’t want to jinx it. Hearing him talk about flying out there to talk to the Civettis had both crushed me and made me proud. I wanted him to be happy, and I knew turning that lodge into a B&B was his dream come true.

But I didn’t want to lose him. If he was going to pursue his dream that far away, I wanted us to figure out a way to do it together, to make the distance work until I could retire and join him full-time.

I couldn’t wait any longer to touch him again. I crawled across the leather sofa and forced myself between his bent legs until I was propped on top of him. “Please don’t leave me,” I said softly.

He studied me as if processing my request and carefully parsing his words. “I don’t want to leave you.”

I chose to ignore the clanging warning bells going off somewhere deep inside my brain as he inserted the word want in there. As if he’d do it anyway. Instead, I leaned in and kissed him, telling him with my slow perusal of his lips that he was more important to me than any nosy reporter could ever be.