Down by Contact (The Barons 2)

“You guys can’t get this upset every time you lose a game,” Adrián said matter-of-factly. “You think I win all the time?”

“We definitely don’t think that,” Delilah informed him. “No one does.”

Adrián gave her a dull look. “What I’m trying to say is, we all lose. Fu—shoot, me and Simeon do this for a living, and we lose. You guys have been playing for, what? Ten days? Come on, now.”

“Yeah, but we’re not pro,” Jory said, kicking at the grass. “And those kids aren’t either. We just suck.”

“Those kids are from an actual football league in Staten Island,” I piped up. “They’ve been playing together for a while. Besides, this was just a scrimmage.”

“Oh, like the preseason game when you two got so mad you got into a fistfight?” Brayden asked with an arched brow. “My dad said it wasn’t about the game, but I think he’s wrong.”

Yeah, because his dad was queer as fuck and could probably sense there was something not-strictly-broish about me and Adrián. Nothing about our challenge to make each other uncomfortable was straight, and the flirtatious teasing between us wasn’t either. But Adrián was convinced that having only enjoyed sex with women so far meant he was hetero. I’d been with guys who’d screwed me six ways to church and still proclaimed their straightness, but having Bravo be this far in denial was grating.

“Well, your dad is right,” I said. “Adrián and me had a disagreement about something else, and it spilled over into the game. It shouldn’t have and it was a mistake, so we’re trying to teach y’all better. And this whole winning thing? He’s right. It doesn’t always happen. When I was first drafted by the Predators—”

“You played for the Predators?” Delilah demanded. “I didn’t know that!”

“Well, that’s the thing.” I squatted down so I wasn’t towering over our little crew. “They drafted me, but they thought I wasn’t a good QB after seeing me go through training camp.”

“How could they think that?” she crowed. “You’re the best!”

“Haha, thanks. But they were right. I was so nervous about being cut that I let it get to my head and lost the confidence I had when I was playing for LSU. I’d hesitate before releasing the ball.” I grabbed their ball and demonstrated. “So they cut me and put me on their practice squad, and I got the chance to keep working on my skills while practicing with their players. And trust—I was ashamed that I didn’t make the cut. I felt like a failure to my family and to my hometown. I was supposed to be a star and all that.”

Adrián had crossed his arms over his chest as I spoke, but his dark eyes were trained on me. I wondered what he was thinking about the short time I’d spent on his team. We’d bonded back then, before he’d moved past third string and while I was desperate to even get that far, but then it had all changed. Our developing bromance had taken a nosedive into the gutter and had been replaced by open hostility.

“When the Barons saw something in me, I thought it was my chance to prove I was more than a meat puppet for the real football players to practice on. And it was. Finally, I could prove to my mother that there had been a reason for all of the crap I’d put her through on my journey to the League. I got my shot and then I had my chance, and before I knew it I was starting for one of the most respected teams in the NFL. But you know what?” I grinned broadly. “The fact that I didn’t make it that first time around just made me push through harder. Without being with the Predators for all those months, maybe I wouldn’t have ever lost my fear and hesitation.”

Drop by drop, the dejection and anger drained from the kids, and they bombarded me with questions about how I’d “gotten my chance” to start. Unfortunately, it had come at the expense of other players. The original starting QB had suffered a back injury, then his backup had suffered a broken collarbone, and the kid from LSU who’d just whiled away half the season on another team’s practice squad got thrown onto the field. And they’d never let me go back to the bench.

My mother had said God had blessed me, but it hadn’t felt like a blessing at the time. I’d suffered a lot of guilt for riding my way to the top on the backs of two other men who’d just been injured, but that was the way the League worked. It sucked, and there had been a lot of resentment until Marcus and Gavin had adopted me as their bud. Well, Marcus had adopted me. Gavin had just growled at the other guys who’d questioned my skills.