A Secret for a Secret (All In 3)

Bishop pulls a newspaper out of his bag, and I scroll through the movies. Sort of. I’m half paying attention to the movies and half paying attention to Queenie when I get an elbow in the side. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Dude. Stop being so obvious.”

“What are you talking about?”

Bishop leans over so he can see past the seat in front of us. “Really, King?”

“I’m looking for a movie.” I tap the screen in front of me.

“No, man, you’re not. Maybe that’s what you want me to think you’re doing, but the only way you could be less conspicuous is if you went up to the front of the plane and sat in her damn lap. Stop staring. It’s borderline creepy.”

“I’m not staring.”

“Yeah, man, you are. You’ve been doing it a lot, not to mention driving her home and hanging out with her,” he says quietly. “What the hell is going on between the two of you?”

“There’s nothing going on. We’re just friends.”

He gives me a look. “Why are you lying to me?”

“Can you drop it for now?” I glance to my left, where our teammates are sitting and potentially listening to our conversation.

He pokes at his cheek with his tongue. “You’re spilling it later. But you need to check yourself, King, before people other than me start to notice, if they haven’t already.”

“Right. Yeah.” I keep my eyes glued to the screen for the rest of the flight. Mostly.Several hours later we arrive at the hotel. Bishop and I always room together, so we wait with the rest of the team for the elevators and head up to our respective floors. I lose track of Queenie along the way, partly because I’m paranoid that Bishop is right, especially since Jake just finished asking me to watch out for her.

When we get up to the room, I do what I always do: unzip my suitcase and find my portable steamer. When I turn around to retrieve the hangers from the closet, Bishop is standing in front of it with his arms crossed.

“Can I get in there?”

“Not until you spill it. What the hell is going on with you and Queenie?”

I open my mouth to speak, and he raises a hand. “And do not say, ‘Nothing.’ We’ve known each other for years, and I have never seen you tail a woman like you do her. Even Stevie has noticed, and she usually couldn’t give less of a shit about stuff like that.”

I rub the back of my neck. “Okay, okay. But this has to stay between us.”

“I’m antisocial as fuck, King. Pretty sure you don’t need to worry about me running my mouth to anyone apart from my cat and maybe Stevie, but she’s a vault.”

I nod and blow out a breath. “So you remember when I found out that Hanna is actually my biological mom?”

“Yeah, of course. You were appropriately freaked out, and then you did what you always do: you got over it in five minutes and moved on.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not quite what happened.”

“Right. You said you went to a bar. There’s no shame in getting drunk once in a while, King. No one is going to hold it against you, except maybe you.” He uncrosses his arms and leans against the wall.

“I didn’t get drunk by myself.”

“Also not a crime.”

“And I brought a woman home with me.”

“As long as that woman was a coherent and willing participant in whatever you got up to—which I’m assuming she was, because you’re you—that also isn’t something you should beat yourself up about. I’m not getting what this has to do with Queenie.”

“She’s the woman I brought home. But she left before I woke up the next morning, and I didn’t see her again until the first team meeting of the season.”

Bishop blinks, and blinks again. “Holy shit. Are you telling me you had a one-night stand with the GM’s daughter?”

“No. I mean . . . sort of? We agreed that night that we were just going to have fun and forget that our lives were kind of messed up. I would have given her my number, but I didn’t have a chance. And we didn’t have sex. Not really, anyway.”

“How do you not really have sex? You either do or you don’t, King. There’s no actual in-between.”

“There was some wet humping.”

His eyebrows lift. “Wet humping?”

“Like dry humping but without clothes.” I lace my hands behind my head and pace some more. “I sort of slipped for a second.”

“Slipped?”

“In. I slipped inside. But just the head.” This is more sharing than I’ve ever done before. But it’s Bishop. He’s good at keeping his mouth shut, because I’m one of the only people he actually willingly speaks to on a regular basis.

“Wow. I haven’t played just the tip since high school.”

“It’s not a joke, Ship. And we weren’t playing just the tip. We were both under the influence and not making the best choices, and we got carried away, but we didn’t have actual sex.”