The Unforgiving Minute (12 page)

But Mitch was not to be distracted. He reminded Ryan of a robin who’d spotted a nice, juicy earthworm and was going to pin it down without anything stopping him, because, unfortunately for Ryan, earthworm superheroes did not exist.

“How was it, playing with Josh Andrews at the Davis Cup?”

“Yeah, fine,” Ryan said. “Josh kind of helped me with it all, it being my first time.”

Even though Ryan was concentrating on the label he was trying to peel away from the bottle in his hands, he knew Mitch’s eyes hadn’t left his face.

“He was okay with you?”

Ryan looked up, confused. “Yeah, of course.”

“Good,” Mitch said. He started working his thumbnail under the corner of the label on his own bottle, looking awkward about what he was about to say. “You know me, Ry. I don’t want to badmouth anyone, but Josh Andrews can be a real bastard. You can’t trust a word that comes out of his mouth.”

Fury burned through Ryan, sudden and shocking. He fixed his eyes on the bottle in his hands again because otherwise he would say something he really, really shouldn’t, and probably ending up outing Josh and himself with the vehemence of his reply.

Mitch put a hand briefly on his shoulder, in semi-apology. “I just don’t want to see you get taken for a ride by him.”

Ryan forced himself to loosen up where he was rigid under Mitch’s hand. “Whatever,” he said, trying for casual but suspecting it came out more as angry.

Mitch took a swig from his bottle, gazing into the middle distance, and Ryan copied him, willing the anger in him to fade as swiftly as it had flared up.

“A brown and crinkly giant condom,” Mitch said.

Ryan choked on his beer. “What the hell?”

“Earthworm superhero costume. If you don’t look like an earthworm, how are they going to know they can trust you?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” Ryan said. “It doesn’t sound very heroic, though.”

Mitch shot him a sideways glance, his gray eyes shrewd. “Depends on whether you want to be
seen
as a hero, or actually be one.”

And how the hell had earthworms gotten to figure in their conversation in the first place, let alone getting to the point where Mitch was getting philosophical about them? “Want another beer?” Ryan offered. Anything to break the topic of conversation.

Once he was back from the bar, they kicked back and griped about the length of the queues at the racket stringers at a tournament of this size. It was almost as if Mitch had never said anything about Josh.

But when they came to part ways and Mitch said, “Take care,” there was concern in his eyes that left Ryan feeling distinctly unsettled. He didn’t know what had caused Mitch to get that impression of Josh, but he was wrong. Tommy had been wrong, too. They didn’t know Josh, not the way Ryan did.

Chapter 12

A
S
THE
tournament got underway, Ryan fell into his usual pattern of practice, planning, physio, and playing, with the difference that he was more organized about it than he had ever been before. Stefan seemed to be happy Ryan was finally putting into practice all his teaching about the importance of routines. Ryan didn’t have the heart to tell him he was just making sure everything was done by the time he got to see Josh, so there wouldn’t be any distractions. And maybe he’d also learned from watching Josh, who was rigid in his own routine. The only variations Josh made were to accommodate the different times of day he had to play matches. He never complained, and he kept on winning, so it obviously worked.

Ryan was playing at the top of his game as he progressed through the tournament. He got as far as the quarterfinals without any real scares, and then found he was due to play Mitch. His first impulse was to text Mitch. Then he remembered Josh’s attitude about contact before a match and thought he probably shouldn’t.

Instead, Mitch came to find him. Ryan was in the lounge, chatting with Finn and Daniel when Mitch moseyed on up to their table.

“Howdy, y’all,” he drawled, and touched the brim of his imaginary hat.

“Poser,” Finn said.

“Loser,” Mitch said.

They grinned at each other before Mitch turned his attention to Ryan. “I need to borrow Ry here for a minute.”

“Just make sure you do something with his hair before you return him,” Daniel said, “and he’s all yours.”

“Remind me again why I was ever nice to you guys.” Glaring at Finn and Daniel, Ryan obediently got to his feet and followed Mitch to a quieter corner of the lounge.

Mitch looked unusually serious as he spoke. “I guess I don’t need to say it, but what happens on the court stays on the court.”

“Well, yeah,” Ryan said, surprised. He’d played enough friends over the years, beaten them and lost to them enough that he never thought otherwise.

“Cool,” Mitch said. “I know some guys have problems separating the two, and I don’t want to stop being friends, Ry. For some strange reason, I kinda like you.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you?” Ryan asked, trying to ignore the warmth that Mitch’s confession gave him. “Me too,” he confessed, after a moment. “It’s just a match, right?”

“Right. Hey, are your folks coming to watch?”

“Uh, no,” Ryan said, taken by surprise again.

“Oh.” Mitch sounded taken aback. “I just figured, with it being in the States and you doing so well, they’d want to cheer you on.”

“It’s term time,” Ryan pointed out. Plus they’d never had the spare time nor money to follow him to every tournament he’d played. Nor, if he was really truthful, the interest. They supported him every step of the way in what he’d chosen to do, but the attraction of hitting a ball back and forth over a net for hours at a time remained a mystery to them. Wanting to watch somebody
else
do it seemed to them positively bizarre.

“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Mitch said. With a quick squeeze of Ryan’s shoulder, he left.

T
HAT
evening Josh was later than usual coming to Ryan’s room. Ryan wasn’t sure why it was always his room they spent the night in, other than the fact he wouldn’t put it past Roger Andrews to drop in on his son at any time and he didn’t think either of them would want Josh’s dad to walk in on them in the middle of some of the very enthusiastic sex they had. Not only did Josh have the whole athletic strength and stamina thing going for him, but he was also amazingly bendy. Or flexible, as he preferred to call it, giving Ryan the stink-eye whenever he made reference to Josh’s bendiness. Apparently he practiced yoga as part of his training regimen, which probably explained it.

Ryan jumped at the knock on his door. He’d managed to get himself completely distracted with thoughts of Josh bent almost in half under him.

“You okay?” he asked as Josh came in, because he looked… off, was the best way Ryan could think to describe it. His mouth was tight, with lines of strain around it, and his eyes were dark. He was also limping slightly.

“Yeah,” Josh said as he sat down on the couch. He offered nothing further.

Ryan didn’t miss the way he was absently massaging his left knee.

“Problem?” he asked, nodding toward it.

“No.” Josh was aggressive all of a sudden, and Ryan quickly backed off.

“Just asking,” he said mildly, snagging a couple of bottles of water from the fridge, not because he wanted one but to buy some time for Josh to settle back down. Then concern won out over his attempt to be tactful. “You need any ice for the knee?”

“I told you, it’s fine.”

“Which is why you keep rubbing it.”

Josh didn’t say anything as he drew his hands together into his lap, away from that knee, and refused to look at Ryan.

Ryan sat down on the couch next to him and put the bottles on the coffee table. “Can I help?”

Josh’s gaze shot to his. From the surprise in his face, he hadn’t expected Ryan’s question.

“Look, something’s obviously wrong, whether it’s your knee or something else. I don’t need to know what’s going on with you if you don’t want to tell me, but I want to help, if I can.”
And if you can’t trust me enough to do that, what the hell are we doing
, Ryan wanted to add, but managed not to.

Josh glanced away again and took his time before looking back at Ryan. When he did, there was something that looked like fear in his face, along with uncertainty. He took a breath, and Ryan saw the uncertainty change to resolve just before he spoke.

“My physio wants me to have an MRI. He thinks my ACL might be going again.”

Shit.
It was an ACL reconstruction and subsequent complications that had taken Josh out for so long. Ryan didn’t know if a further reconstruction was even possible, if it turned out to be necessary. It could mean the end of Josh’s career. It could impair his mobility for the rest of his life.

“Crap,” he said.

“Yeah.” And all of a sudden there was a sheen in Josh’s eyes.

Ryan pulled him into a tight hug. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “Best to be safe and get it checked out, though.”

Josh didn’t say anything, but he didn’t resist Ryan’s hold.

“You want me to come with you for the MRI?”

Josh shook his head against Ryan’s chest. “Dad’s taking care of it,” he said, his voice tight. “He’s kind of pissed. He wanted to fire Danny for even suggesting it, I think.”

“Danny’s your physio, I take it.”

Josh nodded, then took a deep steadying breath before patting Ryan on the back. Ryan took the hint and let go of him. And tried not to say a
word
about Roger Andrews’s reaction to the news about his son’s health.

“There’s a
Die Hard
marathon
on,” Josh said, his voice striving for normal. “You want to watch Bruce Willis blow shit up?”

“Hell, yeah.”

They sat in front of the TV for the rest of the evening, Josh with his leg propped on the coffee table, watching Bruce Willis blow shit up. If Josh let himself be tucked closer into Ryan’s side than he usually did, and if Ryan held him a little tighter than he usually did, neither of them said anything about it.

Later, in bed, Ryan persuaded Josh to lie still and let Ryan do what he wanted. And that was to take care of Josh, to let Josh know, in ways that he didn’t think Josh was ready to hear in words, what Ryan felt for this man. He was in Ryan’s life and in his bed, and had somehow worked his way into Ryan’s heart.

He explored Josh’s body slowly and thoroughly and with a new tenderness. He paused next to that damn left knee, the cause of so much pain, and he kissed the surgery scars he found there, and heard Josh sucking his breath in with a hiss. And then Josh let that breath out again in a whimper as Ryan moved further up the bed and licked a wet line up Josh’s cock, swirling his tongue over the head teasingly before finally pushing his mouth down on it. He loved Josh’s cock. He loved even more the way Josh was moving under him, hands caught in Ryan’s hair as he begged, until he finally gasped out Ryan’s name and came.

Afterward, after Josh had brought him off with his hand on Ryan’s cock and his tongue in Ryan’s mouth, Ryan gathered Josh against him. They were a sticky, sweaty mess, but even so, it felt sweet to Ryan.

Chapter 13

R
YAN
blinked awake to the sound of his alarm. Josh must have woken up before it had gone off, because he was out of bed already and almost fully dressed.

“You okay?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah.” Unlike the previous night, Josh was telling the truth. “My appointment’s at ten. I’ll let you know.”

Ryan got out of bed and kissed Josh. “You’ll be fine.”

After Josh had left, Ryan couldn’t get back to sleep. To stop himself from clock-watching, he tried to lose himself in preparations for his match. For the first time, he fully appreciated the value of Stefan’s insistence on routine, because it imposed order on his day despite his chaotic thoughts.

He got the text just as he was finishing lunch.
Just a sprain.

Excellent
, he texted back, even though that wasn’t entirely true. A sprain meant Josh would have to withdraw from this tournament and would probably miss Miami next week. But it was so very much better than it might have been that Ryan reckoned he was being picky in thinking about the downside.