Grady slid under the covers. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Max opened suddenly sharp blue eyes and narrowed them, but his mouth gave him away, the corner of his lip tugging up into a sort of smushed smirk under the beard. “Did it physically hurt you to ask that?”
“I’m not sure. It might’ve been my collarbone.”
That earned a smile complete with eye crinkles, and Grady’s heart skipped a beat. “Get over here and cuddle me.”
Grady scooted closer, a little awkwardly since doing anything on his left side was still hit-or-miss, and wrapped his arm around Max’s waist.
He thought Max had forgotten about the original question, so it surprised him when he said quietly into Grady’s chest, “I lost my lucky cuff links.”
Grady blinked. “The ones with the weird tentacle monster thing?”
Max’s snort tickled his chest hair. “It’s Cthulhu. Well, on one side. The other one’s a big hairy foot, for Bigfoot. My parents got them for me when I got drafted. Monsters, you know?”
Grady rubbed his thumb in an absentminded circle over Max’s hip. “Where’s the last place you saw them?”
“I wore them the last night of the first series. We went out after, and I rolled my sleeves up. I usually put them in my jacket pocket when I do that, but I looked there. There’s a hole in the pocket lining.”
Probably gone for good, then. “Did you call the bar?”
“I even offered a reward,” Max said moodily. “Maybe they fell out in the Lyft on the way home.”
“Maybe.” Grady kissed the top of his head. He wanted to say something about how Max didn’t need lucky cuff links to win, but he thought that might be missing the point. But maybe there wasn’t a point. Maybe Max needed to talk.
After a moment of silence, Max sighed and some of the tension melted out of him. “Thanks for listening.”
Grady mentally awarded himself another point for guessing right. He could absolutely do this supportive-partner thing. “Of course.” Then he paused. “Hey, Max?”
“Mmm.”
“Can you be the big spoon? My collarbone is killing me.”
MAX WASalready gone to practice when Grady woke up the next morning, infused with determination to do something to cheer Max up. He took Gru for a quick walk before it got too hot, fired off a text to Mitch and Farouk to see if they wanted to get lunch, and hopped in the shower.
When he got out, he had two messages waiting, along with a meeting invitation to a trendy but casual place with a great patio. Mitch had a Google Calendar obsession, but Grady appreciated people who made reservations too much to tease him. He accepted the invite and shoved his toothbrush in his mouth while he went to investigate his laundry situation.
An hour later he was sitting under an umbrella with Mitch and Farouk, nursing a beer and studiously not talking about the season.
Until Mitch said, “So has he reached out to you yet?” and suddenly Farouk started acting cagey. He grimaced and set his phone, which he’d been fidgeting with, facedown on the table.
Mitch had been asking Grady, who didn’t follow. “Has who reached out?”
Mitch rolled his eyes. “The captain, obviously. I mean it’s only his second season, but he does take being the captain pretty seriously. He’s usually on the ball making sure nobody is blaming themselves, they know nobody else blames them, we’ll get ’em next year, blah blah.”
Yeah, well, he didn’t punch most guys’ boyfriends in the face.“I haven’t heard from him.” And he didn’t need a pep talk from a guy more than a decade younger than him. Hard pass. “Are you sure he doesn’t just do that with you?” Goalies were notorious for taking losses personally.
First Mitch looked offended, then like he was considering the possibility. But before he could answer, someone cleared their throat.
Grady looked up, and God damn it, there was Dawg, hunched awkwardly with his hands in his pockets, hiding behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses that had gone out of style before he was born. “Hey.”
Grady tried to catch Farouk’s eye, but Farouk was studiously looking anywhere but at him, so he had a feeling he knew who’d shared their location.
Dawg cleared his throat again. “Uh, Grades, can I talk to you?”
This was definitely a setup.
“Um, privately?”
