All of this was true, so Max didn’t bother responding to it. “And?”
“And I thought he overheard me talking about riding crops with a drag queen, so when he said not to hurt you, I told him to stay out of our sex life.”
“Youdid not,” Max said delightedly.
“The word ‘spanking’ may have been involved.”
Max cackled. “God, serves that fucker right. I can’t believe he tried to give you the shovel talk! At a party!” He shook his head. “As if I need him to keep you in line.”
“He was just trying to look out for you. He loves you.”
“So do you,” Max pointed out.
Grady went even redder. “I think I told him that too.”
Fuck, Max was going to marry himso hard. “I bet you did. And as a reward for your good behavior, I’m going to tell you how to fix your dry mouth. But you’re not going to like it.”
The second Gatorade bottle was empty. “I’ll try anything. I’m going to be pissing all day at this rate.”
Max handed him back the spatula, then turned to take a bottle of Coke out of the fridge. “Don’t give me that look. Blah, blah, sugar, caffeine. It works.”
Grady looked at the bottle, his internal battle writ large on his face. “Okay,” he said, “but no telling Todd.”
Max put his hand to his chest. “Cross my heart.”
While Max finished with the cooking, Grady finished his glass of Coke, still wearing Wet Cat Face. “Can you butter the toast?” Max asked as he reached for the sour cream.
Grady hummed in acknowledgment, and then, weirdly, kept humming as he spread butter.
In all the time they’d known each other, Max didn’t think he’d ever heard Grady do that. He was carrying a tune too. After the embarrassment he’d just been subjected to, and the Coke? That was justweird. Also—“Is that the Jonas Brothers?”
Grady glanced up from the toast. “How should I know? It’s a stupid earworm from last night.”
Oh, of course it was. Max fully suspected shenanigans—the set list for the last hour would’ve qualified as subliminal messaging if it had actually been subtle—but didn’t know who to blame. Not Grady, it seemed. Logan or Nora, maybe. And he wouldn’t put it past Baller either; he loved to meddle.
He finished mixing in the sour cream and plated the eggs. Then his phone buzzed again.Tell you what, though, Logan went on.Guy was very concerned someone might dare to get engaged at your Cup party and steal your spotlight. Kinda thought he might throw down.
Oh Jesus. Max pursed his lips, imagining the scene. He texted back,He was very high.
But as he sat down at the table with their plates, a silly, whimsical thought occurred to him.
Maybe Max was having trouble asking Grady to marry him because asking Grady for things wasn’t Max’s MO. He preferred to annoy Grady until Grady did what he wanted. It was more fun that way.
So maybe, for the next week, Max would take a step back from thinking so hard, and instead focus on little activities that would remind Grady that he wasn’t legally bound to Max forever, but heshould be.
That sounded a lot more fun than trying to do the asking himself—and Grady was so easy to manipulate. All he needed was a few good argumentative conversation topics to get him stewing, maybe a nudge here and there. It’d probably only take a few days. Then they could spend the rest of their off-season having nasty engaged-people sex.
Smiling to himself, Max picked up his toast. “So listen. How do you feel about keeping chickens?”
WHEN GRADYfirst met Todd, he thought he’d have a hard time taking him seriously as a trainer, and then immediately felt like an asshole for judging a book by its cover.
Then the first workout started and Todd’s cheerful façade peeled back to reveal the soul of a sadist. Grady didn’t know if it was because he’d gotten soft, if he’d really needed more rest than he thought, or if Todd was just that much meaner than his usual trainers, but by the time they finished for the day, he had just enough energy to heat up a freezer meal and lie down on the couch.
“Pathetic,” Max said, but he was prone on the floor, so Grady figured he was talking about both of them.
He would’ve flipped Max the bird anyway, on principle, but his phone vibrated in his gym shorts and startled the crap out of him. He pulled it out to see a text from Baller.So did u ask him yet or what?
He followed this with a YouTube link. After a moment the phone loaded a preview—the music video for “White Wedding.”
