CHAPTER ONE–Liam

I looked down at the paper in my shaking hands. My new contract. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Sure, I hadn’t had the best season—a rotator cuff tear that had me spending more time at the physio than on the pitch hadn’t helped—but I’d thought for sure the nearly ten years I’d played for Dublin would have garnered some good will for my future. Apparently, I’d thought wrong.

“So that’s it then?” I asked, meeting my agent’s shrewd eyes.

Maybe because I’d expected to see pity, I was surprised to see a hopeful gleam instead.

“Maybe not,” Sean answered, reaching into his desk and pulling out an unmarked folio. “I know you want to finish out your career in Dublin, but I put some feelers out to see if another team might be interested.”

“What?” I barked, furious he’d gone against my wishes.

“Calm down, would you? You may not have anticipated this, but I had a sneaking suspicion you weren’t going to like what they came back with. I hate to break it to you Liam, but Dublin is building a team of youngsters, and Ireland wants to focus on guys who can play in the next World Cup. Everyone knows you’re too old to be a legitimate prospect.”

I wanted to tell him that he was out of his fucking mind, but at thirty-two, it’d be a goddamn miracle if my body held out long enough for 2019. As it was, I’d already spent almost a year sidelined with injury, and once something like that happened to a rugby player, it seemed to keep on happening. Once you were injured as badly as I’d been, getting back to peak physical condition was the exception, not the rule.

“You know I’m right. I can see it in your eyes. And you know as well as I do that McConnell kid is the future. He had some tremendous games while you were out, which was all they needed to justify that.” He notched his head toward the contract I held clenched in my hands. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his desk, his fingers forming a steeple against his lips. He paused, tapping them twice. “Good money to be found in Edinburgh.”

“I can’t go to Scotland, Sean.”

“I don’t want to be insensitive, but what’s keeping you here?”

His question hurt like a motherfucker.

“Fuck,” I muttered, dropping my head into my hands. “Can this year get any worse?”

“Liam, Liam, Liam.” He shook his head and asked, “You really want me to answer that?”

“No,” I responded with a sigh. We both knew my year could have been infinitely worse. In fact, Sean was one of only a handful of people who knew about the crisis I’d barely avoided and what the toll could have been—both on my personal and my professional life.

“Hey,” he said, his tone gentling. “Do you want to hear what I think?”

I did want his advice, even if I probably wasn’t going to like what he had to say. Sean wasn’t just my agent; he was also my sister’s husband, and one of my closest friends.

“Going to Edinburgh might be good for you. Ever since The Incident”—he used his fingers to make air quotes —”you’ve been stressed as fuck, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It might be good to go somewhere you don’t need to be constantly looking over your shoulder.”

“Of course I’ve been stressed,” I laughed cynically. “Blackmail will do that to a man.”

Sean leaned back, holding his hands up in a show of surrender. “Look, I’m not saying you don’t have every reason to be concerned. I don’t trust that asshole not to come waltzing back in a couple of years demanding more money. Maybe if you weren’t around to tempt him, we could buy you some more time.”

“He signed a NDA,” I groaned. “Doesn’t that buy me some protection?”

Sean shrugged. “It should. But here’s the thing: nothing actually happens to him if he breaks it. You can threaten to sue, but if you do, everyone finds out anyhow. He’s probably not smart enough to have figured that out yet, but when he does, it’s only a matter of time until he asks for more money or releases the pictures.”

“Fuck,” I muttered, having long ago run out of eloquent ways to express how I felt about what had happened with Conor Henry three months ago.

Not for the first time, I wished I’d never met the asshole. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, as my gran liked to say.

“Go to Edinburgh, Liam,” Sean urged. “You’ll make good money, and while you’re there, you can figure out the other thing.”

I raised my eyes to his. “There’s nothing to figure out. It was a one-time thing.”

He studied me for a few moments. “Okay,” he nodded. “But even if it wasn’t, you know you always have our support.”

While technically what had happened with Conor had been a one-time thing, I hated making a liar of myself. From the time my prick had started getting hard and I’d discovered the euphoria of an orgasm, I’d had those urges.

For years, I’d avoided my desires—focused my attentions elsewhere—but now that I’d acted on that curiosity, I didn’t know if I could deny that part of myself any longer. Because while I craved pussy, apparently I also liked cock.

Or rather, I liked another man sucking mine—not something that was generally accepted in my world. With the threat of Conor exposing me hanging over my head, I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to keep my secret hidden.

With the legalization of gay marriage in Ireland in 2015, people were a whole lot more accepting of the whole “gay thing,” but I couldn’t name one current out professional rugby player. Gareth Thomas had hung up his boots a long time ago, and Nigel Owens was a referee. Sure, there were entire gay amateur rugby teams all over the world, but that was an entirely different situation than the one I faced.

Guys like Declan O’Shaughnessy and Aidan Quark, people I’d known my entire adult life, wouldn’t give two shits where I liked to stick my dick, but the other lads? Let’s just say you still heard faggot jokes in the locker room sometimes. Hell, I’d laughed at a few of them over the years myself.

But now? Well, things had changed.

I’d changed. 

I didn’t hate what I was or what I liked, but I wasn’t looking forward to others hating me for it, either. I didn’t want to see disgust in the eyes of lads I’d stood naked next to in the showers. Coming to terms personally with my sexuality had been hard enough; explaining that I liked dick and pussy wasn’t the sort of pressure I wanted to deal with.

Not at this point in my career, at any rate. Maybe if I was just starting out and looking to make a name for myself, I might feel differently, but now I had a reputation and a legacy at stake.

I knew that made me a coward, but I had no interest in becoming the poster boy for professional gay athletes. Especially since I wasn’t even sure how this would all play out in the long term. Just because I’d loved shoving my cock down Conor’s throat—had reveled in having my hands wrapped around the back of his head while I held him flush against me and his eyes watered from the force of my orgasm—didn’t mean I was about to go out and just fuck some random guy … or get fucked by one either.

Blow jobs were one thing, that was a whole other can of worms. One I didn’t know if I was ready to open. One I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready to explore.

You’re fooling yourself, my subconscious sneered. Now that you’ve had a taste of the forbidden, you want more. You loved it and can’t wait to experience it again.

Yeah, I had.

Which meant I needed to get the fuck away from Conor Henry and the turmoil he could cause. Because even though I wanted to murder him, I also really wanted to fuck him, too.

Properly.

And that meant I needed to leave.

I dropped my head back and stared at Sean’s ceiling for a few beats. With a weary sigh, I made my decision. It looked like I was going to Edinburgh after all.

“Make the deal,” I said, my head falling forward. Sean nodded once with a satisfied quirk of his lips. “And wipe that shit-eating grin off your face,” I added with a smirk of my own as I walked out of his office.

Back in my car, I took a few moments to recalibrate. Life had been so much easier before The Night That Had Changed Everything, but the move to Edinburgh could be my opportunity for a fresh start. Now, I just had to decide what that fresh start looked like. Was I the same Liam I’d been all these years, or did I accept this new reality and allow myself the pleasures I’d only recently discovered?

But … was I even ready for that? I’d waited almost twenty years to act on my attraction to men; surely I could keep my dick in line for a few more—at least until I hung up my boots and retired.

On the pitch, I was known for trusting my instincts. With the exception of a tackle I hadn’t rolled into adequately—the one that’d kept me on the bench for most of last season—my instincts had never steered me wrong.

Unless, you also counted the instincts that had led me to Conor’s apartment at three o’clock in the morning. Because that had been a major miscalculation on my part. Not that I regretted what we’d done; I only wished I’d chosen someone more trustworthy for my first time—someone who wouldn’t blackmail me afterward.

The sad part was, I probably would have done the same thing all over again.

I’d been drawn to Conor like a moth to a flame from the first moment I’d seen him, and nothing would have kept me away that night. He was the physical embodiment of every dark fantasy I’d ever had … and he’d known it from the second our eyes had locked across that dark club.

What a fucking cliche, I thought with a cynical roll of my eyes as I remembered it all over again.

Toward the end of the night, he’d cornered me in a dark hall leading to the VIP section of the club. Whispering in my ear that he wanted to get down on his knees and taste me, I’d nearly come in my pants at the idea of taking him up on those dirty promises. And then he’d palmed my cock through my jeans and kissed me hungrily, licking his way inside my mouth and sucking on my tongue. With a groan, I’d fisted his hair in my hands and gave in, reaching the point of no return and passing it at warp speed. Through hungry pants and whispered moans, I explained that I’d never been with a guy and begged him to go easy on me. He’d laughed, grabbed my hand, and led me out of the building through the back door. When we’d reached my car, he promised he’d be gentle, that he wouldn’t push me further than I was ready. He also promised that when he was done, I’d never forget the feel of his mouth on my cock.

At least in that, he hadn’t been lying.

But when I’d told him I couldn’t stay the night and that I wouldn’t fuck him either, he’d turned sullen and mean.

Instead of the experience being one of the most sublime of my life, I’d forever think of him as the man who’d used my vulnerability against me—the one who’d abused the trust I’d placed in him. I’d always remember him as the person who’d ruined something I’d been longing for my whole life, leaving me riddled with guilt and remorse.

So no, maybe my instincts weren’t all that sharp after all. Because if they were, I would never have kissed Conor while in the background Michael Jackson sang about the way someone made him feel, how they really turned him on. I never would have returned his hungry stares or encouraged his advances.

But I had, and all that had led me here.

Now, I just needed to decide what I did next. Because right now, the only thing I was certain of, was that I wasn’t certain of anything.