Flushing, Tristan untangled his arms and legs from around Zach and scowled. “Get off me. You weigh a ton.” As soon as Zach rolled off him, Tristan got out of the bed and headed to the bathroom. “Use the bathroom down the hall,” he threw over his shoulder. “You stink.”
“You always must have the last word, huh?”
Tristan opened the bathroom door, looked back at Zach, who was sitting on the bed with a dark look on his face. Tristan smiled and blew him a kiss. “Always.”
Zach stared at him oddly and Tristan quickly shut the door and cringed. Sex must have addled his brain, too.
Chapter 14
Two weeks later
“Hey,” Zach said, closing and locking the front door.
Lydia looked up from the pile of letters in her lap and smiled. “Hey.” She looked uncertainly at the keys in Zach’s hand.
“I asked for a spare key after the little prince overslept for the third time and couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed to open the door,” Zach explained, putting his keys back into his pocket.
Lydia snorted. “That’s pretty much how I got a spare key.” She looked at Zach curiously. “But I thought you’d already come and gone today. I thought the training session was in the morning.”
Shrugging, Zach walked over. “I thought it was your day off.”
Lydia shot him a sharp look but didn’t comment on the change of subject. “I’m a little behind on fan mail. I have to finish going through these and give the non-creepy ones to Tristan to respond.”
That gave Zach pause. “He actually does it himself?”
She smiled. “I know, right? Doesn’t sound like him, but I guess it strokes his ego to read all the gushing letters.”
“Hmm.” Zach picked up one of the letters. Skimming through it, he shook his head. Sometimes he forgot how famous Tristan was.
“Zach?”
He looked up and found Lydia chewing on her lip.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Sure.”
Lydia hesitated before saying slowly, “Tristan has been strange lately.”
After a moment, Zach asked, “Strange?”
“He’s…distracted and—just weird. For example, I was late by four minutes yesterday and he didn’t even say anything!”
“It’s just four minutes, Lydia,” Zach said, looking back at the letter. “Not the end of the world.”
“Come on, you know him! He’s constantly bored and gets a kick out of threatening to fire me for the silliest reasons. But this time he didn’t bitch at all!”
Zach laughed. “Shouldn’t you be glad he didn’t?”
“I—of course I am. It’s just strange.”
“Not that strange,” he said.
“But that’s not all. I think he’s seeing someone.”
Slowly, Zach looked up from the letter. “Seeing someone?”
Lydia nodded. “Haven’t you seen his neck? The hickeys? He used to scoff when he saw someone’s hickeys and now he’s…”
“Tristan is fit enough to have sex,” Zach said, putting the letter down. “That’s the only thing I care about.” He glanced upstairs. “Is he home? I need to talk to him.”
“He is,” she said, returning her attention to the fan mail.
Zach headed upstairs, relieved that he didn’t have to answer more of her questions. He’d never been comfortable lying. He liked Lydia and lying to her didn’t sit well with him. Of course, technically he hadn’t lied to her. Tristan wasn’t seeing anyone. They just had sex. Sometimes.
Zach nearly laughed out loud. Sometimes? More like every day. Sometimes twice a day. The worst part was, they couldn’t keep it strictly to the bedroom. Like yesterday, in the middle of an argument Tristan grabbed his head and pulled him in for a hungry, bruising kiss and Zach’s dick somehow ended up in Tristan’s mouth. In the past two weeks, those little incidents had been happening with a disturbing, ever-increasing frequency and intensity.
That was why he had to end it. Their no-strings-attached arrangement was bleeding into their professional relationship. No matter what he told himself, it wasn’t okay to start kissing Tristan’s thighs during a sports massage. It wasn’t. His lack of professionalism when it came to Tristan was grating. It couldn’t go on like that. At least he had already taken steps to put an end to this. For starters, he had managed not to touch Tristan this day.
The day isn’t over yet, his inner voice said snidely. His inner voice sounded disturbingly like Tristan lately.
Zach tried to ignore it. He wasn’t here for that. He hadn’t lied to Lydia: he really needed to talk to Tristan. Jared had called him and asked about Tristan’s progress. Apparently the club higher-ups wanted Tristan back on the pitch, and although Jared didn’t let them bully him, he asked Zach to accelerate Tristan’s rehabilitation program if Tristan was ready. That was why Zach was here: to talk. And nothing else.
Tristan was in his bedroom, seated on the couch with a tablet in his hands. He didn’t look up when Zach entered.
Closing the door, Zach said, “Jared wants me to accelerate your rehabilitation program.”