“Lazy ass motherfucker,” I mumbled, loud enough for him to hear. I could hear his laugh and I smiled as I made my way down the stairs.
Grabbing a bottle from the cabinet, I placed it under the water reservoir on the fridge and let it fill while I grabbed my phone from my pocket. Curiosity was getting to me, so I pulled up Cam’s interview from after the game and watched while I had a second to myself.
“Would you say your personal life is too complicated for you to concentrate on football?”he was asked.
“My personal life has nothing to do with football,”Cam scoffed at the interviewer.
“But it is safe to say that since you and Kace Jackson…”
“My personal life has nothing to do with football,”Cam repeated, cutting the interviewer off after he said my name.
Another interviewer popped up with a question and Cam looked her way.“So Cam Nichols is off the market?”
His eyes squinted and he tilted his head to look at her. She was behind the camera that pointed at his face, so I had no idea what she looked like, but I knew the face Cam gave her. It was the look he gave me when he got home that night.
Utter astonishment.
“And so is Kace Jackson,”he finally replied, making my eyebrows shoot up to my forehead.
CHAPTER7
CAM
Kace jumped when he heard the words I said in my interview, causing water to spill out over the top of the bottle he was filling.
“Fuck,” he whispered, grabbing a towel and throwing it on the small puddle on the ground.
“So either I just admitted we are both with Ali, or I insinuated you and I are a couple.” I spoke to let him know I was there.
“Damnit,” he whispered again, moving the towel with his foot to a new spill. “I was just kidding about you being lazy, I was gonna bring you water.”
I leaned on the counter behind me, propping my hands on the edge, and leaned back. “You took too long.”
That wasn’t true. Ali fell asleep the second I took the warm cloth to her body, so I decided to check on Kace.
“Sorry,” he grimaced, knowing I came in while he was watching the interview. “I got curious.”
“How bad did I fuck up?”
“You didn’t.” Kace shook his head and leaned on the counter next to me. “I don’t give a fuck.”
“I don’t either.” I defended myself even though I didn’t have to. Kace knew we only cared about how any of this affected Ali.
“She’s okay,” he whispered. “She’s just about ready to face the world. Let’s get through Christmas and give her that before we turn her world upside down with ours.”
Two more games, I thought to myself. Two more games and Christmas would be over, and we could start our new year together. At least I was home until the day before Christmas. We were going to go see Ali’s dad, Philip, and Mary. Philip lived about two hours away, so it was going to be an all-day event on my only day off. That meant I wouldn’t see my own family for our Christmas party, but my mom seemed understanding.
In fact, my parents seemed way too understanding when it came to my relationship with Ali and Kace. Mom was wary at first, but she took to Ali quickly–and she already loved Kace. She thought what we had was unorthodox, and I guess it was, but she also saw how happy it made me.
I wished I could share my family Christmas with Ali, but it seemed like something that would never happen. Not when there were three of us, with three different families. We would always be forced to choose, and that was if I even got to be around at all. Next year could be totally different.
A twinge of jealousy shook my body as I stood quietly in the kitchen. Kace was lost in his own thoughts, but he noticed my change and nudged me.
“What’s up?”
I had never been jealous of Kace and Ali, because I always knew I got to share the same things with her as well. I knew she loved me just as much as she loved him, but for the first time, it almost didn’t feel like enough.
“I’m jealous,” I admitted. “I found something I love more than football and I’m jealous I can’t spend our first Christmas with her the same way you can.”