PLAY THE GAME Sneak Peek

Chapter One

Taylor

I was pretending to enjoy myself in a Las Vegas nightclub when Crosby Holcomb, an aging pitcher for the Los Angeles Dragons, proved once again why I couldn’t stand the motherfucker.

“Lovely to see you, Kimber,” he drawled as a waitress wearing a black, lacy bustier and not much else draped herself across the table to present a bottle of tequila. “I missed you last time I was here.”

Kimber rolled her eyes, pasting on a smile that looked forced. “Why can’t you be a nice guy like Taylor?” She strolled away, her hips swinging in time with the steady drumbeat from the music playing on the speakers below.

Yup, that was me. Mr. Nice Guy. Sweet, dumb jock with a heart of gold.

The tequila brand rep—a woman who looked to be in her late twenties—hovered near the edge of our booth. “Okay, guys, we’re going to grab a few more photos before the next wave comes through.” She moved her hands together in a narrowing motion. “I need you to scoot in, Crosby.”

“I’m good,” he said. “Don’t want anyone getting any ideas. I like Taylor okay, but he ain’t my type.”

I clenched my jaw and kept my gaze fixed on the table, focusing on the condensation pooling beneath my glass. Causing a scene would only make this drag on longer.

“All right, bottles up,” the photographer said, lifting his camera. He glanced at me, then back at Crosby. “And Crosby—or Taylor, I really don’t care—but one of you still needs to move in closer. This campaign’s about partying with your friends.”

Crosby snorted. “Nah, man. That’ll look hella gay.”

My fingers tightened around the neck of the tequila bottle before I caught myself and forced them to relax.

“Let’s just make it look fun,” the brand rep said quickly, pretending not to hear him. She turned to me and tipped her head. “Come on, Taylor. Smile like you’re actually having a good time.”

I lifted the bottle, leaned in just enough to make the shot work, and gave them exactly what they wanted. I held the smile until the shutter clicked, then let it drop the second the photographer lowered his camera.

I hated every minute of this dog-and-pony show.

But a thirty-one-year-old defenseman for the NHL’s worst team, stuck on the worst contract of his career, didn’t have a lot of earning power. Endorsement gigs like this helped pad my salary, even when they made me feel like the punchline of a joke.

My agent knew I hated this type of shit, but he kept booking things like this anyway—especially after I told him I wanted to come out. Ever since, he’d been hell-bent on boosting my image with a particular type of hockey fan, the kind who’d immediately call me a fairy, arguing with other online trolls about whether I was a top or a bottom.

Not that I even knew myself—the only man I’d ever been with was my college roommate, and we’d never actually fucked.

For a long time, I’d tried telling myself one guy didn’t mean anything. But a two-week trip to Colorado with a friend and his ridiculously hot buddies proved Sebastian Carruthers wasn’t a one-off.

That trip had shaken me more than I wanted to admit. I’d needed to talk to someone I trusted, so I’d flown immediately to Cleveland to see my sister. Within ten minutes of my confession, Audrey threw me for a big fucking loop by saying she always assumed I was bi.

Apparently, I’d talked about Sebastian a lot back in college, and—in her opinion—it had never sounded even remotely platonic.

What kind of friend visited three different grocery stores to track down another guy’s favorite ice cream? Or woke up at five o’clock in the morning to have his favorite coffee ready before he left for swim practice? And then sat by his side for four days straight when he got pneumonia, brushing sweat-damp hair off his forehead and calling him “baby” like it was the most natural thing in the world?

There’d also been the part where we got each other off practically every night. You’d think that would’ve been my first clue that I was in love with the guy.

No one I’d met since Sebastian—man or woman—had ever come close to making me feel the way he had. After one too many failed relationships, I couldn’t help but wonder now if I’d squandered a shot at something real because I’d been too stupid to recognize what was—in hindsight—heartbreakingly obvious.

Crosby snapped his fingers right in front of my face. “Yo! Earth to Taylor.”

I blinked, the club suddenly coming back into focus—the music too loud, the lasers too damn bright. I had no idea how long I’d been sitting there, completely zoned out. 

“Dude. Are you on something? Because if you are, and you’re holding out, Imma be pissed.” He made a “hand it over” gesture, wiggling his fingers expectantly.

I scrubbed my hand over my jaw, biting back a comment about how Crosby should know better than to fuck around with drugs. But nothing I said to this guy would make any fucking difference. “Sorry. Didn’t sleep well last night. You know—”

He pulled out his phone and swiped over the screen, not really listening. “This place is fucking lame. I know we have to stay another hour, but I just added us to the VIP list at Portal.” He looked up with that shit-eating grin he got when he thought he was being clever. “We should sneak out and head over there instead.”

“Nah,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’m already on Johnny’s shit list, and if he finds out I bounced early, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Johnny was my agent Carl’s assistant—a job he clearly hated, mostly because he had to wrangle people who couldn’t follow simple directions.

“Ugh, Johnny’s such a little bitch,” Crosby sneered. “I hate him.”

I imagined the feeling was mutual.

“He’s just doing his job. It’s not easy herding a bunch of dipshit athletes for a living.”

“I wrangle pussy for a living.” Crosby waggled his overly groomed eyebrows.

Christ. I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on. “Come on, man. Don’t say shit like that.”

He barked out a self-satisfied laugh and clapped me on the shoulder, squeezing it before sliding out of the booth. “Always a pleasure, Taylor. Always a pleasure.” With that, he crossed the mezzanine and jogged down the staircase to the dance floor below, getting lost in the sea of bouncing, swaying bodies.

Kwame Jones, an Olympic sprinter Carl also represented, slid into Crosby’s vacated seat. “Johnny made me promise to get you out on the dance floor. Something about shaking what our mamas gave us so the influencers can see.” 

I tried to muster some enthusiasm. I liked dancing. What I didn’t like was getting groped by women who seemed to think my being a somewhat famous athlete whose name was on the marquee meant they could touch me. If I had a dollar for every time I’d had to grit my teeth through someone pinching my ass, I’d be … well, richer, I supposed, because it happened a lot.

“Yeah, okay.” I tossed back one of the shots Kimber had poured earlier, wincing when the tequila hit my taste buds. I might not be able to discern good tequila from bad, but even I knew this stuff tasted like ass.

An hour later, I’d taken approximately fifty selfies and had been fondled no less than ten times. 

I just wanted to go back upstairs to my room. Any other night, I’d be happy to hang out with Kwame until the early hours of the morning, but I really wasn’t feeling it tonight. My feet hurt. The music was too loud. And some guy had spilled a really sticky drink on my shoe.

Not to mention, all of my earlier thoughts about my sad fucking love life had put me in a funk.

I tapped Kwame on the shoulder to get his attention and gestured with a tilt of my head toward the club’s exit. He gave me a quick thumbs up and went back to grinding on a gorgeous woman whose arms were wrapped loosely around his neck.

At least someone was enjoying themselves.

I maneuvered toward the far edge of the room so I wouldn’t need to muscle through the mass of writhing bodies in the middle of the dance floor. As I moved past a group of bachelorettes, a woman shrieked my name, and I stopped for another round of selfies as I kept angling my body closer to the door.

I was almost to the edge of the dance floor when a man caught my eye. My steps slowed, and someone bumped into me hard enough to knock me a half-step sideways. I caught myself, muttered a distracted “sorry,” and my eyes went straight back to him.

Something about the way he moved stirred something restless in me. It was the same type of awareness I used to get at parties when Sebastian would wander onto the dance floor and pretend he didn’t know exactly what he was doing to me. 

The club around me slipped out of focus, replaced by sticky floors, cheap beer, and a bass line that rattled my ribs. I could practically see Sebastian on some long-ago dance floor, his dark t-shirt gone damp at the collar, moving like he moved against me late at night. I’d stand there with a drink in my hand, every instinct screaming at me to cross the room and pull him close. 

It used to take everything I had in me not to.

The pull toward this man was nearly the same.

He rotated his hips in a slow roll. Another guy—dark hair, built like me—leaned back against his chest, head tilted to the side. Behind them both, a woman with long dark hair had her arms draped over his shoulders, the three of them moving in sync to the music. 

The beat changed, and they swung my way.

The hair on my arms stood up.

I edged closer, weaving between clusters of people, needing a better angle, needing to confirm what some part of me already knew.

Then the man smiled, and my stomach dropped. I knew that smile—the warmth of it, the way his eyes used to crinkle at the corners when he was truly happy.

Once, too many years ago to count, that smile had been mine.