Page 6 of Playing His Game

He’d just hung up—the other guys might prefer Lyft or Uber but Adam supported unions—when the bar door opened behind him and spat out Moritz Du Pont. Unlike the unfortunate woman who’d just ducked into the CVS, walking in a straight line seemed beyond his capacity at the moment.

Adam was about to step forward and try to steady him when Mo raised his head, looked directly at Adam, and groaned loudly. “Oh. It’s you.”

The guy was obviously drunk—worse than he’d been ten minutes ago, even. Adam spent a significant chunk of his life around drunk people, but usually, they weren’t performing gay drama at top volume. He couldn’t help it: he laughed.

Mo did a double-take.

Behind him, the bar doors opened again and a bachelorette party streamed out onto the sidewalk. “Wait!” one of them shouted. “Wait, post-bar selfie!”

There was a moment where eight beautiful but sobriety-compromised women attempted to fit themselves into the frame of an iPhone held at arm’s length before one of them looked over and said, “Oh my God, do you mind…?”

For a second, Adam thought they wanted him to get lost, but then the bride-to-be adjusted her tiara and added, “Can one of you take our picture? Ow! Sarah, that’s my foot!”

“Sorry!”

If Adam were a worse person, he’d have let Mo take the phone. But instead, he smiled and stepped forward. “Sure.”

It only took a few seconds. Then he handed the phone back to the group with a polite “congratulations,” and retreated a respectable distance while they waited for their limo.

Or, it was a safe distance from the party—but not from Mo, who rounded sloppily on him and pointed a finger in his face. “This isyour fault.”

Adam took a step to the left, hoping to lure Mo farther from the street. He didn’t want to watch someone get hit by a car. “Yeah? Are you going to tell me what I did?”

Like he’d planned, Mo followed him over the cracked sidewalk. “You and your stupid straight teammates. Ruining everything.”

In front of the bar, the bachelorette party was still waiting. A few of them had their heads bent together in conversation, and they kept glancing over at Adam and Mo. Great. Just what Adam needed—another potential public scene to embarrass the Canyons.

“Sorry.” What else could he say? He wasn’t exactly going to win an argument of reason at the moment.

“Sorry.” Mo narrowed his eyes and poked him in the chest. “You’resorry?—”

His shoe caught on the stupid cracked sidewalk and he stumbled forward. Adam caught him automatically, arms on his elbows, but Mo had basically fallen into him. They were pressed together from the chest down.

For a moment, Mo looked up at him with wide eyes, seemingly dazed. He was cute like this, Adam thought helplessly, and then hated himself for it. Even a walking chip on the shoulder could be cute if he shut up long enough.

After a moment that felt too long, Adam licked his lips. “Uh—are you okay?” He propped Mo upright and took a careful step back, letting his hands linger at his elbows until he was sure Mo was solid on his feet.

“No,” Mo said mulishly. “Your stupid team abond—absconded with my friends to some stupidclub. Those aremyfriends.”

Adam had seen the crowd Mo usually hung out with. He hated to stereotype, but if there was a type of person who dressed to the nines and hung around at certain bars looking for the company of rich men, Mo had surrounded himself with them. “Why didn’t you go with?”

“Lifetime ban,” he said, sullen. Somehow, Adam didn’t laugh. And then, “And it’s mybirthday.”

Okay, now that wasn’t funny at all. “Happy birthday,” Adam said softly.

Finally, his cab pulled up to the curb.

Kicking himself just a little bit, he offered, “Can I take you home?”

2

Mo woke up on the shop creeper, half under his Jeep, with the harsh fluorescent lights of his garage stabbing directly into his brainstem. He felt like one of his grease rags. His mouth tasted like one too.

Fuck my life, he thought as he wheeled himself out from under the vehicle. Then, when his head spun,Fuck my liver.

It wasn’t until he’d managed to scrounge up water, ginger ale, Advil, and a shower that the implications of where he’d found himself last night hit him.

Fuck.He leaned against the marble wall of his shower and took a deep breath. Totally shitfaced, Mo had decided to do some work on the undercarriage of his off-road Jeep. Fuckity fuck on a pogo stick. He’d better do a full safety inspection before he drove it anywhere. Also maybe he should check the security footage to make sure he hadn’t done impromptu work on any of his other babies.