Page 15 of Tempted By the Safety

“It’s not what it sounds like when you put it like that.” The brown-haired one—Griffin—has gone red from the collar of his robe all the way up into his hairline, and it is, objectively, a very good color on him. Not that I’m cataloging that information for any particular reason. “You say something like that around the wrong person, and it’s on social media by dinner.”

“It’s already out there,” Travis says, stirring his coffee. “There’s a whole thread. I checked last week. Somebody made a compilation.”

“Acompilation?”

“Yeah, like a video of our cute moments together.” Travis shrugs, unbothered, and takes a sip. “They got the offseason practices where we sat next to each other. The golf thing. I think there’s a gif from your sister’s wedding.”

“You were my plus-one because Dana canceled on me three days out!”

“Which nobody knows about, so. People fill in the blanks with whatever’s most interesting. And two guys on rival teams who like each other’s company reads more interesting than the truth.”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about.” Griffin drags a hand down his face. “You go around saying stuff like you can’t wait to see me in red briefs, in a room full of people, and you don’t get why the internet runs with it?”

“I don’t get why it matters if they do.”

“It matters because—” Griffin stops and comes up short.

“Because what?” Travis asks, and his voice has gone quieter.

There’s a pause that goes on a beat too long. Travis watches him over the rim of his coffee cup, and Griffin’s gone very still.

“Whatever,” Griffin says, and looks away first. “I don’t care what everyone thinks. Never have.”

“Good.” Travis says it softly. He’s still looking at Griffin, who picks his coffee back up and doesn’t say anything else.

I finish topping off my coffee, grab a granola bar and a bottle of water, and slip out of the alcove before either of them notices me. I don’t know either of them from anywhere, but I’m walking out weirdly invested. And I suspect the internet might be onto something.

***

I plant myself against the wall with my coffee and try to look like someone who has seen professional athletes half-naked before, which, until today, I had not.

Spencer stands under three separate lights that all seem determined to make sure nobody in a fifty-mile radius misses a single inch of him, one hand loose at his side, the other braced against a stool the photographer keeps repositioning. He’s wearing electric-blue boxer briefs and has that light sheen going,whatever they put on him before I got in here, catching every place his body decided to be unreasonable about proportion.

“Chin down a touch. There. Hold that.” The photographer says it like she’s talking a horse through a jump, and Spencer holds it, eyes fixed on some point past the camera. The wall, the light stand, the assistant’s clipboard. Anywhere that isn’t where I’m standing, which is a relief. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if he looked at me right now.

“Beautiful. Now weight on the other hip, and give me something with the eyes, not so much soldier, more like you just remembered something good.”

Spencer’s face does the exact look he wore on the drive over. Intense, unsmiling, and wildly out of place on a man in electric-blue underwear. But nobody asked me.

I try to keep my eyes on my coffee. I fail. I look back up almost immediately, because apparently my neck answers to someone other than me now.

They change him into black next, tighter through the leg, sitting lower on his hips, the V of muscle above the waistband sharp and defined.

The photographer wants him seated on an apple box this time, forearms on his knees, and Spencer arranges himself into it with the same grim compliance he brings to everything, doing exactly what’s asked and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

“Relax the jaw for me.”

He tries. His jaw does not get the message.

I laugh under my breath, and the assistant standing two feet away glances over. I straighten up and look down at my coffee.

Red comes after black, and by then I’ve stopped pretending I’m not staring. The red’s the worst offender, pulling the whole room’s attention whether it wants to give it or not. Spencer turns through the poses the photographer calls out, one after another, three-quarter turn, chin up, now down, hand on the hip, now off, and I catalog every single one of them.

He doesn’t look at me once.

“Great, that’s a wrap on this set, thank you,” the photographer finally calls, and Spencer peels off toward the dressing room like he’s been sprung from something, robe grabbed off the rack on his way past without breaking stride.

I let out a breath, thinking I survived this unscathed. That’s when the set assistant with the headset finds me.