Page 16 of Man Advantage

Cole had looked at him across that table tonight like Ford was the only thing that mattered in a room full of noise. He was still looking now. Ford was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid.

“We’re gonna freeze,” Ford said, and didn’t move.

“Probably,” Cole agreed, and didn’t move either.

Ford laughed under his breath because it was that or reach across the seat and do something he couldn’t take back. He shouldered the door open, and the cold took what was left of the warmth right off him. His hip lit up on the first step, and he swore at it, quietly, out of habit. Behind him he heard Cole’s door, and Cole’s boots on what was left of the snow and ice from the night before, following him to the house.

Ford flipped the kitchen light on, and when he turned, Cole had stopped just inside the doorway, close, whatever he’d been chewing on all night coming off him in waves. The kitchen wasn’t big enough to hold the two of them and the simmering tension between them. Ford wanted him so bad it was work to stand there without doing anything about it.

This was the part where Cole said goodnight and went up to the spare room. Ford had done a hundred of these nights, and he wasn’t ready for this one to end with Cole disappearing up the stairs, so he reached for anything that might keep the man down here a beat longer. “There’s pie in the fridge that Nadine left for us. You want some?”

“I turned down the apartment.”

Ford stopped with his fingers curled around the fridge door handle.

“I called Delgado on Friday and told him I wasn’t taking it.” Cole said it to a spot on the floor, then lifted his head. “It’s already rented, some couple from Kenosha, so it’s gone. Done. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you all week, and I couldn’t because there’s no way to say it that wasn’t going to lead to more questions. And I know I should have talked to you about it before I made the decision. You’ve been really cool about me invading your space, and it wasn’t right for me to assume you’d be okay with me staying even longer, but I couldn’t do it.”

The dread Ford had carried for a month went slack all at once. He’d been walking around, certain Cole was leaving, braced for the morning it came up over coffee, casual, Cole dropping the news in Ford’s lap like it was nothing at all.

“You turned it down,” Ford said. He needed to say it himself to make it real.

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got two years guaranteed. You could’ve had your own place. Your own everything.” Ford heard how it came out and stopped. “Shit. I have a feeling I’m not helping at all. I’m just— I really figured you were going to take it. Why didn’t you?”

Cole didn’t answer right off. He went still, quiet all over, like he had to lock the rest of himself down to get the words loose. His ears had gone red. He looked like a man testing ice he wasn’t sure would hold.

“Because I don’t want to leave,” Cole said. “Not the house. You. I don’t want to leave you and Charlotte.” He pushed on like he was terrified of what would happen if he took a breath. Ford had never seen him so plainly wanting to bolt and so set on staying put at the same time. “That night on the couch. I know we’re not talking about it. But I’ve been replaying it in my head for three days, and I can’t keep standing in your kitchen every morning acting like I don’t know what that was. What this is. I’ve felt it for months, Ford. And maybe I’ve got it dead wrong, and if I do, you say the word, and I’ll drop it, and we never bring it up again. I’ll find somewhere else to go. But I don’t think I’m wrong. I think you feel it too.”

When he finally stopped talking, the only thing Ford heard in the kitchen was the hum of the fridge and Cole’s ragged breathing.

Ford had spent so long telling himself he could deal with what he felt for Cole without doing anything about it. He’d called it fondness, gratitude, anything but attraction and want. Cole stood there with his ears red and his hands at his sides, everything he had laid out between them, waiting on an answer.

Ford crossed the room, refusing to second-guess himself. He got a hand on the side of Cole’s neck, felt the warmth of him and the rough stubble on his jaw. Cole’s breath left him all at once as Ford pulled him closer, tentatively pressing his lips to Cole’s.

It wasn’t smooth. Their noses collided as they both gave in to the attraction they’d ignored for months. Cole made a low, wrecked sound and got a fist in the front of Ford’s shirt like he thought Ford might come to his senses and back off. Ford wasn’t going anywhere. Not this time.

He tipped his head and found a better angle, and then there was no more caution. A year of wanting ignited all at once. Cole gave back the whole way, quiet even now, both hands coming up, one knotted in Ford’s shirt and the other spread wide and hot across his back. Ford backed him into the doorframe just to have something solid to press him against, and got a hand in his hair, like he’d wanted to for longer than he’d let himself admit. Cole made the sound again, low in his chest, and Ford felt it everywhere.

For a while, there was nothing else. The scrape of Cole’s stubble. His hands learning Ford’s back, his shoulders, the base of his skull. Somewhere his brain was still running the list of reasons this couldn’t happen: the locker room, the season, his hip and how little was left of it, Charlotte above all of it. Ford kissed him harder and pushed every excuse aside until there was only this moment. Just Cole, warm and solid and finally, finally not holding back.

Ford could have kissed till the sun started creeping up over the horizon, and that was the exact thing that worked its way up through the heat and turned cold in his gut. He pulled back, just far enough to breathe, his forehead dropping against Cole’s.

“Cole.” His voice came out shot. He felt Cole go still against him, already bracing, and God, he hated that he’d put that there. “I want this. I need you to hear that part first because I’m about to say a but, and it’s not the one you’re bracing for. I’m not pulling back because I don’t want you.”

“But,” Cole said, low.

“But there’s Charlotte.” Ford made himself say her name. “If we do this and it goes to hell, she doesn’t just lose the guy in the spare room. She loses Big Cole. Off her Saturday mornings, out of her whole life. She’s already had one family rearrange itself around her. I told myself I’d never make her go through that again. If I started dating again, I had this whole list of rules drawn up in my head to protect her, and being with you would break damned near all of them.”

Cole was quiet for a second. Then he nodded slowly, like he’d weighed Ford’s words and found them fair.

“I’d never forgive myself if I was part of anything that hurt that little girl,” Cole said. “But I’m not giving up on this. We go at whatever pace you need, and we keep it away from her until we’re both sure.”

Ford let out something that was half a laugh. “When’d you get brave?”

“About a minute ago.” Cole’s mouth twitched. “I might still throw up.”

Ford huffed and pressed his lips to Cole’s temple. Charlotte could still be the one who got hurt if this went wrong. But Cole had let the apartment go and stayed despite his uncertainty over how the news would be received. He was wrong about only finding his courage a few minutes ago. Ford hoped like hell he could be a man worthy of Cole’s attention.