The Locker Room (15 page)

It wasn"t until they"d moved into the big monstrosity overlooking

Folsom Lake that Chris had realized that the dreams were a heart-

pounding, body-shaking, head-exploding reality for Xander every single

day of his life.

One morning, about three months into their first season with the

Kings, after Chris had crooned over Xander"s sweating shoulders, and

Xander had finally calmed down, he"d finally asked the hard question.

“What do you dream about, Xan?”

“Being alone in a box.”

And Chris had breathed in and out deeply, and kissed his temple. “I

forget,” he murmured. “I forget that your life didn"t just start when you

moved in with us. I forget that you had a long time to be afraid.”

“I should be past this,” Xander had confessed, still struggling to

breathe, and Chris had soothed him until the shakes had faded.

“You"ll never be past it,” he said, when Xander had finally groaned

and turned into his warmth. Chris skated his hands over the breadth of

Xander"s shoulders, and because Chris was so broad himself, Xander felt

protected, and almost delicate. “I mean, they may fade, Xander, but…

you….” He exhaled softly. “You went through a lot of pain, baby.

You… you were starving that first night, you know? I didn"t realize it

The Locker Room

81

then, you were just the best new friend I"d ever had. But I think about it

now, and….” Chris"s voice grew fragile. “Your hands were shaking. You

were trying not to just wolf chicken at our dinner table, and your hands

were shaking as you fed yourself.”

Xander had struggled to sit up, because it sounded as though Chris

were the one who needed comfort now, but Chris was firm, and kept

Xander"s face pressed into his middle, and kept up that sweet, steady

stroking of Xander"s strong back.

“I wondered sometimes, where your drive comes, why you press

yourself down the court like you were running from something that was

going to gobble you up, and then—” Something had plopped, hot and

wet, onto Xander"s sweat-cooling shoulders. “Then,” Chris continued,

trying to firm his voice up, “you kept having these dreams, and I realized

you"d always had them. You must have woken up in the dorms with

them and calmed yourself down because I was on the other side of the

room, or next door, or not there.” Another hot, wet plop, and Xander sat

up then and faced Chris, his short, curly blond hair awry and sleep still in

his eyes. Chris shook his head and framed Xander"s face with his hands.

“I will always be here, okay? If I have any choice in the matter at

all, I will always be here.”

And this morning, nearly five years later, he still was.

Xander turned into that strong, sturdy body, bulkier now that he"d

passed twenty-five, but also more finely honed, and started touching the

sleek muscles, the smooth, golden skin.

Well, not golden
everywhere.
They"d both gotten tattoos, heavy

ones, spanning from their necks and over their shoulders and to their

upper biceps. The tats were matching, a series of interconnecting rings,

all done in black, which looked dramatic against Xander"s Slavic-white

skin, and worked into the rings, they"d had the other"s name written in

Cyrillic. Xander didn"t have any particular attachment to the language,

but it blended in so seamlessly with the rest of the tat that not even the

news cameras had picked up on the fact that the two of them had

practically carved marriage vows into their skin and worn them for the

world to see, if only it cared to look.

Chris arched, sleek and powerful as a racehorse under Xander"s

firm and gentle touch, and burrowed deeper into the blankets.

82

Amy Lane

“Better?” he asked sleepily.

“Uh-hm.” Chris always made him better.

“Then leave me alone, you sadist. We"re in the middle of

conditioning; do you think I want to go running around the lake with you

today?”

“You"re gonna get faa-aaat,” Xander taunted, the singsong of his

voice masking the fact that he was still not quite recovered from his

morning terror. Chris wasn"t fooled. He snagged Xander"s hand and

kissed the back of it.

“You"ll love me anyway,” he said softly.

Xander bumped temples with him and said, “Damned straight,”

before rolling out of bed and into his morning routine. In less than five

minutes, he"d brushed his teeth, thrown on his old, holey college sweats,

washed down 800 milligrams of ibuprofen with a Pepto-Bismol chaser,

put on his god-bless-me special-made, fully endorsed arch-supporting

running shoes, and gotten his tall bag of bones on the road.

They hadn"t really looked when they"d moved in, but Leo really

had chosen well for them. The entrance to the house was nearly a mile of

thinly paved private road, which bled into a trail that lined one of the

high hills that overlooked Folsom Lake in the foothills. Xander (and very

often Chris, in spite of his grumbling) would go running in the morning.

In the summer it was excruciating. Much of the time, the temperatures

reached the high eighties before eight in the morning, and the underbrush

was dry and brittle. Burrs and stickers would worm their way into the

boys" sweat socks and scratch their legs as they ran, and tan-colored dust

would puff up at every footfall.

In the winter it was chilly, sometimes cold enough for gloves and a

hat, and the grasses grew long enough to be slick if they lay across the

trail. They would also wrap around unwary ankles if Xander or Chris

strayed off of the path too far, and since there was poison oak (which

Chris had discovered in their first year, much to his intense discomfort

and loud complaint) they tried to stay on the trail.

But winter or summer, it was worth it. In spite of the fact that the

hillside was becoming increasingly populated with large, multimillion-

dollar houses (apparently zoning laws stopped at ten, which relieved the

both of them) there was the illusion on their little trail that they were

The Locker Room

83

completely alone. More than once, they had stopped and kissed, softly,

passionately, in the same way they had kissed as virginal teenagers when

they"d worked their afterschool McJob. Sometimes they skipped the run

and simply walked, holding hands and talking of anything at all.

The press had been inside their house, had silently pitied the “stoic,

severe” Xander, had laughed indulgently at the “cheerful, sociable”

Chris, and had left, never seeing the lie right in front of their faces. That

didn"t mean that their home didn"t feel invaded, labeled, imprisoned

under the weight of the expectations of thousands of people who loved

their team as much as they did. But the two of them couldn"t even hate

the fans who placed the burden on their shoulders. They were, after all,

only using the game in the same way Xander had, to escape a life that

was sometimes too difficult to bear.

But the press had never followed them on their run. There were no

pictures of the two of them on their unpaved path, giving each other shit,

racing each other for fun, or stopping and kissing passionately behind the

thick stand of oak trees toward the center of the path. There were no

pictures of the golden Labrador retrievers, Max and Mercury, chasing

balls and sticks and pheasants through the underbrush and trying to trip

them and kill them as they roared back. These things were theirs. This

place was real. It was the unspoken reason between the two of them that

although they had more money than they knew what to do with, they

never stopped and landscaped the path, or tried to civilize it (with the

exception of hiring someone to burn out the poison oak, that is. Chris

had been applying calamine lotion too damned high up on his thighs for

anybody"s comfort.) It was something in their lives pure and untainted

by the rest of the world, and they clung to it.

It was a short run, even with the dogs crashing in front of him, one

hundred and fifty pounds of clumsy canine good will. It was the second

week of January, and the sky was the color of snow on the road, and the

wind off the dirty silver lake cut to the bone. Xander never had gotten

the hang of running in anything but old T-shirts and sweats, and he

shivered his way through half his run before he decided he was getting

old and spoiled and that he"d rather spend the rest of the morning in bed

with Christian.

84

Amy Lane

He threw the ball for the dogs a couple of times in their modeled

front yard, and then left them their food in big bowls on the porch before

coming inside, hot, breathless, and sweaty. There was fruit and pastries

on the table, and his stomach felt like it might behave, so he grabbed a

banana and a croissant on his way up the stairs, thanking Lucia, their

middle-aged housekeeper as he went. Lucia, fully intent on her morning

break, waved to him with her nose buried in the middle of her
People

magazine, and Xander gave her shit like he always did.

“Lucia, why you reading that crap, sweetheart? Seriously, you

know they always get it wrong!”

Lucia turned around and looked at him, halfway up the stairs, her

mouth twisted wryly. “Old habits are hard to break, Mr. Karcek. I

understand you"re dating one of those dancers from that show now;

how"s that going?” She held up the picture for proof, and Xander rolled

his eyes. The girl—sweet enough, but completely devoted to her
female

choreographer—had asked him to accompany her to a charity dinner,

and he"d agreed. It had gotten him out of an unpleasant duty that month,

and the picture was worth its weight in gold.

“It"s going great, darlin"!” Xander said now, jovially. “I"ll let you

know when Chris is done hiding the body!”

Lucia snorted. “Like you wouldn"t be the first one to kill to keep

that one to yourself.” She shook her head. “You ask me why I read it?

It"s because this shit is even more fun now I know it"s fiction. Now go

shower. You smell like dirt and dog.”

Xander laughed his way into the bedroom, and then stopped

because Chris was sleeping with his head under the pillow, usually a

surefire clue that the poor boy was either sleeping in or hungover.

Xander wrinkled his nose at that last thought. It wasn"t like Chris partied

a lot—twice a month wasn"t too much to be hungover, was it? Or was it

three times? Or five or six? And it was never on game days or training

days. Since it was a game day, odds were he was just tired from

practicing the day after an away game. Airplane travel was getting

rougher on the old system every year, and Christian grew visibly paler

when he spent long trips away from home.

Xander tried not to think about it as he undressed, but he wasn"t as

good at that as he used to be. It used to be he could focus on Christian,

The Locker Room

85

focus on basketball, and say to himself,
I have them both. That"s all I

need.
But the toll… the toll this life took on the both of them.

Xander shuddered. It was the third home game of the month.

Christian
would
be hungover tomorrow, and Xander would likely

be hurting right along with him. The next couple of days would be

strained and painful, and they would barely stand to touch each other,

and he"d been a fool to leave Chris in bed, alone, the morning before the

third home game of the month.

He was squeezing his eyes shut tight and pounding his fist against

the shower walls with rhythmic thuds, when there was a burst of cool air

and a chilly hand caressing his backside through the spray.

Xan tried to clear the water out of his eyes and was in the middle of

saying, “Chris?” when another hand joined the first, this one parting

Xander"s ass cheeks, and a smooth, cool, metallic object, heavily coated

with what Xan assumed was the waterproof lube, teased his opening.

Xander spread his legs a little, and bent his knees, making it easier for

Chris to push the heavy, stainless steel plug against his tight ring of

muscle. Xander gasped, and relaxed, and let Chris push Xander"s

favorite toy slowly and relentlessly inside his asshole as his body

clenched and recoiled from the cold metal.

With a little pop, the wide part was in, and Xander gasped hungrily,

still leaning against the wall, his hair dripping into his eyes.