Chapter 9: The Rugby Player's Return
The key turned in the lock with a sound like a cracking bone. Liam shouldered the door open, his duffel bag dragging the floor. His apartment smelled of lemon polish and stale air. Everything was exactly as he’d left it a week ago: the minimalist furniture, the framed print of a mountain he’d never climbed, the neat stack of rugby playbooks on the coffee table. It felt like a museum exhibit of someone else’s life.
“Liam?”
Charlie stood up from the sofa, a book falling from his lap. He looked relieved, then immediately concerned. He crossed the room in quick strides. “Jesus, where have you been? I was about to call the hospitals.”
“I texted you,” Liam said, dropping his bag. It hit the floor with a thud that echoed in the quiet space.
“‘I’m fine, need space’ is not a text, Liam. It’s a fucking placeholder.” Charlie reached for him, his hand aiming for Liam’s shoulder, but Liam shifted, bending to untie his boots. The movement was casual, but it left Charlie’s hand hanging in the air. “You look terrible,” Charlie said, softer now, examining him. “Are you sick?”
“Just tired.” Liam couldn’t meet his eyes. He focused on his boots, on the dried mud from Jasper’s gravel driveway caked in the treads. He could still smell the loft on his jacket—pine and sex and that electric, musky trace of his own heat. He felt wildly out of place here, a feral thing tracked into a sterile room.
Charlie watched him, his worry hardening into something sharper. His nose wrinkled, almost imperceptibly. “You smell… different.”
Liam straightened up too fast. A lance of pain, deep and low, made him suck in a breath. He covered it with a cough. “I need a shower. A long one.”
“Yeah.” Charlie’s voice was flat. “You do.”
The shower didn’t help. The hot water pounded his skin, turning the marks Jasper had left—the faint bruises on his hips, the love bite on his thigh—into angry, visible blossoms. He scrubbed until his skin was pink, but he couldn’t wash away the feeling. The phantom stretch. The profound, internal weight. He dried off, staring at his reflection. His pale skin was a map of possession. His stomach, usually a flat plane of muscle, had the slightest, firm roundness to it. He pressed a hand there. It wasn’t bloat. It was different.
When he walked back into the bedroom in just his briefs, Charlie was sitting on the edge of the neatly made bed. The lamp cast a warm, intimate glow that felt like a lie.
“Feel better?” Charlie asked. His tone was careful.
“A bit.” Liam moved to his dresser, pulling out a fresh t-shirt.
“I missed you.” Charlie’s voice was close now. He’d come up behind him. His hands settled on Liam’s bare hips, his thumbs stroking the crests. It was a familiar gesture, one that usually made Liam melt back into him.
This time, his whole body went rigid. A flash of memory—larger hands, a tighter, almost painful grip—overwhelmed him. He flinched.
Charlie’s hands froze. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just sore. From… from being sick.” The lie tasted like ash.
“Sore.” Charlie repeated the word slowly. He didn’t move his hands. Instead, one slid around to Liam’s lower abdomen, pressing gently. “Here?”
The touch was an invasion. A violation of the secret. Liam jerked away, turning to face him. “Charlie, don’t.”
The look on Charlie’s face shattered. The concern burned away, leaving raw, dawning hurt. His eyes, usually so kind, scanned Liam’s torso, taking in the bruises his fingers hadn’t made. The mark on his thigh. The defensive posture.
“You’re sore,” Charlie said, his voice dangerously quiet. “You smell like a fucking forest and sweat and something else. You’ve been gone a week without a real word. And you flinch when I touch you.” He took a step back, running a hand through his hair. “So who was he, Liam? Some guy from the team? Some random?”
“It’s not like that,” Liam said, but the words were weak, pathetic.
“Then what is it like? Explain it to me. Because from here, it looks like you went off and got railed by someone else and now you can’t stand the sight of me.”
The crudeness of the words, their accuracy, hit Liam like a slap. Hormonal tears, sudden and hot, blurred his vision. “You don’t understand.”
“Make me understand!” Charlie’s control snapped, his voice rising. “I’ve been here! For two years! I buy your fucking sports drinks, I listen to you talk about scrums and ligaments, I planned my future around your scholarship dinners! And you come back smelling like another man’s bed. So yeah, Liam. Make me understand.”
The room was too small. The walls were closing in. The neatness of it all, the planned future, felt like a straitjacket. The life inside him, the one that was real and growing, kicked against it. All of it—the fear, the confusion, the bizarre, anchored certainty—rose in his throat.
“I’m pregnant.”
The words fell into the sudden, vacuum silence. They were too big for the clean room. They didn’t fit.
Charlie stared. His anger crumpled, replaced by a blank, stunned confusion. His lips moved, but no sound came out. He looked at Liam’s face, then his stomach, then back to his face.
Seconds ticked by, measured by the low hum of the refrigerator in the next room.
When Charlie finally spoke, his voice was a shattered thing, barely a whisper.
“Whose?”