Page 71 of On Thin Ice

Jacob internally winced as Sophie pounced. “You were at Jacob’s house?”

Finn grinned, clearly aware of why she wanted to know. “Oh, yeah. Jacob’s working with me, one-on-one.” He winked, and Jacob nearly groaned.

He would ask Finn what he was trying to do, but it was obvious. He was trying to wear Jacob down. He was trying toseducehim.

The only question was if Jacob was going to let himself be seduced.

The waiter approached, and Jacob blindly picked a merlot that sounded good—not even bothering to consult the flavor profile in his wine app, even though he rarely didn’t. But if he took his attention away from Finn for even a second, what was he going to say?Do?

“Now, what’s the news?” Jacob asked after the waiter promised to bring out the sommelier with their wine.

“I think we might have a solution for you,” Sophie said excitedly.

“You do?”

“You know Neal Fisher?” she asked.

“Wasn’t he a football player? Kicker, yeah?” Jacob wondered. Not sure if he was remembering the right guy.

“Yeah, he missed that field goal at the end of the Super Bowl a few years ago. Riptide released him after that, even though he’d been a great player for them,” Mark said.

“I remember. And then he ended up on some football show on ESPN.” Jacob also remembered that he was gay and gorgeous, though not really Jacob’s type.

Who was he fucking kidding? If he’d had a type before now, his type was currently sitting next to him.

“He’s doing a podcast now,” Sophie said.

“Good for him?” Jacob didn’t want to go on a podcast, even if Neal Fisher was the one doing the podcasting.

Finn nudged his foot under the table.

“It’s a great podcast. All about the intersection of queerness and athletics, and he touches a lot on other topics related to professional sports, like how tough retirement can be.”

“I’m glad he’s talking about it,” Jacob said grudgingly.

Sophie skewered him with a single look. “He wants to have you on, Jacob. And the conversation wouldmostlytalk about your emotional health post-retirement, but I thought this would be a great, really awonderful, opportunity to come out in a veryunderstated, easy way. The conversation wouldn’t focus on that, but it would be easy enough to slide in.”

“It’d still make a lot of fucking headlines,” Jacob said. Wishing the wine would get here. He needed a fucking drink.

“Jacob,” Mark said bluntly, “there’s going to be a lot of fucking headlines no matter what you do. You tell the truth, any part of it, no matter how you downplay it, and it’s going to be news. Everyone’s going to be talking about it.”

“Don’t promise me a good time or anything,” Jacob muttered. It made his skin crawl, the thought of everyone gossiping about it, tearing his private life apart one soundbite, one headline, at a time. Especially when he’d spent so long, so fucking long, trying to stay out of the spotlight so nobody would put two and two together and get four.

He turned to Finn, but already knew he wasn’t going to like what he said, based on the wry smile he was wearing.

“Mark isn’t wrong,” Finn said. “Everyone’s going to talk about it. But it’ll be one time, and then it won’t be news anymore. And frankly, it’slessnews than it used to be. Maybe if you’d come out ages ago, when you were playing . . .” Finn must have figured out that going downthatroad was going to do him no favors, so he stopped. “I’m just saying, this sounds like a good possibility. Maybe you shouldn’t dismiss it outright.”

“It’ll be an easy, comfortable, sympathetic environment,” Sophie chimed in, clearly sensing that this was the time to strike. To close the deal.

“And you can talk about the foundation while you’re on. Neal does a lot of work with kids and athletics. He’s got this huge field complex down in LA, hosts all these kids’ teams, a lot of them queer,” Mark said.

“I’ll think about it,” Jacob said and realized that hemightmean it.

“Not for too long,” Sophie said. “Promise me you won’t just put me off forever. You know you can’t get the ball rolling on the foundation until we take this step. Youknowthat.”

Jacob turned to Finn. “Is that true?”

Finn shrugged. “I’m not an expert, but yeah, I’d assume there would be alotof questions if you suddenly rolled out a foundation designed to support queer athletes and you hadn’t said a word about your own sexuality.” His gaze softened. “There’d be a lot of talk. Mark’s right; there’s going to be talk no matter what. But if there’s no story . . .nothing to question, to wonder about, that’s better.”

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