Chapter 7: Walking Contradiction

'But what?'

'How?... Why?'

'Leo had lied to him?' Max looked up at the stands and felt a slow, steady pinch in the middle of his forehead. As if someone were pressing firmly against his eyebrows furrowing them together.

He felt a heavy sloshing and burning in his stomach and throat. The kind that almost felt as if lava were trying to reverse travel up his throat to burn him internally and fuse together his tongue and mouth. Making him only capable of growling in rage if he wanted to.

He felt horrible. Sticky.

That lava feeling traveled and burned and took away with it all sense of logic and control. And then his legs were off before he could convince himself to calm down, he was almost running. The driving force propelling him, while his eyes fixated unhappily on that beautiful face in the stands.

The feeling tightened his chest and coiled around his stomach. 'He needed to know why! Why had Leo done it?'

"Dude! Where are you going?" Sam called after him, but Max ignored him.

He ran into the bleachers. Leo was close to the inner railing and had a few people in front of him. Max pushed through them, apologizing, but continuing until he stopped in front of Leo.

Max caught his breath, but stared back down at Leo multiple emotions warring on his face.

'Why had he lied to him?'

And why did the thought of that bug him so much?'

He reached out, grabbed Leo by his wrist and turned around dragging him out of his spot, ignoring the curses of the people in the surrounding bleachers.

A few people chuckled, and some even got out their phones to snap a picture. Max ignored them. Rumors could be settled later, right now he needed to find out what the heck was going on with Leo!

✥✥✥

Leo had headed back to the stands working very hard not to turn around to continue to stare at Max and those intense eyes that seemed to suck him in. But he knew he had to try to at least control himself a little. Because if he was being honest, he was acting a bit like one of those obsessed fangirls in school. Not that it was a bad thing. But for him, it was all just so new. He didn't even know what to do with all these sudden emotions.

And so even though he didn't want to stay, and he hadn't wanted to leave. He had torn himself away from the field, lightning-fast before his heart could explode from their proximity. And now he watched Max carefully from under his lashes from the safety of the second row of the bleachers. He looked around once or twice to scout out the other team and the rest of Max's teammates, but his eyes always trailed themselves back to Max. He tried to stop, but he really couldn't help it. The way Max looked in his track shorts and the track tank top. 'Well...'

'He was handsome, hot, dashing. Like a prince.'

Besides, it hung so beautifully on his body, and he had tucked the front of it into the bottom of his shorts, while letting the rest of the loose flowing jersey material fall down his back. His long dark brown hair was pushed back. And his muscles worked with every movement.

And he sat up because he realized that that beautifully jersey clad body was coming towards him, his expression very different to what it had been before.

Leo heard his heart beating strongly in his ears. A banging sound that felt as if he had held onto a washing machine that was spinning out of balance. A sensation that made his ears almost throb in anticipation and worry.

✥✥✥

Max dragged him and thought he would hear Leo curse him, get annoyed, yell at him to stop. But Leo didn't even use any of those muscles Max knew he had, instead he just let himself get dragged.

Max dragged him out around the side of the building near the shed that held all the extra equipment. Opened the door and pulled Leo inside.

He finally let go. And turned to look at Leo.

Leo blinked and stared at him. Curiosity on his face.

Max eyebrows creased with confusion.

'This boy is like a walking contradiction. He isn't mad, just curious why I ripped him from the stands and pulled him to be alone.'

Max gulped his chest heaving from exertion, and he held out his arm and held up the Key.

'His Key.'