If not for how restrictive his major was, he’d transfer. Transferring from nursing program to nursing program was next to impossible. He’d have to repeat a year just to satisfy the program’s residency requirement. Pushing back his degree by a full year was out of the question. No, he could buck up and deal. Wes didn’t define his life. Wes wasn’t going to run him off, chase him away from his school or his future plans. Wes, and whatever game he’d played with Justin’s heart, wasn’t going to ruin anything.
A man turned at the corner. Started walking up the block.
From the distance, he was just a dark shape. Someone large—gigantic, really. Defined muscles bursting out of a shirt with the sleeves cut off. He wore a backward ball cap and athletic shorts, carried a duffel over his shoulder and three binders in his arms. He stared at the ground as he walked, his shoulders slumped forward like he had the weight of the world bowing his back. Something about him…
Justin threw himself back from the fire escape until his ass hit the opposite rail.
Wes.
He looked terrible.
He walked like a zombie, shuffling like it hurt to lift his legs. He hadn’t shaved in Justin didn’t know how long. Too long. He’d gone from sexy stubble to wild, unkempt overgrowth. He didn’t give off that warm, comfortable, approachable vibe anymore. He was pure strength, raw power, bulging muscles cutting hard edges into his arms, his legs, the glimpse of his abs and obliques Justin saw through his shirt’s baggy armholes.
The closer he came, the worse he looked. His eyes were sunken and hollow, black holes in his gaunt face. He looked exhausted. Beyond tired. Like death, not just a nap, was what he needed.
The footballers on the porch called out to him, waving and raising their beer bottles. He nodded to them, then trudged up the same porch steps. One of the players kicked a patio chair toward him, offering him a seat.
Wes shook his head and disappeared inside the house.
Oh no. No no no.
Every one of Justin’s bold, strong thoughts fled. It was easy to be strong when he was alone, when he was imagining how, the next time he saw Wes, he’d give him a piece of his mind. How he’d read him the riot act and then leave him broken and miserable as Wes remembered how wonderful Paris had been. How he’d cut Wes with his words, leave him shattered like Wes had shattered him, leave him clinging to the floor and sobbing like he’d left Justin. He’d rehearsed his lines in the shower ten thousand times. He’d imagined himself radiant and gorgeous, maybe with a new man on his arm, looking Wes up and down and saying, “Who?”
Justin sank to his heels, clinging to the railing as he watched the house across the street. Wes’s house. Fuck. Fuck.
He bit down on his lip, trying to funnel the pain in his heart to a physical sensation that would ground him. He wanted to be strong, but damn it, he wasn’t. He still cried himself to sleep some nights. He still asked Why and What happened and how did they go from back on the same continent and smiley faces to I can’t do this. Forget you know me in the space of a few hours.
It was football, Justin knew. It was the team. It was Wes making first string. But knowing that didn’t change how much it hurt to be tossed aside—not even a second choice, but a non-choice. Nothing. All those pretty words in Paris, all those promises made over champagne and under the Eiffel Tower. None of it meant anything. None of it was real. Wes was always going to come back and be the footballer, the big man on campus.
And no big man on campus sucked dick. Ever.
Justin wanted to be happy for Wes. Wes had worked hard for what he’d earned. He’d seized his dreams and made them come true through sheer grit. He was going to be phenomenal. The trajectory of his life was straight for the stars.
It was hard to be happy for Wes, though, when his own heart was so broken. When they’d had hopes and dreams and had started to make tentative promises to each other. I would have come to every game to cheer you on if you asked me to.
Fuck. What would his dad say? Well, if he knew Wes Van de Hoek lived across the