Inhale. Exhale. He gripped his helmet until his fingertips turned white and his bones ached.
It didn’t matter what Justin was doing, or where he was. He wanted nothing to do with Wes. Not ever again.
Wes tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
He was ten minutes late to French class the next morning.
Coach and the trainer had told him to stay off his knee and alternate ice and heat for the next three days. He had a brace he was supposed to keep stuffed with ice packs. He’d slept in the damn thing, then woken up at four to shove the packs back in the freezer and wrap a heating pad around his knee as he tried to read the first chapter of his epidemiology textbook.
He wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to see Justin, though, even if all he could do was stare at the back of his head. So he’d strapped the ice brace on and driven the three miles to campus, hunted for a parking spot, nearly pulled his hair out, and finally limped nearly a mile to the humanities building. He kept his head down and tried not to make eye contact, but he still got a dozen questions lobbed his way, grating concern and Oh no and Hope that isn’t serious! He tried to wave it all off with “Just a little twist” and a polite smile.
When he finally made it to class, he was breathing hard and had worked up a sweat, and he was limping even more. The professor’s face went from pissed at the late entry to horrified in a single cartoon smear when he took in Wes’s injury.
Wes tried to head off his concern. “Sorry I’m late. I tweaked my knee, and I was a little slow on the walk.”
“But are you okay, Monsieur Van de Hoek? Pourrez-vous jouer?”
“Yeah, I should be good. I just need to rest.”
“Limping across campus is not resting.”
Wes fell into his chair at the back of the room. “I didn’t want to miss class.”
His eyes skittered to the front row. Justin glowered at him. Well, it was a step up. At least he was looking at Wes. Justin was, again, in running tights and a baggy shirt, his hair pulled back in a sweaty ponytail. He met Wes’s gaze and then turned away. Wes’s heart twanged like a broken guitar string, just like his knee had the day before. He looks so good.
The professor had them partner up again—“same partners, s'il vous plaît”—to present each other to the class. Who their partner was, what their major was, what they liked to do.
“You have a very interesting partner to work with,” the professor said, clapping Justin on the shoulder as he deigned to sit across from Wes at the back. “I look forward to your presentation on Monsieur Van de Hoek.”
“What about him?” Wes blurted out before the professor moved on. “Isn’t Monsieur Swanscott interesting, too?”
The professor blinked. Looked from Wes to Justin and then back. He pasted a plastic smile on his face and said, far too brightly, “Bien sûr que oui!”
Justin gritted his teeth as he opened his notebook. “I don’t need you to defend me.”
“He was being a dick.”
“I like being anonymous. Not everyone craves the spotlight, you know.”
And there went his heart again, broken string after broken string. Wes drooped, nodding as he stared at his own notebook. Of course Justin enjoyed his privacy. Wasn’t that one of the reasons why Wes had ended things? To protect Justin from exactly this? If Wes could rewind time, would he go back to being just Wes, the big ole boy from West Texas who worked with his dad on the ranch? What if he could go back and never, ever let himself pick up a football?
Well, then he’d never have met Justin. And, despite the pain, he’d never trade those three weeks in Paris away. Not for anything.
The other groups were already talking softly, getting to know their partners and scrawling notes as they sipped their coffees, kicking back in the most relaxed French class Wes had ever been in. It would be nice, and an easy A, if he weren’t paired up with the man he loved.
“What happened to your knee?” Justin finally asked. He wouldn’t look at Wes.
“Practice. I tripped. I was distracted.”
“Doesn’t sound like you. You’re never distracted.”
I was thinking of you. Wes said nothing.
They made it through the presentation with the least interaction possible. Justin scrawled out a