if you ended us because you thought you were saving me…” He shook his head. “That’s my job. Respect me enough to let me weigh the risks and make the choice.”
“But you don’t know—”
“You didn’t give me the chance to.”
“You said you like your anonymity.”
“I do. But I liked you a lot, too.”
Wes pushed his forehead against Justin’s as if he could merge their minds. If only Justin could see and feel his thoughts, all his mixed-up nightmares and breathless, hopeful dreams. “I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”
“Let me worry about me, okay? I’m not helpless.”
“No, you’re not. But I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. You don’t deserve that.”
“Wes, the only person so far who has hurt me because of your football career is you. Why don’t you think about that before you go imagining some phantom attacker waiting for me in middle of the night to avenge your lost heterosexuality, okay?”
He wanted to laugh. It was such a Justin thing to say—and, God, he’d missed that, missed his dry humor and his way of cutting right to the heart of an issue, chainsawing his way through the briar patch of Wes’s mind. But he also wanted to vomit again, because Justin was right. The only one who had hurt him was Wes. He’d hurt him badly. Maybe unforgivably.
“I don’t know how to live with myself,” Wes whispered. “I have no idea what to do.”
“What are you saying?” Justin asked carefully. “Are you—”
“No. Nothing like that. I just don’t know how to put all the pieces of myself together. I don’t know how to be the team captain and take care of the guys. I don’t know how to be the best tight end in the nation. I don’t know how to handle all this attention, the people who think they know me, who want the best for me but are all up in my face all the time until I can’t breathe anymore. And I don’t know how to live with what I did to you. I don’t know how to move on from this. I think about you every moment.”
He ran his hands up Justin’s arms. Tugged softly until Justin’s chest was pressed to his and they were body to body on their knees in the darkness behind Daisy Lane, beneath the overhead deck. A hundred conversations were going on above them, mixing with the live music that washed out the sound of their conversation. Justin’s cell phone was still buzzing, but in this tiny pocket of the world, it was just them. “I don’t know how to be all those men at once. It’s like I have to put on different faces every hour, when the only face I want to wear is my own. The guy I was in Paris. The guy I am with you. Wes, who loves Justin.”
Justin’s thumbs stroked over Wes’s cheekbones, and his fingertips massaged the skin behind Wes’s ears, brushed through the short strands of his hair. “You’re spread too thin.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
Justin was silent. He brushed his nose over Wes’s. His soft lips ghosted Wes’s cheek.
“I thought about quitting,” Wes whispered. “I thought about telling Coach no, I didn’t want it. I thought about calling you, driving up to Dallas. Going to your house. But I can’t quit. I’m nothing without this.”
“That’s not true. You’re you, and football doesn’t define you—”
“I have nothing without football. I don’t have a scholarship. I don’t have college. I have no path, nothing, if I don’t ride this as far as I can. I need football as much as this team needs me. I only have two options: I finish college, or I go back to the ranch. And if I go back, I’ll never get out of West Texas again. Living there is like drinking poison water that you can’t get out of your body. Once you’re in, you’re in, and there’s no escaping.” His breath choked off. He tried to swallow. Couldn’t. “I don’t want that life. I want to be a man that you’d want to be with,” he forced out.
“I don’t care what you are. I don’t care if you’re a footballer or a grocery store bagger or you work at McDonalds or, hell, you’re a cowboy.”
“You hate cowboys.”
Justin almost grinned. “I do. Except for one, apparently. And if you were the biggest cowboy to ever cowboy, I would still care about you. I don’t care what you do. I