Page 35 of Beautiful When He Breaks

What exactly am I feeling? Why now? Is this attraction, exhaustion, or gratitude curdling into something else because he’s here and steady, and I’m falling apart in ways only he seems able to witness without flinching?

I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.

I’m still standing half dressed when Luca says something across the room, low enough that I can’t make out the words but familiar enough that I turn my head automatically.

Julian is standing two lockers down from him, towel slung around his neck, completely naked and apparently without a single care in the world. That in itself should not be earth-shattering. It isn’t exactly a rare sight in a football locker room, and it definitely isn’t a rare sight when it comes to him specifically. We’ve changed in the same spaces for years. We’ve skinny-dipped. We’ve grown up together. There is no objective reason for my brain to seize the way it does the second I actually register him now.

But it does.

God, it does.

He’s turned partly toward Luca, still talking about route timing for Saturday, and because he’s talking and has no clue what seeing him is doing to me, I can actually look for one disastrous beat too long.

I see the broad line of his shoulders, the dark ink covering his chest and arms, the hard length of his torso tapering into his waist, the muscle in his thighs from years of football, the thick, heavy curve of his cock between his legs—all of it so fucking male and familiar and suddenly not familiar at all.

It hits me in one hard rush, not just awareness but arousal, immediate and hot and so mortifying I actually stop breathing for a second. There’s no confusion about what my body is doing:

I’m getting hard in a football locker room because I looked at my best friend.

What the fuck.

What. The. Actual. Fuck?

I jerk my gaze away so fast it makes my neck hurt, but the damage is already done.

Luca keeps talking. Julian answers something under his breath, followed by a muttered “for fuck’s sake” that makes Luca laugh. Neither of them notices me. Thank God. Thank fucking God, because if either one of them turned right now—if Jules caught my face or the way I’m standing or the pure panic blowing through me—I would probably walk barefoot into traffic before I tried to explain it.

My hands shake as I yank my locker wide open and grab the first pair of sweatpants I see. I move too fast and nearly drop them, which makes me curse under my breath and glance sideways in reflexive terror, but they’re both still talking, still normal, still completely unaware that my internal life has become a crime scene in the last ten seconds.

Breathe.

Act normal.

Do not look over there again.

The worst part is that the second I tell myself not to look, every traitorous inch of me becomes aware of him all over again.

Mortification hits in waves with confusion right behind it.

Can straight guys get hard looking at their naked best friend?

I get dressed as quickly as I can without making it look frantic, which is harder than it sounds when you’re trying to hide both physical arousal and the fact that you feel like your skin is turning inside out. I drag on the sweatpants first, then my shirt. Then socks with fingers that still don’t feel steady, while my brain screams increasingly inventive forms of what the fuck.

I finish dressing, stuff my damp towel into my bag with way more force than necessary, then sling the duffel over my shoulder before I do anything even more pathetic, like run.

“Matthews,” Luca calls just as I’m about to make it out of the row.

I freeze and turn, praying with everything in me that nothing about my face is giving me away.

He’s pulling a shirt over his head, his expression easy but mildly puzzled. “You heading out already?”

“Yeah,” I say, and my voice sounds normal enough that I could cry from relief. “Need to get home.”

Julian also glances over then, finally looking at me straight on for the first time since I nearly had a full-body meltdown over his naked existence. There is absolutely nothing different in his expression, just the same open, familiar concern he’s worn for me on and off for weeks now. “Everything okay?” he asks.

That question should not make heat go through me all over again. I hate my body. I hate my brain. I hate every weird, confusing thing that’s waking up in me right now with all the subtlety of a car crash.

“Yeah,” I manage. “Just wanna check in on Mila.”