Page 128 of These Secret Years

To my surprise, when the steps return, I hear him again, but this time he’s speaking to Adrian. “Open your eyes, darling. There you go. Just a little bump. You’re all right. Keep those open, darling. I know how you love to watch how much I enjoy your precious protégé.”

The door opens on Quinn’s formidable bulk, and that night, I learn the most important lesson of all about freedom.

It comes at a price.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

KNIGHT

The team is on the plane, cruising toward the terminal of the Philadelphia airport when all the missed texts and calls from Sullivan appear on the screen.

The texts don’t say much. A lot of hey, hi, you around? Guess you’re busy, and of course he doesn’t leave any voicemails.

I put through a call, and it goes unanswered. I do leave a message. “Hi, it’s me. We just got to Philly. Game’s tomorrow, but I’ll be around the rest of the day if you need anything. Text me, all right? Don’t make me worry. Do your part for the team. School spirit or whatever. Text me.”

Then I text him.

Me

Here. Just touched down in Philly. Totally available.

When I don’t hear back from him after we’ve gotten to the gate and are walking through the terminal, I text again.

Don’t make me worry.

I hope that didn’t come off like a threat to take some kind of action. After all, what the hell can I do about anything from here? The name he let slip has been plaguing me. I’ve searched “Adrian Detroit Violin” online and Google led me to the symphony orchestra page, saying I was likely searching for Adrian Frazier who was the current conductor there. And yeah, I’m pretty sure that was right. Judging by the looks of him, an anemic blond man in his forties with unremarkable facial features and no muscle tone, I’m pretty sure the search engine nailed it.

He’s got a Wikipedia page, too, and I read that he’s married to a man, further reassuring me I’m on the right track. Of course, the internet didn’t give up his address, and Detroit is a big place, but I know who his husband is, who his parents are, and more importantly, if Sullivan goes missing, I’ll have a name to give to the police. Whether they’ll believe me or not—well, I have my own name I can use along with my dad’s to at least get someone to check it out.

His husband Quinn is a concert pianist with his own Wikipedia page and a large social media following. He tours a lot. World tours. He’s actually good-looking and much younger than Adrian in his early thirties. He’s a decently big guy who keeps himself in shape, and he draws good crowds.

But all I can see when a picture of him fills my home screen is a fucking monster. A pervert. A rapist. And rage. My own rage that has me navigating away quickly because I feel as powerless in the face of this situation as Sullivan does. No. That isn’t right. But I do feel helpless and frustrated. The truth is I can’t even begin to imagine what Sullivan feels. All I know is how fucking strong he is, how resilient. The fact that he was even able to let a man—me—touch him after everything…

I can’t think about all that. I’m in desperate need of focus. If we lose this game, I won’t forgive myself. We load up on the bus, and Deandre sits next to me. “What’s got you looking like that?”

“Just thinking about the game tomorrow.”

“Wanna know what I’m thinking about?”

I already know what he’s going to say.

“Cheesesteak.”

This is the first round of the college playoffs. The first in what we hope will be a championship series of bowl games for the next three weeks. If we win tomorrow, we advance to the quarterfinals where we’ll play one of the top four ranked teams in the nation. We’re currently the sixth seed, so we have a few things to prove. Or I do. Fucking Blake and his team are number seven. It’s theoretically possible we could play each other in the semifinals or even the finals, but that’s a problem for January, and I have plenty of other things to think about until then.

I really didn’t want Sullivan’s safety to be one of them, but here we are.

We get to our hotel, receive our room keys, and pair off with our roommates. I’m with Deandre, like I have been all year. Last year, it was me and Tyson, like freshman year, but he tore his ACL during a game last season and got beat out for his spot as a starter by a red shirt freshman named Benito Lopez who’s fast as hell and has two properly working knees. It sucked. It still sucks because Benito’s obnoxious, and I miss Ty on the road, but D and I are used to sharing space at this point, so it could be worse.

As the team captain, I don’t catch a lot of shit in the locker room, but some of the guys on the team are your prototypical assholes—the kind of guys who were probably shoving smaller kids in lockers in high school and threw the F-slur around a lot. I don’t tolerate that shit in our locker room. Someone fucks up, they get a look, and I make sure they suffer for it, either in a game or on the practice field. There’s another dude on our D line, who I suspect is one of the queer ones Sullivan mentioned—Braden Cope from Louisiana—who knows how to keep the defensive assholes in line as well.

Braden and I, without saying anything to each other pretty much ever, know how to communicate across a distance with a single, pointed glance, and just like that, everyone is respectful again.

Me, well, I’ve still been working on my conversion therapy. Seeing Sullivan as much as I have this past semester, being his friend, hasn’t been the kind of torture I thought it would be. His presence in general is something I like a lot. I look forward to it. When the wanting became acute, though, as it often would if he’d spend an evening at our house like he fucking belonged there, or we’d be bitching at each other over a video game, there were plenty of times I wished everyone else in the house would cease to exist, leaving only me and him so I could have a moment or two, just a few, where I could rub myself all over him, suck his skin between my teeth, or have a taste of his tongue in my mouth, feel the crown of his cock in my throat—just for a few seconds.

Just enough to remember the real me. The real us.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to get away with not dating anyone without someone saying something or questioning whether something’s wrong with me. During the season it’s fine. Focus is the name of the game. But off season? Next semester? With all the media attention I’m starting to get and women more or less throwing themselves at me whenever I stand still on campus long enough, I don’t know what I’m gonna do if I can’t figure out how to be intimate with one.