Page 148 of These Secret Years

He stares down at his coffee mug, and I swear his cheeks are still flushed from the orgasm or the shower—probably the shower. Anyway, it’s cute, but I wish he’d look at me. I already feel like shit about what happened.

“Look, I think I understood it would be unpredictable,” he says.

“Okay…”

“Which is not a problem for me, to be clear, but when you get upset—it’s hard to know what to do.”

God, I fucking hate this. He’s so perfect. I’m the one who fucked up. “You’re doing everything right.”

“It doesn’t feel like that.”

I feel a wash of dread deep down, like there’s nothing I can say or do to fix this. He’s so good, and I’m so rotten—rotting—there’s no reason for him to be with me other than we’ve never tried being with anyone else. But maybe he should. Can I let him go, though? Fuck, I don’t know. “I can’t think of a single thing I’d have you do differently,” I tell him.

“I mean I could have said no.”

“That would have hurt my feelings,” I state honestly. “I actually think if you’d said no, that would have been worse.”

“Okay,” he says carefully. Too carefully.

“It was you breathing for fuck’s sake,” I burst.

He looks at me now. “What?”

“Your breath. Feeling you breathe on me. That was the trigger, which is so fucked up. Like how could I have possibly known? Like I can’t tell you not to breathe.”

“Sullivan…”

I don’t mind the pity on his face or in his tone. I really don’t. I’ll take his pity, his sympathy, his “we need to talks” or whatever else he needs as long as he’ll try sticking this out with me a little longer because surely I can make this good again.

“I want to have sex with you,” I say bluntly.

He blinks, startled.

“Not right this second, but I’m saying I want to be able to have sex with you. I should be able to do that. Enough about this relationship isn’t normal or gonna work but that part should, right? I mean, don’t you think?”

He scowls, cocking his head to the side. “What about this isn’t gonna work? Forget sex for a second, we can come back to that if you want, but why say it’s not gonna work?”

“Because you always said it couldn’t.”

“And then I said I’d figure it out.”

I scoff. I don’t know why, but I do it anyway. “Figure out how to be in a relationship with me while you’re a star quarterback in the fucking NFL?”

“Or…” He doesn’t finish his thought, just bites his cheek and looks back down at his mug.

“Or what?” I ask softer. I hadn’t meant to snap at him. He’s not the one failing at our relationship.

“Or say fuck the NFL.”

What?

I’m stunned. It’s like someone just tased me. I have tingles all over, and I swear there’s a bell ringing somewhere, vibrating the insides of my brain. “What?” I ask out loud.

“What if…what if it’s not worth it?”

“Knight. Shut up. Stop.” Maybe what I’m feeling is more like whiplash. “You’re a quarterback. You’re literally the best quarterback.”

“But I don’t have to be. My dad’s always trying to tell me to do something else—and it’s not like I can’t. I come from a well-off family, I can go to law school, med school, whatever. I can flip houses if I want to, and I don’t think that would suck.”