Page 170 of These Secret Years

“Thinking I couldn’t handle it. That I was too weak for what was coming.”

Knight is soft, but this updated version of him has managed to shore up some of his weaker spots. His father’s death didn’t make him fall apart. Not a single member of his family did that I could see. They all bucked up. They put one foot in front of the other, and I don’t know if it was denial or what at first, but what it turned into was what looks very much from the outside like healthy coping.

I told him once to feel his feelings, and he does do that. Sometimes. But sometimes he buries them under a layer of concrete—making them untouchable. He’s harder to read these days, and I blame that as much on his loss as our inability to be truly intimate with each other. As painful as our beginning sometimes was, I miss who we were when we faced each other as a collection of raw nerves comprised mainly of need and want and this shimmery band of love binding us closer.

I miss us.

He hasn’t come out to anyone else yet, and he’s stopped talking about wanting to, but I get the feeling he’s thinking about it a lot. About what his uncle told him. About what he knows from his own experience. More and more, I don’t want him to do anything because of me.

I love him, yeah, but we might as well still be “just friends.” I’m beginning to think I’m not capable of offering him any more than that. And it breaks my heart every time I think about it.

There are far better lovers out there for him for sure, and maybe one of them would be worth putting his career on the line for, but it isn’t me anymore, if it ever even was.

I swallow hard because I haven’t really let myself have that thought with such full, nauseating clarity until now.

“I was gonna ask what your dad would want, but now I think it matters a lot more what you want.”

“Obviously I want to see it through,” he says with the bitterness that came free of charge with his new operating system.

“It’s not obvious,” I say softly.

“I’m doing it, aren’t I?”

Yeah, I guess. With a complete lack of joy.

“I think…maybe…just see how it feels tonight. To be back out there under the lights with the team and the fans and all the school spirit. Just…see who you’re there for if not to prove something, then see what about it feels right.”

He scoffs. “If anything.”

“If anything,” I repeat. “Yeah.”

He picks up the razor, shaves the one spot he left undone then rinses his face before turning to me. “Is Chelsea coming with you?”

I nod.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“It’s been a while.”

“Is she still doing the sex house thing?”

“She moved,” I tell him. “She’s got an actual boyfriend now. He’s a dermatologist. She met him on an app.”

“Good for her. Does he want a ticket, too?”

I shrug. “It didn’t come up.”

Both Knight’s mom and his uncle will be at the game tonight, and this time, I can’t pretend we don’t know each other. Having Chelsea there will help. I want to tell her about Shannon anyway. She and I have barely talked since she started dating this doctor over the summer, but that’s not all on her. I’ve been very preoccupied.

Knight turns toward me when he’s done in the mirror. “Come here.”

I stand and walk to him, stopping just before our chests touch. He looks my face over while he runs his hands down my arms in the way that always makes me shiver. Need roars like a fucking dragon inside me, licking my insides with flames that make their way to my now burning cheeks.

“I couldn’t go through with this without you,” he says quietly.

“You could,” I tell him. “You can do anything. You’re Knight Winters. You’re the most perfect man in the world.”

He gives me half a sardonic grin and a slight shake of his head.