Page 171 of These Secret Years

“The best of the best. The greatest of all time,” I add, trying to turn his grin into an actual smile.

“Stop,” he whispers before pressing his mouth to mine in a light kiss. “I love you.”

For the hundredth time this summer, love doesn’t feel like enough. I love him, too. So much, but it’s like he said—for what? What’s the point when neither of us can be what the other truly needs anymore. When we’ve both been broken in ways that neither of us knows how to fix.

“I love you, too.”

During the game that night, I see the moment things change for Knight. It’s the middle of the second quarter, and USM is down by three points. Knight struggled to find his rhythm in the first fifteen minutes of game time, relying too much on Rod, who couldn’t break through Texas’s line. But there’s this one point after we win a turnover from a fumble where I see Knight speaking with his coach on the sideline. He nods sharply at whatever the old man says and then puts his helmet on before taking his place on the field at the center of the huddle.

When he comes out of it, and the offense forms their line beneath the lights, they’ve all got more swagger. Knight’s gaze looks sharper, he’s standing taller, and his count off rings so loud and sure it sends a chill down my back. Then, when he drops back into the pocket, and Deandre heads down a route at the sideline, shifting sharply for the center of the field, Knight lets fly a perfect pass that sails directly into D’s waiting arms. The wide receiver—my friend—runs it twenty more yards into the end zone with no one even close to touching him save for Derek who covers him the entire way.

The crowd erupts, and I look back to see Knight walking off the field, helmet in hand, head held high, grinning wildly, and he looks up to where we’re sitting.

His mother gasps, her hand on her heart.

His uncle Luke whistles through his teeth. “There’s our boy,” he says.

His mom bursts into tears, but when she and I look at each other, she’s smiling.

“What did the coach say?” I ask him later, at home once he’s showered and getting into bed.

“He said the game was mine.”

“That’s it? And that changed everything?”

“No.” Knight turns to face me, his face limned in moonlight and not stadium lights. “I felt my dad in there. I think—since he died there’s just been this absence. This hole. A million regrets and conversations I wish had gone differently. But when I came out of the huddle, it was like he was right there, telling me to trust my instincts, look alive, all the shit he used to say when I was a kid. He was there—he is—” He presses his hand to his heart. “Here.”

I touch the side of his chiseled face and try to smile. I’m happy for him. This is huge and important, and he needed it so much, but it also reminds me how far away I am from closure like that. How my wounds are not only still open and bleeding, but I swear they’re beginning to fester, too.

“It didn’t feel meaningless at all,” he says. “Playing that game, I felt like—just for a little while, I had the best parts of him back.”

“I think he’d be so proud.”

Knight makes a move and pulls me closer, almost all the way on top of him. “He was always proud. It was my dumb ass who couldn’t see it.”

“And what about what your uncle said?”

“I’m not saying I’m all better, or I’m not still upset, but I am still thinking about that, and I promise, you’ll be the first to know what I decide. Right this second, though, I think you should kiss me.”

Those words ignite that flame again. My own needs roar to life. “I think you should let me do more than kiss you.”

He arches a brow, the confidence I saw in him on the field here in the room with us now, too, and I like the look of it. Too much. I’m hard for it. I want a piece of it. “Such as?” he asks.

I shift over him and down, rucking up his shirt several inches until my hands cover his pecs. Realizing I’ve got my hands on his chest even as I’m lowering my head to kiss his happy trail, I slide them down his sides and into the waistband of his thin sleep pants. He never makes it through the night this dressed because he gets hot, but he likes falling asleep in clothes, he says. I’m not a hundred percent sure I believe that, but he sleeps well enough, so I haven’t argued with him about it.

He sucks in a breath as the backs of my fingers slide around front, his lower abs clenching tight. His dick is half hard and rising quickly when I lower his pants enough to reveal it.

“This is—wait—” he says softly, touching lightly at my hair and my face.

“You’ve been very sweet and patient, and I appreciate that, but this I can do. I promise,” I tell him.

“And you never mentioned this, why?”

Because our lives have been a mess for months, and because I was too afraid he’d push me away for my own safety and his sanity, but I’m less afraid of that now because if he can be okay, then maybe I can be too, and we have to fucking start somewhere. I have to try.

I give him a one-shoulder shrug and kiss the tip of him, my eyes on his. They hood as I lick at the divot on his crown. “Baby,” he murmurs.

I hope my eyes are screaming something along the lines of let me, don’t even try to stop me, but there’s a hand of his on the side of my head that could end this at any moment, so I need to get him lost fast, if I’m even still capable of it. The fact that he’s fully erect is a good sign that he does still want me, despite the beating I took and the wreckage it left.