Page 42 of Save the Game

“Stop it,” he says, pointing at me sternly and grasping the edge of the towel. “We have work to do and I don’t need you distracting me with sex eyes.”

I close my eyes and hold up my hands in surrender. He laughs, brushing another kiss across my lips before stepping into his bedroom to get changed. I follow him, greedily watching the way his back muscles move and the way water drips from his hair down his spine. My phone buzzes in my pocket as he starts pulling on the clothes he’d left laid out on the bed. I check it, reading the message but not bothering to reply before tucking the phone back into my pocket. Max glances at me, adjusting his shirt over his still damp skin.

“Who’s that?”

“Bryce. Him and the rest of my roommates are going to go to a party out on Sorority Row. I told him you and I had plans but now he just wants me to bring you along.” I grin at him, shrugging. He’s fully dressed now, so I reach out a hand to take the towel from him and hang it back up in the bathroom. “The five of us usually go to shit like that together, so he’s feeling abandoned.”

“Oh,” Max says, running a hand through his hair as I step back into the room. “I mean…do you want to go?”

“Nah. Trust me, they’ll be all right.” Reaching a hand out to cup his face, I brush a bit of his hair back from his ear. “I wouldn’t want to go without you.”

“We can, though, if you really wanted?—."

“No, I don’t even want to go, and I’m sure as hell not making you go to a party with me, especially after what happened last time.”

He freezes, and my hand falls to his shoulder like a dead weight. My words catch up to me a second too late, and I don’t even have time to hope that he didn’t register what I said—it’s obvious that he heard it, loud and clear.

“Max—."

“What does that mean?” He interrupts, eyes skating rapidly over my face as he tries to catch every small change in my expression. “What do you mean, ‘after what happened last time’?”

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything by it, just forget I said anything.”

He takes a step away from me and my hand slides from his shoulder. The wariness in his eyes has my palms breaking out in a sweat, and I rub them back and forth on my legs; Luke, you fucking idiot.

“Oh my god,” he says, and he takes yet another step away from me. In less than thirty seconds the warmth has gone from his eyes, and he’s looking at me like I might be a stranger.

“Max, hold on?—."

“You know, don’t you?” He says, voice rising. “You know about…you…”

He can’t bring himself to say it, and I can’t bring myself to hear it. I cut across him with a single word, fired into the space between us like a gunshot: “Yes.”

He breathes in so hard it sounds like it hurts. The look on his face is so transparently pained, I take an unconscious step toward him, automatically wanting to comfort him. He backs up another step, and I change my direction immediately, skin burning with shame as I scramble to try and find the words to say to rectify this.

“How long have you known about that? How the fuck do you know?” His voice ping-pongs between anger and pain, and I instantly open my mouth to lie to him before snapping my jaw closed, ashamed that my first instinct was dishonesty.

“I…I found out right after your panic attack. The next day.”

If I’d hoped that telling the truth was the best course of action, I don’t have to wait long before I’m swamped with disappointment. The color drains from his face so fast he sways unsteadily, cupping the back of his neck with his hand in a gesture of discomfort that I haven’t seen in quite some time. He shakes his head at me.

“Oh my god,” he breathes.

“Listen Max, just let me explain. My friend, Margot, her brother is a cop and he told her about what happened. I didn’t mean to find out—I wasn’t trying to…to invade your privacy, but she thought I needed to know, and…” I trail off, stomach falling to my feet as I see the effect these words have on Max. I want to tell him it doesn’t matter that I know, but am smart enough to bite this particular sentence back. It’s very clear that it does matter to Max.

“You’ve known this entire time,” he says, voice small in a way that breaks my fucking heart. “You…so, what, you thought you’d date me out of pity? Thought you might try a savior complex on for size?”

“No, fuck, of course not,” I run a shaking hand through my hair, noticing the way his voice has risen as his anxiety spirals upward into a fever pitch.

“You said to me—after you didn’t talk to me for a few days—that you had been working a few things out. That’s what you said,” he reminds me. “Me. That’s what you were trying to work out, huh? How to fuck the guy who’s been raped?”

The words land between us and lie on the floor, as horrible and disgusting as a dead body. His face is tight with anger, but not even that can mask the hurt in his eyes. He doesn’t even let me respond before he continues, voice breaking on every word.

“You weren’t supposed to know. Nobody is supposed to know.”

“I’m sorry, Max. I didn’t mean to find out, and I didn’t want to bring it up unless you did…I thought,” I put a hand through my hair again, annoyed with myself and my complete inability to explain. “I don’t know, okay, I just thought you’d tell me at some point and then we could?—."

“No,” he says, the word as forceful as a shove to the chest. “I would never have told you. I don’t fucking want you to know.”

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