Page 58 of Beautifully Conflicted

Damien hobbles to the kitchen in his walking boot, grabs a bowl that explains the buttery scent in his apartment, and sets it on the coffee table in front of us as he sits at the opposite end of the sofa. “Both our cocks were out in the shower, and again in your room, which you asked me for by the way.”

Bickering with him makes me feel like I’m not giving in to my body’s urges, so I lean in to this ridiculous argument. “Still not buying that excuse. And I damn sure didn’t ask you to pull your dick out yesterday and jerk off.”

“You didn’t have to watch.” He tips his head back and tosses a few kernels of popcorn in his mouth, which makes his Adam’s apple protrude in a way that does fluttery things to my stomach.

“I didn’t watch,” I insist.

“Repeating that lie doesn’t make it true.”

“I didn’t watch, but I saw it yeah. Kind of hard not to when you’re only a few feet away. Just don’t pull that shit again today.”

“Don’t touch me and I won’t. Popcorn?” He holds the bowl out so I can reach.

I shove my fist in the bowl and grab a handful, turning to face the TV so I don’t have to see his sexy throat work as he eats. “You get the clips I forwarded from Coach?”

“Yeah.” He fiddles with the remote and pulls up the assigned videos, checking his phone for the notes that go with it. “Coach wants us to pay attention to how Pacheco and Tindall play each other.” He references the two guys who hold our positions—receiver and corner—on the pro teams matched up for this game. “Tindall is pretty good at crowding Pacheco without interfering with his ability to make the catch, and Pacheco has a few evasive moves to get open that Coach thinks you could replicate.”

“I remember this game,” I say as the first play gets started. “This was senior year of high school. The last game my dad took me to before I came here.” Playing college ball doesn’t allow me to get to pro games the way I used to growing up, making this the last one the two of us saw together.

“Been to a lot of games?” Damien tosses another kernel at his mouth, but his posture is too tense to catch it, and it bounces off the corner of his lip.

“At least one a year for as long as I can remember. Up until I started college anyway.”

“Cool.” He repeats the gesture, this time trapping the popcorn in his mouth, though he’s still a little too stiff for me to believe he’s making casual conversation. He’s trying, but something’s got him uncomfortable. “I guess that’s why you’re good with shoes as a reward. Going to games is nothing special.”

“Of course it’s special. The energy of the crowd, the food, even the weather makes each game unique.”

“If you say so. Stallions have the ball.” He points to the screen, and the Denver team whose receiver I’m supposed to be watching.

I grab the remote off the couch and hit pause. “Why have you never been to a game?”

“Why do you ask?” Damien’s jaw is borderline locked as he gnaws on a piece of popcorn.

“Because you usually don’t shut up and right now you’re hardly talking. Plus, everything you say has an edge to it.”

“I’m channeling my inner Lucy.”

Ouch. I know I’m usually—almost always—kind of an ass toward Damien, but I justified it by telling myself it was in response to something he did. Yet right now, all I did was bring up a memory, and he’s been prickly ever since. My memories are hardly a reason for his attitude, but now that he’s pointed it out, I can see how he’s using an unrelated issue to justify his anger toward me, the same as I usually do to him.

I don’t want to be that guy, but I also don’t know how to avoid it. Not with him. Our dynamic is just so…ingrained.

“You gonna tell me why you’ve never been to a game?”

“You gonna tell me why you’re not gay?” When all I do is purse my lips together, he huffs, “Thought so.”

I hit play and toss the remote on the cushion next to me, crossing my arms in front of my chest so Damien can’t see how tightly my hands are balled into fists.

Three seconds later, he’s the one to pause the screen. “We couldn’t afford to see live games.”

I suspected as much, but for him to say it out loud clearly pains him, yet he did it anyway. And whether it’s that I can’t let him one-up me, or that I’m just tired of keeping my secret, I find myself offering a reciprocal confession, murmuring, “I’d be disowned if I was gay.”

“Oh.” A line creases Damien’s forehead. “So, you weren’t, like, abused or anything?”

“Abused?” The shock of what I just confessed doubles as I repeat what he said. “Why would you think that?”

“You have a pretty major freak out each time we’ve—after we’ve—I mean, you sort of lose your shit. I thought maybe you were reliving a bad experience or something.”

In a roundabout way, I guess I am reliving a bad experience each time we’ve hooked up, though it’s more my uncle’s than mine. And one I don’t want to go through myself. “I’ve never been abused. I just don’t want to lose my family.”

---