Page 105 of Freestyle
Because if I don’t say it now, I’m not sure I ever will.
“I meant it, you know. That kiss. Every second of it.”
His head turns. Barely, but I catch the flicker in his eyes.
“I’veloved you for a long time, Gray,” I continue, voice low and hoarse. “Not just as a teammate. Not just as some ride-or-die best friend who bleeds with you when the world comes down.” I pause. “I’ve loved you the way I never thought I was allowed to love a boy like you.”
He sucks in a breath.
I keep going.
“Rowyn didn’t pull this out of me. She showed me it was okay to feel it out loud. She made space. For you. For me. Forus, and now I’m sitting here scared out of my mind that you regret it. That you’ll file it away as some crisis response.”
Gray’s lips part. His eyes are glassy now.
“You think I’d kiss you like that because I was scared?” he rasps.
I shrug, voice catching. “I think you don’t know if you’re allowed to love both of us without breaking something.”
He turns fully now, knees brushing mine. His voice is raw when he speaks.
“I broke the second I thought I might lose her, and again when I realized I’d been losing you in silence for years.”
A hush falls over us, but it’s not cold.
Not distant.
It’s full. Itbreathes.
Finally, I reach for his hand. Not hard. Not pulling.
Justoffering.
He takes it.
And for the first time since everything began, I see peace settle behind his eyes like a truth that’s stopped running.
We don’t need to say it again.
But we will.
Tomorrow.
And the day after that.
Until the world knows this kind of love doesn’t ask permission—
It just is.
Twenty Eight
Rowyn
Ididn’tfightthemwhenthey told me I was coming home with them.
Mostly because I couldn’t. Not physically because of the pain meds they put me on, not emotionally but also because deep down, I didn’t want to.
I didn’t want to go back to my dorm where the walls still echoed with memories I hadn’t processed, where silence had too much space to turn loud. I didn’t want to be alone in the dark with everything that nearly happened.
