Page 43 of The Jock
“What do you mean?”
“The fans…” He sighed. Brushed his chapped lips against Justin’s pulse, a lightning-fast kiss. “There’s so much love for the game, but there’s also this ugly hatred. When you’re perfect, you’re a god. When you’re not, there are death threats. People say horrible things. Sometimes theydohorrible things. We had a quarterback, years ago, who was attacked by a fan because he threw a few bad passes.”
“I remember that. He ended up paralyzed, right?”
Wes nodded. “We get so much attention. I thought I was used to it, before, but now… It’s a whole other level. I can’t go anywhere without being recognized. I don’t have a life that’s my own anymore. I don’t have any privacy. None. And you said yourself, you hate that. You like your anonymity. Your privacy.” He cringed. Curled around his aching stomach.Don’t puke again. Puking isn’t sexy.“If someone hurt you because of me, or if someone attacked you—”He couldn’t say it.
Justin pressed their foreheads together, and it took every bit of Wes’s strength not to break down. He dug his fingernails into the ground. Something came loose inside him, and he grabbed on to Justin, clinging to his elbows.
“Listen to me,” Justin said. His voice was, finally, gentle, like Wes remembered from Paris when they spoke to each other at night, their sweat cooling on each other’s skin. “No one chooses what risks I take. No one decides for me what I think is worth it. You had no right to make that decision for me.”
“But—”
“No buts. If you wanted to end us becauseyouwanted it to be over, fine. But if you ended us because you thought you were saving me…” He shook his head. “That’s my job. Respect me enough to let me weigh the risks and make the choice.”
“But you don’t know—”
“You didn’t give me the chance to.”
“You said you like your anonymity.”
“I do. But I liked you a lot, too.”
Wes pushed his forehead against Justin’s as if he could merge their minds. If only Justin could see and feel his thoughts, all his mixed-up nightmares and breathless, hopeful dreams. “I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”
“Let me worry about me, okay? I’m not helpless.”
“No, you’re not. But I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. You don’t deserve that.”
“Wes, the only person so far who has hurt me because of your football career is you. Why don’t you think about that before you go imagining some phantom attacker waiting for me in middle of the night to avenge your lost heterosexuality, okay?”
He wanted to laugh. It was such a Justin thing to say—and, God, he’d missed that, missed his dry humor and his way of cutting right to the heart of an issue, chainsawing his way through the briar patch of Wes’s mind. But he also wanted to vomit again, because Justin was right. The only one who had hurt him was Wes. He’d hurt him badly. Maybe unforgivably.
“I don’t know how to live with myself,” Wes whispered. “I have no idea what to do.”
“What are you saying?” Justin asked carefully. “Are you—”
“No. Nothing like that. I just don’t know how to put all the pieces of myself together. I don’t know how to be the team captain and take care of the guys. I don’t know how to be the best tight end in the nation. I don’t know how to handle all this attention, the people who think they know me, who want the best for me but are all up in my face all the time until I can’t breathe anymore. And I don’t know how to live with what I did to you. I don’t know how to move on from this. I think about you every moment.”
He ran his hands up Justin’s arms. Tugged softly until Justin’s chest was pressed to his and they were body to body on their knees in the darkness behind Daisy Lane, beneath the overhead deck. A hundred conversations were going on above them, mixing with the live music that washed out the sound of their conversation. Justin’s cell phone was still buzzing, but in this tiny pocket of the world, it was just them. “I don’t know how to be all those men at once. It’s like I have to put on different faces every hour, when the only face I want to wear is my own. The guy I was in Paris. The guy I am with you. Wes, who loves Justin.”
Justin’s thumbs stroked over Wes’s cheekbones, and his fingertips massaged the skin behind Wes’s ears, brushed through the short strands of his hair. “You’re spread too thin.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
Justin was silent. He brushed his nose over Wes’s. His soft lips ghosted Wes’s cheek.
“I thought about quitting,” Wes whispered. “I thought about telling Coach no, I didn’t want it. I thought about calling you, driving up to Dallas. Going to your house. But I can’t quit. I’m nothing without this.”
“That’s not true. You’reyou, and football doesn’t define you—”
“I have nothing without football. I don’t have a scholarship. I don’t have college. I have no path, nothing, if I don’t ride this as far as I can. I need football as much as this team needs me. I only have two options: I finish college, or I go back to the ranch. And if I go back, I’ll never get out of West Texas again. Living there is like drinking poison water that you can’t get out of your body. Once you’re in, you’re in, and there’s no escaping.” His breath choked off. He tried to swallow. Couldn’t. “I don’t want that life. I want to be a man that you’d want to be with,” he forced out.
“I don’t care what you are. I don’t care if you’re a footballer or a grocery store bagger or you work at McDonalds or, hell, you’re a cowboy.”
“You hate cowboys.”
Justin almost grinned. “I do. Except for one, apparently. And if you were the biggest cowboy to ever cowboy, I would still care about you. I don’t carewhatyou do. I careaboutyou.” His breath washed over Wes’s cheeks, his lips. “It’s okay to admit that you want this, too. I know you a little bit. I know how hard you worked for this. You wanted to be the best, and you basically are. You should be so damn proud of yourself.”
