Page 46 of Never Stay Gone
Dakota tugged on that ragged string in the comforter as his expression darkened. “What you said that day… I thought that meant you didn’t ever care about us or what we had. I thought maybe it was only what you was sayin’: nothin’ but foolin’ around and hormones and being boys. I thought maybe I had fallen in love with you when all you wanted was some kinda physical thing.” His voice went thin, and soft, and fragile. “It seemed so easy for you to say what you said and end everythin’ between us, and there I was, my whole world destroyed. And you just… drove away.”
“I was dying inside. I never imagined that you loved me, and I… froze. I had my dad’s voice in my head and all those fears, and I—I didn’t mean what I said. I swear I didn’t. It was all lies. Lies I told you, lies I told myself…” He tipped his head back. Felt that swirl again, like the world was being yanked out from underneath him and everything he knew was going down the drain.
The one time he’d tried to say the wordgayto his reflection in the mirror his senior year, he’d had a panic attack on the bathroom floor, nearly choking as he smothered his screams in a towel. That was the first time he felt this Tilt-A-Whirl darkness, and every day since, he’d been trying to beat back the truth. He couldn’t be gay. He’d lose everything: his future, his family, his home. His dad would kill him, truly kill him. The whole Carson legacy was on his shoulders, and that legacy was something his dad had believed in so strongly. Shane had always wondered whether his dad loved the idea of restoring the family name more than he’d loved his own son. He’d been a kid, though, and he hadn’t known that his dad would never love him. He was like a dog chasing a bone, always trying to get his father’s approval and affection. He chased that shadow all the way to his dad’s grave, and in the end, he never got so much as a single drop of love.
“How were you so okay about it?”
“’Bout what?”
“About being gay. How was it so easy for you to accept?” Dakota had never had a crisis, as far as Shane could remember. He’d been the same steady, even-keel guy throughout those two years. Even now, coming back and working the case with him, Dakota was solid.
Dakota shrugged. “Wasn’t easy at first. I was shit scared when I realized I’d fallen for you. Here I was, new kid in town, just made his first friend—the coolest kid in school—and now I was dreamin’ about kissin’ him and makin’ out in the locker rooms.” Dakota snorted. “That wasn’t easy. But then you kissed me, and nothin’ else mattered. Whatever happened, it couldn’t compare to that, I thought. The world could go fuck itself. We were together. That’s what was gonna last. Not…” He waved his hand as if to encompass everything around them, all of the world’s shit. “I knew you had dreams for your life, so I was tryin’ to be careful with those. I wanted to make everythin’ you wanted come true.”
“Those weren’t my dreams.”
“You loved playin’ football. You were amazin’.”
“I loved playing football withyou. I could throw, yeah, but I got great those two years because I was playing withyou. It wasn’t the same after. I wasn’t any good in college.”
“That’s not true. I read every article they wrote about you. Everyone was sayin’ you were the next great quarterback.”
“Any joy I had in the game was gone after we—afterIdid what I did.” Memories plagued him: his dad dissecting every game, pointing out what he’d done wrong. Him and Dakota throwing the football in the setting sun, smiling at each other. His dad’s constant litany of what he needed to improve. Dakota jogging back to the starting line with his pass, their eyes locked on each other, Shane’s heart beating so hard it was halfway up his throat. His dad telling him his life plan: football, college, wife, kids. Football, college, wife, kids.
Kissing Dakota for the first time on that trail, so nervous he couldn’t stop fiddling with the football he’d brought.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I couldn’t get my head in the game. I looked downfield and saw you instead of the receiver who was headed for the NFL after the next semester.” His mind had whirred nonstop, lying to him about how Dakota was just a phase, just them messing around, while his heart was breaking every way it could and his life fractured on the fault lines.
Dakota’s eyes were wide, and round, and so full of pain it made Shane want to beg for forgiveness. He’d done that. He’d hurt Dakota.
“I was distracted all summer at football camp. The coach was so mad he yelled at me and asked why they even bothered to recruit me if this was how I was going to play. Dad was there at practice and saw the whole thing, but he always preferred the quiet, soul-shredding kind of disappointment instead of yelling. That night at dinner he told me I had to forget the games boys play with each other if I was ever going to grow the fuck up and become a real man.”
“Jesus,” Dakota breathed. His hands made fists on top of his thighs. His forearms shook.
“I tried.” Shane was on a roll now, talking about things he’d never talked about, breaking the airtight seal he’d kept over his rotten life. “I tried to forget you. The more I tried, the worse it got, until you were everywhere, all the time. On the field, in my dreams. I thought I saw you walking across campus sometimes. I thought about you nonstop. Cried myself to sleep more nights than not.” It had been the cruelest kind of medicine. Truth, injected straight to the soul. “And when the first-string quarterback went down and I was called up for those two games, I knew I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t even close. I was too broken up inside.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t. Don’t you dare apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong. All of this, everything that happened—” He pointed to his knee, to the space between them, to the empty motel room and the world beyond. “It’s all my fault.”
Dakota ran his tongue over his lips. Frowned. Glared at his thighs. “I didn’t know any of this, but I shoulda. How can I know your favorite cereal is Cap’n Crunch and your favorite color is blue and you don’t like chocolate-flavored things ’cause you say they taste like the color brown, but I didn’t know you were livin’ in hell all those years? I shoulda known what it was like for you at home.”
“My favorite color is hazel.”
“No, it’s blue. You told me junior year. That’s why your cupcake had blue frostin’ on it. Woulda had a blue candy heart, too, but I couldn’t find a blue one with the message I wanted.”
“It used to be blue.” Shane stared hard into Dakota’s gold-flecked hazel eyes. “But that changed.”
Dakota flushed, seemingly getting it. He cleared his throat. Looked away.
“No one knew,” Shane said, heaving a sigh. “We were supposed to be the perfect family. You can’t be perfect if people see beneath the surface. And I never brought you home. I never brought anyone home. I didn’t want anyone to see.”
“I shoulda seen. I loved you, and I shoulda seen it.”
“I think my dad knew about me. Or suspected.” His inhale hitched. “That morning after prom, when I got home after dropping you off, he was waiting for me. He asked me where I was all night and if I was with a girl. I couldn’t lie to him, so I told him no, I was out with you. He hit me so hard he slammed me halfway through the drywall. He yanked me back by my shirt collar and said I had hickeys on my neck. He never asked where they came from. I think… I think as long as he didn’t ask, he didn’t have to hear me say the truth. And that was the silence we kept, all the way to the day he died. But maybe that’s why, after prom, before graduation, he started hammering on his life plan for me even more: college, football, wife, kids. I didn’t need to be at campus until August, but he drove me there right after graduation and told the coach I was going to start football camp right away. I think he wanted me away from you.”
“Guess he got what he wanted,” Dakota growled.
Shane’s eyes closed. “Kissing you that day on the trail was the first thing I ever did that was just for me. Falling in love with you was the only time I felt like I was really alive. And loving you is the only authentic part of my life.”
