Page 57 of Your Pace or Mine
Darius gaped at him. “I am not all loved up, and he’s not really my boyfriend,” he stuttered out.
Jackson glossed over Darius’s interjection. “Notreallyyour boyfriend?“ he laughed. “Ok, what are you calling it then? A situationship? Either way, way to go after what you want. Gotta say, I’m a bit jealous though, damn.”
“You keep away, you charming bastard. I’ve seen enough people leave relationships for you,” Darius said petulantly.
“Ooh, so it’s arelationship, is it?”
Darius’s heart skipped a beat; it wasn’t, but he bloody well wanted it to be. And wasn’t that a revelation? Darius hadn’t been in a relationship since he and Sebastien had parted ways, fairly amicably, after uni. Now that Jackson had given voice to his desire, though, he couldn’t get it out of his head.
Jackson nudged his shoulder. “Interesting how you assume it’s you I’m jealous of. He’s cute, yeah, obviously, but come on, Darius, nobody’s ever managed to lock you in.”
Darius flushed. “As if anyone would want to,” he muttered, heat crawling up his neck. He’d never been good at relationships. His last, and only attempt, had drifted into nothing when his focus on his career had become too much. If he hadn’t bankrolled Sebastien’s dream business, he doubted they would even still be on speaking terms. No one stuck around for him, not really. They stayed for what he could offer—money, connections, a title. Just like his father had always said.
“Jamie clearly wants to,” Jackson replied.
“It isn’t real, Jax,” Darius said again. “Seriously.”
He explained the whole ridiculous affair from Jamie’s proposition to his wildly inconvenient feelings. Everything poured out of him as Jackson listened wide-eyed and silent, for once in his life.
“So, it’s not real?” Jackson summarised. “But you want it to be.”
Darius deflated. “Yeah.”
“Have you considered like, telling him?”
“I can’t,” Darius sighed. “Jamie needs this to work. It would feel too much like I was giving him an ultimatum—like ‘love me back, or else.’”
“Love?” Jackson started. “Darius, you need to…”
“You don’t understand, we both need this to work. I can’t complicate it for him. The publicity will help his career, and I know he needs that right now. Real feelings just make things messy.”
“Yeah,” Jackson agreed, surprisingly subdued. “Is that why you didn’t tell me about this? You didn’t want it to get messy?”
Darius sighed. He was grateful to move on from talking about his feelings for Jamie, but felt like he had just landed on another conversational landmine. “It’s just been a bit… off lately with us, hasn’t it? I mean, since the selection, but even before that.”
It was hard to believe that just a month earlier, they had been living in each other’s pockets. Darius had barely seen Jackson since the selection announcement.
Jackson hesitated for a second before responding. “Training sucks now. Anders is ridiculously intense, and Owens is basically acting like he’s the one who was named for the team. I didn’t want it to happen like this,” Jackson started, his voice low. “I don’t think I ever considered that it would be me, not you.”
Darius’s head snapped up, his dark eyes narrowing. “Don’t pretend to be all broken up about it, Jax. It’s patronising.”
Jackson flinched but stepped closer. “You think I’m happy about this? About how Anders treated you? About any of it?”
Darius snorted, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Jackson. You didn’t exactly leap to my defence when Anders and then the press called me an elitist, homophobic prick. Or was that too much of a risk with Owen’s breathing down your neck?”
“That’s not fair, I apologised for the article. You said we were fine,” Jackson shot back, his voice rising. “Do you know how blindsided I was by all of this? Then suddenly fucking Anders is asking me if I’d ever felt unworthy because of you, Darius, and I, I spiralled.”
Darius was taken aback. Jackson’s jaw tightened, and for a moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he exhaled sharply. “Youmake me feel unworthy all the damn time, Darius. Being your friend, being your teammate, it’s like this constant need to prove I’m good enough to be anywhere near you.”
Darius’s glare faltered, his shoulders slumping slightly. “You never said.”
“Yeah,” Jackson admitted quietly, scrunching a hand up in his hair like he always did when he was nervous about something. “I know you don’t try to, but you just have this way of making everyone around you feel kind of small.”
Darius turned to Jackson. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want to lose you, we were like, a thing… and then we weren’t, and I thought if I made things difficult, well. You’re still my best mate, and I think… look, you can’t help the way you were raised any more than I can.”
It always came back to that, didn’t it? The world Darius had grown up in was one of pomp and circumstance. He didn’t know how to wear his heart on his sleeve the way his friend did. He’d have been eaten alive as a teenager at boarding school if he had ever shown even a flicker of the emotions he truly felt, especially with the tabloids circling after his parents’ dramatic split.
