Page 100 of Our Secret Moments

I swear I can feel her presence before I can see her.

Catherine stands at the edge of the couch, the bag that she uses for classes slung over her shoulder and a thermal bottle in her hand. Her face is etched with sadness and confusion as if she’s disappointed in me. This is the one time I didn’t want to see her when I’m like this. I try to sit up further on the couch and she leans down in front of me.

“What are you doing here, Cat?” I ask, my voice not sounding like my own.

“Wes has been calling me all day and I finished classes early and I wanted to come see you,” she replies, her voice soft and quiet.

“I’m sick. You don’t want to be around me right now,” I urge. The last thing I want is for me to get her sick too. She doesn’t seem to listen to me because she lifts up the blanket I have over me and slides underneath it, sitting beside me on the couch.

“I got you some soup. Drink this and I can make you some more later if it helps,” she whispers, bringing the warm bottle to my hands. She leans down and pulls out two DVD’s from her bag, showing meTen Things I Hate About YouandThe Proposalas well as her Nintendo Switch.“We can watch these so you’re not thinking about the game all day and then we can play Mario Kart before we inevitably fall asleep.”

My chest pinches at the thoughtfulness, but I shake my head. “Cat, you don’t have to do this. You’re going to get yourself sick.”

She turns to me, those gorgeous brown eyes staring straight into mine. “Ask me where I want to be right now, Connor.”

I frown, knowing exactly what she’s doing. “Where do you want to be right now?”

“With you.”

I try my hardest to swallow back the emotion in my throat as I look at her, but just being with her makes me want to cry with how lucky I am.

I don’t deserve this. Her. Everything that she gives me. Every vulnerable piece of herself that she’s kept hidden for so long.

“What should we watch first?”

CAT

I’ve never felt like this before.

Maybe this is truly what love feels like. The second I heard that Connor was sick, the first thing I wanted to do was to run out of class and be there for him. I was lucky that I finished early and was able to make some of my mom’s favourite soup to bring to him. And being here with him, snuggled under the blanket whilst we watchourmovie, I couldn’t think of anything better.

It feels like we were always meant to end up here. As if every single glance that we gave each other over the years, every time we bumped into each other at parties, we would always be tied together by some invisible string that would lead us right to this moment.

I’m so caught up in the movie that I don’t even notice that he’s gone quiet. I turn to him and his eyes are on the floor, not the screen. I nudge him with my shoulder, trying to draw him back. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

He shakes his head slightly before he leans back, resting his head on the back of the couch. “I feel like this is more than just sickness, Cat,” he mumbles. Here he is with his dramatic-ass statements. I swear he’s a real drama queen sometimes.

“What do you mean?” I say, laughing. He seems better than when I first came. The colour has slowly returned to his cheeks, courtesy of the soup, and he’s managed to hold it down without throwing up. I lean my head back against the headrest too, our gazes clashing.

“I don’t know…” he murmurs quietly as if he’s telling me a secret. “I think it’s just something in my head. With the final coming up and all the schoolwork I’m going to be behind on…. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

My stomach twists. As much as we joke around with how uptight he can be, he’s never spoken to me like this before. Never vocalised exactly how it is that he’s feeling. I’ve done that before. I’ve bottled up everything and shoved it to a corner of my mindand never opened it again just to save myself from spiralling, but it only ends up getting worse.

I bring my palm to the side of his face, stroking his cheek softly. “Talk to me, baby.”

“I feel like I can’t breathe sometimes, Cat. I don’t know how to explain it, but I just can’t do it sometimes.” His voice is hoarse and strangled as he nuzzles his cheek into my palm.

“Try for me, Connie. Talk to me.”

I watch him take a deep breath and I wait for him. I would wait for him all day if he wanted me to.

“I just feel like I have this overwhelming sense of responsibility to do good and to be great at all times and I don’t know how to get rid of it. No one has told me these things. No one has evermademe do what I do, but I can just feel it. When I first started playing, I never expected to be a quarterback. I never expected to be considered that good that I would need that responsibility and to carry the weight of the team on my back. As I started to settle into it and realise how important my position was, my brain couldn’t stop telling me the worst possible things that could happen on the pitch.”

The words flow out of him before he takes a deep breath. “I vowed to never get involved in any excessive drinking or do anything to put myself in harm's way, and part of me regrets it. It’s a weird thing because I don’t want to do the things I’m missing out on, but I still want to be included, you know? I don’twantto be uptight and in charge all the time. I don’twantto be the person to tell everyone off, but I just am. I feel like I spend so much time trying to make sure the team is perfect and make sure I’m training enough that when I get time to think for a few seconds, or answer questions, nothing comes because I’m so hyper-focused on trying to be good in my performance. It doesn’t stop sometimes, Cat and I don’t know how to make it stop.”

My heart tears in two at his words. My eyes sting with tears wanting to flow down my face. Did I ever make him feel like he couldn’t tell me this? Did I not make our relationship a safe enough place where he could tell me anything?

“Make what stop? What do you need, Connor?” I ask gently, desperate to help him. He places his hand over mine on his cheek before he slowly brings it down to his chest where his heart is racing.

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