“Why are you so pissed then?”
“Because I wish we were strangers too. I wish we’d met in a bar and you didn’t hate yourself so much you’d rather not know me at all than deal with the fact that everything I really know about you has come from the fucking media.”
“What?”
I emptied my pockets onto my chest of drawers with shaky hands: keys, phone, wallet. I usually did it in the hallway, but my eagerness to get to Micah had been so absolute, I’d forgotten. Now, I did it to buy myself time before everything hurt, but the task was over far too soon. I dropped my keys and turned to face Micah in the darkness. “You won’t let me in.”
Micah shifted. “The fuck does that mean?”
“It means if you weren’t a footballer who’d had his life splashed all over the internet, I wouldn’t know anything about you, and half of that probably isn’t true.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it? Tell me something you’ve shared with me, something I haven’t dragged out of you kicking and screaming or guessed close enough to the truth that you’ve told me the rest?”
Micah flinched as my words seemed to hit him one by one, chipping away at his armour but not getting through. I hated him for being so vulnerable and yet so unreachable, and I hated myself even more.
“Fuck.” I knocked my fists against my temples. “This is coming out all wrong, but can’t you see what I’m saying just a little bit?”
“I don’t even know what you’re trying to say,” he said flatly. “Apart from the fact that I’ve been disappointing you all along. What do youwant, Sam? My life story written on the front door so you see it first?”
“What? No! I wantyouto tell me so I don’t have to make assumptions or rely on bullshit rumours. Micah, I don’t even know what happened to you on that fucking train platform. Do you know how that feels? To not know if you really did jump?”
“Jump?”
“Yeah. Jump. Cos that’s what it said on the internet. That you threw yourself in front of an incoming train—”
Nausea cut me off. That and shock that our encounter had taken such a catastrophic nosedive. Jesus. I’d come home for a pizza and a cuddle, not to attack festering wounds with a pickaxe.What the hell are you doing?But the dam had broken. It wasn’t enough that Micah had admitted that he felt anywhere near how I felt about him. It wasn’t enough that he made my body sing with his devilish mouth. And it never would be as long as I couldn’t make him understand how much I needed toknowhim. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I just—I can’t live with my own version of events. It tortures me.”
“Why?”
“You know why! Because I fucking love you.”
My shout pierced the air and seemed to rattle around the room like a curse. The shock in my bones morphed into dread and I slapped my hand over my mouth as if I could press every word I’d uttered in the last ten minutes back in. I’d told Micah not to erase himself, but fuck, I wanted to disappear.
The feeling increased with every second that Micah stared at me with his dead gaze.He doesn’t believe me. More than that, he didn’t want to because accepting love meant everything he believed about himself was wrong, and that maybe, just maybe, giving up on himself was impossible.
I let my hand drop. “Micah, come here. Please?”
He didn’t move. For a long moment, neither did I, but the need to be close to him overrode my fear of rejection. I kicked off my shoes and padded across the carpet. Micah was a statue of tension—shoulders, neck, jaw. I wondered if he’d even heard what I’d said or if he was stuck on me demanding he tell me every detail of the worst moments of his life. Shame crept over me. I fought his locked arms and pulled him close, burying my head in his chest. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m so sorry. I just get so frustrated that you don’t let me—or anyone else—love you the way you deserve.”
“I don’t want anyone else to love me.”
It felt like forever since he’d spared me a full sentence. I blinked up at him.What does that mean?But the question stuck in my throat. Speaking without thought had led us into this unholy mess in the first place.
Life crept into Micah’s eyes. Aggravation first, then panic as whatever he was searching for in my face couldn’t be found. He sucked in a breath and gripped my shoulders so hard a pained grunt escaped me. “I mean it, Sam. I don’t want anyone else to love me. Only you. It’s only ever been you. I just wish—Fuck.” He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I just wish I knew what was me.”
I eased his hands from my shoulders and twined his fingers with mine. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me.”
Micah opened his eyes, his expression brimming with despair. “I don’t know how I feel about anything. I never have. Before I got outed, I didn’t feel anything, like, ever. I was dead inside. The only time I felt alive was when I was playing, snorting coke, or paying Grindr hook-ups to keep quiet. And it was like that for bare years, man, so I just kept playing and sniffing and fucking, hoping it would kill me in the end.”
“How does a professional athlete have a coke habit?”
He shrugged. “It’s all in the timing and who you know. For a while there, I was a connected motherfucker.”
