He lifts his head, looking dead serious. “Don’t stop wanting things for yourself. Not just for me.”
I pull him in, holding him so close I think we might fuse together. “Only if you promise the same.”
He nods, and that gesture alone eases the fear in my chest. The future is still a wild, uncertain thing, but right now, with Noah’s blinding smile and his body pressing close to mine, I believe in it. I believe in us.
For now, it’s just us—no games, no press, no agents or contracts. Just a boy in my arms, a promise on my lips, and the sense that, maybe for the first time, we might actually get everything we want.
Epilogue
Noah
NewYorkmorningsalwaysstart with coffee. The city wakes up grumbling, the traffic below a restless ocean, and me barefoot in threadbare shorts and Damien’s rookie jersey, staring out over the skyline from the narrow kitchen window.
This apartment is average by Manhattan standards, but it feels huge compared to where I came from. There’s space for us here—space for my cameras, for Damien’s shoes lined up in the hall, for our mess, our quiet, our mornings.
The mug is chipped—one of Damien’s, stolen from his Blackthorne days, Thunderhawks mascot faded to a ghost. It’s become my favorite, even though we have a dozen slick new ones in the cupboard.
It’s been almost a year and a half since I left Blackthorne, since I left everything that nearly broke me. I still have my routines, and there are still days I wake up expecting to feel empty and hollowed out from the inside. But those days get fewer the longerI stay here—tucked into the corners of this apartment, far above the city, safe in a life that actually feels like it’s mine.
My hands still shake sometimes, my stomach still knots when I eat, but I do it. I do it anyway. The outpatient program I’m in runs three mornings a week, and sometimes I still hate the sound of my own voice in group, but it’s helped. God, it’s helped.
I don’t negotiate with the voice that used to run my life. I don’t bargain, and I don’t punish myself. I eat because my body needs fuel and because I want to stay alive. Healing is not a straight line, but I’ve stopped asking for it to be.
There’s a whiteboard on the fridge with my med reminders and mantras scrawled in crooked marker—eat when you’re hungry, rest when you’re tired, trust the process, you are not a project.
That still feels like a small miracle some days.
My mother texts sometimes, as if she suddenly woke up and remembered I exist. She sends selfies with her new boyfriend from Monaco, articles about mental health, and messages about “starting over.”
But it’s not love. It never was. She started trying when Damien got signed to the Manhattan Vipers last summer. She started caring when the headlines used words likerookie phenomandfuture MVP, and the paycheck came with a number that could swallow her entire Milan penthouse. Suddenly, I was valuable again. Not as Noah, not as her son. But as the one Damien Moore loved.
She can rot. I mean that in the calmest way possible. She can rot with her rosé and her curated Instagram stories of perfect white hydrangeas. I don’t have anything left to give her now. I’m learning that’s okay.
My father tried once a few months ago. He sent a letter—an actual letter, three pages of neat, blocky script. It sits in my sock drawer, unread. Some wounds don’t scar; they just stay open.Maybe I’ll look at it one day, just to see if the words line up with the man I remember. For now, I let him be silent. I let myself heal.
Sometimes, after Damien leaves, I’ll spend hours editing photos. Sometimes I just sit on the fire escape and let the noise of New York roll over me, coffee in hand, hoodie too big, safe in a place that doesn’t care who I am. I call Sage or Nate or Ryan, text the Sin Bin group chat, send stupid TikToks to Killian, and… I exist. That’s enough.
Damien’s everywhere now. On billboards in Times Square, in highlight reels, in magazine spreads. He was the third overall draft pick, rookie of the year frontrunner, and the youngest starter the Vipers have had in six years. He came out as bi at his very first Vipers press conference when the reporters kept pushing him about‘rumors’. He didn’t freak out at all, he just stared down the cameras until nobody could meet his eyes.
The team’s head coach is queer, too, but the league is full of old money and older ideas, and the bias is real. They call him names behind closed doors, in press rooms, comments sections, locker rooms, and forums that still think queerness is something that weakens a man.
But Damien doesn’t fucking care. He plays with this stubborn kind of joy, a physical poetry that makes it clear to everyone watching that he’s not here to hide.
“You know what slurs mean when they can’t touch your stats?”he told me once when I flinched at a headline.“It means the fuckers are scared. Scared of somebody they can’t box in. They can’t call me a pussy when I’m breaking records. Can’t say I’m weak when I’m flooring their golden boy. Let ‘em talk.”
And they still talk, but Damien just drops forty points on them and walks off the court with his middle finger metaphorically raised. He doesn’t need to shout when his game does all the talking.
I envy his fearlessness.
I half expect to wake up and find out this was all a dream, that the tall, wild-haired boy who still calls meBabygirlis just a wish I made in another life. But he’s here, as real as the coffee in my hands, as constant as the sound of his voice behind every closed door.
I smile against the rim of the cup when I hear the sound of footsteps padding down the hallway. There’s something about the way he walks now—more solid and sure—that makes me fall in love with him even more. He’s louder when he enters a room, but only because he’s grown into the space he was always supposed to take up.
Damien slides up behind me, warm and half-draped in sleep, arms looping lazily around my waist. He folds himself into me, chin dropping onto my shoulder, face buried in my neck. His hands are big, callused from hours of ball, but he’s always gentle with me.
He’s shirtless—always is in the morning—and I feel the press of his chest as he breathes me in, all muscle and early heat and familiarity that never stops feeling new.
“Mm,” he grumbles, voice thick with sleep. “Why’re you up? It’s Saturday. Come back to bed.”
