In a few short months, he’s learned every little thing that makes me quiver beneath him. I crave this man more than I have anyone else, and while that should terrify me, it doesn’t. Because I know he feels the same.
He almost told me yesterday. I heard the unspoken words in the way his eyes met mine, a tender promise that he was ready to choose me. He’s ready to give up everything to be with me.
I hate that it even has to be a choice. His family should accept him for who he is, and they drove him to this. At least his father did. Noah can’t go on living his life in the shadows. He tried, and it’s been slowly destroying him. It kills me that he’s been hurting himself.
Slipping my phone from my pocket, I snap a photo of myself and send it to him.
Zac: I miss you.
Again, my phone stays silent.
I sit there for a few more minutes before heaving a sigh and dragging my arse downstairs. I can’t risk Jasper getting back with the pizza and busting me.
When I reach the games room, Blake and Griffin are mid-match, thumbs flying over the controllers as Liverpool and Tottenham battle it out on the screen. Dane’s nursing a beer in the bean bag, while Ritter and Doyle are in the middle of a game of pool, with Everett watching on.
I settle onto the couch next to Blake and let myself get pulled into the conversation.
“Where’ve you been lately?” Ritter asks. “We’ve hardly seen you outside of training.”
“Swamped with schoolwork,” I lie, but I don’t miss the curious glance Dane throws in my direction.
Fuck. I hope he doesn’t somehow know I was here two nights ago.
Everett leans over the back of the couch and ruffles my hair. “Aw, we were hoping maybe you’d met someone, and you’d been getting lucky.”
I force a smile and shove him off me. “Nope. But even if I had, I wouldn’t tell you arseholes.”
“You know we wouldn’t give you shit regardless of who you were hooking up with, right?” Dane asks, taking a swig of his beer.
“I wouldn’t care if you did,” I say with a shrug. “I’m not ashamed of who I am.”
But I do feel fucking guilty as all hell for lying to my mates.
It will shock the shit out of them when they find out about Noah—they all think he’s been dating Hannah for the past three months—but hopefully they give him the same consideration as me. He’ll have enough to deal withonce his parents find out, and he’ll need the support of his teammates.
Griffin changes the subject, launching into a story about a hypothetical domestic violence case they were discussing in one of his law classes, and everyone chimes in with their opinions. The debate is still going strong when Jasper arrives with the pizzas.
“Verbal abuse is still abuse, any which way you look at it,” Doyle says, opening the box closest to him. “Just because no one has the physical marks to prove it, the psychological ones are still there.”
“One hundred per-cent,” I agree, my stomach twisting as I think about Noah’s relationship with his father. “In its own way, fear and trauma can be just as damaging as visible bruises.”
“This is depressing,” Jasper comments, taking a bite of his pizza.
“It’s a hypothetical case study from class,” Griffin explains.
“It’s a shit situation,” Ritter says, “and I’m certainly not making excuses for it, especially when kids are involved, but how are authorities supposed to do anything about it without physical evidence?”
“So, they wait until it escalates?” Dane asks incredulously.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Ritter says. “But without evidence, it just becomes a ‘he said, she said’ situation. It’ll be impossible to get a conviction in court.”
“The system isn’t perfect, that’s for sure,” Blake mutters. “That’s why it’s so important to implement change.”
“One case at a time,” Griffin grimaces.
“Did anyone watch the Middlesborough game?” Everett interjects awkwardly.
Everyone’s quiet for a moment, reeling from the abrupt topic change, but Blake recovers quickly, and our conversation switches to soccer.
