Jackson chuckled. “If I had my way, I’d shout from the rooftops that you’re my boyfriend. I’d tell literally every person I meet that I’m in love with Elliot Owens and that it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Elliot flushed. “What if I can’t get there? What if I can’t give you that?”
“Then I won’t say anything.” Jackson shrugged. “I’m not going to tell you it’ll never bother me to drop your hand in public or lie to my friends and family, but the single most important thing to me is that I never make you feel afraid.”
“It’s not that I want to hide forever. I don’t think that anymore.”
“I know that, Ell.”
“And it’s not that I think your parents will be horrible about it. But some people are, and I don’t know if I can handle it. Even the comments on your videos sometimes make me feel sick, Jackson. I don’t understand how you let it all wash off you.”
Jackson was silent for a moment. He looked contemplative. “Hate comments and online trolls are just a fact of life in what we do. You must get them too?”
“Yeah, but they’re, like, about my shit performance or that I’m a dick. Not some fundamental truth about my identity.”
“You are kind of a dick, love. That’s a fundamental truth.”
Elliot could tell he meant it fondly, and instead of voicing the biting reply that was on the tip of his tongue, he smirked. “Nothing wrong with dicks.”
“Fair point. Rather fond of yours, in fact.”
Elliot let out an exasperated laugh. “My point is, those kinds of comments, they don’t hurt because they aren’t true, becausethose people don’t know anything about me except what I let them know.”
Jackson turned down a small cul-de-sac and pulled into a drive. He stopped the car and turned his full attention to Elliot.
“The comments you’ve seen on my posts, the homophobic ones, the ones insulting me for daring to be an out athlete. They aren’t true either.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. Stop, Ell. I think you need to hear this.” Jackson took his hand and looked him in the eyes.
Elliot felt like squirming away, but he forced himself to maintain eye contact.
“There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with us loving each other.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” Jackson asked. “Because you’ve had this idea drilled into you that you have to be some perfect, emotionless portrait of a human by the people who are meant to love you unconditionally, and I’m not sure if you realise that the problem was with them.”
“I know.”
Jackson arched a brow at him.
“No, I mean, I know that on an intellectual level, right, but I can’t help but think about all the things that could go wrong.”
“But what about all the things that could go right?” Jackson whispered.
“Like this? This is right,” Elliot replied, lifting Jackson’s hand and kissing his wrist. This was more right than anything Elliot had ever felt. He didn’t know if he was ready to tell the world about their relationship, but maybe he could work up to telling Jackson’s family.
“I think we could tell them. Your family, I mean,” he said. “But maybe not right away?”
Jackson beamed at him. “Of course. We can take as long as you need.”
Jackson squeezed his hand and climbed out of the car, stretching his long limbs. Elliot watched as Jackson’s shirt rode up, exposing the soft trail of ginger hair beneath his navel. Part of Elliot—the part that wasn’t scared half to death of meeting his partner's parents for the first time—that tiny part of him wanted to lick that exposed bit of skin.
However, they were currently standing on the drive of a suburban house, on a suburban estate in Leicester, and any overly horny impulses Elliot had developed since Jackson had so completely consumed his life were firmly quashed by the domestic scene that reminded him he was going tomeet the parents.
And sisters. Jackson had sisters. Elliot took a shaky step forwards, which Jackson misinterpreted, rushing to his side to help him into the house. “Did you push too hard at the trial?”
