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“Oakley,” he says, taking a step toward me, and on reflex, I step away.

“No, you’re right. I mean, I don’t even know if I’m bi anyway. That was just a thing—a one-time thing, like you said.”

“Exactly.” He digs his toe into the dirt.

“Serena and me belong together anyway, and if we’re going to have a baby, I have a lot of shit to figure out. I’m going to make it work with her.”

“Yeah,” he replies, looking up at me. “I know you will. That’s the kinda guy you are. It was fun, but it’s over.”

It’s over. Those words are another hard tackle against my heart. Why am I taking this so badly? Everything he’s saying is right, plus I don’t have it in me not to try with Serena again, and I know her. She’ll want to do the same.

Still, there’s a part of me that’s pissed at him, that feels betrayed and abandoned because last night felt like more than a fling to me. Last night felt real. Do I have a right to think that way, since I’m the one here telling him I’m going to get back with my ex?

“I gotta go,” I say, then turn and start walking away.

“Oakley,” Desmond calls, but I keep going. “Oak!” he says again, but I still don’t stop…and Desmond doesn’t come after me.

When I get back home, Serena and I talk. I admit that I kissed someone, but don’t tell her it was a guy. She’s not mad. We weren’t together. She went on a date with another guy too, but still, we want to try to make it work for the baby. We’re best friends, after all. We can do this. We can be happy and together for our child.

And it’s hard as shit. We’re almost seventeen when Tiana comes—her parents and my dad supporting us the whole time. We move in with Ree’s parents. They have more space at their house, her mom helping while we finish high school. Her mom is like a mom to me. She helps when we’re in college too—both Ree and I going to Ohio, so we’re close to home—and somehow, we make it work. We graduate, and I get drafted into professional football, playing for the Los Angeles Pulse, my girls making the move there with me.

And it’s worth it. I need to be there for Tiana.

We don’t get married. I don’t know why neither of us wants to take that step, but things are good for us for the most part. We get along, and we raise our daughter, but both of us know something is missing—that spark that you’re supposed to have with the person you’re in love with just isn’t there, which is why, when Ree came to me before last Christmas and said she loved me, but she wasn’t in love with me, I wasn’t surprised.

And I feel the same.

We’ve been separated now, sleeping in different rooms in the house, but no one knows it—not our parents and especially not Tiana. What if she thinks that means I’m going to leave her like my mom left me? We’re not ready to tell her yet, not ready to blow up our little girl’s world. But now, ever since we found out Sanaa—Ree’s mom—has Parkinson’s, telling the world about our separation feels even further away.

It’s what’s best for our family, for our daughter and the woman who is like a mother to me. It’s not like I have plans to date anytime soon. All that matters right now is football and my family. Everything else can wait.

CHAPTER ONE

Desmond

July

“Des, tell Hunt we need to go out tonight,” Lucas, my best friend Hunter’s boyfriend, tells me.

The three of us are sitting by their pool, enjoying the rest of the offseason before training camp starts in a couple of weeks.

This will be my first season playing with the Los Angeles Inferno—one of the two L.A. teams. Hunter plays for the Pulse, which is the other one.

And so does Oakley—don’t forget him.

Oakley, whom I’ve rarely spoken to in the past eleven years. He tried to contact me a few times after we left the beach, but I ignored him. I didn’t know how to talk to him, didn’t know how to let this guy I hardly knew, who got back with his ex, know that he broke my heart. The only time we do speak is on the football field or when he’s with Hunter—something that I’d imagined would happen much more since I was traded here in the offseason. I don’t know if they just rarely see each other or if Oakley has been avoiding Hunter so he can avoid me.

“He’s right, Hunt. It would be fun, and we won’t get to do much of that shit once the season starts,” I agree.

Hunter lowers his sunglasses and looks at me, a happiness in his eyes that is basically a constant now. Before he and Lucas got together, I hadn’t seen it in years. Keeping it real, maybe I never had, because Hunter is like a whole new man now—like there had been parts of him he kept locked up, and now he’s finally free.

“He wants to take me to a gay bar,” Hunter says.

“He’s never been,” Lucas replies.

“You’ve been openly queer as long as I’ve known you. How have you never been to a gay bar?”

Hunter gives me the finger as though he expected me to take his side. “I don’t know. I just didn’t do that stuff before.”