Chapter 30
DARE
Turns out, if you treat someone like a secret, they’ll eventually treat you like one too.
The first time we crossed the line again, it was raining.
Not in the poetic, movie-scene way, just fat, ugly drops hammering the concrete and fogging up the windows of the car as if the sky couldn’t keep its shit together.
We weren’t supposed to be alone together.
Tru had followed me out after dinner, barely saying a word before slamming the passenger door shut.
His hair was damp, skin flushed from the cold.
I couldn’t even look at him without feeling it, all of it.
The guilt, the need, the damn ache that lived in my chest whenever he got too close.
He said, “I’m not doing this anymore.” And I believed him until he kissed me.
Or maybe I kissed him. I honestly didn’t know. It just happened, too fast and too much and too fucking familiar. Lips crashing, hands tangled in damp clothes, our bodies twisted toward each other like magnets, finally giving up the fight.
I gripped the back of his neck, drowning in his taste. He bit my lower lip. Hard. I groaned, and then I shoved him away. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to.
“Don’t,” I said. But my hands were still on him. My forehead pressed to his. My breath mixed with his in the confined space.
“Then don’t start,” Tru whispered. And fuck me, he was right.
But I did start it. Again and again. In the stairwell two nights later. In the laundry room at midnight, the dryer rumbling beneath his ass as I stood between his legs. In our dorm, when he was shirtless and brushing his teeth. I couldn’t stop staring at the freckles on his shoulders.
Every time, I told myself just once more. And every time, I left him wanting.
I could kiss the ever-loving shit out of his perfect lips, touch his dick and jerk him off until he cried into my neck, tease his sweet nipples with my tongue—but beyond that, I got stuck.
I didn’t know how to hold him. Not in the way he deserved.
Not in a way that meant something. I was dying to taste his dick, feel the weight of it on my tongue, suck him dry, but…
it was crossing an invisible line in my head that I just… couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. Not yet.
I’d spent nights in his bed, breathing him in, clinging to him like he was the last safe place I had left. But every morning after, the panic crept in—the reminder that the world outside our room still had rules. People to fool. A version of myself I still thought I could protect.
I kept pretending it wasn’t a lie. That what we had didn’t need a name. That I could keep him close without giving up the part of me that still wanted to pass as straight, safe, normal.
But he deserved more than my silence. More than the shadows I kept him in.
The truth was uglier than that. I was still holding onto the last shred of hope that I didn’t have to come out. That maybe, I could love him halfway and still survive it.
But I couldn’t. Not without breaking him in the process.
And God, I knew I was losing him, every time he smiled like he was trying to believe I was worth the wait, every time I pulled away first. I could feel him slipping through my fingers even as I held on.
If I stayed—if I let it be real—it meant I had something to lose.
And losing him? That would wreck me worse than any secret ever could.
Tru’s chest was still rising fast, flushed pink, a thin sheen of sweat catching the low light like he’d been painted in candle wax. His lips were parted, just barely, and I could still feel the way his hand clutched at my wrist as if he didn’t want me to stop. Like he never wanted me to stop.
He looked beautiful. Destroyed in the best way.
And I… I felt sick.
Not because I didn’t want him. I wanted him so bad it made my bones hurt. But because the more I gave him, the more he thought he had me. And he didn’t. Not really. Not in the way he hoped. Not in the way he deserved.
I lay back beside him, arm flung across my eyes. Maybe if I blocked out the sight of him, I could calm the riot inside my chest. His fingers found my stomach, tracing slow, lazy patterns like we were lovers and this was normal. As if I hadn’t just hidden him in the dark again.
“Mom wants us home for Christmas.”
I rubbed my sticky fingers on the sheet, heart racing. “Yeah?”
He kept tracing. “I told her we’d drive back together.”
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t.
“You know,” he added, quieter now, “just like we always do.”
Just like we always do.
Like nothing had changed. But everything had. Every damn thing.
I turned my head and looked at him. He looked peaceful. Happy. And I hated myself.
“Tru…”
That was all I could get out. Just his name. He blinked at me, the smile sliding off his face as if I’d flipped a switch.
I swallowed hard. “Coach might keep us here to train. Finals and all.” Lame. Weak. A lie so thin it wouldn’t hold water.
He blinked, confused. “You don’t want to go?”
No, I wanted to disappear, and my face gave me away.
“Never mind,” he mumbled, rolling onto his back and pulling the sheet up to his chest.
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t tell him I was scared. Couldn’t tell him I wanted to go. That I wanted him. That I wanted to kiss him on our parents’ front porch and sleep in the same bed and not pretend anymore.
But I wasn’t there yet. I didn’t know how to be.
So instead, I lay there next to him, breathing his air, sharing his warmth, and slowly building the wall between us brick by brick.
It wasn’t the trip. It was what it meant. Being in that house, knowing I was keeping a secret so loud it echoed in every room. Being near him and not allowed to reach for him, not the way I did now. Not without risking everything.
I looked away, voice flat. “Let’s just… not make plans yet.”
I grabbed my phone to distract myself from the way his expression shifted. Tru didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. I could already feel the crack forming again between us.
We didn’t talk much the rest of the day, barely making eye contact. I caught up with him in the Dining Hall. Tru stood next to me in line for pizza. Our shoulders brushed for half a second, my whole body tensed, and I stepped away.
Tru didn’t react. Just studied me, cataloguing data.
Okay. So that’s how it’s gonna be.
Then Parker from my team trailed behind us with a tray full of fries, loud and obvious as usual.
“Yo, lovebirds. You two married yet?”
My blood ran cold. I laughed too loud, too fake, and slapped Tru’s back like we were just guys being guys. “Only in tax brackets.”
Parker laughed. Tru didn’t. He didn’t even crack a smile. Just picked at his food before walking off.
Later, back in the dorm, I was still crawling out of my skin. Tru was reading, curled up in bed like some fucking dream I couldn’t let myself touch. So I picked a fight about the trash, of all things.
“It’s your turn to take it out,” I said flatly.
“I did it yesterday.”
“Pretty sure that was last week.”
He didn’t rise to it, just gave me a tired, knowing look. “You’re mad because someone noticed?” he asked.
“No.” Yes. My chest hurt. My jaw clenched. “I’m mad because you act like this is something it’s not.”
He set the book down slowly. “I didn’t do or say anything.”
“You don’t have to,” I said, and my voice cracked just enough to humiliate me. “It’s all over your face.”
The quiet that followed was worse than yelling. Worse than anything. I grabbed my jacket and left before I could do something even more stupid. Like, tell him how much I wanted to believe he was right.
That was followed by two days of silence. It was the longest I’d gone without touching him since that first kiss at the party.
We were back in the car, driving across campus in our shared Honda, fast food wrappers littering the floor, dashboard lights flickering because I still hadn’t fixed the fuse.
Tru sat in the passenger seat, picking at an apple as if he didn’t care, but I knew him. Every shift of his body, every subtle glance. He was waiting for me to say something.
Fuck that. The silence stretched tight, ready to snap.
“So,” he finally said. “Are you gonna tell my mom you’re not coming, or should I?”
I tightened my grip on the wheel, knuckles white. “Just tell her I have stuff to do here.”
“She’ll know you’re lying.”
“Then tell her whatever you want,” I growled with rising irritation.
His sigh was long and quiet. Not angry, just disappointed. That made it worse.
“Why won’t you just say it, Dare?”
Because if I said it out loud, I’d have to mean it. I’d have to own it. I’d have to make it real.
I didn’t answer. Didn’t look at him. I wanted to, but I felt like a live wire wrapped in caution tape. Touch me too long, and everything burned.
The radio murmured some song I didn’t know the name of, but it mirrored my feelings—sad and defeated.
“I don’t want to go home with you if I have to pretend,” I said, barely audible.
He turned to me fully, voice strong. “Then don’t pretend.”
Simple. Clear. But nothing about this was simple. Because I was already pretending. Pretending I didn’t care. Pretending I didn’t wake up every day with the taste of his kiss still on my tongue. Pretending I wasn’t terrified of the second someone saw us and put a name to it.
I kept my eyes on the windshield and let the fog roll in. I didn’t say another word. Despite Tru sitting beside me, he might as well have been a million miles away. The divide between us had grown so wide I couldn’t even reach for him.
That night, as Tru lay in my arms, I apologized to him for my cowardice the best way I knew how—with my body, not words. I had to push myself over this invisible line… it was the only way to overcome my fear, the only way I wasn’t going to lose Tru.
He shifted closer, his forehead brushing my jaw, checking to make sure I was really there. Really staying. His fingers curled in the fabric of my shirt, gentle but certain, and something inside me split open at the trust in that one small touch.