Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Marco
I woke up to the sound of étienne breathing, deep and even.
Not the quiet, distant sound of someone sleeping on another couch or in another room, but wrapped around me. His body heat radiated against mine. The faint woodsy scent of his shampoo filled my lungs. I could reach out and run my fingers through his hair if I wanted to.
And I wanted to. God, I wanted to.
We’d fallen asleep on the couch again last night. Legs tangled together, his arm around me, his head on my chest. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Like we’d been doing this for years instead of days.
It had been two days since we’d first kissed. Stopped hiding from each other. Since everything had changed.
Seventeen years I’d been carrying this secret.
And in two days, étienne had figured out he was bisexual, confessed his feelings, and turned my entire world inside out.
The asymmetry of it terrified me.
What if this was just a novelty? What if the newness wore off, and he realized this wasn’t what he wanted? What if he woke up one day and decided that being with a man—being with me—was too complicated, too risky, too different from what he’d always known?
I’d survived years of hiding by never letting myself hope for more. By accepting that wanting men meant wanting in secret, in ways I could never act on.
And now I had more than I’d ever imagined possible.
Which meant I had so much more to lose.
étienne stirred beside me, his arm tightening around my waist. His eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, then found mine. A smile spread across his face—sleepy and genuine and so beautiful it made my chest hurt.
“Morning,” he murmured.
“Morning.”
“What time is it?”
I reached for my phone on the coffee table. “Almost eight.”
“We should probably move to an actual bed at some point.” He stretched, careful not to jostle my foot. “Your couch is comfortable, but I’m getting too old to sleep on it every night.”
The casual assumption that we’d keep sleeping together made warmth bloom in my chest. But it also brought up the question I’d been avoiding.
“My bed,” I said carefully. “Upstairs. Would you… I mean, if you wanted to…”
He propped himself up on one elbow and peered down at me. “Are you asking me to sleep in your bed?”
“Yes. If you want to. No pressure. I just—” I was fumbling this. “The couch was fine when we were just friends. But now I want… I’d like you to sleep with me. In my actual bed. If that’s okay.”
His smile widened. “I’d like that too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He leaned down and kissed me, soft and slow. “I was hoping you’d ask. Didn’t want to assume.”
Relief flooded through me. “So tonight—”
“Tonight, I’ll sleep in your bed. With you.” He kissed me again. “This is going to be a problem, though.”
“What is?”
“Keeping my hands off you when we’re in an actual bed together.” His voice had gone rough, and heat pooled in my groin.
“That’s a problem?”
“Might be. Depends on what you want.”
The question hung in the air between us.
What I wanted was everything: his hands on me, to know what it felt like to be with him, to stop holding back.
But the wanting came tangled with fear.
I’d had hookups before. Discreet encounters with men who needed the same anonymity I did. Functional. Physical. Nothing that required emotional vulnerability or morning-after conversations.
This was different. This was étienne, who mattered in ways those encounters never had.
What if I wasn’t good at this? What if sex with me wasn’t what he expected or liked? He’d been with women. But I’d be his first man.
The weight of that responsibility felt enormous.
“Hey.” étienne’s hand found my face, his thumb stroking my cheekbone. “Where’d you go?”
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
“This. Us.” I made myself meet his eyes. “I want… I want to be with you. Completely. But I’m—” Shit, this was hard to say. “What if I can’t satisfy you? What if you realize you don’t actually like being with a man?”
Understanding flickered across his face. “Marco. I’m not going to suddenly realize I don’t like men. Don’t like you. That’s not how this works.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know.” He said it with absolute certainty. “Because it’s not theoretical anymore. It’s you. And I want you so much I can barely think straight. No pun intended.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled. “Bad joke.”
“Terrible joke. But true.” He shifted closer. “And as for satisfying me—I have no idea what I’m doing. But we’ll figure it out. Together. No pressure. No expectations. Just us.”
Guilt chose that moment to surge up, familiar and suffocating. My mother’s voice in my head, the priest’s sermons, the teachings I’d absorbed since childhood. This was everything I’d been told to resist.
Being attracted to men was one thing. I’d learned to live with that, to compartmentalize it.
But this—being in a relationship, planning to sleep with him, actively choosing this—felt different. Felt like crossing a line I couldn’t uncross.
“What?” étienne asked, reading something in my expression.
“Nothing. Just—” I struggled with how to explain it. “My family. They’re Catholic. I was raised Catholic. And I’ve spent my whole life being told that this—” I gestured between us. “Is wrong. It’s a sin. And I’ve been able to ignore that when it was impersonal. But now…”
“Now it’s personal. Real.”
“Yeah.” My throat tightened. “And part of me keeps hearing my mother’s voice. The priest from our parish. Everyone who told me that being gay meant going to hell. That you could overcome it if you tried hard enough, prayed hard enough, chose to be different.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know.” It was the most honest answer I could give. “I don’t want to believe it. But years of conditioning are hard to shake. And being with you—actually being with you—makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong even though it’s the most right thing I’ve ever felt.”
étienne was quiet for a moment, his hand still resting against my face. “I’m not religious,” he said finally. “So I can’t really speak to the theological part. But I do know that caring about someone, wanting to be with them, choosing them—that can’t be a sin. I won’t believe that.”
“Your father’s homophobic,” I pointed out.
“He is. And I’m terrified of what he’d say if he knew about us. But that doesn’t mean he’s right.” étienne’s jaw set in that stubborn way I recognized. “My father being a bigot doesn’t change the fact that this—what we have—is good. Is real. Is worth fighting for.”
I wanted to silence the voices in my head that said this was wrong, that I was choosing sin over salvation, that I’d regret this.
But those voices had been with me for half my life. They didn’t disappear just because I wanted them to.
“I’m going to need time,” I said. “To work through all of that. The guilt. The conditioning. All of it.”
“I know. We have time.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “However long you need.”
We lay there in silence for a while, and gradually the guilt receded. Didn’t disappear but became manageable. Background noise instead of a klaxon.
“We should probably get up,” étienne said eventually. “I need to make us breakfast.”
“Practical.”
“One of us has to be.” He grinned and carefully extricated himself from the couch. “Come on. I’ll help you upstairs and into the shower.”
Our first shower had been fraught with tension and unspoken desire, both of us trying desperately to be clinical about something that felt anything but.
But as étienne helped me navigate the stairs and steadied me in the bathroom, there was an ease between us that hadn’t existed before.
He helped me with the waterproof boot cover without either of us overthinking the vulnerability of it.
Helped me undress without the avoidance of eye contact.
When I sported a half-chub at the brush of his hands on my hips and thighs, there was no awkwardness, just practical necessity and the luxury of not having to hide anymore.
He helped me into the shower and this time he didn’t flee, just stayed, talking to me while I washed under the warm spray.
Afterward, he helped me into fresh gym shorts and a T-shirt, then supported me back down the stairs to the kitchen.
Watching him move through the house—my house—it struck me how different he seemed. More relaxed. More open. The tension that had been in his shoulders for days was gone. He hummed while making coffee, smiled at nothing, moved with an easy grace that spoke of contentment.
This was étienne without the weight of confusion and hiding. This was him being himself.
And he was beautiful.
He caught me staring and raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing. Just… you seem happy.”
“I am happy.” He crossed back to me, leaned down to kiss me. “For the first time since I met you, everything makes sense. I know who I am. What I want. And that’s worth being happy about.”
“Even though we have to hide?”
“Even though.” His expression grew more serious. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. We have to be circumspect. But yes. Even with all the complications, I’m happy.”
The confidence in his voice steadied something in me. If he could be certain, maybe I could learn to be too.
After breakfast and the routine of managing my recovery, we ended up back on the couch. étienne had grabbed his tablet to review some game tape, and I had my laptop, catching up on team emails.
Typical. Domestic. Comfortable.
Except every few minutes, his hand would find mine. Or he’d lean over to show me something on his screen. Or I’d catch him looking at me with an expression that made my heart race.
This was what it could be like. What it was like. Being together.
“étienne.” I set my laptop aside.
“Yeah?”
“What are we?”
He looked up from his laptop. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I gestured vaguely. “We’ve admitted we’re attracted to each other. We’ve kissed. We’re sleeping together—literally, I mean. Tonight, we’ll share a bed. But we haven’t actually talked about what this is. What we are.”
He shut off his tablet, giving me his full attention. “What do you want us to be?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never—” I struggled with the words. “I’ve never been in a relationship before. Not a real one. So I don’t know what the rules are. What we’re supposed to call this.”
“There aren’t rules, Marco. We make our own.”
“But what are we? Boyfriends? Together? What do we tell ourselves, even if we can’t tell anyone else?”
Understanding dawned in his expression. “You want to define this?”
“I need to.” It came out more desperate than I’d intended. “I need to know what this is. What you are to me. What I am to you.”
He reached out and pulled me closer, until I was tucked against his side. “You’re my boyfriend. If you want to be. If that word works for you.”
Boyfriend. The word sent a thrill through me—part terror, part joy.
“I’ve never had a boyfriend before,” I said.
“Me neither.” He pressed a kiss to my temple. “We’re both figuring this out. But yeah. I want you to be my boyfriend. I want this to be real, even if we can’t tell anyone yet. Official, at least to ourselves.”
“Okay.” The word felt monumental. “Boyfriends. We’re boyfriends.”
“We are.” He sounded pleased. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah.” And despite all my fears, all my anxieties, I realized it was true. This house, the only place I could feel free and safe, was back to the way it had been, just with another person in it. “Yeah, it’s okay. It’s good.”
“Good.” He kissed me again, longer this time. “So, boyfriend, any other questions you want to clear up?”
I took a breath. “Your apartment. The landlord said at least another month, maybe six weeks.”
“Right.”
I wanted to trust that one month would be enough. That we could figure out how to be together while hiding, how to navigate the complications, how to protect what we had.
But experience had taught me that things rarely worked out the way you hoped they would.
Still. I had him now. Had this. Had one month—maybe more—of being together without the outside world intruding.
And maybe that would be enough time to build something strong enough to survive whatever came after.
“Okay,” I said. “One month. We’ll make the most of it.”