Chapter 25
BECK
I’m losing my mind.
Rephrase—I have lost my damn mind.
Not metaphorically. Not exaggerating for dramatic effect like Caty always accuses me of. I mean it in the very real, very existential sense that my entire world feels like it’s shifted six inches to the left, and my body hasn’t caught up yet.
Maybe it’s because I had sex for the first time in my life. Or maybe it’s because it was with Brody Miller. Or maybe it’s because somewhere between his dick in my ass and the way he held my face afterward, something inside me cracked open in a way that feels irreversible.
Whatever the reason, I’m freaking out.
More than a little.
Caty sits cross-legged on my dorm bed, eating pretzels and watching me pace like she’s observing a wildlife documentary on the mating habits of closeted jocks. When I finally admit what happened, not in explicit detail, but enough, she chokes on her pretzel.
“You had sex for the first time,” she wheezes, hitting her chest. “With Brody. And you’re both still alive to talk about it? This is huge.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mutter, rubbing my hands over my face.
Which is, of course, a green light for Caty to talk about nothing else.
“Sweetheart,” she says, leaning back against my pillows like she’s settling in to stay awhile. “Please don’t tell me you’re freaking out that you lost your v card to a guy. I thought we were past this. You sucked his dick. He sucked yours. You had his big sausage fingers—”
“Caty!”
“My point is that all of that was pretty fucking gay, Beck. I don’t see what there is to panic about now. Let’s move on to acceptance and telling your best friend all the dirty details.”
“It’s not that,” I groan. “I’ve accepted it, or whatever. I’m not about to come out and join a parade or anything, but it’s whatever. I just… I didn’t expect it to feel like that.”
“Like what? Did it hurt?”
“No, that’s the thing. I thought it would. I didn’t think it would be awful—”
“—because of the aforementioned fingers…”
I narrow my eyes in warning. “I can’t talk to you about this if you’re going to make fun of me. I don’t even know how to say the words, I’m not going to be able to handle any kind of humiliation.”
Caty drops her bag of pretzels and scoots to the end of the bed to wrap her arms around me from behind.
“I’m sorry. I use humor to make heavy things easier to talk about, but I promise you there is nothing but support and acceptance in my heart.
I am here to talk about anything and everything you want.
And while I’ll always be honest, I’ll never ever judge you or think less of you as a person. I love you, Lincoln Beckett.”
“I love you, Catherine Hunt.”
“I promise to keep my comments about Brody’s weirdly thick, meaty fingers to myself even though I couldn’t think of anything else when we were locked in that study room together.
It’s why I had to flee. I was going to start making inappropriate comments at any moment and knew I wouldn’t be able to control myself once I got going. ”
I can’t help but laugh at my best friend’s antics. “You don’t even want to know about what happened after you left,” I mutter.
“Oh, I absolutely do. In detail,” she says, pointing a sharply manicured finger at me. “But let’s not get distracted. I want to know why you have such big feelings about finally getting dicked down.”
At this point, I’m surprised my eyes haven’t gotten stuck in my head, because between Caty and Brody, it seems I’m constantly rolling them so far back I can see brain matter.
“I liked it. Um. A lot.”
“Yes, and…”
“That’s what I’m having a hard time with.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Me either, really. And yeah, I totally get that all that other stuff we did was pretty gay or whatever, but this… The fact that I liked it as much as I did… I mean, Caty—I saw fucking colors I didn’t know existed, okay?
I felt it in my hair follicles, all the way down past my toes.
And then he was looking in my eyes and kissing me and saying things… ”
“That’s amazing though. That your first time could be that beautiful.”
“I just didn’t think I was like that.”
“Like what?”
I don’t have the words to explain what I’m trying to say without sounding as disgusting as the voice in my head.
It’s not that I don’t know that my brain is twisted—I’m very aware.
But I can’t help putting myself in a new category, one my father would absolutely abhor and describe in the worst ways.
A category of men he finds distasteful, weak, emasculated and unworthy to be called real men.
I sigh deeply. “It’s one thing to enjoy the occasional blow job from a pretty guy that looks like a girl. It’s another thing entirely to like being called a good girl by a brick shithouse of a man whose giant dick makes me feel like I’m on another planet.”
“Ohh, I see,” Caty says, pursing her lips. “So you’re hung up on the bottom-shaming, heteronormative bullshit that big, strong jocks like to throw around in locker rooms.”
“It’s complicated, okay?”
“It’s really not though, Becky. You like men.
You’ve always known that. You just convinced yourself it didn’t count because you weren’t the one on your knees.
And now you’re having a meltdown because you took it up the ass and think that makes you extra gay or something, or a worse version of gay, or some other absolute ridiculous nonsense. ”
“Don’t call me that. And that’s not it. Or at least not all of it. Besides, those guys didn’t count.”
“How did it not count? Please explain it to me.”
“It just wasn’t the same,” I say weakly.
She rolls her eyes. “Obviously, it wasn’t the same. Because you didn’t care about them. But this isn’t some experiment you can shrug off. The way you two look at each other…” She fans herself with her hand. “It’s intense, babe.”
I bury my face in my hands. “Caty.”
She softens, then asks gently, “Did he hurt you?”
I look up sharply. “No.”
“Did you come?”
“Caty—”
“Well, I heard sometimes people don’t their first time.”
My ears burn. “It was good.”
Inside, the truth rolls through me with dizzying clarity.
It was more than good. It was incredible.
Mind-altering. I loved the way he held me, the way he told me exactly what to do and how to breathe, how careful he was when he was in control.
I loved how it hurt for just a moment and then felt better than anything in my entire life.
I loved how out of my head I got, how I couldn’t stop moaning or clinging to him, how he whispered praise in my ear like he meant every word.
What I’m most embarrassed about, and what I’ll never admit to Caty or anyone else, is that afterward, when the adrenaline dropped out from under me and I felt soft and open and ruined in the best possible way, I couldn’t look him in the eyes.
Not because I was ashamed.
But because I knew one glance at those stupid sky-blue eyes would make me cry.
And that’s the last thing I need right now.
I watch Brody constantly, my gaze snapping toward him every time he moves, but I manage to avoid being alone with him. Or being close enough to smell his shampoo. Or making prolonged eye contact, which was hard at first, but he seems to have stopped trying so hard.
He seems down, and I know it’s my fault. There’s just nothing I can do about it. All I’d do is make it worse, because I’m not ready to admit how he made me feel.
I’m glad he seems to have found good friends in Jay and Aaron.
They’ve been sticking close to him at practices, conditioning, and in the dining hall.
Hell, even if I wanted to be alone with Brody, I’m not sure those two would let me.
I wonder what he’s told them. Why they’ve suddenly turned into overbearing bodyguards.
At practices, I keep things professional.
I pair Brody with Matt Young for drills, claiming that wrestling someone a weight class up will prep them both for West Virginia’s lineup.
It’s not a total lie. Matt is a strong grappler with explosive moves and tough-to-break holds.
Brody doesn’t balk at the switch. He doesn’t blink or argue or have any reaction at all.
Meanwhile, I focus on the underclassmen, barking corrections and forcing my attention anywhere but on the way Brody moves.
If I look too long, the memories punch back with brutal clarity.
The way he kissed me afterward, slow and deep, and the way he whispered that I was good, so good, as if he’d been waiting forever to be with me like that and I’d surpassed all of his expectations.
And I can’t handle that right now.
Not when everything inside me feels so raw.
Our first dual away from home is in Lincoln, Nebraska. It also happens to be against the school that Brody transferred from. I can tell he’s nervous, but I can’t bring myself to say anything about it.
Just before we get on the flight, Coach McCoy hands us each a packet with information about our prospective opponents, which I already know by heart, as well as a list of room assignments.
Naturally, as the only two in our weight class, Brody and I are roomed together.
I spend the entire charter flight pointedly staring out the window or at Coach McCoy’s bald spot, refusing to risk eye contact with Brody.
Every time I consider asking Coach for a room reassignment, my brain conjures the question he’ll inevitably ask, and I can’t come up with a solid reason why my apparent dislike of Brody Miller is enough to make Coach change the entire room assignment.
So, I say nothing and dread every mile that slips by.
It's the shortest flight of my life, and before I know it we’re dragging our bags down a long hotel hallway, branching off as we find our rooms. I feel like I’m being marched to my death, or worse, to give a speech on accepting your sexuality to a group of millions of disapproving parents who all have my father’s judgmental eyes.