Chapter 20
WEST
It takes a second to realize what I said, but before I can freak out, Anthony laughs and flips his long hair back from his face. “Glad you think so.”
I want to sink into the floor and never surface, but Anthony just picks up the Bosu ball and carries it over to his closet like nothing weird just happened.
“How did you learn to do that?” I ask as he disappears into his closet. “Like what made you think, you know what would be more fun than using my feet to balance on the death ball? Doing it on one hand!”
“I couldn’t let Hazen and Connor be the only ones who could do it,” he says as he emerges from the closet. “They need to be humbled every now and then to keep their egos in check. And I like a challenge, so when someone tells me I can’t do something, that just makes me want to do it even more.”
“Are the twins why you do dips in your room?” I ask as he crosses over to the dip bars, which look a lot like waist-high inverted U’s that are a few feet apart and held up by a base. “Keeping the triceps in shape for all the handstands you’re doing to keep them humble?”
He stops next to the bars, and his playful grin makes my stomach wobble in the most inconvenient way. “That would be a good reason to do dips, but that’s not why I have this.”
“Is it for keeping the guns in tank top shape?” I wave at his arms. “Because you’re definitely doing that.”
He steps between the two bars and tosses me a cocky smirk that’s going to be the death of me. “Sort of.”
Before I can ask what he means, he grips the bars and pulls himself up into a handstand.
“Holy shit,” I exclaim as he does a move where it looks like he’s walking down an imaginary set of steps until he’s holding himself at a perfect ninety-degree angle, like he’s planking in midair.
The amount of core and arm strength needed to pull off a move like that is unreal, and I’m in utter awe as he “walks” back up the staircase so he’s once again in a handstand, then he carefully lowers his feet back to the floor.
“I mostly stick to stuff like that.” He pushes his long hair back from his face with a casual swipe of his hand.
“I prefer full-body work over isolation. It’s more efficient.
” He picks up the bars and carries them over to his closet.
“I’d show you more, but I was just finishing a workout when I heard Derek being a dumbass in the hall, and I can’t pull off my more impressive moves right now. ”
“What the fuck do you call what you just did?” I ask incredulously. “You don’t consider that impressive?”
He comes out of his closet and closes the door behind him. “Not compared to what else I can do.”
I sit back against the couch and shake my head. “You’re not even exaggerating, are you?”
He drops onto the cushion next to me, close enough that our legs are only about an inch apart. “Nope.”
“I’m so lucky I don’t have any delusions about what I’m capable of,” I say as he picks his tablet up off the coffee table. “And I’ve already come to terms with never being able to do even half the stuff you can, otherwise I’d feel very inadequate and inferior right now.”
He chuckles and turns on his tablet. “Sounds like someone took my advice about it being better to know your limits than it is to push yourself to the point of failure.”
“It was solid advice,” I say as he tosses me a smile that makes my insides feel funny.
We lock eyes for a few beats, and there’s a softness to his gaze that I’m not expecting, and I’m not even sure it’s really there.
It’s no secret that I’m a mess over everything that’s happened, but I really need to get my act together and stop projecting my issues onto Anthony.
I don’t exactly have a lot of friends right now, and I really don’t need to be scaring one of them off because I can’t get control of the stupid crush I have on him.
“For tonight,” he starts, switching into homework mode. “I was thinking it would be best if we nailed down the points we want to make during our presentation and figure out what format we want to present in. Then we can focus on the details later. How does that sound?”
“That sounds good,” I say, happy to fall in line while he takes the lead.
A little niggle of awareness prickles at my brain, and it takes way too long to realize that I forgot something pretty important. “Oh my fucking god,” I mutter and lift my eyes to the ceiling in exasperation.
“What?”
“I’m such a moron,” I say on a frustrated groan. “I left my stuff in my room. I had a feeling I was missing something when I left to come over here, but it never occurred to me to bring my laptop or textbook or even a damn notebook.”
“Strike one,” he says in a low voice, and all the negative things I was just thinking and feeling about myself melt away in an instant.
“I can take notes and send them to you when we’re done,” he says, still looking at me intently, like he’s daring me to say something bad about myself to get another strike. “It’s not a big deal.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Remember what I said about offering things and meaning it?”
I nod, and my cheeks flush hot with a blush.
He shifts closer and holds the tablet at an angle so I can see the screen. The move puts him right next to me, and I do my best to ignore the crackles of electricity that detonate on my skin as the side of his body presses against mine.
“I was looking through one of my old communications textbooks,” he says, switching us right back into homework mode. “And I found a few things in it that we can apply to our topic.”
I shift my thoughts off how warm and strong Anthony feels next to me and try to focus on what he’s saying.
It’s time to buckle down and get some work done, then I can go back to my room and spin in circles for hours while I replay all the embarrassing things I’ve done tonight.
“I think we’ve got it,” Anthony says as he lays his tablet on the coffee table. “How do you feel about stopping here for the night?”
“I feel pretty good about it.” I lean back against the couch and lift my arms over my head in a deep stretch. “How long were we working for?”
He checks his phone. “Almost two hours.”
I huff out a laugh.
“What?” he asks, shooting me an amused look.
“It’s nothing,” I tell him. “It’s just funny because time is weird for me.”
He arches a brow in question.
“I just mean that sometimes my time sense is bang on, and other times, I barely know what year it is.” I shrug, fully aware of how crazy I sound.
“It’s like when I’m into something or I’m having fun, hours can pass, and I’ll have no idea until I finally stop.
Then other times I’m like a human clock and can keep track of passing time down to the minute without counting or even trying. ”
“Do you do that thing where you can’t remember where you put your phone or your earbuds or keys, but you can remember exactly where something random is, like a blue paperclip or a specific receipt from a year ago?”
“Yes!” I nod emphatically. “All the freaking time. Are you like that too?”
“Not me, but the twins are.” He gives me an appraising look.
“What?” I ask. “That’s the face of a man who has a question but isn’t sure if he should ask it.”
“You’re not wrong,” he says. “I have no idea if I should ask what I’m thinking because I don’t want to overstep.”
I laugh. “I think we’re past overstepping considering I’ve almost had multiple nervous breakdowns in front of you in the last few days, and I’ve overshared enough for the both of us. You can ask or say whatever you want.”
Something dark flickers in his expression, but it’s gone a second later.
“Have you ever been tested for ADHD?” His tone isn’t blunt, but it isn’t careful either. “The twins were both diagnosed when they were kids, and it sounds like you struggle with a lot of the same things they do.”
I shake my head and toy with the strings of my hoodie.
“Has anyone ever mentioned it before?”
“A few times.” I pull one of the strings almost all the way through the hood, then do the same with the other one. “I looked into it a few years ago when Damon mentioned that one of his sisters was being assessed, and I fit pretty much all the diagnostic criteria, but…”
“But?” he prompts when I trail off.
“There are certain things that aren’t acceptable in my family,” I say, choosing my words carefully.
I might not always agree with my family, and I don’t always like them, but I love them.
And I respect my parents, even if they aren’t the greatest parents to me.
“One of those is admitting failure, and to them, having any sort of mental health condition or disorder is a failure.”
“You know you can’t control how your brain is wired, right? Neurodivergence isn’t something you catch, it’s how you’re born,” he says in a gentle tone that soothes something deep inside me.
“I know.” I stop yanking on my hoodie strings so I don’t accidentally strangle myself and switch to fiddling with the little hard bits on the ends of them. “But being born a certain way isn’t an excuse for my family,” I say before I can stop myself.
He tilts his head to the side, his question clear.
“Just the whole ‘being born a boy when everyone was expecting a girl’ thing,” I say hastily.
He gives me a long, piercing look, his blue eyes searching mine, and I have to shove my hands under my thighs so I not only stop fidgeting, but so I don’t squirm under his scrutiny.
Anthony doesn’t just have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen on anyone; he also has an incredibly intense stare that feels like he can read your every thought like it’s written on your forehead in Sharpie. And right now, it feels like he’s reading all of my deepest, darkest secrets.
“What else?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say quickly.
He tilts his head to the side and keeps studying me for a few beats. “There’s something else,” he says definitively.
I drop my gaze to the floor.
He isn’t wrong, but I can’t tell him the truth without revealing another one of my biggest secrets, and that secret could ruin the tentative friendship we’re building.
“Tell me,” he says in a low, slightly raspy voice that sends a little zing of awareness through me, and I physically jerk like he poked me with a live wire.
That voice sounded exactly like Mr. X, but there’s no way Anthony and X are the same person.
That would just be insane.
It’s weird, but I haven’t spent much time thinking about who Mr. X is. Even after everything we’ve done and all I’ve learned about myself, it’s almost like my brain can’t reconcile that Mr. X exists as a person outside of my phone or when he sneaks into my room.
That separation is most likely the only reason I haven’t been obsessively trying to figure out who he is, and why I haven’t been freaking out over the situation when I probably should.
It’s like large-scale compartmentalization, and right now, it’s the only thing keeping me from losing my marbles and adding one more thing to the pile of crap I’m dealing with.
The truth is that in my family, being queer isn’t okay, but it’s totally fine as long as it’s other people who are queer.
It’s hard to explain, but while my family isn’t homophobic or biphobic per se, they hold bigoted views, and that’s one of the main reasons I’ve kept my bi-curiosity, and now my bisexuality, under such tight wraps.
With my family, and especially my parents, everything boils down to image and reputation, and the illusion of perfection. Being queer isn’t wrong because of the whole queer aspect; it’s because it makes you different, and ultimately, it makes your life harder.
It’s fucked up, and it makes them sound awful, but my parents aren’t bad people, and they wouldn’t hate me or disown me or even treat me differently if I ever came out to them. It would just be one more thing to add to the list of why I’m such a disappointment and why I don’t fit in with them.
“West,” Anthony says softly. “Look at me.”
There’s a quiet authority to his voice that I can’t ignore, and I slowly lift my eyes to his.
“What else?” he asks again.
I shake my head. I can’t just blurt out that I’m into guys, not without him figuring out the truth.
“I think I know what it is,” he says in that same quiet voice from before. “You’re not entirely straight, are you?”
His words hit me like a punch to the gut, and I once again have the ridiculous urge to run away, like when I was in the hall with Derek.
“And I know you’re into me,” he continues, his intense eyes never leaving mine.
The world around me narrows as a mix of snow and static shimmers around the edges of my vision, and it feels like someone just dumped a bucket of ice water over my head as his words fully register.
“You do?” I croak stupidly. He knows?
The corners of his lips lift in a smile. “Did you think you were being subtle?”
Heat floods my system so quickly I legit get lightheaded, and I have no idea if it’s from humiliation, shock, or shame. Probably a combination of all three.
“I have to go,” I mumble as my flight instinct kicks in, and I jump to my feet.
Getting up so quickly after having such a strong physical reaction to him calling me out was a stupid thing to do, and I sway on my feet as the world around me spins and static explodes in my vision.
Strong hands grip my arms and hold me steady until my dizzy spell passes.
“I’m sorry,” I say, or more accurately, mumble when the world goes mostly normal again.
He lets go of my arms. “Strike one”
“Huh?” I lift my eyes to his. He’s not mad I’ve been creeping on him this entire time?
“Remember what I said about apologizing for things that don’t need an apology?”
“But…”
“But?” he prompts when I don’t continue.
“But that deserves an apology,” I say, my brain still playing catch-up and trying to make sense of our conversation.
“Why?” he asks, and instead of looking exasperated or pissed, he looks amused.
“Because it’s not cool to creep on your frat brother?” I say stupidly.
“What if your frat brother was creeping on you too?” he asks with one of his signature smirk-smiles, and I just blink at him like a dumbass.
“You were?” I finally ask, still completely dumbfounded.
He nods, and he’s still looking at me like he finds me adorable instead of aggravating. “You didn’t notice?”
“You mean the jokes and comments and all that were real?” I ask. “Like, that wasn’t just you fucking with me?”
“I mean, I was definitely fucking with you,” he says with a grin. “But I wasn’t just fucking with you.”
I stare at him for a few beats. This can’t be real, can it? There’s no way Anthony is actually into me.
“Are you being serious?” I ask softly.
He nods and takes a half step closer, and it’s like I forget how to breathe when he gently grips my chin with his thumb and forefinger and tilts my face up so I’m looking right at him.
That move is familiar, and something in my mind clicks, like a veil has been lifted, as I stare into his beautiful eyes.
I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to see it, but there’s no way I can deny it anymore.
Anthony and Mr. X are the same person.