Caught in Blackwood Woods

My entire life, including the athletic scholarship that depends on it, is built on rigid routines, exact splits, and the certainty that I am strictly straight.

I stepped off the trail during a late-night run and entered Blackwood Pines, where varsity locker-room rumors proved true: a secluded, unlit hollow where closeted athletes went to lose control.

Curiosity kept me there a breath too long, and a massive, anonymous stranger slammed me against a pine trunk, stripping my discipline in the freezing dark.

I swore the hunger that answered him would stay a buried exception, never spoken of again.

Then, at the joint conference meet, I looked across the infield and recognized a dominant rival sprinter from those shadows.

He knows my secret, knows how my body answered him, and he has no intention of letting me pretend it never happened.