Chapter 14 #2
I got the zipper up, stomach twisted inside out.
“The thing is, I knew. I knew what this was. I knew what your life looked like, what was possible and what wasn’t.
I knew you weren’t promising me anything bigger, and I still…
” Jesus Christ. I laughed under my breath, mostly so I wouldn’t cry.
“None of that stopped me. Because Cole—he was right.”
Matt’s face changed, went tight and soft at once. “Stellan.”
“No, just. Okay.” I shook my head, then exhaled a laugh that hurt. “Turns out I was stupid enough after all. I fell for you.”
He inhaled sharply, shifted as if to move closer and then didn’t. “Don’t.”
“What?” I asked. “You don’t want to hear it?”
“Don’t call yourself stupid.” His voice held just a hint of steel—like Naomi in the car last night, trying to defend me from my own words. Funny. So funny it made pressure pool hot behind my eyes.
“I do feel pretty stupid,” I told Matt.
“You’re not.”
“Well, thanks, I guess.” I bent for my socks, head ducked low to breathe through the burn in my chest. “But I kept pretending. Acting like scraps would be enough.”
We dropped into a moment of silence that echoed all the way to the marrow of my bones. When he spoke again, his voice was hushed. “Is that what you think this is?”
I straightened. “What else am I supposed to think?”
He drew a breath. Said nothing.
Darkness clung to the ends of my thoughts. Symbolic, maybe, because we hadn’t turned on a single lamp. Just faint city lights and outlines and the two of us hiding even now, even here.
“I’m not asking for some huge public gesture,” I said, voice quiet as something in me pulled tight. “I’m not asking you to drag me in front of cameras and tell the world you’re gay. I get what your life is. The locker room, the road trips, the team thing, all of it. I do.”
He didn’t move a muscle, watching me in utter silence. Shocked or unsure, scared—who even knew.
“But I can’t do…” I forced a breath, then gestured vaguely between us—at the bed, the shadows, his body still bare in the night.
“I can’t do this. I can’t be half in your life and half not.
Four nights a week in your bed, and then your parents come to town and suddenly there’s no place for me at all.
That’s…” I shook my head. “I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter. I can’t pretend that I don’t matter.”
Something in him straightened. “I’m not ashamed of you, Stellan.”
It hit fast, sure, and I inhaled through the ache. “No? Then what is it?”
He dropped his gaze, and… answer enough. Or maybe it wasn’t an answer at all, just the only one he had. Fear, habit, timing. The closet sat so deeply in his spine that he no longer even felt its weight.
I could understand that. I just couldn’t live inside it.
“I…” My voice cracked. Get it together. I tried again. “I’ve spent so much of my life making myself easy and small, no trouble at all. I just—I can’t do it here, too. Not even for you.”
His expression flickered, something painful, quick and dark. “That’s not what I want from you.”
I wish I’d met you in a different life.
“I know,” I said.
True. I knew he wasn’t asking me to hide because he wanted me smaller. He just… lived in a world where making room for me would cost too much. I got that. I really did. But I couldn’t do it.
Not when I was in love with him.
He took a step toward me. “Stellan, please just—”
I stepped back.
One step, just that. But he stopped like he’d hit a wall.
“I’m not angry, Matt.” My voice came out low like a confession. “I’m hurt, yes. I feel a little stupid, sure. But I’m not angry. I understand, okay?”
Even in the dim glow of the city, I caught the way he pressed his lips together. A moment passed. “Then stay,” he said, quiet, no flourish to the words.
Fuck. I…
I can’t do this anymore.
I clung to it—a promise I’d made to myself. “You don’t get to say that,” I told him.
“Why not?”
Because I might. Because even now, a small, helpless part of me thought, ask me again. And then—what? I’d crawl back into his bed and let it stretch another week, another month, another set of half-lit, urgent nights until I blurred into whatever he had room for.
Because I loved him.
But that wasn’t enough.
“Because that’s not the life I want,” I said instead.
He flinched—tiny.
“I know you care,” I said. “About me. I know this means something to you, too. But I can’t keep going when I can already see how it ends.”
His focus was heavy on me, and God, I’d liked that from the start, the way he made me feel seen. “How does it end?” he asked, voice quiet.
“Like this.” I swallowed. “If I’m smart.”
For a moment, he just stared at me, breathing. Then he dragged a hand over his mouth and looked suddenly tired, miles removed from the guy who stepped onto the ice and made a whole building go loud. Just… a man. Stripped bare in the half-dark while the guy he’d fucked got dressed to leave him.
“Stellan, I—” A hard stop. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Yeah. Same.
“Nothing.” Breathing took work. “That’s kind of the point.”
He exhaled, harsh and long. Nodded.
I headed for the bedroom door. Then stopped on the threshold and turned—couldn’t leave without one last look at him, just one. Still by the bed, shadows cutting his body into pieces, mouth softer than usual.
I loved him.
But I couldn’t stay.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and—fuck. It almost felled me.
“Me too,” I said.
Neither of us moved, a second slipping by as we stared at each other.
God. I turned away and crossed out into the hallway, took my first step toward the elevator and the city, back into a life where I didn’t wear his T-shirt, where he didn’t make me coffee in the morning with his perfect body moving half-naked around his kitchen.
“Stellan.” Quiet, but it landed.
I closed my eyes and stopped, but didn’t turn around.
When he spoke again, his voice was almost too low to bridge the space between us. “I never meant to make you feel small.”
It twisted through me like the accidental cut of a knife. No anger, just sadness, maybe. Recognition.
“I know,” I said.
Then I left—before he could say anything else that might make it seem like a good idea to stay.