Page 69 of Attractive Forces

“No. I mean the stuff with your dad and church and all that,” Jake says.

I almost like the fact Jake’s not going to let me get away with the easy joke. That he’s making me talk about this.

I stare at the ceiling. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay with it all,” I say finally.

Jake’s silent for a minute.

I risk a glance over at him, and he’s staring at me with such…care that more words tumble out of me without any filter. “This is what’s real to me. You and me. Everything else in my life feels pretend, you know? Like I’m just putting on an act.”

Jake’s dark eyes don’t leave mine. “The real Logan is pretty awesome,” he says. “So maybe you should stop pretending.”

I swallow, the noise loud in the silence between us. “I don’t know how to.”

It’s true. I know how to be Logan Madison: pastor’s son and rugby captain.

There’s no roadmap for how to be Logan Madison: gay guy.

“I can’t bear the thought of changing the way everyone looks at me,” I continue.

Fuck, when I say it like that, it’s slightly pathetic, isn’t it? That it’s partly my ego keeping me from being honest about my sexuality. I like the admiration I get from people at school and in this town. I don’t want anything to change that.

“I get it,” Jake says in a low voice. “When my dad got arrested, everyone started treating us differently. It sucked.”

I turn onto my side to see him properly. “How did you cope with it?” I ask quietly.

“We moved away.”

I huff a bitter laugh. “Yeah, not really an option for me right now.”

“I don’t know if moving away was the best option for us either,” Jake muses. “Sometimes it feels like we ran away rather than faced up to everything.”

Crazy, but my chest tightens with panic at the thought of Jake not having moved here, of him not being part of my life.

I reach out a hand and rest it lightly on his hip.

“If you’d never come here, you’d have never met me,” I say.

Jake throws me a half-smile. “Yeah, and that would mildly suck.”

“Just mildly,” I say.

We lie there in silence, both lost in our own heads.

“I really should study,” Jake says eventually, going to detangle himself from me.

“Okay,” I say. But then I lean forward to kiss him.

It’s just a gentle kiss. It’s nowhere near as urgent as the ones we were exchanging earlier. It’s soft and tender, and I can almost feel Jake melting under my lips as we continue to kiss sweetly.

His hands move to my chest, tracing a path along my muscles. I finally wrench my mouth away from his, but it’s only so I can kiss down his neck to his collarbone.

“I guess I can always study later,” Jake says with a gasp.

21

Jake

Okay, I’m seriously in trouble for this quiz.