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TWELVE

JAXON

It seemed to me I knew two people in that gorgeous body of his, two souls that clashed against each other at every turn. I could almost see him hesitating at every fork in the road, being tugged this way and that.

Elio spent his spare hours with me. With little planning, we got our workouts synchronized. When people were around, the difference was striking. To me, at least, it was clear that Elio couldn’t drag himself to show even friendliness in case someone suspected there was more. He never said it, but he always went out of his way to make up for it. Guilt-driven sex was daring and risky, and it turned me on more than it should have.

There was something enchanting about being someone’s dirty secret. I often wondered if I had the same fucked-up streak as Ronan, but maybe I was more like the women in his hotel room. Take me. Hide me away. Use me for your pleasure. Give me nothing in return. The more I was led on, the more I enjoyed the moments of sinful delight after the sun went down.

He was trying, I knew. He showered me with kisses, he brought me little presents, and he nearly cried when he found his old hoodie in my wardrobe. “I just couldn’t bring myself to throw it away,” I admitted. And when he dared to ask about the bracelets with engraved coordinates of Still Water Cove, I had to tell him I had thrown them away for not being able to look at them without shame.

The night that followed was world-shattering. Who knew sad sex could rock you so profoundly? The underlying anger drove us to bed-ruining madness, and we savored those moments like we would soon run out. Maybe I knew we would. Maybe I knew that every time he ripped my clothes off and shoved me against the wall and fucked me until I was a brain-dead mess of pleasure and hormones, we were a step closer to the breaking point.

It was a whole other game we played, stretching the rubber string and wondering if now would be the moment it snapped.

Sometimes, I caught him looking at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. Like maybe he wanted to love me properly. Like maybe, for a second, he could pull it off.

And every time, I’d pretend I didn’t notice, even though I was desperate to.

But those moments never lasted.

The second laughter echoed down the hallway, he stiffened. His gaze snapped away, and the guy who kissed me until my lips bled the night before would act like I didn’t exist. He would hurry to conceal this reaction, but it didn’t erase the sting.

I didn’t have to be a genius to know I was the itch he couldn’t scratch in daylight.

Some nights, he stayed with me. Other nights, he sneaked out of my room like he was about to choke on the guilt. I let him. I let him every time.

I didn’t want to admit it, but the dance, the secrecy, the stolen scraps of affection—it got me high.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted Elio or if I wanted the risk.

And maybe he wasn’t sure, either.

Once, after his practice, I stalked into his locker room when everyone else had gone, and we ended up pressed against the lockers, the metal cold against my back, Elio’s hand in my hair, breathing me in like I was oxygen. I moaned his name—and he flinched, terrified someone might hear.

He covered it up by biting me until I winced.

That was our story. Shame and pleasure. Fear and lust. Love, if it even was love, warped into something almost cruel.

And maybe I liked it like that.

I wasn’t sure if that scared me more than anything else.

Once, I told him he couldn’t even look at me when one of his teammates walked into the gym. He grabbed me by the hoodie and slammed me against the locker in the gym, briefly evoking a memory of an evening two years ago, and my heart dropped into my stomach. But he kissed me so hard that my knees buckled. It was raw and messy, teeth biting my lip, tongue following and filling my mouth, bodies pressed until I couldn’t breathe.

He brought me a stupid little book once—some beat-up copy of Neruda poetry he said he’d found in a secondhand store.

“This reminded me of you,” he muttered, not looking at me.

I flipped it open. The first line was, I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees .

I didn’t know whether to kiss him or burn the book. It now sat on my desk, untouched.

The worst part was how good he could be when he tried.

When it was just us, locked behind my door, knees tangled and mouths desperate, he was the guy I used to dream about. The one who sat with me under the stars at Still Water Cove and promised we’d always be close. The one whose hoodie I wore to bed and the one who whispered that he liked how I smelled.

But once the morning came, so did the denial.

The excuses.

The silence.

“I don’t know where I’m going,” he told me once, right after fucking me so hard I couldn’t speak for a full minute.

I said nothing. Because if I said what I wanted to say, I’d fall apart. And if I fell apart, I’d never stop.

He told me the whole miserable story of his friendship with Easton. He told me, although he’d had a couple of beers before unzipping his mouth at last, how he had felt betrayed when Easton was outed. “Am I not the most selfish piece of shit you know, Jax?” he’d asked in a tone that begged to be agreed with. And all I could think was, Yeah, but I love you anyway. And the thought scared me more than anything.

And maybe that was the problem.

I loved him anyway.

I loved him despite the wreckage he left in his wake, despite the bruises on my pride, despite the shame he threw at me like he was trying to infect me with it. Every time he hurt me, I swallowed it down like it was the cost of doing business with him. Like I deserved it somehow for coming back. For staying. For wanting.

But lately, it wasn’t enough. The little gifts, the late-night kisses, the desperate confessions at two in the morning—they didn’t patch the hole he left every time he flinched away from me when the sun came up.

What was I even doing?

I wasn’t some innocent kid who didn’t know better. I’d spent enough time in locker rooms, in frat houses, in the dark corners of too many parties to know this dance inside and out. But I kept doing it with him, like the pain tasted sweeter because it came from Elio.

Was I really that pathetic?

Or worse—was I like him? Did I like the poison? The denial? The adrenaline of having to sneak out the back door before anyone saw? Maybe I did. Maybe I’d been feeding off this slow destruction the whole time, convincing myself that wanting him was worth drowning for.

But I was starting to choke.

I could feel it, tight around my throat, every time he kissed me like he needed me, only to look through me the next day like I was nothing. Like I was a mistake he kept making on purpose.

And the worst part?

I think he wanted me to stay.

I think he wanted me to suffer right alongside him.

And God help me, I kept letting him.

It was easier when it was just sex. When it was friction and heat and sweat, when I could pretend I didn’t notice the way he wouldn’t meet my eyes afterward. When he could still blame the alcohol, or the stress, or some kind of accident of circumstance.

But we weren’t teenagers sneaking vodka out of kitchen cabinets anymore.

He knew what he was doing. I knew what he was doing.

And I knew I was complicit.

The way he’d say my name when we were alone, soft, fragile, like it meant something, like it always meant something, made me ache.

The way he’d create distance between us the second someone walked outside my door, or even worse, pretend like I was the one chasing him when he had been the one to knock on the door, made me want to tear something apart.

And yet, I stayed. Like a goddamn moth circling a flame I knew would burn me alive.

I remembered a night last week. I was half-asleep in his bed, tangled in his arms, when he whispered, “I wish it could be different.”

It wasn’t an apology.

It wasn’t a promise.

It was a warning.

He didn’t even know he was saying it. I think he thought I was already asleep. I almost wished I had been.

Because if I hadn’t heard it, maybe I could keep pretending. Maybe I could keep lying to myself that I wasn’t the only one falling.

When Mom called me one morning before I had to run to lectures, she asked me how I was. The words choked in my throat. What was I supposed to tell her? “I’ve got great news. The boy who broke my nose is finally letting me worship his body in all its glory. I don’t sleep at night because he drives me mad with crazed sex, and I know it’s going nowhere because it has always been going nowhere. I know that childhood fantasies had no place in adult life, but I’m still holding on to this one. Are you happy for me?” So I said I was fine, just really busy, and Mom accepted it.

“We saw Ronan yesterday,” she said.

My stomach felt heavy like I’d swallowed a rock. “Oh yeah?”

Mom bit back the words she had used on several occasions before. Aren’t you going to ask how he is? But she kept her tone even. “He had Misha over the weekend. We went to the zoo. You should see her, Jaxon. She’s such a joyful child.”

Right. Because Ronan did so much to make Misha’s life all rosy and bubbly. “I’m glad she is.”

“And your new team? Have they accepted you?” Mom asked. She had done a cursory read-up on the mechanics of football when Ronan’s career had taken off. It was as far from her sphere of interest as something could possibly be, but she never missed a chance to ask a question.

“I mean…yeah,” I said, wondering if I should just tell her that Ronan would forever cast his shadow over my life and work. “They’re a good bunch.”

“And are you seeing anyone special?” Mom asked.

“No,” I said, firing the word like a cannonball.

When I saw Elio later that day, he was worn-out and distant. He wasn’t uninterested in me, but he was preoccupied. And it wasn’t long before he told me that he had spent weeks in this stupid balancing act his coaches had created within the team. He was bothered by the issue of Easton. “I can’t fix it,” he told me. “They’ll make us vote, and if I win, it’ll just pull us further apart. He won’t forgive me for how I’d behaved.”

Yet if Elio gave up the competition, his prospects would take a hit, and there was no guarantee his friendship would be mended.

I didn’t mean for it to happen that night.

We were in my room. The blinds were half-shut, letting slants of streetlight stripe the floor. Elio sat on the edge of my bed, staring at his hands like they might have the answers he couldn’t find anywhere else.

He’d shown up unannounced. He always did. And I always let him.

“I thought you had early practice tomorrow,” I said quietly.

He shrugged without looking at me. “I’ll manage.”

We both knew he wouldn’t. He’d be dead on his feet, and someone on the team would notice and someone would wonder, and he’d spend the rest of the day punishing me for it.

I sat next to him, close but not touching. I don’t know why, but I didn’t reach for him this time.

And for the first time in a long while, he didn’t reach for me, either.

He rubbed at his mouth like he was trying to scrub away the words building behind it. “Jax…” His voice cracked halfway through. “I don’t…I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

I turned my head to him, swallowing the lump in my throat. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

He finally looked at me. “Then why can’t I just…why can’t I do this right?”

And just like that, I knew. He wasn’t talking about the team. He wasn’t talking about Easton. He was talking about us. About the thing we’d been pretending wasn’t a thing for far too long.

I opened my mouth, but I didn’t have an answer.

“I want to,” he said, softer, like he was telling me a secret. “I swear to God, I want to.” His lip trembled, and for a second, he looked like that kid I’d loved by the lake. “But every time it gets too real, I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I?—”

I cut him off gently. “I know.” And I did.

God, I knew.

I reached for his hand, and this time, he let me. Our fingers laced together like muscle memory. But it felt like I was holding something fragile, already half-broken.

“You don’t have to say it,” he whispered.

But I did.

“I can’t keep doing this.” I said it so softly I wasn’t sure he heard it.

He blinked, eyes glassy, pulling back slightly like I’d slapped him. “What?”

“I can’t keep being the thing you hide from the world,” I said, voice steady even as everything inside me cracked. “I can’t be the secret you hate needing.”

His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

I pressed on because if I stopped now, I never would again. “I wanted this for so long, Elio.” His breath hitched. “But not like this. Not the way I need it to be.”

Silence. Heavy and suffocating.

And then, “Jax,” he whispered, so broken it made me flinch. “Please.”

I smiled, small and ruined. “I’m so tired of begging the universe to bring you here.”

He grabbed at my wrist, holding on like I was already leaving. Maybe I was.

Elio’s breath shuddered out of him. He looked down, like if he didn’t meet my gaze, this wouldn’t be real. Like maybe if he closed his eyes, we’d be back in my bed tomorrow, waiting for him to pull me under again.

But I wouldn’t be.

Not this time.

Elio nodded, slow and numb, like his body was moving before his mind could catch up. He stood without a word, crossed the room in three silent steps, and slipped out the door. He didn’t even close it all the way. Just left it ajar like he might come back. Like maybe he couldn’t bear to shut it. And I sat there, staring at the gap, knowing he wouldn’t.