Wind rushed around me, making me feel alive. My heart thudded, felt as if it were running laps in my chest, fueled by nothing but pure adrenaline. I tightened my hold with both my arms and legs around West as he took a corner, both of us leaning into it on the bike. There was almost nothing like this feeling. I rode myself, loved it, but being there, riding with him, holding on to him…
I never thought I would have someone. I never thought I’d have this —love and a relationship, spending an afternoon out on a motorcycle like other couples did all the time.
It was easy right then to tell myself it would always be like this—that we could spend our days off together, that life would be simple, that love would make it so. But deep down I knew that wasn’t true. Soon I’d have to go back to Georgia. I had a commercial to shoot and endorsement commitments to fulfill. Even though it was now the off-season, I couldn’t just let everything go and spend all my time with West. Plus, he would be back and forth between California and DC anyway, and I was in the closet, and— Fuck. I hadn’t wanted to go there today. For once, I just wanted to enjoy the time we had.
So I did my best to lose myself in it, in the feel of West in my arms and the melody of the bike and the rhythmic twists and turns that somehow managed to relax me.
Eventually, I began to recognize the scenery and knew he was taking us back to his house. It wasn’t as if we could risk going anywhere else and being seen together.
West made his way back to his street, then down his driveway and into the garage. When it was closed behind us, I pulled my leg over the bike and my helmet off just as West removed his. I leaned in and pressed our lips together. “That was fucking fantastic. My legs feel wobbly. It’s been a while since I’ve ridden.”
“Yeah, me too. Feels like there’s always something else that needs to be done.” West dismounted the bike. We put the gear away, and then he unlocked the door leading to the kitchen.
We hadn’t taken much time to talk about what we were going to do. After sex and what we’d admitted to each other earlier, we’d gone to sleep. West had woken me with a healthy breakfast and coffee, then asked if I wanted to go for a ride. I figured it was a good distraction for us both, but I was also going a little crazy and was now struggling to turn off the rapid-fire questions shooting around inside my head. What were we gonna do? Where did we go from here? Was West okay with keeping our relationship in the closet? How could we have any kind of future together?
“Hey,” he said softly, making me realize I’d spaced out. West was staring at me with his forehead creased in concern. “What’s going on in that head of yours?” He reached out and cupped my cheek. I couldn’t help leaning into his touch, into him. I struggled to wrap my brain around the fact that this had even happened. How had we gotten here in a matter of…well, it’d been five months since West had sat beside me in that hotel bar, but still.
“Everything.” It was strange, the vulnerability I allowed myself with him, but it didn’t make me feel weak. I wrapped my arms around him, put my head on his shoulder, and just breathed in his masculine scent. God, I wanted this. Now that I had it, I didn’t know how I would ever live without it or him. “How are we going to do this? Do you even want to do this? Is it too much? You’re out, and I’m—Christ, I’m asking you to hide for me, and I know how you feel about that.” It was important to West to be vocal and unapologetically himself and, well, gay. There were some things he hid from the world, like how deeply he felt things, but his sexuality was something he refused to hide.
West’s hands found their way to my hips, and he pushed me back just enough so we could look at each other. “I’ve never seen this side of you before. You’re a worrier.”
“Yes. Yes I am.” I shook my head, but I was smiling. “But only when it’s something that matters.” West mattered too much.
He brushed his thumb under my shirt, against my bare skin. “We’ll figure it out. We don’t have to have all the answers today. Hell, it’d be impossible to have them all today, and even when we think we have it sorted, things will change.”
“This isn’t helping,” I teased.
“How long can you stay?”
“I’ll have to make something up to tell Mom and Elias, but I can stay through the week. When do you go back to DC?”
“Sunday evening. I do have some work to do here, of course, but I’d like you to stay. I’m not nearly done with you yet.” He leaned in, ran his tongue down the column of my neck, then bit gently.
“Fuck.” My knees buckled. He turned me into a puddle of want every time he touched me.
“Oh, Bashful, I love the way you come undone for me.” He kissed his way around my neck before pulling back.
“Are you going to call me that forever?”
“I was planning on it. Do you have a problem with it?” I grinned but didn’t answer, and he added, “I didn’t think so.”
“You’re such a cocky asshole.”
“What does that say about you since you like me so much? No, you love me.”
I rolled my eyes, but damned if I wasn’t laughing. Right then, standing in West’s kitchen with him, I could almost make myself believe he was all that mattered, that none of the other stuff could touch us. Somehow, out of all the people in the world, we’d found each other, and we’d fallen in love.
Unfortunately, life was never that simple.
We ended up lying on the couch together, watching a movie. I was behind him on my side, with my arm around him. It was a wide couch but still a tight fit, and I liked it that way. I liked being close to him, feeling him against me.
“What else do you like?” I asked when the movie was over. I wanted to know everything about him, all the big and little things.
“As in television? I’m a huge fan of documentaries. I love learning new things. I like true-crime as well.”
“What else?” I fingered a lock of his hair. “Anything, not just TV stuff.”
“Hmm…well, you know a lot already. I went to law school and also have a poli-sci degree. I like motorcycles, sex, sexy football players, having sex with sexy football players.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“Stop pretending to be scandalized. I can feel your dick getting hard against my leg.”
“You have that effect on me, but…tell me more. I want to know everything.”
The edges of his eyes crinkled slightly, and I knew he could tell what I was asking. I wanted to know the things about him no one else did. I wanted to prove to myself that this could be real. “You know me, Ans. You know me better than anyone. It doesn’t matter how many months it’s been or how little we see each other. The things I’ve told you, I don’t say them easily.”
I felt silly then, for doubting, for needing to prove something to myself. “I know. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I like that you’re obsessed with me.”
“Hey, fuck off. You’re the stalker and the one who’s obsessed with me.”
He shrugged. “If the shoe fits.” Then he paused a beat, two, three. “I want to make the world a better place. That might sound naive or childish, to think that way, to feel like I have that much power or like I’m that important, but it’s how I feel. I know I’ve said that to you before, but really, it’s all I’ve ever cared about. I want to make people’s lives better, and I thought I was doing that, but most of the time all I’m doing is running in circles and not getting shit done.”
“You make my life better.”
“My cheesy little football player.” He rolled over, and I moved with him until he lay on top of me.
“Little?” I thrust against him.
“Definitely not little. You’re big everywhere, but you’re still cheesy.”
“What would you do? If you weren’t a senator, I mean. Be a lawyer?”
“I don’t know…maybe. Or teach. I like when I have speaking engagements. Something that makes an impact.”
“Elias would love you. He’s always been into politics.”
West nodded. “So he told me.”
Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten they’d met, that they’d spoken. Yet my brother, the most important person in my world, didn’t know who West was to me.
“You want to know a secret?” he asked, quieting my thoughts.
“Obviously.”
“I don’t know if I want to run for reelection. I’d always told myself I would, that I’d be a lifer like my father. As I said earlier, I clearly have daddy issues. I’m still trying to make him proud when I know I’ll never be able to, but if I’m honest with myself, the thought of running again, of another six, twelve, eighteen years of this… I don’t know if I can do it.”
“You deserve to be happy, West. You should do what you love. How much longer do you have?”
“Not this January but the next.”
Basically another two years. That felt like a lifetime. How would we ever make this work? “Ouch! ” I said when he swatted me.
“Stop thinking.”
“Stop being bossy,” I countered, then surprised myself by adding, “Don’t run again.”
West didn’t respond with a yes or a no, just, “What will you do? After football? You said you’d considered physical therapy. Would you go back to school? Work in sports? Live off what you made while playing?”
“I have no idea.” It was a shitty answer, but the only one I had. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I don’t know who I am without football. I’m not like you. I didn’t have more than one dream. I don’t have multiple degrees. I don’t know what I want or who I am.”
“Mine,” West answered. “That’s who and what you are, Hawkins. You’re mine.”
My damn heart felt like it expanded, hearing him say that.
“Okay…I’m liking this—calling you by your last name. Role-play fantasy? We can act out a locker-room scene. I can be your coach and be all, get down and give me twenty, Hawkins . And you could tell me to make you before we wrestle and have hot sex on the floor.”
I laughed, feeling it vibrate through my chest and up and into him. “God, I love you.”
West answered with his mouth on mine.