The Jock (The Team, #1)

by Tal Bauer

Going to have to talk about what? How he’d fallen in love? How he’d met the man he wanted to spend forever with? He loved Justin, loved him so damn much, but he’d destroyed what they had, and now there was nothing left. He didn’t even feel human anymore.

He was made to love the white swan.

Wes shrugged. I lost what I wanted more than anything in the world. No, he hadn’t lost it. He’d thrown it away. He’d destroyed it. He’d destroyed them. He knew exactly who was to blame.

He couldn’t face Justin. Not tonight. Not when Justin was on a date and the last of Wes’s heart was turning to dust. He needed to get away, now. Needed to get somewhere he could let out the scream building inside him, where he could claw out his own failure, where he could cry, just cry, and whisper Justin’s name as he clung to the memories of Paris.

Why do you care that I’m on a date? Why are you leaving flowers on my windshield? Why do you have pictures of Paris up on your wall? Why do you have a picture of us under your pillow?”

I love you,” he called after Justin. “I loved you in Paris, and I still love you. You’re everything to me. You’re the first thing I think of when I open my eyes in the morning. You’re in class with me, you’re on the field with me, you’re in the gym with me. I talk to you when I’m alone. When I’m driving in my truck. When I’m jogging or working out. You’re on my mind every minute of the day. And you’re the last thing I see every night. That photo…” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I love you, and I’m not ashamed of that.”

I don’t know how to be all those men at once. It’s like I have to put on different faces every hour, when the only face I want to wear is my own. The guy I was in Paris. The guy I am with you. Wes, who loves Justin.”

I don’t know how to do this, Justin. I don’t know how to live with loving you like this. It will fade eventually, right? Because right now it feels like I’ll love you for the rest of my life, and I’ll just have to learn to live with this hole in my chest forever.”

“If I let myself love you, are you going to break my heart again?”

“It was just there one day, inside me. I didn’t want to be without you. And then I couldn’t be without you. That’s when I knew you were the love of my life. You’d become a part of me, and my life was incomplete without you.”