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Sometimes a year changed a man in ways that couldn’t be measured in hours and days and weeks. Sometimes a year became the cornerstone of a life.
Wes had once sent him a video of him roping a calf. Colton tried to swing his towel over his head that night in the bathroom, trying to emulate how cool Wes had looked. He smacked himself in the face after two seconds.
He looked soft, warm, and comfortable. Like the word home turned into a person.
What was better? Suffering in silence and hardening your heart against the world? Or owning what you wanted, what you needed?
He wanted Nick to fall for him, because Colton had already fallen for Nick.
If you loved me, I’d never make you regret it. I’d never give you a reason to wish we hadn’t met. If you loved me, I’d never let you drink to try to forget us.
I want to be your quarterback. I want a million nights like this. I want you to always smile at me exactly the way you are right now.
Nick closed the distance between them and took Colton’s face between his hands. Leaned in and closed his lips over Colton’s, hushed him with a kiss.
“I don’t want to forget. And I don’t want to stop. I want you, Colton.”
“You’re genuine,” Nick breathed. “You’re exactly who you are. I look at you, and I can see your entire heart.” He inhaled, sharply. “And what I see, I trust.”
“You’re beautiful, Colton. Sometimes I can’t breathe when I look at you.”
“I love you,” Nick breathed. “Colton, I love you.”
“I fell in love with you so hard it scared me. I didn’t think there was any way you could love me back, not with everything you have in your life. So I tried not to let myself dream of things that would never happen.”
“But I can’t stop. I can’t stop loving you. It’s probably impossible, but I have to tell you. I can’t go another day like this. I can’t not tell you that I love you. God, Colton, I love you, and I never want you to leave. I want to be with you, however we can. Whatever that looks like. I’ll do anything.”
Something invisible connected them, a tie that ran from his heart to Nick’s and back.
“I love you, too.”
He only wanted to be loved, and cherished, and needed by one person in the world. And he was.
“The only thing I ever wanted more than football was for someone to love me.”
“I love you,” Colton had whispered, in the middle of the stadium, in the middle of the field. “I love you, too,” Nick had whispered back.
And it hit him: this is the family I always wanted.
The love of his life. The one man he’d been waiting for his whole life. The man who rewrote his life in all the shades of happiness that existed. The man he loved, and who loved him, forever.
