Brody looked up from where he was fidgeting with the joystick on his controller and shot me a fragile smile. His eyes glittered, the deep brown muddled with complicated emotions. There was happiness there, but something else, too. Almost… relief, if I had to put a name to what I was seeing. Like something I had done just now meant more to Brody than me coming out to the team, or revealing our relationship. Kissing Shea out in the open, showing off how happy we were, or how gone I was for Shea, meant something different to Brody.
I’m so happy I got Brody’s perspective on this moment FUCK 😭😭😭😭😭😭
“But… Morgan was still the captain, you know? So when Shea said he and Morgan were together, it sent me right back to all that stuff, before. ‘Cause Coates was the captain, and…” He shoved the tree bark into the sand and started to bury it. “I just thought the worst, and it was all coming back, and I was remembering how bad everything had been.” … “And after Shea totally cheated and helped Morgan win, and then Morgan laid one on him, in front of all of us? That was it. That was all it took. All my fears went pop. Because they were so obviously happy, and so obviously in love” … “They weren’t a secret. They didn’t want to be a secret. What they had wasn’t shameful. And that mattered a lot to me, because that’s all Coates wanted me to feel: ashamed. Hiding. His biggest weapon against me was telling everyone what had happened.”
