by Shae Connor
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover more New Adult titles from Entangled Embrace… Falling for the Player
The Reality of Everything
Full Count
Beyond the Stars
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Shae Connor. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
10940 S Parker Rd
Suite 327
Parker, CO 80134
[email protected]
Embrace is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Amy Acosta
Cover design by Bree Archer
Cover photography by Morsa Images/Getty Images
KIKE ARNAIZ/Stocksy
caluian.daniel/Deposit Photos
ISBN 978-1-64937-063-1
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition November 2020
Dear Reader,
Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.
xoxo
Liz Pelletier, Publisher
For Jamie, who asked me to write a story about “a ginger gymnast,” lo, these many moons ago.
Chapter One
Hi, my name’s Grant Clark, and I have managed to screw up my entire life. In triplicate.
Number one: I fell in love with my best friend.
Number two: I thought he was straight.
Number three: Because of number one and number two, I didn’t make a move.
Until it was too late.
…
It’s a sunny and windy mid-September day, a few weeks into the fall semester of my sophomore year, and I’m feeling pretty good when I walk into my dorm room. I’ve been sharing with Darryn Kaneko since our first semester, and we’ve gotten to be super close since we first got tossed together because we’re both on the gymnastics team. Darryn’s better than me, but not by much, and sometimes I get the best of him in the gym. Usually on floor exercise.
Darryn gets the best of me this time, because when I push open the door, he’s on his bed. Naked. And decidedly not alone.
I’m frozen at first, stunned by what I’m seeing. It takes my brain a few seconds to work out that the person wrapped around my best friend and super-secret crush is a guy.
“Holy shit! You’re gay?”
The words burst out of my mouth before I can even think of stopping them, and that’s what it takes for the two of them to realize I’m there. Darryn’s wide eyes meet my gaze from where he’s lying on his back with the guy over him, and he’s as frozen as I am for a second before he scrambles to get the sheet pulled up in a vain attempt to cover up what’s going on.
“Do you mind?” he snaps out. “I put a goddamned note on the door.”
His uncharacteristic anger yanks me out of my fugue, and I spin around on my heel so at least I’m not staring anymore. At their naked bodies. Their naked, sweaty, oh my God my roommate is having gay sex bodies.
“Jesus Christ, Grant. Could you at least wait outside while we put some clothes on?”
Oh shit. Dammit. I fumble for the handle to escape and the next thing I know I’m in the hallway, staring at the door. Right below the room number is our sticker of the University of Atlanta logo, complete with gray-and-blue tornado in the center. And below that is a mess of colorful papers. There’s always some new flyer showing up on the door, and I never pay any attention to them anymore. This time, though, next to an ad for some off-campus party this weekend, there’s a folded piece of paper attached with a piece of tape. My name is scribbled on it in Darryn’s messy handwriting. I reach for it on autopilot and unfold it.
Got company. ;) Give me till 3? And knock before you come in. ~ D
It’s actually after 3—I know, because it was a few minutes before when I left the student union—so I don’t know how he thought that part would help. Which makes me wonder, how long have they been making the beast with two backs?
Which brings me back to—how in the hell did I not know he’d be willing to make the beast with two backs with a guy?
The realization finally hits me then, and a cold chill runs through me, starting from the chest out. My vision blurs and my knees buckle, and I have to catch myself with both hands against the wall to keep from crumpling to the floor.
Darryn is gay. My best friend, teammate, and roommate. The guy I’ve been sharing most of my life with for well over a year…and crushing on for most of that time.
Is.
Gay.
And somebody else got to him first.
Fuck. My. Life.
“Hey man, you okay?”
I recognize the voice as Pace Solomon, who lives a few rooms down the hall. I turn my head without removing my forehead from where it’s pressed against the wall, because if I do, I might start pounding that spot until I bash my skull open.
“Yeah,” I lie. Pace is a nice guy—and hot, too, all piercing eyes and lean muscle and massive thighs from catching for the baseball team—but he tends toward the clueless side sometimes. “Just forgot about something.”
Pace doesn’t look convinced, but for once he leaves me alone, and that’s all I care about. I’m so out of it I don’t even take the chance to secretly watch his fine ass as he ambles away. My mind’s still stuck on the fine ass of my roommate and the guy he’s fucking.
“Argh.” I do beat my head against the wall then, though not hard enough to bruise.
The one who’s really getting fucked here is me.
The door a foot to my right opens, and the naked-guy-who’s-not-my-roommate-and-also-isn’t-naked-anymore comes out. The dude gives me a once-over and sneers. “He’s all yours,” he says, as if he has any claim to my best friend other than the fact that he’s been naked in bed with him and I haven’t.
“You said it, not me,” I spit back.
I don’t give him time to come up with a response. I’m inside the room with the door closed behind me and my backpack hurled onto my bed in seconds.
“I’d say I’m sorry you walked in on that, but it’s your own fault.” Darryn’s in boxer-briefs and a tank top, though his skin still glistens with sweat and maybe other bodily fluids. He’s standing next to his bed with his hands on his hips, which only serves to show off his massive arm muscles. “I left a note. Like we talked about.”
Post-coital Darryn makes for quite the vivid picture, but I won’t let myself be distracted right now. “Like we talked about ov
er a year ago,” I shoot back, waving my arms for emphasis. “When we first moved in together. Not once since then has either of us used it. I had no idea you’d suddenly decided to start bringing back hookups or whatever that was. So no, I didn’t see the goddamned note.”
I don’t even care how mockingly I repeat his words (complete with head tilts). I’m still too busy being pissed off—at him for being gay, fucking hell, and at me for not figuring it out until someone else got his hands all over that perfectly sculpted body.
“Well, excuse me for getting some.” Darryn stomps over to his closet and starts rummaging through it. Probably looking for the right pair of jeans to show off his bubble butt to all the men on campus who would love to get a piece of it. Me included. “Not my fault if you can’t get a date.”
Wait, what?
“I cannot believe you.” I’m in his face before I know I’m moving, even though that puts me halfway in his closet. Poetic. “I’ve spent every waking hour of the year that I wasn’t in class or at home for breaks with you. Practice, meals, studying, sleeping in the same room. When, exactly, was I supposed to find a hookup, much less a date?” And that brings me up short. “For that matter, when, exactly, did you have time to find one?”
Darryn pushes past me to his bed and starts shoving his legs into his jeans. “We make time for the things that matter.”
And I’ve spent over a year making time for you, I think, though I manage not to say that out loud, at least. “And in all this time you couldn’t mention once that getting fucked mattered to you? You’re supposed to be my best friend.”
Darryn’s shoulders droop, and he doesn’t look at me. “For a best friend,” he says, “you sure don’t seem to want to be honest with me about who you are.”
The words hang between us like he’d shouted them, and the icy ball in my gut sends up a spike that threatens to pierce my throat. “I don’t—”
He shakes his head and goes back to fastening his jeans. “I knew you were gay within a month after we met,” he says. “I figured eventually you’d trust me enough to tell me.”
He might as well have slapped me across the face.
“You didn’t tell me, either!” I lash out. “If you’re gonna talk about trust, you could have told me.”
He finally looks up at me, and the pain in his eyes matches the pain in my heart.
“There wasn’t anything to tell,” he rasps out. “Not to start with.” He yanks a T-shirt over his head and then grabs his keys and phone off his bedside table. “It took another good six months before I figured out that I liked guys, too.”
He shoves his feet into flip-flops, grabs his duffel bag from the floor at the end of his bed, and pushes past me.
My heart races the farther away he moves. “How did you know?” The question jumps out of me, and he stops with his hand on the door handle. I can feel the tension in his body from three feet away.
He finally turns his head far enough for me to see his profile, his features etched with pain.
“It took me six months to realize that I was falling for you.”
He’s out the door and gone then, and my knees finally do give out.
At least my bed is there to catch me.
…
Darryn doesn’t come back until late. Late enough that I’m half considering calling everyone I know to find out if they’ve seen him, and then maybe the campus police if that doesn’t pan out.
I’ve spent the rest of the evening alternating between staring at the wall and pacing the floor, the last few hours running in a loop in my head, but I keep getting stuck on the same thing.
I was falling for you.
How could I be so completely oblivious? Six months. Six months of pining after Darryn, and if I’d ever once gotten my head out of my ass, I might have realized that he felt the same damn way. Might have finally had a chance to do more with a guy than just a few kisses. Might have Darryn in my bed every night, and not only in my dreams.
And now it was too late.
Finally exhausted from pacing and stressing, I threw myself in bed around eleven and proceeded to check the phone every ten minutes. More like every five.
My phone’s just finished telling me it’s 12:13 a.m.—and Darryn’s always been an early-to-bed type, even on weekends—when the door slowly eases open, like he’s trying to sneak in.
Which he is, of course. Because this is how we operate now, apparently. Hiding from each other.
“Don’t bother.” I get a sick sort of joy from the way he jumps. “I’m awake.”
Darryn sighs and tosses his duffel back into its usual spot. “Go to sleep,” he grumbles. “We’re not talking about this now.”
I think I hear him mutter “or ever” under his breath. Like that’s gonna happen. I will give him a break tonight, though, only because I know he has a calculus exam coming up that’s had him tearing out his hair, almost literally. And even though I’m pissed at him on so many levels it’s like a parking garage all up in my brain—level one, anger; level two, hurt; level three, oh my God, you’re gay??—we’re still supposed to be friends.
And that’s something I’d like to retain out of whatever else happens, at least.
“Okay. Tomorrow, then.” I roll over, putting my back to him and the bed that changed the entire course of my life a few hours earlier. “Good night.”
We lie there in silence, neither of us sleeping, until finally we do.
…
In the morning, of course, we don’t talk. Darryn’s up and out the door before I’m awake enough to stop him, and I don’t see him again until gym. Where we proceed to ignore the hell out of each other. Because reasons.
Well. I try to ignore him. But my traitorous gaze keeps seeking him out anyway. Does he look different? Happier? Is this guy really what he wants, or is it—
“Clark! You’re up!”
Fuck. Worst practice of my career. That’s the third time Coach Everson has had to prompt me, and he’s pissed as hell about it. I shake my head once, hard, and focus my frustration into the job ahead of me.
I blow out a long breath, bounce onto my toes, and start the long run up to the vault. The empty stands blur in my periphery, and I can tell as I hit the board that I’ve got it nailed. My hands slam the wide, curved top of the vault, and I punch off with all my strength and pull my arms in tight, twisting my body as I fly through the air.
I hit the mat with my balance a tiny bit off-center, and I have to take a small step to recover, but as I punch my fists into the air, I know it’s one of my best efforts. Vault’s never been my strength, but the new routine that works in more height and an extra half twist rather than trying to add a flip seems to be doing the trick.
I jog over to get my notes from the assistant coach as Coach Everson sends the next team member down the lane. Coach Sato gives me a nod and a tiny, tiny smile. He’s the one who worked up my new vault, and he’s got to be feeling good about it.
“Good form,” he says, back to all business. “Watch the angle when you hit the vault. Your right hand was too high up, and that put you off at the end.” He nods again and pats my flank with the hand not holding his ever-present clipboard. “Take a couple of laps to cool down and hit the showers. You’re done for today.”
For once, I don’t argue. Usually I’m all for more time in the gym, more time on the apparatus, but my head’s not in it today. Hell, I’m surprised Coach Everson didn’t pull me out of the line for the vault. Not paying attention is a problem with any of the six apparatus, but the vault’s particularly dangerous if you aren’t laser focused.
I give Coach Sato a nod and head for the track that runs around the perimeter of the gym. In less than a minute, I’ve settled into a slow, steady jog, and I let my mind wander.
Unfortunately, my eyes do, too, zeroing in on Darryn just as he takes off for his turn on the va
ult.
His body is a solid, taut line as he runs, legs and arms pumping, and then he launches himself into his routine. He’s several steps ahead of me in both difficulty and execution on vault, his best event, though we’re even on the others except my own specialty, the floor exercise. I watch as he takes a cartwheel into the launch and backflips onto the vault, the muscles in his arms bunching and flexing as he pushes into the air. He pulls his body straight and flips around twice before planting into the mat, not a wobble or step to be seen.
That’s okay. I almost make up for it by tripping over my own feet. I snatch my gaze back from ogling my teammate and concentrate on finishing my run. Well, mostly. My mind takes the opportunity to run even more laps around the same questions. Why did I wait so long to say anything to Darryn? How could I have missed my chance so badly? Have I screwed up so much that I’ve lost my best friend for good?
I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that last one, which is why I can’t exactly blame Darryn for avoiding me the next few days—okay, hell, yes, I can blame him. Yeah, I’ve been in avoidance mode, but I’m not the one who’s been staying out every night until after I’ve given up and fallen asleep.
Not this time.
Thursday night, I stake out our room, determined to have this conversation whether Darryn’s ready for it or not.
When he opens the door at a quarter to midnight and sees me sitting on the foot of his bed, he takes half a step back as if to turn around and walk right back out.
“Enough is enough.” I point to his desk chair. “Sit your ass down and let’s talk.”
He’s going to say no. I can see it coming. I try a different tactic.
Honesty.
What the hell, right?
“I miss you.” It’s the God’s honest truth, and he knows it. “Whatever else is going on, you’re still my best friend. Okay? Can we just…talk about this?”
He hovers halfway between yes and no for an eternity before he finally lets out a sigh like he’s deflating and kicks the door shut. “All right,” he grumbles, dropping his backpack on the floor and his ass into his desk chair. “Talk.”