The Love Series Complete Box Set

by Melissa Collins

  Without saying anything, Scott looked over his shoulder at me, his face half-hidden, half-lit by the moon. “Hot, right, Dylan?” Insinuation was thick in his words.

  I didn’t think the other guys heard the accusation in what he’d just said, or the sneer in his tone, but I did. “Hell yeah, it was,” I spat out quickly, with what was hopefully not too much eagerness to seem unconvincing.

  “All right, boys. It’s been real, but I’m being eaten alive out here. Damn mosquitos.” Eric swatted away an imaginary bug before adding, “I’m heading back to the room.”

  Snorting through his laughter, Scott stood next to him. “Bugs, my ass. You just want to go jerk off in the shower before I get back to the room.”

  “How about I race you back to the dorm and whoever gets there first gets the shower for as long as they need while the other one has to wait in the hallway?” Without even giving him a beat to react, Scott sprinted toward the dorms, leaving Eric more than a few steps behind while the rest of us stood there laughing at them.

  “And that is why I’m happy to be in a single this year.” Ryan clapped his hand to my shoulder, setting me on edge even more than I had already been. “See you in the morning,” he said as he strode away from us.

  The awkward silence that descended upon Shane and me as we stood there alone was crippling—at least for me.

  Wordlessly, we walked back to our room. After tossing my key on the desk, I flopped back into my bed and stared up at the ceiling. “You can have the bathroom first. I’m gonna go call Reid. Check up on him.” Shane’s words clogged in his throat with some kind of unnamed emotion, one which I chose to ignore.

  Shane slipped back out the door so quickly, I didn’t have any time to respond, not that I would have known what to say. Reaching for my journal, I pulled the pen out from the spiraled wire, my words flowing with more clarity than my brain was capable of.

  I don’t think most people can pinpoint the actual moment they discover who they are. I mean, you hear stories all the time about people wasting their life trying to figure out their purpose, trying to figure out who they are and what they’re meant to be. I’m not going to pretend that I know all of the answers—that’d be a huge fucking lie, but I do know more about myself now than I did an hour ago.

  I guess I’ve always known I was different somehow, but I just wrote it off with a million different excuses. Maybe I’m different because my parents are still happily married or because I’m an only child.

  But when those excuses run out and you start thinking that you’re different because there’s something inherently ‘wrong’ with you, that’s when it gets complicated. Yeah, I know they say—whoever the hell ‘they’ are—that growing up isn’t easy, that being a sixteen-year-old boy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but I’ve known for maybe longer than I care to admit that whatever is making my life difficult, whatever is screwing me up in my head is much more than normal teenage shit.

  Watching what I watched tonight only confirmed what I’ve known for probably my whole life.

  I’m gay.

  The door slamming shut scared the shit out of me and I quickly tossed my journal under my pillow, my heart pounding like crazy in my chest. Shane didn’t notice as he crashed his phone down on the desk angrily.

  “Everything okay?” I asked as I tossed back the covers.

  His fists were clenched at his side; the anger vibrated off him, filling the room with a palpable tension. “What the fuck do you think?” he roared, punching the door with rage.

  I jumped off my bed as he clutched his right hand and winced in pain. “What the hell did you do that for? You’ll break your throwing hand, asshole.”

  “I don’t fucking care, anymore.” Some of the bite left him, and he calmed marginally. He slinked down onto his bed, hanging his head in his hands. “It’s so fucking unfair,” he gritted, stifling back his rising emotions.

  I sat next to him, far enough away to leave him some space, but close enough to let him know I was listening. “What happened? Is it Reid?”

  He punched the bed with his good hand—at least both wouldn’t be broken. “No, it’s my fucking asshole father. Reid came home late the other night and dear-old-dad knocked him around a bit,” he snidely remarked as he stood from the bed, pacing the room like a caged animal. “I don’t know what the fuck to do. He’s getting out of control. At first, he would just yell at Mom. Then he would just lash out at me, smack me around a little, but now, this. Reid says he can barely open his eye; it’s so swollen.” He flopped into the chair at the desk and looked at his hand as it turned purple and swelled.

  “You need to put ice on that. Let me go get it so Coach doesn’t see you.” I moved to the door as he muttered, “thanks” before I left.

  In the two minutes it took me to walk down to the water cooler to grab a bag of ice, I tried to make sense of what made it okay for a father to beat his own son, but it turned out that two minutes wasn’t enough time.

  I twisted the knob to our door and saw Shane sitting on my bed, my journal open and in his hands.

  He looked up at me as if I was some kind of intruder, or as if he was seeing me for the first time. Considering what I was sure he’d just read, that was certainly true. “What are you doing?” Shock colored my words as I tore the spiral notebook from his bruised hand.

  He looked up at me, sadness and confusion mixing on his face. “You’re gay?” he whispered as if anyone else was in the room to hear his words. Hearing Shane say it somehow made it feel more real than when I had written it, thought it, knew it in my own soul.

  In the few moments it took me to answer him, I considered denying it, but there was no point. The words were messily scribbled right there on the page for him to read. I was just happy I hadn’t finished my thoughts. The ones where I wrote about how confused I was for wanting my best friend, for thinking that he was gay as well—even though I knew he would never admit to it himself.

  “Yeah, I am,” I admitted sheepishly before sinking onto my bed. With my secret out in the open, there was no sense in hiding the journal any longer, but out of the habit that I had developed over the last week, I tucked it in between my mattress and box spring, even though Shane looked on.

  “How? When?” he barely whispered as he scrubbed his hand over his face and through his sandy-brown hair in disbelief.

  “I don’t know,” I said after taking a deep breath. “I guess I’ve always known, as cliché as that sounds.” I stood to walk over to him, but he held his hand out to stop me. “Look, I don’t want this to change things. We’re still friends, right?” I held my hands up, palms facing out in an attempt to surrender to him and his confusion.

  He didn’t say anything, just stood up and grabbed his keys from the desk. “I’m gonna go stay at Scott and Eric’s tonight.” He shut the door behind him without saying anything more.

  He didn’t speak to me at all the next day, or the rest of the week, or on the two-hour car ride home, or the first day of school.

  In fact, Shane didn’t speak to me for most of the next ten months, and on the first day of baseball season in the spring of our senior year, all I got from my best friend of over ten years was a subtle chin nod.

  Chapter Four

  May 4, 2007

  “Smile, would ya? We made the fucking playoffs.” Reid ruffled my hair and punched my arm, which was so fucking sore from the game. Throwing a two-hitter was not necessarily noteworthy as far as baseball stats were concerned, but it was the best game I had ever thrown and it won us the chance to play for the state championship in the coming weeks. I was damn proud of that and the look on Reid’s face, along with the rest of my team, helped to dull the pain.

  As the trainer plastic-wrapped an ice pack to my throwing arm, I saw Dylan walk into the locker room and toss his bag on the bench. A few of the other guys followed behind him, carrying a water cooler over their shoulders. Dylan hit the game winning homerun, securing us the victory. He was the hero of the day, a
nd an hour after the game, I still hadn’t said a word to him.

  Fuck, if I’d said five words to him in the last six months that would be saying a lot. Maybe it was time to just fucking open my mouth and congratulate him.

  I walked over to the other side of the locker room just in time to get a first row view to the guys dropping five gallons of ice-cold water over his head. He skyrocketed up from the bench and spun around like he’d been punched in the back of the head. Everyone laughed and he eventually calmed down enough to realize they were congratulating him—in their own weird, ice-cold way.

  When the other guys moved away, Dylan caught sight of me behind them and nodded toward me. That was all we’d relegated to since camp. I walked out of our room once I found out he was gay and I never looked back.

  Fucking coward—that’s what I was.

  Leave it to Dylan to be the better person. He always had been. “Great game today. A freaking two-hitter. That’s a record for you.” He lightly tapped my left arm, the one that was not currently wrapped in ice.

  “Thanks, man. You too. I think they’re still looking for that ball you hit out of the park.” We stood there awkwardly for a few moments, neither one of us sure of what to say. That was when Reid walked up behind us and draped his arms over our shoulders.

  “How come I didn’t get an invite to this little reunion, huh?” he joked, a smug-ass look plastered to his face and everything.

  Dylan and I shared a sad look. What I hoped would pass for an apology flashed in my eyes. He nodded and in true “guy-code,” we spoke more words than our silence transmitted.

  “Nick is having a party at his house tonight since there’s no practice tomorrow morning. You think you two sorry assholes want to join us for once?” Sometimes, I wanted to punch my little brother in the face for his wise-ass attitude, but then I remembered all the times our own father had done that to him.

  That always sobered me.

  It saddened me more than anything. Hell, it was the main cause of my own depression over the past few months—one I tried so desperately to conceal.

  Of late, I was failing miserably at it. My grades had slumped way beyond the C range. I’d lost weight and barely had the strength and endurance to make it through practice six days a week. I’d love to say that my family noticed, but they’d actually have to care first, and let’s face it, that just wasn’t happening.

  Reid may have noticed it, but he was fighting his own battles—ones that always involved our father. Deciding to push all of that shit to the back burner for a while was made a lot easier when Dylan chimed in, saying he would definitely be at the party.

  With a quick jab, I elbowed Reid in the ribs and laughed as he gasped in feigned shock. “I’ll go, but you better not get so drunk I have to take care of you again.” I shot him a look and he swore he would only have a few drinks.

  I knew better. Partying and getting himself lost in whatever flavor-of-the-night he wanted was his way of coping. It was a good thing for both Reid and me that I didn’t drink.

  And that I didn’t take part in the all-night girl-fest he did.

  Besides, one of us had to come home sober; the other one would need the protection.

  A moment later, Reid was dragged away by a few of his friends, divvying up cash to hand over to Nick so his older brother could buy the alcohol.

  “I should go get this looked at.” I lifted my arm slightly. Even though the arm didn’t need an ounce of attention whatsoever, I needed to get away from Dylan and his sobering stare. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”

  Dylan nodded before I walked away and wordlessly returned his attention to his gym bag and his soaking wet shirt.

  A shirt I couldn’t help but peel my eyes away from, something that really fucked with my head. Who the hell had I become? Keeping my sexuality a secret was possible; no one really asked since I was a baseball junkie, figuring I just spent all of my energy on the sport. I made the appropriate comments when the guys talked about a hot girl and learned how to dodge the tough questions about which of those hot girls I’d been with, but it was a small school in a small community, with an even smaller mindset.

  Coming out was not an option.

  Telling my best friend I had feelings for him was also not an option.

  And I was okay with that. At least that was what I kept telling myself. Keeping it all inside was torturous enough, but still possible, as long as I kept to myself. But now, hanging out with Dylan again, even if it was at a party with plenty of other people, made me vulnerable to him.

  To myself.

  To the truth.

  After a quick shower in the locker room, one that I delayed by seeing the trainer for a non-existent shin-splint, I went home, ready to face the angry music of my father.

  “Maybe he won’t be home,” Reid offered up pointlessly before we turned down our block. Dad’s shiny, black sedan sat in the driveway—no such luck, I guessed.

  I pulled up alongside the curb, not even running the risk of scratching it by parking next to Dad’s precious car. I often wondered if he loved that car more than us. Fuck it; I knew he loved it more than us. He couldn’t bear to see a dent on that, but it never bothered him an ounce to see a bruise on his sons’ faces. Ones that he’d put there.

  Fucking asshole.

  After he grabbed his bag from the back seat, Reid leaned over the hood of my car, folding his arms atop the roof. “I’m proud of you, bro. You threw a great game today.”

  I was taken aback by his openness, but not by his kindness. “Thanks, man. But what’s with the sudden outpouring of support?”

  He angled his head back to the house where our father surely sat, waiting and drunk, to rip into us about what we had done wrong, rather than congratulate us on what we had done well. “I just know he won’t tell you any of that, and you deserve to hear it today.”

  I walked around the back of the car, a huge smile plastered to my face. Draping an arm over his shoulder, I put him in a fake chokehold and scrubbed my knuckles back and forth over his head. “I’m proud of you, too.”

  “Noogies? What the fuck? Are we five?” he joked, straightening out the hair that now flopped down into his eyes.

  We both shut up as we approached the front door, knowing better than to sound like we were actually having fun. I heard Mom and Dad talking inside, but they weren’t yelling.

  Sadly, this struck me as odd.

  Reid and I dropped our bags in the front mudroom and carefully peeked into the family room where our parents were sitting across from each other. Their conversation stopped and with sad and defeated eyes; Mom looked up at us.

  “Oh, hi boys. I didn’t hear you come in.” She stood and walked over to us, wiping subtly at her face. With her shoulders slumped and her face drawn, she did everything she could not to look at us. As she stopped in front of us, though, I could see the unshed tears in her eyes. Rather than letting them fall, she blinked them back and lifted her arms to pull us both into a tight hug. “I heard you boys won. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there. Your father told me the game was a close one.” She stepped back from the hug and scanned our faces—for what, I’m not sure, but her own sadness was so clear on her own. “I’ll make you both something to eat,” she said softly as she broke away from us, stepping toward the kitchen.

  “That’s okay, Mom. We’ll grab something in a bit.” She looked so tired, so beaten down, I couldn’t fathom asking her to take care of us when we were more than capable of doing it ourselves—when the thing she really needed was for someone to take care of her.

  With a subtle nod of her head and a crooked, but warm smile, she walked upstairs. After we heard her bedroom door click closed, Dad angled his head to the sofa. Knowing the drill, Reid and I sat down, awaited our verbal lashing for being complete and utter failures even though we won the county championships.

  It was like being in the same room as Medusa—you never wanted to look right at him because you’d turn to stone and crack under the pres
sure. He shocked the shit out of us when he grunted, “Good game today.” His words were barely audible and if Reid’s face hadn’t reflected the same look of shocked disbelief that I was sure was on my own face, I would never have believed that he’d even spoken them.

  He looked toward the stairs, seemingly distracted by whatever had passed between him and Mom before we walked in. “It’s not States or anything, but it’s a start.” His insult should have hurt more than it did, but maybe that was why he lead with the “good game” comment. But, to be honest, something seemed off, like his demeanor shifted or something like that.

  Knowing better than to question why he was going easy on us, after all, I did let up two hits and Reid struck out once, we just nodded in silent agreement and watched as he followed behind Mom up into his room.

  “That was fucking weird,” I muttered when I heard the bedroom door close.

  Reid stood from the couch. “Whatever. He’s a fucking asshole. Let’s go. I want to get to the party.”

  We thought about telling Mom and Dad where we were going, but once we heard their voices filtering out into the hallway, we decided against it and just got our stuff ready to leave for the night. A note on the counter would have to do. Besides, by the time we got home the next day, whatever they were arguing over would have passed and they wouldn’t have even missed us.

  We both changed quickly and raced back out the door before we were told not to. By the time we got to Nick’s, the party was in full swing. Most of the guys hadn’t even bothered to stop home after the game, their parents satisfied with a quick call or text. That would never pass with our dad, so we didn’t even bother it.

  It wasn’t worth the black eye.

  Nick came up to us, two cans of beer in his hands. “Here you go, boys.” He tossed the beer and Reid popped his open, not worrying about the foamy spray that hit his shirt.