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“So it’s not unique to sports.”

“No. Just humans,” he replies, and then…then we just continue talking. Some of it is a blur, like it’s not really happening or someone else is inside my body.

Eventually, Lucas asks me if I’m hungry or thirsty, and I am, but I don’t want to leave this spot, don’t want to leave theroof and take the stairs back into the real world. “I thought we were stuck up here.”

He grins. “That was a lie.”

“Asshole.” But I’d known it was from the start.

“I have stuff downstairs. I can go get it. The party is over, and the gallery is closed.”

I don’t ask how he knows that. I haven’t even looked at the time. “I should probably just go home, then.”

“It’s okay to not always do what you should, Hunter.”

Is it? When photos of me partying have come out over the last few years, when I first started being seen with different women, I always heard about it from my coach, the media…Coach Blake.This isn’t you, Hunter. You’re better than this, Hunter. What would Ellis think?

What would Ellis think of me up here with Lucas?

“Okay,” I say, shutting down the voices in my head.

We go downstairs and get a bottle of wine, cheese, cold cuts, and crackers from his office fridge, then return to the roof—elevator keys in hand now. We eat, drink, and I just do this weird, simple thing—being on a roof with someone it’s strange for me to be with. We don’t talk about Ellis, don’t talk about their family at all, though he does ask about my mom. We stick to safe topics—something, it seems, we both need.

Eventually, we’re lying down again, the sky lightening as night transitions toward day. We’re not talking anymore, just lying there, awake, taking in the never-ending space above us. The silence is more comfortable than I would have expected, more comfortable than maybe I should have felt with Lucas because I’m not sure I’ve shared a similar silence with anyone in years.

“Come here.” He stands and holds his hand out to me. I let him take it, let Lucas pull me to my feet, and we walk to the other side of the building, where the sun is beginning topeek over the horizon, orange fading into yellow and pinks.

Lucas lights a cigarette, and we watch the sunrise, a new day beginning. My chest feels heavy, the sadness I tamped down for most of the night resurfacing from the darkness.

“I should go,” Lucas says.

“Me too.”

We clean up after our impromptu picnic, then take the elevator down, and before I know it, we’re standing outside his gallery, back in the real world.

“See you later, Hunter King.”

“See you later, Lucas Blake.”

Lucas walks away first, and I only make it a few steps in the opposite direction before I’m twisting back around…but he’s already gone.

CHAPTER SIX

Hunter

It’s the firstgame of the regular season, and we’re playing in Dallas.

I love beating any team, but I love beating Dallas even more. The Pulse have a long-standing rivalry with Dallas that goes back to the seventies and a brutal game that went into double overtime, when the Dallas defense took out the Pulse quarterback in a dirty hit. The ball had already left his hand when he was taken down from the side, unable to see it coming. The Pulse wide receiver made what should have been an impossible catch in the end zone, and the Pulse quarterback left the game with a broken leg and missed the rest of the season.

There’s been bad blood between us ever since. That one game made two teams, two fanbases, and future players hate each other on principle, and I’ve always thrived in that environment—when I have something to prove, when the win is so much fucking sweeter.

It’s exactly what I need to take my mind off seeing Lucas a couple of weeks back. I don’t know why I can’t get it out of my head. It was like I’d stepped into another universe, if only for a few hours. Like for a while, I was able to forget Ellis died and the weight that’s been in my chest ever since. I could forget who I was too. Because on that roof, I didn’t have to beperfect. I didn’t have to be the best football player or boyfriend. Logically, I know I haven’t owed anyone anything, that the fallacy comes from deep within me, but that doesn’t change how it makes me feel. And now that I’m back in the real world, my brain does what it does best and holds those moments of freedom against me.

“You runnin’ for a hundred tonight?” Oakley, our starting cornerback, asks as we make our way into the locker room at Dallas’s stadium. I’m closest with Oak on the team. He’s a good guy. He’s been with his girlfriend since he was a teenager, even though they haven’t gotten married. They had a daughter when he was sixteen, but he still managed to play college football and make it professionally.

I don’t spend as much time with him as I used to. It’s the same with my best friend, Desmond, who plays for Kansas City. When I go out now, it’s with people I don’t have an emotional connection with, like I don’t want to strengthen any bonds because that’s how you get hurt.

“Are you trying to jinx me?” I playfully shove him, the two of us wrestling around, knocking into other players and the wall before pulling apart. I haven’t joked around with Oakley like this in a while. We’re both wearing big smiles, my breathing having picked up a bit, reminding me how much I miss this, how much I need it, even though it doesn’t feel the same as it used to. Even though sometimes it hurts me just as much as I love it.