“Can I help you?” I ask.
The smile deepens. He tugs on his Ray-Bans. “You look like a fucking Funfetti cake.”
I glance down at my outfit. My favorite yellow sneaks. Watermelon-pink joggers. A pale-blue T-shirt that brings out my eyes. Lifting my chin, I stroll toward the front door and throw it open. “I’ll have you know I like Funfetti cake.”
I feel Gavin’s eyes on me from behind. “So do I.”
After yanking the door shut behind us, I lock it, then pocket the key. He’s still watching me behind the Ray-Bans, his stare intense. I clear my throat and point ahead. “This way’s a nice, even walk. No hills. A one-mile loop. That work?”
He glances in the direction I’ve pointed, then nods. “Yeah.”
“Fine! I mean, good. Excellent. Great. Here we go.” God, I’m a nervous wreck.
Starting ahead of Gavin, I look for a tree to bang my head into and knock myself out before I can open my mouth again and make a bigger fool of myself.
But something about his silent, steady presence as we start to walk begins to settle me. He’s quiet as we make our way, remaining half a step behind me. I keep my stride slow and leisurely, hoping I’ve set a comfortable pace for him, drinking in the view. It’s my favorite time of year here—warm, golden sunshine, glossy green grass, a cool blue sky dappled with cotton-ball clouds.
A canopy of blossoms clusters the trees overhead, and the wind makes them rain a gale of petals. Snow white, lemon yellow, palest pink, they float from the sky, swirling around us.
As I gaze up, drinking in the sight, I feel Gavin’s hand wrap around mine. “Oliver.”
I turn and face him, heart jackhammering in my chest. “You okay? Need to go back? Gotta pee?”
He steps closer, his eyes searching mine. “No. But I do need to ask you something.”
I nod. Too fast. Too many times. My heart’s pounding right out of my chest. Gently, Gavin sets his hand over my heart, soothing it. “Take a breath,” he says quietly.
I nod again, forcing myself to take a deep, slow breath in, then out.
“Good.” He steps closer still, drifting his hand up my chest, to my neck, until he cups my face. “Now. Stop running off.”
My eyes widen. “I…I’m not. Not that you have any place to lecture me on that.”
His eyes search mine. His throat works with a swallow. “That’s fair. But I’m here to change that.”
“You are?”
“Oliver…” He frowns. Suspicion seems to tighten his expression. “Wait…you don’t…you don’t know why I’m here.”
I shake my head. “I’m so confused—”
“Jesus.” He drops his head and sighs heavily. “You didn’t watch all of it, did you?”
“All of what?” I ask, beyond confused.
“The press conference.” He lifts his head and meets my eyes, his thumb gentling my cheek. “All of the press conference. You said you watched it.”
I blink, wracking my brain. “You’d just opened it up to questions, that’s when I stopped. Because…you were here. You were banging on my door. That mattered more.”
“Fuck,” he groans. Now he looks both relieved and also deeply nervous. “Okay. Yeah. Well, that helps. I feel a little better.”
“Gavin.” I grab him by the shirt. “Please just tell me what the hell is going on.”
He smiles softly, his expression tinged with nerves as he runs his hands through my hair, along my temple, ghosts his thumb over the shell of my ear. “I pictured you being more off-the-grid here, unable to watch the press conference, so I thought I’d beat you to the punch. I’d planned to say it myself, but then I got here and you said that you’d seen it, and then I was relieved. Because I’m a fucking coward. And now you’re saying you haven’t seen it—”
“For the love of God, Gavin Hayes, tell me what the hell you’re talking about!”
He yanks me close, until our mouths are inches away from each other, our chests heaving. Like that day in the locker room, heat billowing between us, intensity flashing in his eyes. His gaze drifts down to my mouth, then drifts back up, holding mine. “I love you.”
I grip his shirt tighter, leaning into him. “What?”
He walks us back, slowly, like a dance, until I’m pressed against the trunk of a massive old tree, until Gavin’s pinning me against it. “I said, I love you. And I know I haven’t done much to inspire your confidence in those words coming from me. I don’t have experience with this. I don’t know what I’m doing. And I’m fucking scared as shit, because I don’t know how it will end or if we’ll come out winners, and I fucking hate even the thought of losing, let alone losing something so precious, losing you.
“I know I might be too late. I might not even have you to lose in the first place, but if I let one more day go by without taking a chance, telling you what you mean to me—that I love you more than a ball beneath my feet or the heart in my chest—that would be the greatest loss of all.”
Once again he brings his hand to my heart and says, quiet, reverent, as he searches my eyes, “This past month, all I’ve wanted is to wrap you in my arms, drag you to bed, and never let you go. To cook with you and watch you sing along to musicals and give you hell for your eyeball-singeing wardrobe, but I had to do this first, Oliver. I had to face what will be: the end for me and the beginning for you. I had to watch you have everything that I’d lost and know I could do it, to prove to us both that while I loved soccer, I love you better, best, beyond.
“This past month has been agony, wanting you, feeling nothing but love and pride, but it’s shown me what I can do—that I can share this world with you, be happy for you, cheer you on, that it will never come between us like I once let it.”
Oh God. The pieces fall into place, that night when we were so close and yet he once again pushed me away, the weeks following, full of only professionalism and politeness. They were all for this moment. For us.
I cup his face, my voice is unsteady. “You’re sure? I don’t want to hurt you. I never want my life, my world, to hurt you. I couldn’t take it.”
He leans into my touch. “You won’t. I told you how I spent the past month, and I’ve spent the past two years confronting it then, too. Two years facing what you are and will be, what I have been and never will be again.”
“But you didn’t love me all that time,” I point out.
His mouth tips in a wry smile as he drifts his knuckles along my cheek. “Didn’t I?”
Thank God I’m leaning against a tree. I’d fall on my ass otherwise. “What?”
“Oliver. It was distance myself or drop to my knees and fall at your feet,” he says roughly as he leans into me, as our bodies touch and ache. “I saw you and felt like you’d blasted a hole in my chest. I couldn’t let myself feel how much I wanted you, admired you, longed for you. Not when you had everything in your clutches that was slipping through my fingers.”
Tears blur my vision. I stare at him, stunned, thrilled, disbelieving. “I didn’t know,” I whisper.