Page 148 of Puck the Coach's Son
“Theo…”
“I love you. I'm going with him. Those two things are the same sentence. You can fight it or you can understand it. I'm leaving either way.”
Paul closes his eyes.
“I understand it.”
Theo lets out a sound I can hear from the sidewalk.
Diane's hand squeezes his shoulder once and lets go.
Theo comes down the porch steps.
He doesn't run.
He walks. The duffel bumps his leg. The charger drags. He walks to me. The guard steps aside. Paul doesn't move off the porch. Diane stays beside Paul. The distance between the porch and the sidewalk closes in a dozen steps that will live in my body for the rest of my life.
Theo stops six inches from me.
His eyes are wet. His mouth is shaking.
“I sent you eleven texts.”
“I know. I couldn't answer. Paul had the phone and if Paul readI love youin my handwriting it would have gone to Callahan's press people by noon. I couldn't give them that. Not before I gave it to you.”
His throat works. His hands go up and grip the front of my jacket.
“Maddox?”
“Yeah?”
“Say it.”
I put my hands on his face. He's freezing. His skin is like paper in the January air. I put my thumbs under his jaw and I tilt his chin up and I look at him and I say it.
“I love you, Theo.”
He closes his eyes.
“I love you. I love you a way I haven't done before and don't have the vocabulary for. I love you enough that I sat on Phoenix's kitchen counter this morning and called my agent about you like you were a free-agent center because I didn't have any other language for it yet. I love you. Come to Blackridge. Come to Blackridge and be an idiot with me in a city neither of us has ever lived in. I love you.”
His face crumples. He pushes his forehead against mine. His breath comes out hard and warm in the cold.
“I love you back.”
“Yeah?”
“I love you back, Maddox. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
I kiss him.
I kiss him on the sidewalk in front of his father and his aunt and a twenty-four-year-old security guard. I kiss him long enough to mean it and short enough that Diane doesn't have to look away for too long. His mouth is hot. Everything else about him is freezing. His hands come up into my jacket and they fist at my chest and don't let go.
I pull back half an inch. I put my mouth against his forehead. The hoodie is thin and there's no coat and I can feel him shaking now that the kiss has stopped holding him still. Phoenix swings back around and stops in front of us.
“Get in the truck, kid. You're freezing.”
“Yeah.”
