Page 22 of Beautiful When He Breaks

I don’t answer right away.

The thing about the Sin Bin guys is they’re mine in ways I don’t always deserve. We fight, we piss each other off, we say cruel shit sometimes because we’re all men in our twenties with too much ego and not enough emotional literacy. But at the end of the day, these are my people. Luca especially. Captain on the field, yes, but off it too sometimes. He knows when to shove and when to shut up. He and I have had enough late-night conversations over the years that he can read my silences better than most.

He glances around, makes sure nobody’s close enough to overhear anything real, then lowers his voice. “This is about Eli?”

I let out a breath and scrub both hands over my face. “Yeah.”

His expression shifts, not softer exactly, but less amused. “How bad is he, really?”

I picture Eli sitting in his room this morning with the baby on his chest, eyes red from crying, trying so hard to be steady that it made my own chest hurt to look at him. “Bad,” I say quietly. “Trying not to show it, but bad.”

I stare at the concrete floor. A minute ago, I thought I was too empty to feel anything new. Turns out I’m still capable of being tired all the way through.

“I want to be there for them when the lawyer comes, but I had practice. Now by the time I get back there’ll already be shit happening, and I hate it.”

Luca leans his elbows on his knees beside me. “That’s not all.”

“No,” I say.

I should shower, change, grab my stuff, and get the hell out of here. Instead, I sit there in my compression shirt and football pants, sweat drying cold on my skin, and stare at nothing because if I move too fast, the rest of my life catches up.

Luca’s voice drops another notch. “What’s going on with you?”

There are questions you can dodge, and there are questions that make your blood turn to ice before the answer even forms. Luca’s isn’t suspicious; that makes it worse. If he were accusing, I could deflect. He’s not. He’s worried.

“Nothing,” I say, too fast.

His eyes narrow in that unimpressed way he’s perfected as captain. “Bullshit.”

I force a shrug. “Just tired.”

“You’ve been tired for months.”

“Yeah, welcome to college athletics.”

“I mean different.” He pauses, choosing his words because for all Luca runs hot on the field, he’s careful where it matters. “You flinch more. You disappear more. And today you look like you’re trying to get off this campus before somebody catches you.”

I hold his gaze for half a second too long, and that’s enough to make his face change. I don’t know why it’s easier to talk around the truth than through it. Maybe because saying it cleanly would crack something open that I’ve spent too long forcing shut, and I’m a coward in exactly the ways that matter most. If I say I’ve been in love with Eli for years, while also letting some other mess use me up in private, I have to admit that loving him never stopped me from taking whatever scraps of attention I could find elsewhere… no matter how toxic they became.

“I fucked up a while ago,” I say instead.

“With someone?”

I nod once.

“Bad?”

I let out a hollow breath. “Yeah.”

He studies the side of my face for a second. “You in danger?”

The question makes my stomach clench. I shrug, which is not an answer, and we both know it.

“Julian.”

“Not here,” I say quietly, and his jaw flexes. He wants to push; I can see it. But he also knows me well enough to recognize the line when I draw it. The wrongness of this thing already lives in my body, heavy and humiliating. Naming it in a crowded locker room with shower water running and half the team ten feet away feels impossible.

Luca nods slowly. “Okay, not here. But you listen to me,” he says, dropping his voice even lower. “Whatever you’ve got yourself into, if you need help, you tell Killian or me. I mean that. Don’t do the stupid macho shit where you decide suffering in silence is noble.”