A tiny silence blooms between us. Not awkward, just charged.
I swallow. “So…um. I never asked. What do you want to do? In life. Beyond the gym, I mean.”
He blinks.
Genuinely surprised.
“Damn.”
“What?”
“Well, no one’s asked me that in a while,” he says quietly. “God…I don’t know. Not for as long as I can remember.”
I tilt my head. “Well…I’m asking now. I’m on pins and needles.”
He looks at me, and something in his eyes softens.
“I guess…” He scratches the back of his neck. “I’d like to be a coach. Maybe. One day.”
“A football coach?”
“Yeah. High school. Maybe college if I get lucky.” He shrugs like this is embarrassing. “I… like seeing people get better. I like helping them believe they can.”
My heart squeezes.
That is…beautiful.
“Colt,” I murmur. “That’s…really lovely.”
He stares at me like he doesn’t know how to take that.
Then he clears his throat and tries to push the attention away.
“What about you?” he asks. “Tell me about this traumatizing relationship you mentioned. Aside from the zero foreplay situation.”
“Ugh.” I groan. “Why did I even bring that up?”
“Because I asked,” he says. “And because you trusted me with something. So now I’m holding you to it.”
God help me.
I exhale. “Fine. I just…tried so hard to make things work. For years. And it turned out he was cheating on me. He had a whole damn dating app profile going while we were together.”
Colt’s head snaps up so fast I hear his neck crack.
“On you?”
Something in the way he says it—shocked, offended on my behalf—makes my throat go tight.
“What’s that mean?” I ask lightly, even though I know exactly what it means.
“It means…” He gestures at my entire being, vaguely frustrated. “You’re so hot.”
My brain blue-screens.
“I am?”
He nods once. Definitive.
