Page 166 of These Secret Years

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

“Did I need your permission? Does he?”

I shake my head, mortified with myself. “No. I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting you to say that. I feel like I blacked out most of today.”

“I’m sorry your dad couldn’t meet him. He’s kind of an amazing person, huh?”

“He told you about his music?” I ask.

My uncle shrugs. “Not in so many words, but true talents are always the humblest, I’ve found. Like you.”

I snort. “I’ve been training since I was four. I’m not sure what raw talent I’ve got. It’s just a skill. Sullivan’s different.”

“In what way?”

“He’s a prodigy. He’s like—Mozart.”

“Hm.”

I fidget in my seat, wanting him to make his point. Tell me the reason he dragged me out here. “So, what’d you talk about?”

“The two of you. I admit to having more than a few questions.”

Of course he does. I sigh and lie back on the chair instead of facing him. “Honestly, it’s none of your business.”

“You know, I thought a lot today about your dad. About what he would have said to you if you’d come out—if you’d brought Sullivan home. About how it might make him feel to know you felt safe enough here to be who you are.”

“Do we have to do this right now?” I groan.

“You haven’t been to many funerals, I take it,” he says.

“No.”

“They tend to make you question your own mortality. Among other things. My little brother just died of a massive heart attack, so me more than others, I imagine.”

How he says all that so casually is a mystery of moving on I’m not sure I’ll ever master. “How do you do that?” I ask bluntly.

“Sorry?”

“How do you act like him dying is no big deal when we literally just buried him?”

“Oh,” he says, looking sheepish. “I think it’s mostly denial. None of this has really hit me yet. Nicole asked me the same thing earlier. Kinda hard to process.”

“Yeah,” I say, still staring at him, mystified.

“It’s way easier to worry about you because I can see you’re really going through it.”

“I’m fine,” I say reflexively but not convincingly at all.

“Can you keep a secret, Knight?”

I almost laugh. I’m the fucking prince of secrets at this point. “Yeah, I think I probably can.”

“Then I think you should.”

I blink. I thought he was about to tell me one, not—say whatever he just said. While I scowl at him, he leans over to put a hand on my leg. “Who you are is yours, and you can do whatever you want with it. You can play ball. You can marry a man. You can run a damn grocery store. But if you want to play in the NFL and have a career there and make a name for yourself so you can give something back to the world the way your dad did—the way we all did—then you can’t be out.”

I suck in a breath. It’s the thing I’ve been telling myself my entire life, and here my uncle is breaking the news to me like I’m too stupid to have ever thought about it. “No shit?” I ask with mock surprise.