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“So many fucking things,” Jude chimed in.

“Very true.” Wyatt nodded solemnly. “Continue.”

The laughter faded, and I wrung my hands together. This had seemed easier in my head. Just tell Wyatt the truth. It was that simple. But now that I had to say the words out loud, my heart hammered so hard in my chest I was sure they could hear it. My mouth opened and closed again.

There were too many ways this could go wrong, and every one of them was fighting for space in my head. Wyatt could be pissed I’d kept it from him and not Jude. He could think it was weird. He could look at me differently.

Which was ridiculous because this was Wyatt. I’d already stressed over telling him I was gay, only to find out it didn’t matter one bit. This couldn’t be too different, but apparently, my mind had decided tonight was the perfect time to catastrophize everything.

“Okay, look, there’s no good way to say this,” I began with a sigh. “It’s just… it’s just that…”

“He’s dating my brother,” Jude interjected as I kept struggling with it.

“Jude!” I exclaimed, turning fast to stare at him—more like glare at him.

“What?” He threw his hands up defensively. “I’m helping!”

“That’s not helping,” I retorted. It was definitely helping, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“As in our coach, Rhodes Kennedy?” Wyatt interrupted loudly over our back-and-forth, effectively ending it. “That big brother?”

I winced. Hearing it laid out like that was horrifying. Our coach. Rhodes Kennedy. Jude’s older brother. Put together, I was sure it sounded bad.

Wyatt stared at me, and I stared right back.

The longer Wyatt stayed silent, the tighter my chest grew. I hadn’t considered how he might react. Jude was different. Rhodes was his brother, and despite the initial weirdness, he knew us both well enough to understand there was more happening between us than some stupid hookup.

Wyatt only knew Rhodes as our coach. He’d met him in passing a few times in the months before Rhodes took the position, but that wasn’t enough to know him.

“Yeah,” I finally admitted quietly. “That brother.”

Wyatt’s expression shifted in tiny increments as he processed it—surprise first, then confusion, followed by the slow narrowing of his eyes as pieces began clicking into place. I could practically see him rifling back through months of weird looks and suspicious disappearances. The realization settling over his face did absolutely nothing to help the knot in my stomach.

And neither did the increasing wait time for him to say anything.

“I know,” Wyatt replied with a grin.

I just blinked at him, fairly certain I’d hallucinated his response.

“What?” I exclaimed, and his grin widened. “What do you mean, you know?”

“I mean, I know that you and Rhodes are dating,” he elaborated.

“How do you know?”

“I was at the Super Bowl party too, you know,” Wyatt said, looking at me like I was the idiot here.

My brain promptly stopped working. I stared at him as the implication sank in. My entire face burned hot as memories from that day started replaying with a horrifying clarity. Both of my best friends had inadvertently witnessed a moment between Rhodes and me that they had no business knowing about.

“Oh, no,” I muttered, covering my face with both hands. “No, no, no, no.”

How the hell had we ever thought we were subtle?

From the bed, Jude’s loud laughter filled the room, and Wyatt’s followed shortly after. I just kept hiding in my hands because the idea of looking at them after everything felt impossible.

Eventually, curiosity won out over humiliation. I took a deep breath and turned just enough to look over my shoulder. Both were still grinning at me.

Perfect.