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A frown flits across his beautiful flushed face.
‘It means you’ll owe me.’ I run my hand down his chest again, feeling the muscles twitch underneath my fingers.
He laughs a little and pillows his elbow behind his head. ‘I’ll owe you.’
I wake up before Gabriel, groggy and hot. It’s just after five in the afternoon and the sun streams through my west-facing window, bathing us in warm light. Gabriel lies facedown beside me, hugging my pillow beneath him. His dark eyelashes flicker against his cheeks while he sleeps, and his lips are parted just slightly as he sucks in slow, even breaths. Not for the first time, I’m in awe of how beautiful he is.
I smooth back a few curls from his face and my fingers continue down the column of his throat, pushing his hair away. I discover a mole near his collarbone and a smattering of freckles across his neck and shoulders; markers of days spent training in the sun, no doubt.
‘Quelle heure?’ he murmurs into the pillow.
I thank my current overlord, the Duolingo owl, for my significantly improved French. ‘Just after five.’
‘Slept for a while.’ He sounds genuinely surprised.
‘You played tennis for three hours,’ I say. ‘I felt tired just watching you.’
Gabriel lets out a long sigh and stretches out on my bed. He reaches back to grasp my hand, brings it to his mouth and kisses across my knuckles. ‘Thank you.’
My little gay heart swells. Fuck I’m a sap. ‘You don’t have to thank me; it, um, I wanted to.’ Gabriel drags his mouth across my knuckles again and I swallow. Feelings jitter through my body, nervous and confused. Why am I confused? I got what I wanted—Gabriel in my bed, his mouth on mine. But now, it’s clear that things have changed. And I’m not sure what that means—for either of us.
‘You want something to eat?’ I ask, swallowing down my feelings. Briefly, I wonder if Sadie’s claimed my forgotten sandwich.
Gabriel shakes his head and rolls onto his back. ‘No. I just want to lie like this for a while.’ He runs his hands over his face, and groans. ‘Papa is going to kill me.’
My stomach twists. I don’t like this. While a part of me knows I’m little more than a drop in the river that is Gabriel’s complex life, that there must be more to this argument than simply my presence, I don’t enjoy being the one in the middle of a fight. ‘I don’t want to get between you two. Or the championship.’
He pins me with a serious look. ‘I meant what I said earlier; you won’t. Our fight was a long time coming. I finally told him things I’ve wanted him to know for a while . . .’ He lets out a shaky breath. ‘About how I feel and how he treats me.’
‘Did you tell him you’re into guys?’
Gabriel shakes his head.
His brown eyes are beautiful; the afternoon sun highlights flecks of amber in his irises. I feel his hand run up my back and rest between my shoulder blades.
‘I want to tell him . . . I just . . . I’m scared he’ll take it badly.’ I feel like he’s not telling me the whole truth but I can’t push it. ‘How did you tell your family?’
Ooft. Not the time to open that can of worms. ‘Never did. I wasn’t that close with my dad. I think Mum had suspicions, but I never told her.’
‘No brothers or sisters?’
‘Just me and my mum.’ His fingers trail down my back and up again. It’s distracting in the best way. ‘You?’
‘Mymamanand my sister, Claudia, live back in Paris. My sister is twenty. She studies law at university.’
‘And your mum?’
‘She is a manager at a tech company,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I think she has “suspicions”, as you said.’ His French accent hugs the word.
Gabriel curls closer to me, his thumb brushing over my exposed hipbone.
‘So your next tournament is in Brazil.’ I change the subject.
Gabriel nods into the pillow, his bronze eyes sliding from mine. ‘I won’t get home until March. When I was younger, I used to do all the tournaments I could. Now, it’s expected of me. I wish I could take a step back. Choose where I go and when.’
I don’t pretend to understand the intricacies that come with being a professional athlete, but it’s clear things at home are more complicated than they seem. ‘It sounds like you need to talk with your dad.’
Gabriel presses his lips together. ‘I tried. We just fight. Doesn’t make me confident to come out to him. And then there’s the tour. Sponsorships. The fans.’
