Suddenly the room exploded in laughter, though I hadn’t heard what we were discussing, since I was too zoned out in my own thoughts.
“What?” Tex asked, with a faux-affronted laugh. “Was I really that obvious?”
“Yes!” everyone else in the room yelled in unison.
Jazz, in particular, was laughing so hard his face was turning red. “You were the only one who didn’t realize you were in love with me,” he said affectionately, patting Tex’s knee.
“Well, I’d never thought about dudes that way,” Tex grumbled. “Sorry for being slow on the uptake.”
“Can’t relate,” Jonah said, grinning at Maverick. “I knew I was gay when I was eight.”
“Nineteen for me,” Gunnar said with a nod. “Being bi is extra fun because you can lie to yourself for longer.”
“Sometimes it just takes the right person to open your eyes,” Raven said, then winked at me.
In the kitchen, Eli grabbed another seltzer with a laugh. “Can’t believe how outnumbered I am,” he said. “At this rate, I’m gonna be the only straight guy left! Especially now that Nix switched teams!”
At my side, Nix stiffened slightly. “Aw, come on, Eli,” he said a little tersely.
Odd. I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean, ‘switched teams’?” I asked. Though I was already a little nervous about the answer.
“Nothing,” Nix said shortly before Eli could answer. Nix looked a little… uncertain. Which he so rarely did. It only heightened my nerves.
Tension rippled over the room.
“Don’t worry about being slow on the uptake, Tex,” Raven said, obviously redirecting the conversation away from the silent conversation Nix and Eli were having with their eyes. “How long has it been since I’ve complained about how long it took Gunnar to get his head out of his ass?”
“Six hours,” Gunnar said. “New record.”
“Oh, I’m overdue then,” Raven said. “Okay, so listen to this—”
I tuned out the conversation again. Sweat beaded on my temples. At my side, Nix was still tense. And I was tense, too. The way Nix had kissed me the first time—the way we’d fucked the morning after he took me home from Ballast—I’d just assumed he was experienced with guys, that even if it wasn’t something he did often, it was something he did.
I’d assumed he was bisexual, and maybe even preferred guys after Sienna passed. Nix was so confident, and so self-assured and clear about what he wanted, it’d never occurred to me that he might still be figuring himself out. Or experimenting. Experimenting with me. Without telling me.
Switched teams. And he obviously didn’t want me to know. We’d—we’d talked about our pasts. I felt like I’d bared my soul to him that day he picked me up from rehab. He’d had plenty of opportunities to fill me in on this huge part of who he was, and not once had he even hinted…
I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. If he’d been hiding something so big from me, something that everyone else had apparently known—then our relationship was built on a more unstable foundation than I’d thought.
“I’m gonna get some air,” I muttered, and then stood up and briskly stalked outside, ignoring the way the room went awkwardly quiet behind me.
Outside, the air was so brisk it almost hurt to inhale, but the sensation was grounding. I took a deep breath and leaned my weight on the railing of the front porch.
As I’d expected, the front door creaked open, and familiar footsteps fell tentatively across the porch. Nix leaned against the railing next to me, carefully leaving a bit of space. Despite my nerves—and my confusion—I still wanted his touch. I wanted him to comfort me. But that desire was not enough to overwhelm the sense of betrayal building inside me.
“What did Eli mean?” I asked. “By ‘switched teams’?”
Nix sighed. He leaned forward, forearms on the railing, and dropped his head down. Then he glanced up to meet my eyes, nervous and bashful. “I’d only been with women before I met you,” he admitted. “I’d never even been attracted to a guy before you.”
He rubbed the back of his neck like he was embarrassed. My heart went cold, sinking like a stone tossed into the bottom of Elkin Lake. I’d been so fucking foolish. How had I not seen this? How had I been the last to realize? The great love of his life had been a woman. What if I was just a phase? A detour until he found another woman who caught his interest, someone easy and healthy and good?
“I was your first?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Nix said, then smiled like that was a cute fact, instead of a painful one. “I thought I was straight, until I met you. Or, well…not even straight, exactly. I talked to Raven about it—he mentioned something about, uh, demisexuality? But I don’t need a label to know how I feel.”
“Well, maybe I do,” I said a little sharply.
Nix straightened up, and his smile fell off his face at the sight of my expression. “Dawson…”
“How can I trust whatever this is if—if you’ve never even considered being with another guy until now? Why wouldn’t you tell me that?” I asked. Maybe I sounded a little hysterical, but I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t mentioned this before. That he didn’t think it was a big deal. “I can’t be an experiment to you. Or a learning experience. If you’re starting to notice men for the first time, or whatever this is, maybe you need to go out to Stallions and fool around and figure out your shit before you drag me into it.”
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, and then took a deep, slow breath. The thought of Nix getting laid by some stranger at Stallions made me sick, but that’d be better than me getting even more attached, only to get my heart broken later. “Jesus, Nix, how could you not tell me this?”
I’d known something like this was bound to happen. It wasn’t possible for things to just fall in place as easily as they had. No wonder Dr. Wyatt had cautioned me against relationships—this was a jolt to my newfound stability that I really didn’t need. Fuck, I’d been so cocky, so sure of myself, and of Nix, and it turned out I hadn’t even known this huge part of who he was. What else didn’t I know about him? Was everyone just humoring me because they didn’t want to send me over the edge?
God, I needed to get out of here. I couldn’t stand here and look at Nix’s doe eyes. It hurt too badly. I turned to leave, but Nix caught my wrist, quick as a flash.
“Dawson,” he said softly, but a little brokenly. “Help me understand.”
“What?” I asked, but I didn’t pull my hand away.
“I’ve never—” He paused, cleared his throat. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Not since Sienna. I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel this way again.”
My heart beat hard in my chest. If that was true, why had he hidden this from me? Why had I been the very last person to find out, and from someone else? Had he ever been planning to tell me?
“I don’t understand why this is such a big deal,” Nix said, but it wasn’t accusing. He just sounded confused. “I don’t understand why the label matters so much. Or the gender. Or how many people I’ve been with in the past. I know what I feel!”