#Rev (GearShark #2) by Cambria Hebert

begun.
    “You won’t let it be,” Drew argued.
    I guess it had been too much to think we could take an entire night and not get into this. We’d been fooling ourselves. But wasn’t this what I wanted? Wasn’t I tired of pretending?
    Thick silence pressed in around us. He’d tossed me the ball. He’d laid down one epic argument and left me with a choice. I glanced at the mark I’d put on his chest, so near his heart. The heart he so willingly offered me.
    I’d give him anything… but how could I take from him? Yes, he was offering, but just because something was offered didn’t mean it was right to take.
    But…
    I was hurting him and I didn’t want that.
    “It seems like no matter what I do, you’re going to get hurt,” I confessed.
    “There’s only one kind of hurt for me that won’t ever heal.”
    I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled. “Stop saying shit like that.”
    “Why? Because it bothers you? Because you know it’s true?” His voice was argumentative, matter-of-fact.
    “Of course it bothers me!” I shot out. “You’re my weakness, Drew. You’re the one person in this entire world I would do anything for.”
    “All I want is you.”
    “You have me,” I said, weary, collapsing back against the headboard. I was exhausted and hurt in so many ways.
    And I was naked.
    This was a damn heavy conversation to be having without my drawers.
    “Where’s my damn boxers,” I muttered.
    “You don’t need them,” Drew replied.
    I raised a brow. He lifted one back.
    I fought a smile, but in the end, my lips curved upward.
    The dimple in his cheek made an appearance, and I groaned.
    “Please say you understand where I’m coming from,” I pleaded.
    “I understand you’re an overprotective and bossy bastard.”
    “You flatter me,” I quipped.
    “We’re talking in circles.” Drew sighed. “I asked you a question.”
    “Just because the people in this house accepted us doesn’t mean everyone out there will. How do I condemn you to that? How do I justify my love is worth the risk? It’s not just your body, Forrester, I’m trying to protect. But it’s your heart, too. What happens when you tell your father and he flips the fuck out? It’s gonna crush you. What happens if your brother is sickened his brother likes dick?”
    Drew’s face tightened, and I knew what I was saying was crude and hard to hear. Good. It would never get easier.
    “And what about your racing career, the one you’re just starting? Do you think Gamble is gonna want a gay man as the face of his new sport? What if he drops you? What if you never get another opportunity like this again and you spend the rest of your life behind a computer, cut off from your father, brother, and maybe your mother? What happens when you go out and people whisper crude words, when they call you a fag and dick licker?”
    He didn’t say anything, just sat there and looked at me.
    “You’ll start to resent me,” I whispered. “You’ll blame me for all the shit you lost.”
    “Even if I lost every single one of those things you just listed, it still wouldn’t add up to the single loss of you.”
    I was dumbstruck. So completely astounded. He told me he loved me. I knew it was true. What I hadn’t realized was his love for me rivaled my love for him.
    How did a man fight that?
    I couldn’t.
    I was going to cave.
    It was like all the reasons I put us through this were suddenly null and void.
    “You know what I think?” he asked softly.
    I gestured for him to speak.
    “I think it’s not just me you’re protecting, but yourself.”
    Yes. But not from the bigots and the haters in the world. I was protecting myself from me. From all the things our relationship could do to Drew. As I said, it was he who was my weakness, and it was his hurt that had the power to destroy me.
    “Protecting you is protecting me,” I whispered.
    “I really think you’re the bravest man I’ve ever met,” he confessed, almost shy.
    I took it as