Coached Hearts

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We made it. After everything–the years of hiding, the kiss that blew our lives open, the night that nearly destroyed us–Andre and I are on the other side. We have a life. A real one. The kind I didn’t think men like us got to have.

But surviving isn’t the same as living. And living means wanting things that terrify me. Things I never had growing up and don’t know how to build.

Then my mother calls. My father wants to see me. Years of silence, and now he wants to talk.

I thought I was done being that kid on the court, desperate for approval from a man who never gave it. I thought Andre had healed that part of me.

But some wounds don’t close. They just go quiet–until something makes them open again.

ANDRE

I have the man I almost lost. I have my art. I have a life that, five years ago, I didn’t believe I deserved.

It should be enough. It is enough. But there’s something else–a want so deep it keeps me awake at night. Something I’m afraid to say out loud because saying it makes it real. And real things can be taken away.

Blake sees it in me. He’s always been able to read me better than I can read myself. I think he wants it too–but he’s still carrying the weight of a childhood that taught him love comes with conditions.

What I’m asking for isn’t a test. It isn’t a demand.

It’s a door. And I want us to walk through it together.