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“The NFL part, Theo. Not the trend part. I don’t think you chose to be gay,” I interrupted gently, understanding the sudden defensiveness. I leaned forward and rested my forearms on my knees. “And I sure as hell don’t think it’s something you need to fix, but I think you know that. What I meant was, your father isn’t entirely wrong that being openly gay could complicate your football career.”

“How?”

“It’s easy for people outside football to say nobody cares anymore. And plenty of people genuinely don’t.” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “But football has generations of locker-room culture telling men exactly what they’re supposed to be—strong, aggressive, masculine, straight. That’s not something the culture is readily letting go of.”

“Oh,” Theo whispered.

“There have been queer players,” I said. “Some have been open before entering the league, and some came out later. Every time it happens, people act like it’s proof the problem has been solved. It’s not. It’s progress, and progress is good. But progress doesn’t come without a risk, especially when teams are evaluating hundreds of prospects and looking for reasons to move someone spots down on a draft board.”

Theo’s expression was thoughtful, and I plowed on ahead without hesitating. He needed to hear it all.

“There’s no way to know what twenty or thirty different front offices would privately think,” I told him. “Most of them would probably tell you it doesn’t matter. Plenty of coaches and teammates genuinely wouldn’t care. But you’d be betting your career on that probability—on the probability that someone looking at you isn’t homophobic, or that someone won’t look at you and think it’s better to go with the straight guy who has similar numbers because he’s potentially less complicated. There’s no extra PR involved in that guy because people are dumbasses.”

I hated every single fucking word coming out of my mouth, mostly because Theo deserved better than having to calculate something like all of this.

“Your agent might tell you to wait,” I admitted. “He might tell you to focus on getting drafted and establishing yourself so your value speaks for itself.”

“Make myself untouchable first,” Theo summarized for me.

“Yeah, as close to it as anyone can get in professional sports.”

“Do you think I should wait?” he asked.

That question stopped me because Theo trusted me maybe more than anyone else when it came to football. I was his coach. I understood numbers, probabilities, and risk. More than that, I had his back in everything, and he knew it. If I told him coming out could hurt his career, my opinion could become the deciding factor.

Another part of me—the selfish part—desperately wanted to tell him none of that mattered. That part of me wanted to tell him to choose me over the easy draft interview. Over endorsements, locker rooms, and whatever future required pretending I didn’t exist.

But I refused to be another person telling Theo what his life was supposed to look like.

“I think you need to decide how badly you want this, and then you need to plan accordingly,” I said finally. He watched me closely, clinging to every word I said. “If playing professionally is the dream, then protecting the dream might mean being careful about when you come out publicly. Maybe that’s a year. Maybe it’s several. I can’t give you some magic number where suddenly nobody can hurt your career anymore.”

I swallowed hard.

“But I also don’t think you should spend years hiding behind doing something that makes you miserable,” I added. “There isn’t one right answer here, Theo. There’s just the answer you can live with.”

Silence settled between us as he processed my answer. I watched him chew his lower lip, his gaze dropping to his mug instead of meeting my eyes.

“Where would that leave us?” Theo asked so softly I almost missed it.

There it was: the question I was dreading. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I had too many. And none of them were fair to put on him right now. Not while he was wrestling with this decision.

I could already see every version of what it might mean for us—years of hiding, careful distances, pretending in public, letting strangers believe whatever made his career easier. My chest tightened painfully.

I knew what hiding would cost me. I’d spent too much of my life making myself smaller and keeping pieces of myself locked away because it was easier than dealing with what happened when people saw the truth. I had no desire to go back to that. Not for years. Not with Theo.

I could handle privacy. I could handle being careful when it mattered. But pretending he wasn’t mine? Building an entire relationship in the shadows? I didn’t think I could do that, no matter how much I loved him.

“That’s a bridge we can cross when we get there,” I promised him. “But ultimately, it comes down to what you want for your future.”

I wanted him to say you. It was unreasonable and unfair, especially after everything he’d lost over the last few days. I still wanted him to say it anyway.

But he hesitated, which began to banish that hope long before he ever said a word.

“I don’t want to screw up my chance with the NFL,” Theo admitted.

Something inside me sank, and I looked away before he could see it. Logically, it wasn’t a rejection. I knew that. Theo had spent most of his life working toward this goal, and he was already so close.

Asking him to throw it away because loving me might make things complicated would be cruel.