Anger and want tangling, I snarled, “Shut up and fuck me.”
He obliged. Rough, relentless, each thrust a claim stamped onto my skin. When he shoved me into the cabinet and my head hit wood, the two of us became a thing that had nothing to do with other women in parking lots, or menus, or rumors. He shoved language into the parts of me that denied what I wanted and made them speak.
“Look at me,” he ordered. I did. His eyes burned like a proof he was repeating: Only you. Only you. Only you.
I broke first, loud and raw. He followed, a rough sigh that felt like a brand. He held me there, forehead to mine, breath jagged. “You feel me now?” he asked.
I didn’t answer out loud. I only curled into him. Let him carry me to bed. Let him think it worked — that physicality could blunt the doubt. Maybe for the night, it did.
Morning came quieter than the night left off.He made coffee the way my chest needed: warm, without show. I stole his T-shirt and wore it like a small flag. We ate eggs on the couch, laughed at small things, pretended the parking-lot scene was a far shore we’d already crossed.
Before I left, he lifted a hand like he might touch my face and then let it rest on my hip. “We’re good?” he asked.
“We’re good,” I said. It was true for morning. It felt true where it mattered for now.
You can’t keep running because it feels like falling, the better part of me said.
Or maybe keep a helmet on until you know the ground, the other, louder part warned. I turned the volume up on my playlist before either side won.
Nia had been a test. Not of him — of me. How I handled it was a mirror. I didn’t like everything I saw in the reflection. But I liked this: I hadn’t run. I’d walked in. I’d eaten, laughed, touched, stayed. I’d let his steadiness do the thing steadiness does best.
I wasn’t cured. Fear still lived in a locked closet behind my breastbone. But I wasn’t starving the part of me that wanted more.
I texted himLater?He answeredSoon, then sent the lightning bolt like always. I smiled at my phone, then rolled my eyes at myself for smiling.
“Don’t get soft,” I told my reflection in the mirror as I prepared myself for another day at work.
My reflection smirked.Too late, babe. You been soft. You just finally admitted it.
Light on. Line of sight restored. Angles clear. The shot still long, still risky — and maybe, finally, mine.
Chapter 13
Voltage
Politeness wasn’t supposed to feel like a trap, but lately, it did.
Nia Coleman wasn’t a bad woman. In fact, she’d be a good woman for sure, but just not for me. Body soft in all the places men noticed, confidence that could hold a room without raising her voice. But she’d taken myyes ma’ams, my respectful nods, my small talk in the break room and read them all like invitations.
And maybe it would’ve been once, back when I was younger and chasing whatever attention wanted me back. But I’d long stopped needing every smile to turn into a number in my phone. I wanted more than that now. With Rayna, I felt it. Real. Passionate. Alive.
Still, when Rayna saw me outside school last week with Nia standing too close, that look in her eyes—it burned. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I hated that it still put a crack in the trust she was building with me.
Carver High had been a fresh start. I came from a school where the paint peeled in the stairwells, where half the computers in the lab booted up to error screens and never got fixed, where kids shared tattered textbooks that were already outdated when I was in high school. The district talked a lot about “preparing them for the future” while making sure they had nothing to prepare with. It gnawed at me when I left—I knew those kids deserved more.
Carver was different. Hallways polished, science labs with equipment that worked, Wi-Fi that didn’t choke under the weight of a single class logging in. They had a robotics program, a music wing that smelled like polished brass, art rooms stocked with supplies that didn’t come out of teachers’ pockets. The students walked taller here, like they knew they were being invested in.
My first in-service day, I showed up early, shirt pressed, folder under my arm. A few older teachers shook my hand, welcomed me, gave me the lay of the land. And then there was Nia. She taught history, had already been there a fewyears. Her smile was bright, her eyes keen, and the way she lingered in conversation told me exactly where her interest lay.
I saw it. I wasn’t blind. But I’d also been through enough to know better than to play where I worked. I wasn’t looking for a distraction. Not anymore.
I’d had women—plenty. I knew the pull I had when I wanted it, and I used to lean on that. Easy sex, easy company, never anything that lasted. But that game was old. My phone had been dry for a long time now. No late-night DMs. No unread “u up?” texts. My IG might as well have been a ghost town. I’d cleared the noise on purpose.
Which is why Nia, showing up where she wasn’t invited, sliding too close in places I wanted quiet—it grated. She wanted me to play, and I didn’t. Not with her.
Then Rayna came along. Wild, brilliant, quick-tongued, beautiful Rayna. Stubborn as hell. She was never going to let me hand her a watered-down version of love. She made me work for every inch of her trust.
And when I fucked her into the mattress—when I had her spread under me, walls gripping me like she wasn’t letting go of anything she finally claimed—I felt it: something closing, locking me in. Terrified me, how much I wanted to stay there. How much I wanted her to keep me.
