Matteo puts his hand to his forehead. “No, this isn’t happening.”
“Oh, it’s happening all right,” I assure him. “I haven’t come this far to back out now.”
“No, I mean you finding some stranger to do this crap with. I’ve been thinking about this…a lot…like, I’ve run through options, and it’s the only thing that makes sense…and…” He hesitates, searching around my room before grunting.
“And?” I press.
“It’s gotta be me.” He says the words so quickly, I figure I must’ve misheard them.
“What? And you thought I was the one who lost his mind.”
He approaches, a determined glint in his gaze. “Think about it. How long will it take you to find someone you can do this with? You’ll have to troll these apps and sites, get someone willing to try these oddly specific things with you—unprotected, I might add. And you have no way of knowing if you can trust them with that, especially since you need to have multiple sessions. What if you meet a guy who just wants to use you for once or twice and then you have to start over? And you have no idea what kind of person would agree to this. You could run into some sicko perv who just wants to take advantage of you.”
“Obviously, I’ve considered all that.” And him bringing it up only adds to how overwhelmed I already feel about it all.
“Well, I don’t like the idea of someone getting off insideyou repeatedly while you’re just trying to do something that puts you in such a vulnerable position, and not just your body, but with what this means to you.”
“Please don’t try to make it sound seedier than it already is,” I say, turning away from him. I can’t look at him while my cheeks are this hot. Doesn’t he get how humiliating this is? He doesn’t have to rub it in.
He moves closer. “Alexei, you know me.” He pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket, keying around before displaying it for me. I don’t know what I’m looking at until I see all the negatives. “I got tested last week. Everything’s good.”
“Don’t show me that,” I say, swatting his phone away.
He tucks it back in his pocket. “Come on. It’s not like I’m gonna like it, so it’ll just be clinical. We do that, and we get through it. Together. And I swear to you, no one will ever fucking know a damn thing about it. I’ll protect you. Your privacy. Your body. I know I can’t stop you from doing this, but it doesn’t have to be a fucking nightmare.”
My gaze meets his, and as I look into his eyes, I don’t doubt how serious he is, yet I can’t make sense of it. “You’d do that for me?”
“I told you, I get why you need to do this, but it doesn’t have to be dangerous.”
It reminds me of what he said about his biological parents. Not knowing. Evidently, I’ve underestimated him. Especially with what he’s suggesting. It’s another indication of what a stand-up guy he is.
I sigh. If only it were that easy. “Matteo, you must knowthat’s not gonna work. Like, physically,” I say, looking to his crotch.
“I’ve already googled this, and—”
I’m thrown again. “Wait, you’ve been googling to figure out how you’re gonna fuck me?” I can’t help chuckling as the words escape my lips.
He lets out a nervous laugh too. “I’ve been googling a lot of wild shit recently. I can take some Viagra. I just had to do a questionnaire online, so they’re being shipped. It only works if you’re turned on, but we can work that out. I can pull up porn on my phone. But we’re basically covered.”
“You did all this before discussing it with me?”
“I was hoping it would help me talk you into it.”
This was not the conversation I was expecting. Like…at all.
It’s more than a little annoying that he’s done all this without talking to me, but also, feels nice that as fucked up as it will be for him, he’s willing to help me out. “Noble as it may be, I can’t accept your help. This is my issue. I can’t drag you into it any more than I already have.”
He steps toward me. “Please, Alexei. If you do this without me, it’ll be so much worse for me. I’ll be constantly worrying about you. Stressing if you’re safe and okay. If you won’t do it for your own sake, do it for mine.”
His worry’s written all over his face. A warmth stirs in my chest because as much as I want him to back off, it’s nice that he gives a damn. And he’s not wrong. If I did this stuff with him, it would be safer. And a hell of a lot easier to work out with someone who gets what’s going on, rather than havingto make up excuses with a stranger to follow through with it.
As weird as it will be doing this with Matteo, even just telling him what I have about the Saints and Sinners, there’s relief in knowing I’m not dealing with it all alone like I was at the start of the school year.
“You’re considering it,” he observes.
“I’ll consider it, but again, Preston could message me in a bit, and we find out we don’t need to do this at all.”
“I have a feeling if you thought that was true, you wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble with getting that notebook.”
