It should have turned me off.
Instead, I found myself shooting my load and painting the tiles with cum while Creek’s name left my lips in a gasping whisper.
I did everything I could not to think of him, but hobbling into the staff room made me think of the beach. Which made me think of that hike up the steep stairs.
Which inevitably had me thinking of Creek. Not that he’d been particularlyoffmy mind since the kiss, but the unexpected apology had burrowed its way deep beneath my skin. I was a stubborn asshole when it came to holding grudges. I’d wiped friends from my life with a single click of a block button and never looked back, no matter how sorry they were.
I wasn’t the kind of man who tolerated crossing lines and testing boundaries, but something about Creek made me worried I’d forgive him just about anything. And he had no business making me feel like that at all.
“What happened to you?”
I spun around and sagged a little at the sight of Mark, who had his travel mug dangling from his fingers. I leaned heavily on my crutches as he assessed me, and then he elbowed me out of the way so he could get to the coffee machine.
“Well?” he demanded after a beat of silence.
“You’re seriously asking?”
Mark usually opted for sarcasm as his love language, so he didn’t always expect an answer. “You look like shit, Heath. Am I kicking someone’s ass, or?—”
“I got into a fight with Marshall’s hill.”
He whirled around. “You seriously tackled that beach?”
“I’m normally cool with it, but I have a sore on my leg,” I defended. I wasn’t about to tell him I’d been trying to escape asudden and random kiss from a man I both did and didn’t want to touch me all over. “It was a choice.”
“One that’s left you full of regret,” he said, definitely not a question this time. Jerking his head toward the ugly, paint-stained couch that one of the teachers had rescued from the art building before they turned it into shop class, he dropped down, and I happily joined him.
Stretching my leg out, I rubbed my knee over the sleeve and tried to ignore the sensation that someone was setting my nonexistent toes on fire. “I should have left my leg at home today. I had to schedule a new socket refitting since this one’s causing a sore.”
Mark looked a little green around the edges, the way most people did whenever I talked about the uglier sides of my injury. Most of the time, people just wanted the inspiration. They wanted to see me do shit like hike up the Marshall’s Beach hill and ride cross-country with an adaptive motorcycle and go to Disneyland when I was done.
They didn’t want to hear about muscles atrophying and phantom pains and how sometimes my leg felt so real that I tried to step down on it, falling flat on my face. They didn’t want to know that I was susceptible to pressure sores, which could lead to infection and more of my leg needing to be removed. They didn’t want to think about how my life was now and always would be different.
But I wasn’t the kind of man who was willing to let people sit in their own comfort at my expense either. “But it was a rough day, so no, I don’t have regrets. It felt good to get down there.”
“You should’ve gone with a friend,” he chastised.
Rolling my eyes, I leaned back. “What makes you think I didn’t?”
“Because Kaleo and those guys were down in San Diego for that tournament at Pacific Beach, and I was at home trying to fix that massive hole in my deck,” Mark said.
I blinked at him. “…and so?”
“Andso, you don’t have any other friends,” he said. “I mean, your PT guy, I guess, but I’m assuming he had work, and it’s not like Zayd would take off work for you.”
I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be cruel or if his honesty was just particularly sharp that morning, but I couldn’t help a wince. “Well. Thanks for that. I feel amazing now.” I managed to get up quicker than was probably good for me, and I grabbed my crutches and hurried out.
Mark called my name, sounding a little feeble, but it was no surprise that he didn’t follow me out. The truth was, I would’ve probably caused some kind of scene, and the last thing I needed was to end up on some viral TikTok for having a teacher meltdown.
Turning the corner, I almost careened into a couple of seniors from the football team who had at least six inches on me. One of the guys—James, the tall QB—caught my arm and offered me a toothy smile.
“Whoa, Coach. You good?”
I rolled my eyes and steadied myself on my crutches. “Never better.”
At that, his eyes narrowed. “You sure? You look pissed.”
He was a good kid. I let go of a crutch handle to give his shoulder a pat. “Just boring adult stuff. Don’t worry about it.”
