Something in my chest twisted painfully. It wasn’t attraction, not quite, but recognition. The dangerous kind.
Anthony wasn’t conventionally handsome—he didn’t need to be. He was beautiful in the way wild things were. Broad shoulders, muscled from a life built with his hands. Arms that could carry people, and hold steady in ways words never could. All danger and gravity. Like he’d been carved from a memory you couldn’t quite let go of. His body was the map of a life he didn’t talk about. Scars inked into skin like secrets, each one a silent confession.
I wanted to learn them all. With my hands. My mouth. My soul. To say: “I see you. You’re still here. You still matter.”
Something inside me lunged forward, unbidden. But I stayed, letting the air hum between us. The heat of him, the scent of cedar and soap and smoke, made it impossible to look away. I was tethered to him in a way that didn’t need words.
I didn’t touch him. I couldn’t. It wasn’t right. But I wanted to. So much so I thought I might rip open.
He glanced toward me. Not fully awake. His eyes passed over the hallway and didn’t see me.
Maybe that was mercy.
Maybe it was a warning.
I turned back, pulse skittering, every nerve in my body lit up with something raw and volatile. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Just that if I wasn’t careful, Anthony would ruin me. Body. Mind. And soul. The worst part? I was starting to think I wanted him to.
My breath caught.
A broken, guttural sound clawed its way from my throat—a moan, low and shame-laced. A sick, unwelcome heat coiled lowin my gut, like my body had betrayed me without even asking. I stumbled back a step, unsteady, pulse roaring like thunder in my ears. My heart pounded traitorously, loud enough to drown out reason, louder still than the part of me screaming to run.
But I didn’t move. Because every cell in my body was whispering the same terrifying truth: I didn’t want to escape him.
I caught my reflection in the darkened window—hollow-eyed, breathing too fast, face flushed with something I didn’t recognize. My own expression felt alien, like I was staring at someone else entirely. I looked away before the glass could accuse me fully.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. The sound was violent in the quiet. I flinched like I’d been caught. Fumbled it out of my pocket with shaking hands.
Madeline
Missed call
Missed call
Missed call
Missed call
Missed call
My stomach dropped. I turned the screen face down without answering as it lit up once again.
I made it back to my room before my legs gave out. Shut the door quietly like shame had a sound. My back slid down the wood until I was sitting on the floor, knees to chest, breath too fast and too shallow like I’d just run from something that was still inside me.
He didn’t see me come undone. Didn’t see the tremble in my hands. Didn’t see the way I bit down on the inside of my cheek,trying to anchor myself to the pain and not the way the light curved along his spine.
I’d never reacted to anyone like this before. I’d always known I was gay. Girls were never anything but background noise. But even then… I’d thought I was broken. Ace maybe. Emotionally flatlined. Like my body had been permanently muted.
But now it felt like something inside me had been ripped open with violent hands. Like I’d spent my whole life sealed in ice, and he’d walked into the room and shattered me with a glance I never asked for.
Having spent a week sharing the same space as him. His scent soaked into the air, lingering in the fabric of my clothes, in the fucking hallway like a ghost.
Sleep became a haunted thing. When it came, it brought mom. Her final breaths in that sterile, antiseptic room. Her hands cold and still. The weight of her loss pressed against my ribs until it felt like I was breaking open from the inside out.
But then he was there too. Slipping through the cracks. Every night, every goddamn dream, they blurred together. Her death, and him.
His hands. His voice. The way he smelled like smoke, cedar and sea salt and everything I was never supposed to want.
I’d wake up drenched in sweat, my skin slick, my dick hard and aching like it was punishing me for feeling anything at all.
