“Not sure. But we did it.” I was grinning like an idiot, couldn’t stop grinning, my whole body still buzzing from the closet. The kiss, the way Alex pressed against me, and the relief of being back in his arms. Not to mention the fact that he blew me in the most risky place.
Fucking hot.
Alex was smiling too—that rare, genuine smile I’d only seen a handful of times, the one that made him look younger, lighter, like he’d finally stopped carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Noah gave us a strange look, but I didn’t care. Not in that moment.
“Anyway,” he shook his head and pulled out his phone. “Let me just verify it worked—I told my guy to run a trace after youexecuted the script.” He typed rapidly, then waited, staring at the screen.
A few seconds passed.
Then his phone buzzed.
Noah read the message, and his grin widened. “It’s gone. Completely wiped. No trace of it anywhere on the server.”
“Yes!” Alex laughed—actually laughed—and the sound did something to my chest. Happy to see him happy.
We celebrated for maybe ten minutes. Noah recounting how he’d almost had a heart attack listening to us through the earpieces, Alex and I filling in the details about the security guard, all of us high on the impossible thing we’d just accomplished.
But then Alex checked his phone and his expression shifted.
“I should go. It’s late, practice,” he said.
I wanted to tell him to stay and pull him back to finish the conversation we’d started in that closet.
The scene flooded into my mind—the way he’d kissed me back like he’d been starving for it, like he’d wanted it just as badly as I had. Then the sound he’d made when I’d pinned him against the wall. His hand on me, gripping me through my jeans in a way that had made my brain short-circuit.
I felt alive.
More alive than I’d felt in over a year—since that summer at Brackett Lake when everything had felt possible before it all went to shit.
And God, I’d wanted it. I wanted him. I’d been wanting him for so long that finally giving in to it had felt like breaking through the surface after drowning.
“I’ll walk you out,” I said.
“You don’t have to—”
“I know.”
We stepped into the hallway. The fluorescent lights were harsh after the dim warmth of the dorm. A few doors down, someone’s music thumped through the walls—bass-heavy, muffled.
Alex turned to face me.
We just looked at each other.
No words. Just... looking.
His eyes were so blue. Even under the shitty dorm lighting, even with shadows under them from exhaustion and adrenaline crash, they were impossibly blue, the same blue that had haunted me for the last year.
My chest felt tight.
His lips were slightly parted. Still red and swollen, from kissing, from being on his knees, from having me in his mouth.
The closet scene flashed through my mind—Alex dropping to his knees, his mouth on me, those blue eyes looking up at me like I was everything he wanted. The way he’d rearranged my brain with his mouth, the sounds he’d made, the way my hand had fisted in his hair while I came in his mouth.
Holy shit.
We’d actually done that. That had actually happened. The air between us hummed, and then we tried to talk at the same time.
