I nodded. Let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
I lay back down. The ceiling stared back at me, indifferent.
Everything was different now. Emily was gone—or would be soon. Alex was... something. And Noah knew.
One person knew.
That should’ve terrified me more than it did. But mostly I just felt tired. Exhausted down to my bones.
I closed my eyes and let myself remember it.
The closet. Alex’s mouth on mine and his hands in my hair. The way he’d looked at me when he’d dropped to his knees. Those blue eyes staring up at me while he took me in his mouth, the heat and pressure and the sounds he’d made like he was getting off on it too.
I still couldn’t believe it happened.
And it didn’t feel like just a blow job. It felt like coming home. Like everything I’d been missing without knowing it, and the beginning of something I couldn’t name yet.
Even if it scared the shit out of me.
Tomorrow I’d start being honest.
But tonight, I just let myself want him.
Chapter 18: Alex
The walk to the boathouse stretched longer than it should have.
Late September morning, cold enough that my breath came out in clouds. Mist hung over the river. Fall was dying early this year. Winter approaching with that inevitable weight I could feel in my bones.
I pulled my Kingswell jacket tighter and kept moving.
The video was gone. Noah’s contact had confirmed it—wiped, deleted, like it never existed. That should have been enough. That should have been everything. No more waking up at three AM in a cold sweat. No more threat hanging over my head like a blade.
It was over.
But my chest felt wrong. Too light and too heavy at once because I couldn’t stop thinking about the closet.
Liam’s hands pulling me closer, gripping my hair like he couldn’t get enough—nothing gentle, nothing tentative.
The way I’d dropped to my knees without thinking, unzipped his jeans, looked up at him with those green eyes staring downat me full of want. The weight of him on my tongue, the taste of him, the sounds he made when I took him deeper.
My own cock throbbing in my pants, precum soaking through my boxers because I was so turned on just from having him in my mouth.
It was a relief to finally stop fighting. To stop performing. To want without shame, even if only for those ten perfect minutes.
Heat spread through my chest and lower. My body remembering what my mind couldn’t stop replaying. I was already hard thinking about Liam’s cock in my mouth and the way he’d groaned my name.
God, I’d wanted him.
Still wanted him.
And I’d had him, for one perfect moment.
We texted that night, we were supposed to talk the next day. I’d waited all day. Checked my phone constantly and hoped maybe he was just processing, maybe he needed time.
