We’re backat the library, side by side in our usual corner. Outside, dusk pools low across the windows, brushing the oak-paneled floor in shades of amber. Our laptops glow against blank pages and blinking cursors. We should be working on our capstone. Instead, we sit in silence, adrift.
Usually, we fall into rhythm without thinking?researching, trading notes, brushing shoulders as naturally as breathing.
But today, Olivia hasn’t typed more than a line and I’ve reread the same paragraph three times now.
She’s slipping somewhere I can’t reach, even as our thighs touch. The distance is a rope wrapped around my ribs, pulled tighter with every second she keeps walking backward.
So I reach for her.
It’s the barest brush of my fingers against hers under the table, but it steadies the turbulence inside me. Olivia doesn’t look up at me, but she doesn’t pull away either.
I curl my hand around hers and squeeze once.Are you still here?
She squeezes back.Yes, I am.
It’s just a crumb, but I take it.
I can’t demand more and risk her closing off entirely, as much as I want to grab the silence by its throat and shake thetruth out of her. Instead, I hold the line she’s drawn and try to swallow the resentment rising like bile in my throat.
My thumb glides over her knuckles, tracing each rise and hollow.
I lean in slowly and press my mouth to the slope of her neck. The scent of her shampoo—strawberries and cream—quiets the noise in my mind. Her breath catches, warm against my cheek, while her hand slips from mine and fists the front of my shirt.
I loop my arm around her waist and pull her close until nothing separates us.
My lips part at her jawline, trailing downward. She tilts her head, offering more, and I take it like I’ve gone too long without air.
Her grip tightens. My free hand finds the nape of her neck, cradling it where her pulse stutters against my palm. She trembles beneath my touch, but she doesn’t flee—because she needs this too. It’s the only salve she’ll still let me provide.
I kiss my way down the column of her throat like the answer I’m chasing might be hidden somewhere in her skin. Eventually, my mouth finds the curve where her shoulder yields to her collarbone and I nip at the silken skin there.
Her reaction is immediate, her body tilting toward mine with a soft gasp, pliant and seeking. If I pulled her into my lap, I know she'd melt into me without hesitation. She might even beg for it, as she has every night this week. She’d seek out the comfort I offer so easily, the pleasure I never deny her.
Any other day, I’d welcome her need. I’m hopeless for her, after all. She’s so beautiful as she falls apart, and I’ve always been insatiable with her. I’m addicted to her wreckage because it’s proof that she needs me.
I should want nothing more than this. But today, something twists inside me. For the first time, I feelangertoward her.
It hits low and hot, curling in my gut like a lit fuse. I try to smother it, but it won’t go quietly. The intensity of it scares me.
I don’t ever get angry at Olivia.I ache. I crave. But this?Thisis something else.
Now, I fucking hate that this is all she wants from me.
She keeps turning me into a refuge that she won’t live in, and it hurts that she trusts my touch, but not my devotion. That she’ll let me give her relief, but won’t let me carry her pain.
Haven’t I earned it by now?
What more do I have to do before she finally deems me deserving of her whole self, and not just the pieces she can offer in the dark?
The thought lances through me and I feel it again—that sudden, almost shameful urge totake.
I want to mark her, to leave evidence that I was here. I want proof that I matter to her, and that she’s mine in some small but undeniable way.
The fury floods fast and feral, and before I can think twice—I sink my teeth into her skin.
Her breath morphs into a gasp—pain, pleasure, both. One of her hands jerks against my chest while the other slides down, finding my thigh and clinging there, nails pressing through the denim.
Her body stills, but only to offer itself more fully.
