“Ohfuck, Scout.Fuck, I’m going to…I’m going to…”
“Cum for me.”
Like the good boy that he was, he obeyed. A roar exploded from the depths of him, and he bounced on my cock, determined to make it last as long as possible. Streams of cum erupted from him, streaming across the bed—evidence of just how hard he’d climaxed.
And then, it was over. We collapsed in a sweaty, spent pile ofbones and sex toys and slick and cum. Not the prettiest picture, but I didn’t care. To me, it was the entire world.
The air around us settled. The world stopped shaking. Our bodies stilled. It was a strange role reversal, to be the one who took care of him after sex. Who breathed against his neck and stroked his tender skin. Who wrapped my arms around him and cradled him back to earth after shooting him up past the stratosphere. I held him like I’d never held anyone before, like he was precious to me.
And he was. He really was.
32
Safe Word
It wasn’t the weed that made me sleep so well that night. It was Hudson. This wasn’t the first time we’d fallen asleep tangled up together, but it was different now.
No.Iwas different.
As soon as I woke up the next morning, my body instinctively rolled over in his direction. He was still asleep—I must have really worn him out; he always got up before me—and his hair hung in rough chops across his smooth forehead. The light from my windows poured in, casting him in ultraviolet Technicolor until he glowed.
I matched my breathing to his. I memorized his face. I listened to the reverb of the other night’s words in my ears. They thrummed in time with my relaxed heart rate.You deserved better. You deserved better. You deserved better.They kept coming back, but today, my heart answered.
I deserve you. I deserve you. I deserve you.
Hudson shifted in his sleep. Our knuckles brushed. The refrain rewrote itself.
I love you.
The thought staggered me. Every instinct told me to run. Toflee this bedroom, change my identity, and run away to start anew somewhere. Texarkana sounded good. I’d probably make a passable diner waitress and look good as a boxed-dye redhead, right?
But no. The coziness of bed was too appealing. The thought of staying in it with Hudson too magnetic.
I was in love with him. With his kindness. His sincerity. His quick laugh and easy nature. His whip-fast wit and earnest treatment of everyone he encountered. His perfect cock. The crease between his brows when he looked at his computer for too long. The brush of his fingertips when they traced down my back. His thoughtfulness. The way he opened up to me. Defended me. Honored me. Cared about and for me.
I loved the Hudson-ness of Hudson. In all the universe, I could not imagine another man like him.
And I could not imagine myselfbeingwith another man—like him or not.
Terrifying thought.
But then again, there was the possibility that I was imagining things. After all, what scientific proof was there for the concept of love? I could be mistaking a mixture of lust and loneliness for the emotions that everyone else described as love. What a humiliationthatwould be.
Problem: I’m in love. Or, at least I think I am.
Proposed Solution: Find out if love is even real…and then find a way to measure whether you’rereallyin love with Hudson, or if this is just your overactive mind at work.
As slowly as I could, so as not to disturb him, I took my phone off my bedside table and opened up my DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) app. I turned the brightness down—I would have been more embarrassed by Hudson seeing this than my porn search history—and let my fingers fly across the digital keyboard.
Scientific proof of love.
Steeling myself, I pressed search. The page turned over, populating dozens of peer-reviewed research papers on the subject. Apparently, like hunting for proof of God and ghosts, the questions surrounding soul mates and true love were ripe for study.
And just like those other topics, the results were inconclusive.
In my own research, I relished the idea of questions without answers. It meant that maybeIcould one day be the person to uncover a new secret of our complex universe. It meant that in a world with millions of ready-made answers, there were still mysteries, still new things to learn. It made our planet a bigger and more exciting place to live.
However, as Hudson slept and I read paper after paper, I suddenly hated the very idea of question marks. Science should be able to tell meexactlywhat I wanted to know at thatexactmoment. What was the point of all these papers and research if they couldn’t even tell me that love was real—or how to detect it if it was?
