Seth made a soft sound in his sleep, his hips shifting against me, and I bit down on my lip to keep from making a noise.
I needed to move. Needed to get up before this got worse, before he woke up and realized where his hand was resting, before I did something stupid like press back into him.
But I didn’t move. Didn’t want to. For just a few more minutes, I wanted to let myself have this. The feeling of being held, of being wanted, even if it was just his sleeping body responding to proximity.
Seth’s breathing changed. I felt him go still behind me, felt the moment he woke up and realized how we were tangled together.
“Tanner?” His voice was rough with sleep.
“Yeah.”
“Fuck. Sorry. I didn’t mean—” He started to pull away.
“Don’t.” The word came out before I could stop it. “You don’t have to move.”
He went still again. His arm was still around my waist, his body still pressed against mine. After a long moment, his hand flexed against my stomach.
“You sure?”
I wasn’t sure of anything except that I didn’t want him to let go yet.
“Yeah.”
We stayed like that in the darkness, neither of us moving, neither of us acknowledging what was happening between us. Seth’s breath was warm against my neck. His heart beat steady against my back. His hand stayed splayed across my stomach, heavy and possessive in a way that made my chest ache.
His arm tightened around me, and I closed my eyes and let myself have this. Just for tonight. Just for a few more hours.
Tomorrow, we could pretend this was just two roommates who fell asleep on the couch. Tomorrow, we could go back to careful boundaries and casual touches that meant nothing.
But tonight, in the dark, I let myself want him.
And from the way Seth held me, I thought maybe he wanted me too.
4
SETH
I woke up with Tanner’s scent on my skin and guilt coiled so tight in my chest I could barely breathe.
We’d fallen asleep tangled together on the couch. I’d woken sometime before dawn with my arm around his waist and my face pressed between his shoulder blades, feeling each slow rise and fall of his breathing like it was synced to my own heartbeat. And instead of doing the smart thing—instead of extracting myself immediately and retreating to my own bed like a person with functioning self-preservation instincts—I’d let myself have five more minutes.
Five minutes of memorizing the way he fit against me. Five minutes of his warmth seeping into my bones. Five minutes of pretending this was something I was allowed to want.
Those five minutes had been a mistake.
The kind of mistake that rewrites your entire understanding of what you’re capable of wanting. The kind that leaves fingerprints on your ribs and makes you realize you’ve been lying to yourself about how deep this thing goes.
Now I was standing in the shower trying to convince my body that Tanner McBride was off-limits while my brain replayed the way he’d felt pressed against me. Small and warm and perfect, like he’d been made to fit exactly there.
I turned the water colder.
This was dangerous territory. The kind that led to complications I couldn’t afford. Tanner was Hunter’s best friend. He was still raw from his father’s death. He had visible trauma responses to the sport I played. And we lived together, which meant if I fucked this up, I couldn’t escape. We’d be stuck sharing space and pretending everything was fine while I died a little every time he walked past me.
But more than that—more than the personal disaster it would create—there was the simple fact that our worlds didn’t fit. Tanner put on noise-canceling headphones every time I left for a game. How the hell was I supposed to date someone who couldn’t even acknowledge that part of my life existed?
I finished my shower, got dressed, and opened my bedroom door to find Tanner already awake and making coffee in the kitchen.
He was wearing sleep shorts and a T-shirt that had holes in both sleeves. His hair stuck up on one side. He looked soft and rumpled and completely unaware that he was destroying me.
