“And I’ll tell you I’m fine even when I’m not,” I admit.
He presses his mouth to my forehead. “We’re really bad at lying to each other.”
“Good,” I say. “I don’t want us to get good at that.”
There’s a kind of peace in that—peace I never expected to find, not after everything. There are days when the city feels too loud, when the noise of being alive drowns out everything except the need to keep moving. My hands still shake sometimes. I still count the seconds between breaths when it gets hard.
But there are mornings like this, too—warm, soft, full of the kind of love I used to think was impossible. There’s Damien, who never looks away, who never flinches, who loves me without question, even on the bad days.
I think about all the times he’s walked me to therapy, waited outside with his phone and a cup of coffee, texting me memes until I came out, eyes swollen but lighter. I think about the way he cheered the first time I ate dessert at a restaurant, how he danced around the apartment like a lunatic, holding me tight, whispering, “I knew you could do it, Blue.”
The months have been hard, yeah. Ugly, sometimes. Damien’s schedule is brutal—road trips, press conferences, sponsorship meetings, endless hours at the gym. There are days he gets home and just collapses on the couch, groaning until I bring him food. There are mornings I sit in the dark, phone buzzing with my mother’s messages, and wish she’d just give up, just let me have this peace.
But it’s ours. It’s messy and loud and strange, but it’sours.
Damien doesn’t rush when he says goodbye with his body. His weight presses me down into the bed, and I let it. I need it. I need to feel every inch of him before he’s gone again.
I run my hands down his back, over the smooth planes of muscle I’ve traced a hundred times, down to where the curve of his ass fits perfectly in my palms. I pull him closer, grind up just enough to make him groan. His mouth breaks from mine with a gasp.
When I push his boxers down, he’s hard already, thick and flushed, and I want him so bad my stomach tightens. He lines up without a word, slicking his fingers between my thighs, opening me slowly and carefully, even now, even after he’s had me in every position possible. Even after I realized that I prefer this to being inside him.
He sinks into me slowly—inch by inch—his mouth at my jaw, one hand laced with mine beside my head, the other gripping my thigh, keeping me open, keeping me his. I arch into it, bite my lip hard enough to bleed, and the moment he bottoms out, I swear the world tilts sideways.
I tilt my head and press a kiss just below his ear, my voice shaking when I whisper, “Stay right there, Mien.”
He doesn’t argue or rush. But he tightens his grip on my thigh, breath stuttering as if he’s trying not to break before I do. He brushes his lips to mine without kissing, breath stuttering as he whispers my name. He always does that when he’s too full ofemotion to speak. When the words get caught behind everything he doesn’t want to admit—like how much it costs him to walk away.
“Fuck, you feel like heaven,” he growls, burying his face in my neck. “I get in you, and I don’t know how I survive being away.”
I want to tell him he’s the heaven I’ve been aching for. That when he’s gone, the bed gets colder than winter, and I hate how long it takes me to fall asleep without the sound of his heartbeat in my ear.
But instead, I drag my fingers down his spine and whisper, “Move. Please.”
And when he does, it’s devastating.
He pulls back slowly, dragging against every sensitive spot inside me like he’s memorizing it. Then he sinks back in, smoother this time, his hand slipping under my thigh to hook it higher around his hip. He pushes deeper and stays there, letting the weight of it say what his mouth can’t.
I gasp, my legs trembling. “Damien…”
“I know,” he says hoarsely, voice wrecked. “I know, Babygirl.”
The rhythm starts small and gentle. He grinds in deep, rocks back, then pushes again, the strokes long and fluid and maddening. Completely intimate—the kind of fucking that makes you feel like you’re being carved open with every drag of their cock.
He lets go of my hand and cups my jaw instead, forcing me to look at him. “I love you so fucking much,” he whispers.
I blink up at him, vision blurring. “I love you, too. Show me how much you hate leaving.”
He kisses me hard, his hips snapping forward in a brutal rhythm, and I can feel the switch from reverent to desperate. He doesn’t apologize for it, and I don’t want him to. I lift my hips into it, gasping into his mouth as he fucks me with zero restraint.
“I think about you every fucking second I’m gone,” he breathes against my lips. “Every hotel bed. Every fucking flight. Every time they say my name in a stadium, you’re all I want to come home to.”
Tears sting at the edges of my eyes. I drag my fingers into his hair, tugging just enough to keep him close. “Then come home to me. Every time.”
He rolls his hips just right, just deep enough to make me moan into his shoulder. When I rake my nails down his back, he hisses but doesn’t stop chasing the edge with desperate precision. His hand slips down between us, fingers wrapping around me, stroking in time with each roll of his hips. I arch into him, every nerve lit up, toes curling as heat builds low in my belly.
“That’s it,” he pants. “Right there, Babygirl, come on my cock. I need—fuck—I need to still feel you when I go.”
I bite down on his shoulder as my orgasm tears through me, loud and hot and impossible to control. I’m shaking, choking on his name, my vision blurring as I spill hard between us. He doesn’t slow, doesn’t stop, keeps going until I’m writhing under him, overwhelmed and fucked out.
