We lie there, soaked, everything sticky and hot and unbearably intimate. I don’t know if I’m crying or just leaking from too many places at once. He pets my hair, featherlight strokes, and murmurs, “Hey. You okay?”
I nod, but it’s weak, and he laughs, breathless and sweet. “Yeah, I can tell.”
Something in me unclenches, lets myself be held. For a second I can almost pretend the world outside this bed isn’t a howling, hungry thing.
“Was it too much?” he asks, softer. I shake my head and try to find my voice, but all that comes out is a cracked, “No, it was—fuck. It was everything.”
The corners of his mouth go up, but there’s worry lurking underneath. “You’re shaking.”
I am. I didn’t notice until now. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “I like it.”
He kisses my forehead, then my temple, trailing down to my ear. “You’re fucking amazing.”
We don’t move for a long while. I let him rub circles on my back, let his cock soften inside me, let the sweat cool and the smell settle into the sheets. When I finally shift, he slips out, slow and careful, and I whimper at the loss, at the gush of slick and come that trickles down my thigh.
He props himself up on an elbow, watching me with that laser-eyed focus that always makes me feel both exposed and protected. “Come here,” he says, and pulls me up so I’m facing him, curled into his side like a child.
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Tell me something real.”
It knocks the wind out of me for a second. I don’t know what he means.
He reads my confusion and grins, crooked. “Like, a secret. Something no one else knows.”
I roll my eyes. “You first.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “I used to sneak into the church after hours and lie on the altar. I’d stare up at the ceiling and pretend I was dead. It always made me feel cleaner, like I could start over.”
I laugh—short and sharp, more surprised than amused. “You’re such a freak.”
He shrugs. “Your turn.”
I hesitate, but he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing that matters. “When I was a kid, I used to wish I was someone else. Anyone else. I’d invent whole new lives in my head, try to disappear into them.”
He nods, like he understands —really understands, not just the words but the raw need behind them. Maybe he always has, and that’s why I keep letting him in, deeper and deeper each time.
He traces my jaw with the back of his knuckle, gentle as an apology. “I think I’d still find you, no matter what life you picked.”
“Stalker,” I say, but it comes out soft and ruined.
His teeth flash in a quick, real grin. “Only for you.”
There’s a lull. Some distant siren claws at the night, but we’re sealed up together, breathing the same air. I run a thumb across his sternum, tracing the scar where he told me he’d once splithis chest open on a fence. I almost ask him if it hurt, but I don’t want the answer. I want to keep this small piece of pain, safe and unspoken, like a wish.
He’s the first to break the silence. “You ever think about leaving?”
I don’t have to ask what he means. This town, this house, this busted storyline we’re both trapped in.
“Every day,” I say, and it’s the truest thing I’ve ever admitted.
He exhales, a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “Where would you go?”
I close my eyes, conjure the old fantasy: the ocean, a city with neon bones, some place where no one knows my name. “Anywhere,” I say. “Everywhere. I’d just keep moving until it feels less like being chased and more like running toward something.”
He cups my cheek, pulls me in until our foreheads touch. “Take me with you?”
“Like I could leave you behind.”
He wipes a wet streak off my cheek, his thumb lingering at my mouth. “You’re crying,” he says, voice a notch lower.
