I’ve been waiting my entire life for her to feel that violent urge to claim me as hers, and the second she unintentionally handed me everything I’ve ever wanted, I was ruined.
I wanted to stop the bike and haul her ass off it just so I could fuck her anywhere and prove that yes, fuck yes, it’s only ever, and could only ever, be her.
Every thought I’ve ever had about sex, intimacy, and connection has had her face, her body, and her voice, and when I finally use my cock, it won’t be just for pleasure. It’ll be for possession.
I’ve been ready for the past twenty minutes, but I wait. I’m watching her through the camera feed, and I swear she must forget sometimes that I check in on her, because the way she’s nervously pacing her apartment, wrapped up in her coat with her hands fidgeting at her sides, is so fucking adorable it makes my chest ache.
She agreed to a date. She said yes, not to the boy who fucked it all up back then, but to the man I am now.
I already know how tonight ends. There’s no version of this where we don’t end up skin-to-skin and closer than we’ve ever been, where I’m reshaped and remade into something even more devoted to her than I already am.
I’m not crossing my virginity off a list, getting it over with, or whatever bullshit people say when they talk about their first time. It’s about being as close as two people can possibly get. It’s about feeling what she’s been hiding from herself—love. Dark, messy, all-consuming, soul-binding love that terrifies her because she knows that once we cross this line, there’s no going back. Tonight, I’m going to tear it out of her, inch by inch, kiss by kiss, thrust by fucking thrust, until she stops fighting what she feels.
I knock on her door for what is only the second time in my life, but it feels like the first time everything might finally fall into place.
Nothing prepares me for seeing her standing in the doorway, backlit by the soft glow of her apartment, looking at me like I’m pure trouble but she wants me around anyway—the way she used to look at me. It’s the same look she’d give me when I used to sneak out and show up at her trailer late at night, my boots crunching gravel too loud, my heart pounding because we both knew I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing just by being there. I’d tap on her window, and she’d open it every single time, knowing I was coming for her.
I wasn’t saving her back then. I knew that. We both did. I was just stealing her for a few hours so we could pretend we were more than two broken kids with nowhere to go.
I didn’t know how to keep her back then, and it killed me.
But I do now.
She looks down, and the second she realizes what’s in my hand, her entire face lights up.
“I should’ve given it back sooner, back in Indiana. That’s on me.”
I hold the black book out, and she takes it carefully, her fingertips brushing mine so lightly it should feel like nothing, but I feeleverything.
I always do when she touches me.
“Thank you,” she whispers before laying it carefully on the side table beside the door.
“Don’t… I stole it and kept it. You don’t thank me for shit like that.” I shake my head, swallowing hard. “But what I do need is for you to come with me.”
I hold my hand out, and she takes it willingly. Her fingers slide between mine, and Jesus Christ, I wasn’t prepared for how it feels.
Everything I’ve waited for, every line I’ve crossed, and every boundary I’ve obliterated has led to this.
“Where are we going?” she asks as I pull her toward the emergency exit, the metal door rattling as I shove it open.
“The roof,” I tell her, without looking back. “Just trust me.”
She huffs a laugh as we hit the stairwell, but there’s a nervousness beneath it, and I don’t miss it.
“You’re going to push me, aren’t you? That’s how this ends. You hurt everyone else, lull me into a false sense of security, and thenboom. Biggest drop possible.” She laughs again, but that tiny hitch in it makes something inside me go cold.
I stop so abruptly that she almost slams into me. I turn fast, catching her before she can stumble, my hands coming up to frame her face.
“Look at me, baby.” My thumbs brush her cheeks, desperate for her to hear me. “If there’s any part of you that believes I couldever hurt a single hair on that gorgeous fucking head, then I’ll take you back to your apartment right now, and I’ll walk away.”
It would hollow me out until there’s nothing left but the man I could’ve been if she’d just let me love her, but for her, I’d do it.
“I swear to you, Shannen, if you ever feared me… that’s what would end this. Not you hating me. Not someone else touching you. That.”
Her fingers grip the hem of my shirt, her nails dancing lightly over my abs through the fabric, trying to ground me before I spiral completely.
“I know I’ve done fucked-up things. I know what I am, but don’t ever confuse what I’d do for you with what I’d do to you.”
