Then his hand releases my throat. I double over, gasping.
His cock softens. Slips out of me.
And I hear him inhale, ragged and broken, like someone surfacing from deep water.
“Wyatt?” His voice is different now. Shaking. Present. “Wyatt, what?—”
I can’t look at him. Can’t turn around. My throat is on fire and my ass aches and I just came harder than I have in months and none of it makes sense.
I pull away. Roll onto my side facing the windows. My eyes clenched shut.
“What did I—” Behind me, the mattress shifts. “Oh god. Oh god, oh fuck?—”
“What the fuck.” My voice comes out wrecked. Scraped raw. “What the actual fuck, Chris.”
“I thought I could handle it.” He’s moving away. Putting distance between us. “It was good—I was there, I was with you, and then you said—and I just—I wanted you to feel good, I thought I had it?—”
“You choked me.” I sit up. Everything hurts. My throat. My ass. The place behind my sternum where I think my heart just broke. “You pinned me to you and choked me and you weren’t even there.”
I can still see it. That blank stare in the window’s reflection. That slack face.
“Where did you go?”
“I don’t know.” His voice breaks. “You said harder and I just—I lost it. I couldn’t?—”
He can’t finish. Can’t look at me.
I should say something. Tell him it’s okay. Tell him I understand, that I’m not angry, that we can work through this. That’s what the steady version of me would do. The version who holds everything together.
But my throat is swelling where his fingers dug in. I can still feel his grip every time I swallow. I came so hard I almost blacked out. And I don’t know what that makes me.
“You need to leave.” The words come out before I decide to say them. “Right now. I need you to go.”
“Wyatt—”
“I can’t—” My voice cracks. I drag in a breath that tastes like rust. “I can’t look at you right now. I need you to leave.”
His face is pale, his expression utterly blank, but his eyes are red-rimmed and glistening. He nods once, sharp and mechanical, and starts gathering his clothes. Pulls them on without looking at me. His hands are shaking so badly he can barely manage the buttons.
At the door, he stops.
“I’m sorry.” Barely a whisper. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Then he’s gone.
But he doesn’t just go back to his own room like I expect. The front door opens and closes. The car starts. The engine revs, tires squeal on pavement, then it’s quiet once more.
I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at nothing.
Two doors down, Nina is asleep. Pain meds knocked her out hours ago. She didn’t hear any of this. She didn’t hear me gasping for air, didn’t hear Chris leave. And I should?—
What? Wake her up? Tell her what, exactly?
Hey, our boyfriend just dissociated while he was fucking me. Choked me out. I came anyway. Not sure which part of that is the problem.
Our boyfriend. That’s what we decided, isn’t it? That this thing between all three of us was real. That Chris and I weren’t just fucking each other as a bonus feature of loving Nina, that there was something between us too.
And there was. Even in Denver, when Chris showed up unraveling and I spent half the night holding him together before we fell into bed. When I was inside him, he was there. Present. With me. He ghosted after, sure. Slipped out while I was sleeping. But at least during, I had him.
