I kissed him back because I was too far gone not to.
Because she moaned when we did.
And then her hands were between us—touching both.Exploring.Stroking.Fingertips dragging down my chest, his stomach.Her palm pressed between my legs, and I growled—fucking growled—into Callaway’s mouth.
She leaned forward, lips brushing mine like a question.A dare.
I answered with a kiss that was anything but polite.
I kissed her like I owned her breath.Like she was already coming undone for us and didn’t know it.My hand cupped her jaw, tilted her head, and I took my time learning the shape of her mouth—how she sighed when I sucked her bottom lip between my teeth, how she gasped when Callaway bit her shoulder at the same time.
We were touching everywhere now—hands sliding under clothes, across skin, stroking over heated flesh like we were mapping a new religion.
My fingers hooked under the waistband of her panties, just barely teasing the soft skin beneath, while Callaway’s mouth found the top of her breast, his tongue leaving wet trails that made her shake.
The three of us, tangled in breath and need and sweat.
Crossing a line we didn’t have a name for.
Making promises with our mouths, with our bodies, that none of us were ready to say out loud.
And afterward, when the sun came up and reality returned, we all pretended we could climb back over that line like it hadn’t changed the shape of us.
We couldn’t.
Focus on Ves,I told myself.Just fucking focus on her.
Her laugh.
Her mouth.
Her eyes when she’s angry, when she’s excited, when she’s trying to pretend she doesn’t care.She’s the only person who ever made me feel like I could belong somewhere—not because I was useful, not because I was winning, but because I was ...me.
I hate that my mind goes to her before it goes to the Cup.I hate that even now, my heart reaches for her like it never learned restraint.
Boston was at least manageable.When she was in New York, I could see her.Either for lunch, dinner, a quick hour stolen between her flights.We’d talk like time didn’t pass.Like we didn’t fuck everything up and then wreck the best thing we ever built.
And now?
Now I’m going to Oregon.
Close enough to remember, to want, and far enough from her that I’ll have to live with the wanting.
“You there?”Conrad asks, voice cautious, like he’s approaching an animal that might bite.
“I’m here,” I say, and my voice comes out rough, scraped.
“Okay.”Papers shuffle on his end.“I’ll send you everything for you to sign.We need to talk about logistics.”
Logistics.
As if the problem is moving boxes.
As if the real problem isn’t that Portland drags me back toward her while she keeps running—toward work, toward distance, toward anything that isn’t choosing.
Toward anything that isn’t us.
I stare at the water still running over my hands, and I realize, with a sick certainty, what’s coming.
