I come with my eyes open. Looking at him. His face an inch from mine. Clenching around his cock, pulsing, my thighs shaking, and I say his name and it undoes whatever he had left. He drives deep and holds there and comes with his forehead pressed to mine and his hands on my face and a sound that is the most honest thing I have ever heard from him.
Low. Wrecked. Completely surrendered.
17
Declan
Her charger has migrated.
Left side of the nightstand to the right. It happened sometime on the second day and I noticed it on the third and I am noticing it again now, at six in the morning, because I am awake and she is not and the charger cable is running from the right-side outlet to her phone, which is face-down on the nightstand next to my watch, and the two objects side by side look like something.
Four days.
Her shampoo is in my shower. Not mine anymore — the one she bought and brought over and set on the shelf next to mine like it belonged there. Her coffee mug is the third from the left in the cupboard. I know this because I put it there on the first morning and she used it without asking which one and she has used it every morning since. The gaming headset is on my desk. The Celsius is in my fridge. There's a hair tie on the bathroomcounter and a pair of her socks that didn't make it to the laundry in the hallway.
I could draw a floor plan of my own house with every one of her objects marked. Location, time of arrival, migration pattern. I tell myself this is security awareness. Spatial orientation. Threat readiness.
It is the most transparent thing I have ever told myself.
She fits here. That's the piece I wasn't prepared for. Not the disruption of her — the fit. The way she exists in this space like the space was waiting for her, like the kitchen counter was always going to have someone sitting on it at midnight and the bed was always going to have someone in it who sleeps on her left side with her face turned toward the window.
Ronan calls at ten.
She's on the couch with her laptop, editing something. I'm in the kitchen. I hear her phone and I hear her voice change. Just the shift from how she sounds in my house to how she sounds for her father. Sunday dinner voice. Steady, warm, managed.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Staying with a friend for a few days while my building does some maintenance thing." A pause. "Dad. It's fine. It's not a big deal."
She laughs. The one that's for him. This version is Ronan's daughter. Safe. Settled.
"Yeah, I'll be home for dinner Sunday. Love you."
She hangs up. I don't move.
She's good at this — has been doing it, in one form or another, since she was old enough to know that managing other people's feelings was a skill she could develop. I am grateful for the lie and I am aware that gratitude for a woman lying to her father about me is not something I should be feeling and I feel it anyway.
She looks up from the couch. Reads my face.
"Don't," she says.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to think something about the phone call and make a face and then not say it, which is worse than saying it."
She's right. I was.
"He trusts me," I say.
"I know."
"When this comes out—"
"It will come out," she says. Not flinching. "And he'll be hurt and we'll deal with it and it will be awful and I am choosing this anyway. Every morning. Same as you."
I turn back to my work.
***
Nights with Billie might be my favorite thing.
