The text arrived late, while Evan lay in bed with the lights off. He read it six times. Didn’t respond. Spent the next hour imagining what that mark looked like, purple and red at the center, the impression of his teeth in Finn’s skin, evidence that couldn’t be denied or explained away. Evan had done that. He had bitten Finn Holloway hard enough to leave a bruise, and his fists clenched in the sheets at the thought, wanted to see it, wanted to put his lips there again and feel the bruise give under pressure.
A possessive part of him he hadn’t known existed was proud of it. That scared him most.
Then Evan did the thing he’d spent fifteen years not doing. He got in his car and drove to Finn Holloway’s apartment.
He hadn’t planned it. Hadn’t decided. One moment, he was sitting in the facility parking lot with the engine off, reading the text for the seventh time.You left a mark on my neck.The overhead light in the parking structure was flickering, a moth bouncing off the housing, and Evan watched it instead of starting the engine because starting the engine meant deciding, and he was not going to decide to do this.
Evan turned the key before the rational part of his brain could lodge a formal objection. The engine caught, the headlights carved two pale beams across the parking structure wall, and he sat there for another ten seconds with his foot onthe brake and his jaw clenched, giving himself one last chance to put it in park and walk back inside. He didn’t take it.
Evan could have turned around at any intersection between the facility and Building C. Six places where a U-turn was possible, six places where the rational version of himself could have grabbed the wheel. He passed all six. His grip on the wheel was white-knuckled and his pulse was not, and the gap between those two facts was where his entire professional identity lived.
Building C, unit seven. He’d pulled the address from the emergency contact database, a fireable misuse of student records that he’d stopped pretending was administrative around the time he memorized the unit number. Evan sat in the lot long enough for the engine to tick cool, the leather creaking under his palms.
He was thirty-eight years old. He had spent his entire career not doing things like this. He had a system for not doing things like this, and the system had worked for fifteen years, and now he was parked outside a student apartment complex at ten o’clock at night because a twenty-one-year-old had sent him a text about a hickey.
He should turn around and drive home and pretend he’d never come here at all.
Evan sat with that thought for exactly as long as it took for the parking lot light to flicker twice more. Then he opened the door, stepped out into the night air, and closed it behind him with the measured control of a man who had already accepted that control was the only thing he had left.
The walk to unit seven took forever. The complex was the kind of place student athletes lived in: three stories of beige siding, balconies cluttered with grills and folding chairs, the faint bass of someone’s music leaking from a second-floor window. Cool air pressed against Evan’s face while sweat prickled along the back of his collar, and somewhere below thestairwell a dog barked twice and stopped. His dress shoes were too loud on the concrete walkway. He could hear every step, each one a decision he was failing to reverse, and by the time he reached the third floor his heart was hammering so hard he could feel it in his teeth.
He knocked before he could talk himself out of it. Then he stood there, under the buzzing porch light with his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled from a workday that felt like it had happened to someone else, and waited for the worst idea of his life to open the door.
Footsteps inside. A pause. The entrance swung open and Finn was standing there in gray sweatpants and nothing else, hair damp from a shower, that sandy brown gone wet and catching the light from the doorframe. No flinch. No double take. Just Finn half-smiling, dimples and all, like he’d known this was coming before Evan did.
“Took you long enough.”
Evan opened his lips and what came out was: “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
The cocky angle of Finn’s expression loosened. His jaw went slack for half a second before it reset.
“Good.” His voice was easy, unhurried. “I can’t stop thinking about you either.”
“This is a mistake.”
“Probably.”
“I came here to tell you it can’t happen again.”
“Okay.” Finn leaned into the doorframe, arms crossed over his bare chest. The mark on his throat was visible, faded to yellowish green at the edges but unmistakable. Evan’s gaze caught on it and stayed. “So tell me.”
“I—” His throat closed. “I can’t.”
“I know.”
Finn reached out, grabbed the front of Evan’s shirt, and pulled him inside. The entrance kicked shut and the apartment was unlit except for the kitchen, and Finn’s palm was on his sternum, and the air smelled like soap and laundry detergent and steam.
Evan was pinned to the closed entrance. Finn was six inches away. Shirtless. The mark on his throat visible even in the half-light, and Evan’s lips went dry looking at it.
Then Evan was kissing him, and the decision he’d spent the entire drive not making was apparently something his body had made for him the second Finn’s palm landed on his sternum.
He didn’t remember deciding to do it. One second Finn’s palm was on his sternum and the next Evan’s lips were on his, and Finn kissed him with the same force. Finn’s fingers came up to frame Evan’s face, and the noise he made into the kiss sent Evan’s hips forward before his brain caught up.
“Fuck.” Finn pulled away an inch. “Evan.”
Evan kissed him again. Walked him backward until Finn hit the wall beside the entrance. The impact made Finn grunt, and Evan swallowed it, pressing closer, pinning him there with his weight. Finn’s skin was warm and damp from the shower and Evan could feel his heartbeat everywhere they touched, fast and reckless, matching Evan’s own.
“This is insane.” The words came out into the kiss. “This is so fucking insane.”
