007.

"I know." You would repeat back. It was just what you did to get her off your back.

Your college life was your favorite. Secret service wasn't allowed on campus for risk of other students. As soon as you stepped away from campus, you were back to your old life. This was your sanctuary, the people there could care less about your status. You all came for the same thing, whatever your parents signed you up for and party. It was the way life went on campus.

You aced exams so your parents wouldn't get suspicious. You even kept going to those after school sports they signed you up for. All this to make room for a cold beer after losing beer pong at the end of the night. Your day to day changed when you met Tyriq, the president's son. He was adored by many around him, it was just who he was.

His birth shocked the country since his mother was the president's mistress. That's what many on the outside saw anyway. The insiders knew that he loved that woman like no other. He showed it time and time again how he felt for his wife but Miss. Pope? Oh how he adored the powerful woman.

When you learned the story, you wanted a love like that but not in that way. It was silly but you believed in right person wrong time. Things happened and sometimes you could fix it and sometimes you couldn't. Fitzgerald and Pope showed that clearly. They didn't care how it looked as long as they were together.

Tyriq spent much of his time doing sports or hanging out with his friends but when he saw you? He liked to have died. You both were at another infamous campus party. This one was ran by a fraternity who decided to celebrate their founding day. When you pulled up with your homegirls, people were already passed out on the lawn from drinking. You didn't want to be them especially since the sprinklers automatically turn on in the middle of the night.

"They gon' be mad because there's an assignment due tonight." Leona stated with a shake of her head.

"They'll just cry to the professor like they always do and then get an 'A'." Verity said as she rolled her eyes at the mere thought of it.

"That's true because that's the senates son." Leona laughed as you followed with laughter of your own.

"Girl his daddy got him, trust." You assured them as you all walked along the grass. The party was bumping as per usual.

Verity froze before searching around like she was missing something. You and Leona started looking around too hoping to pick up on what she was doing. She stood up with narrowed eyes as her gaze scanned the area. Leona sucked her teeth before putting a hand on her hip. She knew Verity was on some bull.

"Alright now, I'm not bout to play with you." Leona stated, clearly becoming irritable.

"Y'all hear that?" Verity whispered as she ducked low. You both followed now concerned with what she was hearing.

"No? What's going on?" You asked just as worried.

"It's a shot." She laughed loudly as she practically galloped to the entrance. Her purse swinging on her arm.

Leona let out an annoyed noise. "Remind me to smack her 'fo we leave." You agreed as you both made it inside.

You walked up on her with a glare. "You make me sick, you know that?"

"Girl we here to relax before we have to go back to our mundane lives." She rolled her eyes at you before waving you off.

Verity was all about finding a way to take a load off. It was just how she was. What was the point of hard work if you couldn't enjoy life afterwards? She made sure it paid off and in this case it did because she got through the week. Today was about letting go.

"Verity, you make it sound like we living paycheck to paycheck." Leona said rolling her eyes. Verity glared at her.

"Girl we might as well be, hell. They just threw us in this mothafucka." She sassed as you snorted.

"Girl we are kids of powerful people." Leona reminded her but verity just waved her off. "Same thing."

The party was loud and as usual for a fraternity, packed. You could hear the constant hooting and hollering from all for corners of the house. You looked over to your left and saw some people leaned on walls trying to look cool. This wasn't the place, this wasn't high school anymore. The young adults were free to be themselves without their parents judgment.

"I don't know about y'all but I'm getting me a drink!" Verity squealed before shimmying to the kitchen.

You and Leona laughed at her before Leona dragged you along. "Alright now, I don't want nothing strong. We still gotta get home." You told Leona which she nodded.

"Live a little! It's Friday too. Besides Benny gonna come get us!" Verity smiled mischievously.

Your eyebrow raised as you eyed her. "Benny? Who would rather shit in his hands and clap before getting out his bed in the middle of the night?"

"He said he's cool with it since he'll be out tonight." She stuck her tongue out at you.

"We can always call a taxi." Leona whispered to you before handing you the drink.

The night was as good as a Friday night at a fraternity party could get. Verity was drunk and having a dance off in the main room. Leona went to go cheer her on while you sat by the pool with your feet in the water. The night air was cool and the stars were out—a perfect night. You took a deep breath in as you took in the sounds of the night.

"You usually alone?" A voice spoke through the quiet.

You opened your eyes and looked towards the direction of the voice. Tyriq emerged from around the sliding door. You snorted before resuming your relaxation. "You usually sneak up on folk?"

He put his hands up in defense. "Alright, I earned that one."

He sat next to you causing you to peek one eye open. He got nice and comfortable in the lawn chair before turning to you. You couldn't help but to laugh at him. He was not serious, he couldn't be. He laughed along with you but mostly with confusion etched on his face.

Your laughter quieted down before you eye him again. "What do you want, Tyriq?"

"I can't just talk to you?" He asked with a small laugh to follow.

"Typical one liner from a frat boy." You snorted as he rolled his eyes.

"But I'm on top of my classes and I'm not goofing around." He spoke in a matter of fact tone. You eye him once more not believing him at all.

"Okay I do goof off from time to time but overall I'm focused." You just scoffed and shook your head at him.

"Yeah okay." You teased before laying back on the lawn chair. His jaw dropped before he started going back and forth with you jokingly.

That night went on and on until you both couldn't go on anymore. What was an innocent conversation turned into his hands all over your curves. His deep voice whispering sweet nothings into your ear while your nails dug into his back. His hips snapping into yours repeatedly until you both came undone. However, it was an honest mistake.

The next morning you woke up in his dorm room, sun beaming into your skin. You blinked away the pain from the harsh rays only to find yourself tangled up in the president's son's arms. You couldn't believe you did something like that. It was the one thing you promised yourself you would never do. You lifted his arms off of you and rushed to find something of his to wear. You would be damned if you wore the same outfit out of here. You dressed yourself, snuck past the many passed out bodies in the house and out the door.

You got numerous calls and texts from your friends asking about you. Your roommate was worried about you and called even more than they did. When you finally made it home, you put the chain on the door and went to your room. Your body shivered at the thought of last night. His teeth sinking into you occasionally made you want to scream. You couldn't believe you let yourself fall into him like that. All you could do was try to forget him.

Which you did, you couldn't try hard enough with all the questions you were getting asked either. "Girl we tried to call you because Benny came through and he was ready to go." Leona explained, a hand on her left hip.

"Yeah he would not let us leave without you." Verity said with an eye roll.

"He was quick to leave me at a party." Leona sassed with a roll of her eyes.

Verity sucked her teeth at Leona. "That's because you adamant about leaving with your older cousin who had just came into town."

Leona shrugged her off, not wanting to hear the story. "So? Who was he?"

You could have nearly choked by how taken back you were. "Excuse me?"

"Girl please don't act prude with me right now." Leona sighed softly. Verity snorted before turning away from the group.

"There was no guy. I poured too heavy as usual and just took whatever empty room there was to lie down. I didn't realize I slept til the morning." You shrugged off the lie that slid out your mouth so easily.

Verity knew how you got when you were drunk, sleepy. You'd be hype one minute and drowsy the next. It was just how you were especially when you mixed the drinks yourself. "You taking a grown man's room and leaving him to sleep in the elements is killing me." Verity laughed through her hand.

"They were all sleeping everywhere. On the pool table, lawn chairs, hell even the steps had people on 'em." You rambled making Verity laugh harder.

"You should've took some pictures." Verity wheezed making Leona grimace.

"Alright now it's not that funny." Leona said scooting closer to you.

Your lie was one you had no choice but to keep. You didn't want anyone to know what happened that night. You just wanted to pretend it didn't happen but that was easier said than done. Tyriq isn't the type to just let things be when there's a signal they should be. That's what made him more like his father. That's what made him cling to you like no one's business.

Lips ghosted over the bare slope of her shoulder with the kind of patience that felt almost cruel, not quite a kiss and not quite restraint, just the warm, deliberate promise of his mouth moving over skin he had learned too well, and Karnation shut her eyes hard enough to see stars behind them, her breath catching somewhere between her throat and her chest as she let her head fall back against him like the sea finally surrendering to the pull of the moon.

She was wearing those little college shorts that barely had the decency to pretend they were doing a job, soft cotton clinging to the generous curve of her hips while the oversized shirt she had stolen from him rode up at her waist, bunched beneath the spread of his hands as if even fabric knew better than to get between them when Tyriq Withers got quiet like this.

And he was quiet in the worst way.

The dangerous way.

The way a storm got quiet over open water before it rolled in and swallowed the whole shore.

His chest was warm and solid against her back, his body wrapped around hers with that easy, arrogant confidence that made it clear he was not simply holding her, he was anchoring her, claiming space around her like a man who knew the earth beneath his feet belonged to him only because she was standing on it.

“Karnation,” he murmured, dragging her name against her shoulder like a match struck slowly against stone, his voice low, roughened by want and amusement, the kind of voice that made her feel like some poor mortal woman in a Greek myth who should have known better than to answer when a god came down from Olympus wearing sweatpants and a crooked smile.

She exhaled his name before she could stop herself.

“Tyriq.”

It slipped out as naturally as air, as naturally as blinking, as naturally as the tide coming home no matter how many times the shore pretended it had learned how to live without it, and when she turned her face toward him, there was already a smile waiting on her lips, soft and wicked and too pleased with itself for a woman who knew exactly what kind of trouble she was inviting.

His eyes dropped to her mouth first, because of course they did, because Tyriq had always looked at her like desire had a language and she was the only book he knew how to read without stumbling, and then his gaze lifted to hers with that devastating half-smile that made him look like sin had gotten a scholarship and a starting position.

“You so fine,” he said, and his hand tightened just slightly at her waist, not enough to hurt, never enough to hurt, but enough to remind her that he was there, that he was real, that he had been trying to behave and clearly resented her for making that impossible. “Shit be pissing me off.”

Karnation let out a quiet laugh, breathless and lazy, her lashes dipping as she leaned back into him with all the smug grace of Aphrodite stepping out of the foam knowing whole wars had been started over less than the curve of her shoulder.

“Mhm,” she hummed, tilting her head just enough for his mouth to find the warm line beneath her jaw, “wha’ you gon’ do ’bout it?”

Tyriq laughed under his breath then, not loud, not boyish, but low and charmed, the sound rolling through his chest and into her back like distant thunder crossing dark water, and that was the problem with him, really, because even when he was being impossible, even when he was being too fine and too smooth and too aware of the effect he had on her, he still had that pull, that heat, that gravity, like Poseidon rising from the sea with salt on his skin and trouble in his smile.

He turned her a little in his arms, slow enough to make her feel every inch of the movement, his hand sliding from her waist to the small of her back while the other lifted to her chin, his thumb brushing there with a tenderness that made the tension sharper instead of softer, because Tyriq had always known how to mix sweetness with danger until she could not tell which one she wanted more.

“How you want it, mama?” he asked, and the question did not land like pressure, it landed like worship, like invitation, like a man kneeling at the edge of a temple with fire in his hands and patience in his mouth. “You want me sweet with you, or you want me honest?”

Karnation’s smile faltered for half a second, only because he had a way of saying things that made the room feel smaller, warmer, charged at the edges, like the whole world had narrowed down to his hands on her and her breath trying not to embarrass her.

“You know how I want it,” she whispered.

His brows lifted, amused, cocky, handsome enough to be offensive.

“Nah,” he said, his mouth brushing the corner of hers without giving her the kiss yet, because he was cruel when he wanted to be and charming enough to make cruelty look like romance. “Use your words, pretty girl.”

And there it was, that awful heat, that slow flood, that mythic unraveling of sense and pride, because Karnation Noel St. Patrick could write men into monsters and lovers into legends, could turn heartbreak into bestselling chapters and make entire audiences ache over a man she had survived in real life, but standing there in his shirt, in his arms, with his breath warm against her lips, she was just a girl again, barefoot at the edge of the ocean, pretending she was not waiting for the wave to take her under.

“Karnation,” he hummed against her neck, her name leaving his mouth like it belonged there, like he had carved it into his tongue years ago and had only been waiting for the right moment to speak it soft enough to ruin her.

His lips brushed the curve beneath her ear, warm and maddeningly patient, and the whole room around them seemed to melt into something golden and unreal, the edges of the memory softening like sunlight over water, like she was standing waist-deep in some ancient sea while the tide curled around her calves and dragged her backward into a past she had sworn she was done drowning in.

“Karnation,” he murmured again, deeper this time, amused by the way her breath betrayed her before her mouth could form any kind of lie.

She could feel him everywhere.

Not in the obvious ways, not in ways she would ever confess to anyone with a straight face, but in the old ways, the haunting ways, the ways memory made a man larger than life when absence had been given too many years to make a myth out of him. He was behind her, around her, his chest a warm wall at her back, his hands resting at her waist like he knew exactly where he had left them, like time had not passed, like there was no child asleep in a room down the hall with his face getting stronger every year.

“Karnation.”

His voice folded over her like velvet, low and familiar and impossible, the kind of sound that did not simply enter a room but slipped beneath the skin, warm enough to comfort, cruel enough to bruise, dragging with it the ghost of late nights, dorm-room laughter, hands on her waist, promises made with mouths too young to understand the weight of forever.

“Karnation.”

The dream trembled, thin as silk caught on a nail, and for one suspended second she was not sitting beneath amber restaurant lighting with a half-melted ice cube sweating against the rim of her untouched drink, but somewhere years behind herself, somewhere softer and more dangerous, where Tyriq Withers still looked at her like she was the only woman God had ever taken His time with.

“Karnation, you here?” her date asked, and just like that the memory snapped clean down the middle, leaving her blinking across the table at Marcus Hill, who had advertised himself on Hinge as six-foot-five with the confidence of a man who clearly believed numbers were more of a suggestion than a measurable fact, because in person he was, with devastating commitment and no visible shame, an astounding and underwhelming five-foot-four.

Karnation had damn near walked past him when she first entered the restaurant, her eyes searching politely above the crowd for a tall, broad-shouldered man in a black button-down, only to hear her name called from somewhere near her elbow, and although she had been raised better than to let shock settle openly across her face, the Lord Himself must have seen the way her spirit stumbled.

Still, in Marcus’s defence, and she was trying very hard to be fair because therapy had taught her not to punish one man for the sins of another, at least this one had brought his wallet, which was already an improvement from Jamie, who had ordered caviar with the shameless confidence of a man expecting a woman to pay for his seafood-based audacity before “realising” he had left his card in another jacket, and better still than Nicholas, who, to his credit, had pulled out his card at the bar only for the poor thing to decline with a sound so sharp and public that even the bartender had looked embarrassed on his behalf.

“Yeah,” Karnation said, forcing her mouth into something that resembled a smile while her mind quietly packed away the sound of Tyriq’s voice and locked it behind another door, “sorry, long day, what were you saying?”

Marcus leaned forward like he had been waiting all evening for permission to resume performing interest, his forearms settling on the table with an intimacy he had not earned, his eyes making one brief, lazy attempt to meet hers before drifting—again—to the neckline of her dress, where her cleavage had apparently become the most fascinating topic of conversation at the table.

“I was asking what you do for work,” he said, drawing the words out in that slow, syrupy way men used when they wanted to seem thoughtful but had no actual intention of listening to the answer, nodding before she had even responded, as if whatever came out of her mouth would merely be an obstacle between him and the version of the night he had already written in his head.

Ah, yes, Karnation thought, the infuriatingly slow talk, the ceremonial first-date pretending, the ritual in which a man asked a woman about her life not because he was interested in the architecture of it, but because he understood that questions were the social toll one had to pay before attempting to touch what did not belong to him.

Marcus Hill did not care what she did for work, not really, not in any way that mattered beyond the faint curiosity of whether it sounded impressive enough to repeat to his friends or profitable enough to imagine benefiting from later, because Marcus had spent most of the evening speaking to her nipples and cleavage with far more devotion than he had ever offered her face.

She was deleting Hinge tonight.

Not pausing it, not hiding her profile, not giving dating apps one more delusional chance because maybe there were still good men somewhere buried beneath shirtless gym selfies, “just ask” bios, and men who called themselves entrepreneurs because they owned a ring light and three unopened boxes of protein powder.

Deleting.

Burning the bridge.

Letting the algorithm starve.

“I’m an author,” she said, her voice smooth despite the exhaustion sitting behind it, because if there was one thing Karnation Noel James had mastered, it was sounding composed while privately planning an escape route, a skincare routine, and the emotional autopsy of every bad decision that had led her to a man lying about five-foot-four like inches were a state of mind.

Marcus blinked at her as though she had told him she worked in international espionage, his face arranging itself into that uniquely male expression of surprise that always seemed to arrive when a woman turned out to have a life beyond being pretty in dim lighting.

“An author?” he repeated, letting the word sit in his mouth with the same confused caution one might use for a foreign food they did not want to admit they had never heard of. “Like… books?”

Karnation stared at him for a beat longer than grace required.

“No, Marcus,” she said, lifting her glass and taking a slow sip of water because wine would have only encouraged the wickedness in her spirit, “like parking tickets.”

His laugh came too late, too loud, and far too eager, rolling across the table like furniture being dragged over hardwood, and Karnation offered him a polite smile that did not reach her eyes, the kind of smile women learned somewhere between their first bad date and their first real heartbreak, all teeth and restraint, all social mercy and silent violence.

“Nah, nah, I mean, that’s dope,” he said, nodding as if she had just been granted his approval and ought to feel blessed by it. “What kind of books you write?”

“Romance,” she said.

Marcus’s eyebrows lifted.

Of course they did.

There it was, that ugly little spark, that immediate rearrangement of curiosity into assumption, as though the word romance had crawled across the table, unfastened the buttons on her dress, and whispered something obscene into his ear, because men like Marcus heard romance and thought only of bedsheets, red wine, and women writing down fantasies because reality had failed to give them anything worth remembering.

“Romance?” he said, leaning back in his chair now, dragging his gaze over her with a new boldness that made her fingers tighten, almost imperceptibly, around the stem of her glass. “So you be writing all that freaky stuff?”

Karnation exhaled through her nose.

There were several versions of herself inside her at any given moment, and unfortunately for Marcus, the gentlest one had clocked out around the time he had spent six uninterrupted minutes explaining cryptocurrency to her despite knowing nothing about it except the word blockchain, while the tired one had begun gathering her things spiritually, and the mother in her was already calculating how quickly she could get home, wash her makeup off, check on Karter, and crawl into bed beside the warm little body of the only male on earth she was currently interested in tolerating.

“I write love stories,” she said, because explaining the difference between romance and whatever brain-rotted category Marcus had stored it in felt like charity work, and she had already done enough unpaid labour in this lifetime. “Complicated ones.”

Marcus hummed, still looking at her mouth like it had offended him by forming sentences.

“So, like, based on real life or you just be making stuff up?”

Karnation’s fingers stilled.

It was an ordinary question, thrown out carelessly between a half-finished appetiser and Marcus’s second old-fashioned, but it landed in the space between them with the soft, deadly precision of a blade slipping beneath silk, because for all her interviews, for all her rehearsed answers, for all the elegant ways she had learned to dress the truth until it looked like craft instead of confession, there was still a part of her that flinched whenever anyone got too close to the grave she had buried Tyriq in.

Making stuff up.

She almost laughed.

If only.

If only Lorenzo Anders had come to her in a dream, whole and fictional, born from nothing but imagination and discipline and the particular madness of a woman with a deadline, instead of from Tyriq Withers leaning against her dorm room door in grey sweats and a black hoodie, smelling like rain and soap and something expensive he could not afford, smiling at her like he already knew she would forgive him before he even apologised.

If only those blue eyes had been invention.

If only that devastating height, that lazy arrogance, that almost holy mouth, that talent for breaking things without looking surprised at the damage, had been something she had designed instead of something she had survived.

“I make things up,” Karnation said, and the lie came out so beautifully that for a second even she admired it.

Marcus grinned, satisfied by an answer he had not earned the depth to question, and reached for his drink again, ice knocking against glass as he stretched one arm along the back of the empty chair beside him, settling himself into the evening as though there were still a possibility this night might end anywhere other than with Karnation blocking him before dessert.

“That’s cool, though,” he said. “I always thought about writing a book.”

Of course he had.

Karnation watched him with the dead-eyed patience of a woman hearing a man announce a dream he had mistaken for a plan, her earrings catching the restaurant light whenever she tilted her head, her lipstick untouched, her posture flawless, her soul somewhere on a train platform fleeing the scene.

“Oh?” she asked.

“Yeah, like, my life is crazy, you know what I’m saying? I got stories. I just don’t got time to sit down and actually write it.”

A small, cruel smile tugged at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it.

“That does tend to be the writing part.”

Marcus laughed again, still not entirely sure whether he was being teased or insulted, which was perhaps his greatest mercy.

Across the restaurant, a waiter glided past with a silver tray, leaving behind the warm scent of butter, garlic, and seared steak, and Karnation’s stomach turned—not because she was hungry, though she had forgotten to eat properly today between a meeting with her agent, a tantrum over a missing dinosaur sock, and Karter’s determined attempt to feed blueberries to the living room plant—but because something about the evening suddenly felt too rehearsed, too familiar, too much like one of those transitional chapters she hated writing, the kind where the heroine tried to convince herself she was moving on while the narrative quietly prepared to punish her for lying.

Her phone lit up beside her plate.

Once.

Then again.

Then again.

Karnation glanced down, expecting a text from her mother, maybe a picture of Karter asleep with his foot pressed against the wall and his curls stuck damply to his forehead because he fought bedtime like it was a legal accusation, but instead she saw three notifications sitting on her lock screen from Jazmyn, each one more aggressive than the last.

JAZMYN: BITCH.

JAZMYN: ANSWER YOUR PHONE.

JAZMYN: DO NOT OPEN TWITTER IN PUBLIC.

Karnation’s whole body went cold.

Not dramatically, not in the way women went cold in books with trembling hands and fluttering hearts, but with a quiet, internal freeze that started somewhere beneath her ribs and spread outward, turning her fingers careful, her spine rigid, her face composed in the exact way it became when life was about to embarrass her in front of God and strangers.

Marcus was still talking.

Something about discipline now, about how he could write a book if he really locked in, about how people had always told him he was naturally creative, and Karnation nodded at the appropriate intervals while sliding her thumb across her phone beneath the edge of the table.

Another message came through.

JAZMYN: GIRL THEY CAST HIM.

The restaurant noise receded.

Forks against plates, low conversation, laughter from the bar, the hum of soft jazz, Marcus’s voice spreading itself uselessly across the table—all of it pulled back like tidewater, leaving Karnation stranded in the sudden, roaring silence of her own pulse.

For one foolish second she thought Jazmyn meant Lorenzo.

Not him, him.

The character.

The man on the page.

The monster she had turned into art.

The heartbreak she had polished until readers called it romantic.

Her thumb moved before her mind could stop it, opening the message thread, and Jazmyn, clearly having abandoned all restraint, had sent a screenshot from some entertainment account with a caption large enough to be seen even through the blur of Karnation’s disbelief.

TYRIQ WITHERS OFFICIALLY CAST AS LORENZO ANDERS IN THE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED FILM ADAPTATION OF KARNATION NOEL JAMES’S BESTSELLING NOVEL, RUIN ME GENTLY.

For a moment, Karnation did not breathe.

She simply stared.

At the headline.

At his name.

At the picture beneath it.

Tyriq Withers, older now, sharper somehow, his face no longer softened by college-boy arrogance but carved by fame, money, discipline, and the kind of public hunger that made men look untouchable even when you knew exactly how human they could be in the dark. His hair was cut low, his jaw shadowed, his mouth unsmiling, his eyes fixed somewhere past the camera with that same infuriating distance he had always worn when he wanted the world to chase him.

And God, she hated that her first thought was not anger.

It was recognition.

Because time had not made him unfamiliar.

It had only made him worse.

Worse in the way a flame was worse when it had learned patience, worse in the way a storm was worse when the sky went quiet before it split open, worse because the boy who had once ruined her life had become a man the world applauded for being beautiful while she had been left to raise the evidence of him alone.

“Karnation?” Marcus asked, and this time his voice did not fold over her like velvet, did not haunt or ache or reach some buried place in her, because it was only Marcus, poor lying Marcus, who had added an entire foot to his dating profile and still somehow expected honesty from the universe.

She locked her phone.

Too fast.

Not fast enough.

“You good?” he asked.

Karnation lifted her eyes to him, and whatever he saw there must have startled him, because for the first time all evening, his gaze stayed on her face.

“I’m fine,” she said.

It was such a magnificent lie that she almost applauded herself.

Her phone vibrated again beneath her palm, insistent and wicked, Jazmyn no doubt spiralling somewhere with snacks, a bonnet, and enough profanity to season a Sunday dinner, but Karnation did not look down this time, because looking made things real, and if she looked again, she would have to accept that the past had not only found her, it had been cast, announced, photographed, and placed on every entertainment page with her name attached to it.

Tyriq Withers was playing Lorenzo Anders.

Tyriq Withers was going to stand beneath studio lights and say the lines she wrote in the loneliest months of her life.

Tyriq Withers was going to read pages where she had disguised his sins as romance, his absence as mystery, his emotional cowardice as depth, and he would do it with that face, that voice, that mouth, completely unaware that every woman who had ever called Lorenzo fictional had been loving a man who once left Karnation pregnant and heartbroken before she even knew how to tell him she was carrying his child.

Across the table, Marcus frowned.

“Bad news?”

Karnation almost smiled.

Bad news felt too small for what this was.

Bad news was a flat tyre, a missed deadline, a toddler colouring on the wall with permanent marker because silence in a house with a three-year-old was never peace, only warning.

This was not bad news.

This was divine mockery.

This was God clearing His throat.

This was the universe dragging a chair up to her carefully arranged life, sitting down uninvited, and saying, Now, let’s discuss what you thought you buried.

“No,” Karnation said, sliding her phone into her bag with hands that did not shake because she refused to give any man, living or remembered, the satisfaction. “Just work.”

Marcus nodded, relieved to return to territory where he could pretend to understand her.

“Yeah, work be crazy,” he said.

Karnation looked at him then, really looked at him, at the too-tight shirt, the borrowed confidence, the watch that seemed desperate to be noticed, the mouth still shiny from bourbon, and she felt a sudden, almost tender exhaustion wash through her, because Marcus was not the villain here; he was merely the wrong man at the wrong table on the wrong night, caught in the crossfire of a story he would never be important enough to enter.

“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for her clutch. “I need to go.”

His face fell. “For real? We just got here.”

“We’ve been here forty-seven minutes.”

“Damn, you timed it?”

“I’m a writer,” she said, standing with such calm elegance that the chair barely made a sound beneath her. “Details matter.”

Marcus stood too, hurried and confused, his napkin falling from his lap like a surrender flag.

“Wait, did I say something?”

Karnation paused.

There were many answers to that question, several of them unkind, most of them accurate, but she was too tired to teach another man how to recognise the exact moment a woman’s patience left her body.

“No,” she said softly, and because she was not cruel enough to destroy him over a battle he had not started, she added, “I just remembered I have somewhere else to be.”

It was not technically a lie.

She had to be home.

She had to be with Karter.

She had to stand in the doorway of his room and look at her son’s sleeping face, the soft curve of his cheek, the stubborn little line of his brow, the lashes too pretty to be fair, the mouth that pouted exactly like hers when he was upset and smiled exactly like Tyriq when he was getting his way.

She had to remind herself that whatever was coming, whatever door fate had decided to kick open, her life was not a romance novel no matter how many people mistook her pain for entertainment.

Her life was packed lunches and bath toys, dinosaur pyjamas and nursery invoices, small socks in impossible places, bedtime stories read twice because Karter always looked up at her with those devastating eyes and said, “One more, Mama,” like he knew she would give him the moon if he asked sweet enough.

Her life was not Tyriq Withers.

Not anymore.

Marcus opened his mouth as though he might protest, but Karnation was already turning away, already moving through the restaurant with her shoulders back and her chin lifted, every inch of her polished, composed, and immaculate, even as something old and wounded dragged itself awake inside her chest.

Outside, the night air hit her bare arms with a chill sharp enough to feel personal.

She made it three steps from the restaurant doors before her phone rang.

Jazmyn.

Karnation stared at the screen for one second, two, three, then answered and pressed it to her ear.

“Before you start screaming,” she said, her voice quiet and dangerous, “I know.”

On the other end, Jazmyn inhaled like she had been waiting her entire life for permission to lose her mind.

“Karnation Noel James,” she said, each syllable loaded, reverent, and horrified, “please tell me why I just opened my phone and saw your baby daddy cast as the man you wrote because of your baby daddy.”

Karnation closed her eyes.

The city moved around her, cars sliding through wet streets, strangers laughing beneath awnings, some couple arguing softly near the curb like heartbreak was ordinary, like it did not sometimes grow legs, get famous, and walk right back into your life wearing a casting announcement.

“I don’t know,” Karnation whispered.

And she hated that it was true.

Karnation sighed as she shook her head, a frown settling between her brows while she stood there beneath the restaurant’s glowing awning like a woman trying very hard not to let her life turn into a press release, and because panicking in public felt beneath the version of herself she had spent years professionally assembling, she took one slow breath in, held it until her ribs stopped threatening betrayal, then released it through her mouth with the careful discipline of a woman who had once spent an entire book tour answering questions about “female resilience” while actively running on three hours of sleep and emotional duct tape.

Compress, she reminded herself, closing her eyes for half a second.

Remember the seven steps, Karnation.

Not because the seven steps had ever actually fixed anything, but because her therapist, a soft-spoken woman named Denise with terrifying cheekbones and the ability to make silence feel like an indictment, had told her that spiralling was not the same thing as processing, and Karnation, unfortunately, loved to spiral with a literary flourish.

“I heavily doubt it,” she said into the phone, her voice still too calm, too polished, too close to the voice she used in interviews when someone asked her whether Lorenzo Anders was inspired by anyone real and she had to smile like she had not built a fictional empire on one man’s emotional negligence. “How is Karter?”

Jazmyn made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a prayer.

“Girl, do not try to mother your way out of this conversation.”

“I’m not mothering my way out of anything,” Karnation said, stepping toward the valet stand with her clutch tucked tight beneath her arm, though they both knew that was exactly what she was doing because Karter was the one subject capable of making her heart unclench even when the universe had just slapped her with a casting announcement and called it fate. “I’m asking about my son.”

“Your son is fine,” Jazmyn said. “He ate half his pasta, refused the broccoli like it personally wronged him, made me read the dinosaur book three times, then told me I skipped a page when I absolutely did not skip a page.”

Karnation’s mouth twitched.

“He always knows.”

“He does not know,” Jazmyn said, offended. “That child cannot read.”

“He can sense betrayal.”

“He can sense vibes, I’ll give him that, because when I told him it was bedtime he looked me dead in my face and said, ‘Mama don’t do it like that,’ like I was some underpaid substitute teacher.”

Despite herself, despite the headline still glowing behind her eyes, despite Tyriq Withers standing in the middle of her life again like a ghost who had found good lighting, Karnation laughed softly, the sound escaping before she could stop it, thin and tired but real enough to loosen something inside her chest.

“That sounds like him.”

“Exactly like him,” Jazmyn muttered, and the pause that followed was so loud Karnation could hear every word her best friend did not say.

Exactly like him.

Karnation’s smile faded.

The valet pulled her car forward, sleek and black beneath the restaurant lights, expensive enough to announce success but practical enough to hold a car seat, loose baby wipes, three forgotten toy cars, and at least one emergency packet of fruit snacks crushed beyond recognition somewhere beneath the passenger seat. She thanked the valet, tipped him, then slid behind the wheel with all the grace she could manage while her emotions crawled around beneath her skin like they were looking for an exit.

“Don’t start,” Karnation said as she shut the door.

“I ain’t said nothing.”

“You breathed judgmentally.”

“I breathed normally.”

“You have never breathed normally a day in your life.”

Jazmyn gasped. “And this is why your son likes me better when you’re not around.”

“My son tried to trade you for a biscuit last week.”

“And I would’ve let him if it was a good biscuit.”

Karnation shook her head, but the humour helped, softening the sharpest edge of the night as she placed her phone in the console, switched the call to Bluetooth, and waited for Jazmyn’s voice to fill the car speakers like a very loud conscience with lip gloss.

The screen blinked, connected, and immediately Jazmyn’s voice boomed through the car.

“Now that I’m in surround sound, let me say this properly: what in the Tyler Perry cinematic universe is going on?”

Karnation dropped her head back against the seat and stared through the windshield at the dark street ahead.

“Jaz.”

“No, because I need answers. Out of every actor in America, every man with cheekbones and unresolved trauma, every six-foot-something light-skinned menace with a SAG card, they chose Tyriq Withers?”

Karnation started the engine.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to say this is a prank.”

“It’s not a prank.”

“I want you to say they got hacked.”

“They didn’t get hacked.”

“I want you to say that man is not about to stand on a film set and recite dialogue you wrote at three in the morning while crying into a bonnet and pretending it was character development.”

Karnation paused with her hand on the gear shift.

“First of all,” she said carefully, “I do not cry into bonnets.”

“You absolutely cry into bonnets.”

“I cry beside bonnets.”

“You cry in the vicinity of bonnets, fine, but the point stands.”

Karnation pulled away from the curb, merging into the slow pulse of evening traffic with the kind of focus one usually reserved for surgery, because if she let her mind drift too far, it would find Tyriq’s face again, older and colder and somehow more beautiful in a way that felt deeply unfair considering she had done the decent thing and become sleep-deprived, emotionally responsible, and permanently responsible for another human being’s packed lunches.

“I’m not thinking about it tonight,” she said.

Jazmyn went quiet.

For two whole seconds.

A record.

Then, “You are literally thinking about it right now.”

“I’m driving.”

“You drive and overthink. That’s your brand.”

“My brand is award-winning contemporary romance.”

“Your brand is pretending you’re fine until your left eye starts twitching.”

“My left eye is not twitching.”

“Karnation.”

“It’s resting.”

“Your eye is having a small seizure.”

Karnation tightened her grip on the steering wheel and tried not to laugh because laughing felt too close to crying, and crying felt like permission, and permission was dangerous on a night like this, when one crack in her composure might split her open wide enough for every buried thing to climb out.

She made it three traffic lights before the glow of a Dairy Queen sign appeared down the road, bright and red and absurdly comforting, like God Himself had decided that if He was going to reintroduce her baby daddy through a Deadline-adjacent casting announcement, He could at least offer her a Blizzard as reparations.

Karnation slowed.

Jazmyn immediately caught it.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Why did your indicator just come on?”

“Because I’m an excellent driver.”

“Karnation Noel James.”

“I need something cold.”

“You need therapy.”

“I have therapy on Thursdays.”

“You need emergency therapy.”

“I need a Dairy Queen.”

Jazmyn went silent for half a breath, then sucked her teeth with the weary resignation of a woman who had known Karnation too long to argue with her chosen coping mechanisms.

“You are not about to process the father of your child being cast as the romantic lead inspired by him over a large Oreo Blizzard.”

Karnation turned into the drive-thru.

“I’m not processing. I’m purchasing.”

“That’s worse.”

“It’s not worse if I use Apple Pay.”

“You think capitalism is going to save you?”

“No,” Karnation said, easing her car behind a minivan whose back window was covered in stick-figure family decals and one aggressively cheerful bumper sticker about dance mums. “But it may briefly distract me.”

Jazmyn sighed so hard the Bluetooth crackled.

“You know what? Get me something too.”

“You’re at my house.”

“And you have a freezer.”

Karnation stared at the menu board with the intense concentration of a woman choosing between dessert and a nervous breakdown, her eyes scanning over sundaes, Blizzards, dipped cones, and milkshakes as though one of them might contain divine instruction.

“What does one order when one’s past becomes employed by one’s intellectual property?” she murmured.

“A restraining order,” Jazmyn said.

Karnation snorted.

The speaker crackled.

“Welcome to Dairy Queen, what can I get started for you?”

Karnation leaned toward the window, gathering herself with the same dignity she used on red carpets.

“Hi, can I please get a medium Oreo Blizzard, extra Oreo, and…” She hesitated, because her night had already been ridiculous and moderation seemed like a moral stance she had no interest in taking. “Actually, make that a large.”

Jazmyn cackled.

“That’s my girl.”

“And can I also get a small strawberry sundae with extra sauce?”

“For me?” Jazmyn asked.

“For Karter.”

“Girl, that baby is asleep.”

“For tomorrow.”

“Lies.”

“For me tomorrow.”

“At least tell the Lord the truth.”

Karnation ignored her. “And one dipped cone, please.”

Jazmyn gasped. “Now who is the cone for?”

Karnation stared ahead, deadpan. “The emotional support passenger.”

“You are alone in the car.”

“Exactly.”

The poor Dairy Queen worker, who was almost certainly not being paid enough to witness this woman unravel through dessert logistics, repeated the order in a tone that suggested he had heard stranger things and had chosen peace long ago.

Karnation paid, collected the bag and Blizzard at the window, then pulled into a parking space instead of leaving, because driving while balancing ice cream, suppressed panic, and unresolved romantic trauma seemed like the sort of multitasking that got women featured in cautionary local news stories.

She parked beneath the faint buzz of a streetlight, set the bag carefully in the passenger seat, and took the first spoonful of Oreo Blizzard with the solemnity of communion.

For a moment, neither woman spoke.

Then Jazmyn said, softer this time, “Kar.”

Karnation closed her eyes.

There it was.

Not the jokes, not the yelling, not the dramatic best friend commentary she had needed like air five minutes ago, but the gentler voice beneath it, the one that had sat with her on bathroom floors, held Karter when Karnation was too freshly postpartum to stand without pain, read early drafts of chapters where Karnation swore she had invented everything, and never once asked why Lorenzo sounded like a man they both knew.

“I’m okay,” Karnation said, but it sounded thin even to her.

“No, you’re not.”

The spoon paused halfway to her mouth.

Outside, cars moved through the drive-thru in slow loops of headlights and exhaust, people buying sundaes and chicken strips and pretending the world was ordinary because, for them, it was. For them, Tyriq Withers was just an actor, a handsome man in headlines, a fantasy cast in a role fans were already screaming about online.

For Karnation, he was the boy who had once kissed her like a vow and disappeared like a coward.

He was the man her son resembled when he smiled too wide.

He was the name hidden in the middle of Karter’s like a secret she had never meant to say out loud.

“I can’t do this tonight,” Karnation whispered.

Jazmyn’s voice softened until it almost disappeared beneath the hum of the car.

“Then don’t do it tonight. Eat your ice cream. Come home. Kiss your baby. Take your lashes off before you cry, because you know the glue be fighting for custody. Then tomorrow, we figure out who knew, who approved it, and who needs to be cursed out in alphabetical order.”

Karnation let out a shaky laugh, pressing the back of her hand beneath one eye before anything could fall.

“I’m not crying.”

“Good, because those lashes cost money.”

“They were complimentary from Glam House.”

“Then cry if you want, actually. Free lashes don’t count.”

Karnation laughed again, fuller this time, even though her chest still ached, even though the headline remained lodged behind her ribs, even though somewhere in the world Tyriq Withers might already have the script in his hands, might already be reading Lorenzo Anders without knowing he was reading himself.

She took another bite of ice cream and stared out at the night.

“I should’ve never written that damn book,” she said.

Jazmyn scoffed. “Girl, please. That damn book bought you a house.”

“It also resurrected my baby daddy.”

“It did do that.”

“And now he’s going to be in my face.”

“Probably.”

“Reading my words.”

“Definitely.”

“Playing Lorenzo.”

“Unfortunately.”

Karnation swallowed hard.

“And he doesn’t know.”

This time, Jazmyn said nothing.

The silence was worse than any joke could have been.

Karnation looked down at the Blizzard in her lap, the spoon sinking slowly into softening ice cream, and for one terrible second she saw Karter instead, three years old and warm from sleep, curls crushed against his pillow, one little hand tucked beneath his cheek, breathing easy in a world where his mother had been the whole sky because she had never given him reason to look for another.

“He doesn’t know about Karter,” Karnation said, barely above a whisper.

“No,” Jazmyn said carefully. “He doesn’t.”

Karnation’s throat tightened.

“And now I’m going to have to see him.”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s going to see Karter eventually.”

Another pause.

This one gentler.

“Maybe,” Jazmyn said. “But not tonight.”

Karnation nodded, even though Jazmyn could not see her.

Not tonight.

Tonight, she could sit in a Dairy Queen parking lot like a tragic woman in a suburban opera, eating a Blizzard with one hand and holding the steering wheel with the other, trying not to think about how the past had a body, a voice, a contract, and a call time.

Tonight, she could go home.

Tonight, she could kiss her son.

Tonight, she could pretend for a few more hours that the door had not already opened.

Then her phone buzzed again.

Not a text from Jazmyn this time.

An email.

Her agent.

Subject line: URGENT: CASTING ANNOUNCEMENT / CALL TOMORROW

Karnation stared at it.

Then, very calmly, she reached into the bag, pulled out the dipped cone, unwrapped it, and took a bite so aggressive the chocolate shell cracked down the side.

Jazmyn heard it through the car speakers.

“Was that the cone?”

“Yes.”

“Did it deserve that?”

“No.”

“Do you feel better?”

Karnation chewed, swallowed, and stared at the email until the words blurred slightly.

“No,” she said.

Then she took another bite.

“But it’s helping.”

Karnation decided, with the sort of calm that usually came right before a woman either changed her life or committed a misdemeanor, that she was going to throw everything away.

Not metaphorically, though God knew there were several things she would have liked to toss into a municipal bin with the rest of the evening’s trash, beginning with the casting announcement, Marcus Hill’s fraudulent height, the entire Hinge app, every man who had ever used the phrase I’ve always thought about writing a book, and, if she was being honest in the privacy of her own wicked little mind, the memory of Tyriq Withers standing beneath a Florida porch light at seventeen, smiling at her like he had already decided she was going to ruin him and he was grateful for the privilege.

No, unfortunately, she meant physically.

The Dairy Queen bag in her passenger seat had become a crime scene of emotional eating, collapsed napkins, a spoon licked clean with unnecessary violence, the remains of an Oreo Blizzard she had promised herself she would only take “a few bites” of before somehow reaching the cardboard bottom like a woman possessed, and a chocolate-dipped cone wrapper that looked as though it had survived a natural disaster, and because Karnation Noel James had not spent years carefully cultivating an elegant public image just to be found dead in a rental car surrounded by evidence of a sugar-based breakdown, she pulled into the side of the car park, parked beneath a flickering light that made the entire area look like the opening scene of a low-budget thriller, and gathered the rubbish with all the dignity she had left.

Which was not much.

Jazmyn was still on Bluetooth, still very much in her ear, still making herself at home in Karnation’s panic like it came with snacks and a sectional sofa.

“Girl, where are you now?”

“I’m throwing things away.”

“Emotionally or physically?”

“Both, if God is listening.”

“Karnation.”

“What?”

“You are not about to go digging in a Florida car park bin at night dressed like somebody’s divorced stepmother with publishing money.”

Karnation looked down at herself, offended despite everything, because the dress was black, fitted, expensive, and objectively beautiful, even if the evening had turned her into the human embodiment of a deleted paragraph.

“I do not look like a divorced stepmother.”

“You look like the woman the stepchildren fear respectfully.”

“Good. Fear is underrated.”

“And why are you even in Florida again?” Jazmyn muttered, as if she had not already asked this seven separate times in the past twenty-four hours. “This state has bad energy for you.”

Karnation’s jaw tightened as she leaned across the passenger seat and scooped up the bag, her phone tucked beneath her chin for one second before the Bluetooth stretched Jazmyn’s voice across the car again.

“I’m here because my agent said it was important that I attend the first production meeting in person.”

“Your agent is going to hell.”

“My agent got me a seven-figure adaptation deal.”

“Your agent is going to hell in designer shoes.”

Karnation almost smiled, but it faded before it properly arrived, because Florida sat outside the windshield like an old wound disguised as weather, all warm air, wet pavement, palm shadows, and memories waiting on corners she had spent years refusing to drive past. She had not been back properly since she left, not really, not in the way a person returned home and let the place touch them again; she had flown in for quiet business when she had to, kept to hotels, avoided old neighbourhoods, dodged familiar names like bullets, and made sure every visit was so brief it could not grow teeth.

After Karter was born, she had transferred out so quickly people barely had time to gossip before she was already gone, belly flattened but heart still swollen with the kind of pain nobody could see unless they knew where to look, and the families that had once moved around each other like kin—her mother and his mother trading recipes and church shoes, their fathers talking lawn care like it was national security, Karnation and Tyriq running barefoot through backyards, then hallways, then college campuses, growing from children into something neither family was prepared to survive—had fallen silent with the breakup.

Not all at once.

That would have been cleaner.

It happened the ugly way, by degrees, with missed calls, cancelled dinners, polite excuses, mothers who stopped saying each other’s names, fathers who no longer lingered after service, cousins who chose sides without admitting they had chosen anything at all, and the heavy, humiliating knowledge that one broken love had been strong enough to fracture an entire village.

And Tyriq had never known the worst of it.

He did not know that she had left Florida carrying more than heartbreak.

He did not know that the little boy asleep back at the rental house with Jazmyn had his exact smile and her stubborn mouth and a middle name Karnation had only allowed herself to use because some weak, grieving part of her had still loved him too much to erase him completely.

Tariq.

Not Tyriq.

Close enough to ache.

Different enough to survive.

“Karnation?” Jazmyn asked, softer now, probably hearing the silence change shape.

“I’m fine,” Karnation said, which had become less of a statement and more of a decorative accessory at this point.

“You keep saying that like repetition makes it true.”

“It works in marketing.”

“It does not work on me.”

Karnation grabbed the Dairy Queen bag, her keys, and the little paper receipt that had somehow attached itself to her dress like even the trash wanted emotional closure, then stepped out of the car into the humid Florida night.

The air was thick and warm against her skin, carrying the smell of fried food, rain-soaked asphalt, car exhaust, and something sweet from the drive-thru window, and for one ridiculous second she was sixteen again, standing outside a different Dairy Queen with Tyriq after football practice, both of them too broke to order separate Blizzards, his spoon invading hers every three seconds until she threatened to bite him and he laughed so hard he nearly dropped the cup.

She hated memory.

Memory had no manners.

It just walked into rooms uninvited, sat down on the good furniture, and put its feet up.

“I’m throwing the bag away,” she said, mostly to herself, and marched toward the bin at the edge of the car park with the sharp, purposeful steps of a woman who had decided that if she could not control fate, casting announcements, or the emotional terrorism of nostalgia, she could at least control litter.

The bin was fuller than it had any right to be, overflowing with fast-food bags and drink cups, one cardboard tray balanced on top like it had been placed there by somebody who believed physics was for poor people, and Karnation stared at it with contempt before lifting the Dairy Queen bag by two fingers.

“This is disgusting,” she murmured.

Jazmyn snorted through the speaker. “You ate it.”

“I meant the bin.”

“You also ate from a building attached to the bin.”

“Do you want your strawberry sundae or not?”

“Respectfully, I apologise to the bin.”

Karnation rolled her eyes and shoved the bag down, pressing it beneath a cardboard cup with the sort of focus that did not match the task, because somewhere between the Blizzard and the trash can she had decided that everything attached to this night needed to leave her body, her car, her orbit, and her spirit immediately.

The napkins went in.

The receipt went in.

The spoon went in.

Her patience went in spiritually.

Her good sense had apparently been gone since college.

Then, because luck had always had a personal vendetta against her, the wind caught one loose napkin and sent it skidding across the wet pavement like a tiny white flag making a dramatic escape.

“Oh, for the love of—”

“Karnation, leave it.”

“I am not littering.”

“You are in heels.”

“I have committed to the mission.”

“The mission is stupid.”

“The mission is civic responsibility.”

“The mission is you avoiding your feelings with sanitation.”

Karnation ignored her, bending carefully to catch the runaway napkin before it slipped beneath a parked black SUV, her fingers closing around damp paper just as a pair of trainers stepped into her line of sight.

Not Marcus’s shiny loafers.

Not some stranger’s sandals.

White trainers.

Expensive, clean, familiar in the way a person’s presence could become familiar before the rest of them fully arrived.

Karnation froze.

For one second, she saw only the shoes, the hem of dark trousers, the long shadow cast across the pavement, and then her body, traitorous thing that it was, knew before her mind did.

It knew in the bones.

It knew in the ribs.

It knew in the place beneath her heart where she had once carried his son and refused to say his name out loud.

“Karnation?”

The world narrowed.

Not gently.

Violently.

The voice came down over her like weather, deeper than it had been when they were young, rougher at the edges, weighted now by years, fame, distance, and whatever life had done to him since the last time he stood close enough for her to smell his cologne, but still unmistakably his.

Tyriq Withers.

Her childhood friend.

Her first love.

Her greatest heartbreak.

Her son’s father.

Standing in a Dairy Queen car park while she crouched beside a bin holding a wet napkin like some tragic, well-dressed raccoon.

For a moment, Karnation could not move.

Then pride, that old loyal friend, grabbed her by the back of the neck and hauled her upright.

She stood slowly, smoothing one hand down the front of her dress as though this had been intentional, as though she regularly knelt by bins in designer heels for environmental reasons, as though her life had not just folded in on itself in the most humiliating possible location.

Tyriq stood a few feet away, tall enough to make the air around him feel arranged in his favour, his body broader than memory had allowed, his face older in ways that should have made him easier to look at and instead made him unbearable, because time had not softened him, not really; it had sharpened him, carved boyish beauty into something more dangerous, turned the careless Florida boy she had once loved into a man the world now photographed from low angles and called devastating.

He wore a black hoodie despite the heat, sleeves pushed up over forearms she hated herself for recognising, a cap pulled low, and there was a paper Dairy Queen cup in one hand, which was so absurdly normal she might have laughed if her lungs had not forgotten their purpose.

Behind him, near the SUV, two men hovered with the unmistakable posture of people paid to notice problems before they became headlines, and one of them looked from Tyriq to Karnation with curiosity quick enough to make her stomach tighten.

Tyriq, though, did not look away.

Neither did she.

For years, she had imagined seeing him again in ways that made her feel prepared, because women like Karnation survived by rehearsing disaster until it felt manageable; she had imagined red carpets, courtrooms, hotel lobbies, charity galas, a cold, elegant meeting arranged through lawyers, some eventual confrontation where she would be dressed perfectly and emotionally unavailable, where he would see what he lost and she would be too healed to care.

She had not imagined this.

She had not imagined a Dairy Queen car park.

She had not imagined a wet napkin.

She had not imagined the man who had been announced that same night as Lorenzo Anders finding her beside a trash can with Oreo Blizzard still cooling her tongue.

God, apparently, was a comedian with poor boundaries.

“Karnation,” he said again, and the second time hurt worse, because the first had been shock, but the second carried recognition, disbelief, and something else she did not have the emotional bandwidth to name.

Her name sounded the same in his mouth.

That was the problem.

After all these years, after all the silence, after all the birthdays he had missed without knowing they were birthdays, after all the nights she had held a crying baby and whispered, It’s okay, Mama’s here, after all the times Karter had looked up at her with Tyriq’s eyes and made her feel like love and punishment were sometimes born wearing the same face, her name still sounded like something soft when he said it.

She hated him for that.

“Tyriq,” she said, and the fact that her voice did not crack felt like a personal victory worthy of a trophy.

His jaw moved once, like there were too many words trying to fit behind his teeth and none of them had been approved for release.

“I—” He stopped, glanced around the car park, then back at her. “Damn.”

Karnation’s brows lifted, because apparently after years of no contact, after being childhood friends turned strangers, after their families had stopped speaking, after he had somehow been cast as the fictional man she had built from the wreckage of him, the first real word he had for her was damn.

“Eloquent,” she said.

His mouth twitched.

Not quite a smile.

Almost worse.

“You always did say I needed to read more.”

“You always did prove me right.”

The words came out too easily, sliding into the old rhythm before she could stop them, and for one dangerous second something familiar sparked between them, quick and bright and humiliating, because their bodies apparently had no respect for the years she had spent convincing herself that silence was closure.

Tyriq looked at her like he heard it too.

Like he felt the muscle memory of them.

Like he remembered being eight years old and pulling her braids because he liked her, twelve and carrying her book bag because another boy had tried to, sixteen and standing outside her house until her mother turned the porch light on twice, nineteen and kissing her in a way that made every future man feel like a substitute teacher reading from the wrong lesson plan.

“I didn’t know you were in Florida,” he said.

“I didn’t announce it.”

“Clearly.”

The word had no edge, not exactly, but it carried enough history to make her fingers curl around her keys.

Karnation looked past him, toward the SUV, toward his people, toward anywhere that was not his face.

“I was leaving.”

“You always do that now?”

Her eyes snapped back to his.

There it was.

The first crack.

The first ugly little piece of the thing neither of them had ever said properly, because they had not spoken in years, because the last version of them had ended in half-messages, missed calls, pride, anger, distance, a transfer form, a pregnancy test held in shaking hands, and two families grieving something they pretended was only a breakup.

“Excuse me?”

Tyriq’s face hardened for a second, then shifted, regret passing through his eyes so quickly someone who did not know him might have missed it.

But Karnation knew him.

That was the hell of it.

She knew every weather pattern of that face.

“I ain’t mean it like that.”

“Yes, you did.”

He exhaled, looking away, jaw tight beneath the shadow of his cap.

“Maybe I did.”

Karnation gave a soft laugh, but there was no humour in it, only disbelief wearing lipstick.

“Wow.”

“Karnation—”

“No, it’s fine,” she said, lifting one hand with all the elegance of a woman politely declining a plate of poison. “I’m glad we got here quickly, actually. Saves time.”

He took one step closer.

She took one step back.

His eyes dropped to the movement, and something flickered across his face.

Not anger.

Pain, maybe.

Good.

Let him have a teaspoon of it.

“Karnation, I haven’t seen you in years.”

“And yet you recognised me near a trash can. Beautiful full-circle moment.”

His gaze moved over her face, slower now, almost disbelieving, like he was trying to reconcile the girl he had known with the woman standing in front of him, the childhood best friend who used to fall asleep on his couch during summer storms with the author whose name now sat above his next film contract, the girl who had once loved him in Florida heat with the woman who had built a life far enough away that he could not touch it.

“You look…” he began, then stopped.

Karnation tilted her head.

“Careful.”

That almost-smile threatened again, but this time it came with something sad behind it.

“I was gonna say good.”

“Good is safe.”

“I’m trying to be.”

“You weren’t always.”

The sentence landed between them like glass breaking.

Tyriq went still.

The men by the SUV suddenly became very interested in looking elsewhere, which would have been funny if Karnation’s chest did not feel like someone had reached inside and twisted.

For the first time since he had said her name, Tyriq looked fully unguarded, not famous, not polished, not Lorenzo, not the man fans edited into slow-motion thirst traps, but the boy from Florida who had once sat beside her on a curb at midnight, sharing chips from a corner store bag, promising her that whatever happened, they would never become strangers.

And then they did.

They became worse than strangers.

Strangers did not know where to aim.

He swallowed.

“I deserved that.”

“You deserved worse.”

“I know.”

That answer bothered her.

She wanted denial, defensiveness, something she could sharpen herself against, but his quiet agreement unsettled her, because it suggested that years had passed for him too, that he had not remained frozen at the exact point of damage where she had left him in her mind.

Karnation hated nuance.

Nuance ruined perfectly good resentment.

Her phone, still connected to the car Bluetooth, suddenly emitted Jazmyn’s voice from inside the vehicle, faint but loud enough through the cracked window to carry.

“KAR? HELLO? WHY DID YOU GO SILENT? DID THE BIN GET YOU?”

Karnation closed her eyes.

Tyriq looked toward the car.

One brow lifted.

Despite the emotional violence of the moment, Karnation felt heat climb her neck.

“My friend,” she said tightly.

“The bin?” he asked.

“Do not.”

And then, because the universe had clearly decided subtlety was for other people, Jazmyn’s voice rose again.

“KARNATION NOEL JAMES, IF YOU ARE OUT THERE FIGHTING A RACCOON OVER A BLIZZARD CUP, I SWEAR TO GOD—”

Tyriq’s mouth twitched.

Karnation pointed at him.

“Laugh and I will end your career before wardrobe fittings.”

He pressed his lips together, but the laugh still escaped him, low and disbelieving, and the sound hit her with such sudden, vivid force that for half a second she was back in childhood, back in summer, back in his mother’s kitchen with Kool-Aid moustaches and scraped knees, back before love became complicated enough to need lawyers, agents, and secrets.

The softness almost killed her.

So she reached behind her, opened the car door, grabbed the phone from the console, and snapped, “I’m fine.”

Jazmyn went quiet.

Too quiet.

Then, in a voice stripped of every joke, she said, “Who is that?”

Karnation looked at Tyriq.

Tyriq looked at her.

The night held its breath.

“No one,” Karnation said.

Tyriq’s face changed.

Not dramatically.

Just enough.

A small tightening near his eyes, a shift in his mouth, the kind of wound a proud man would deny if asked directly.

Jazmyn, however, had never respected denial as a concept.

“That is not no one,” she said slowly. “Karnation… is that—”

“I’ll call you back.”

“Do not hang up on me if that is who I think it is.”

“I’ll call you back,” Karnation repeated, and ended the call before Jazmyn could start speaking in tongues.

The silence afterward felt huge.

Tyriq watched the phone disappear into her clutch.

“No one?” he asked.

Karnation looked up at him.

“What did you want me to say?”

His voice lowered. “The truth.”

The laugh that left her then was soft, stunned, and meaner than she intended.

“The truth?” she repeated. “That’s rich coming from you.”

His shoulders shifted beneath the hoodie.

“I never lied to you.”

“No,” she said, stepping closer now because anger had finally burned through the shock and warmed her blood enough to move. “You just left out the parts that mattered, disappeared when things got hard, let pride speak louder than love, and made silence so comfortable between us that eventually I stopped trying to cross it.”

His eyes flashed.

“You transferred without telling me.”

“You gave me every reason to.”

“I called you.”

“After.”

“I came by your mama’s house.”

“After.”

“I asked about you.”

“After, Tyriq.” Her voice stayed quiet, but something in it shook hard enough for him to hear. “Everything with you was always after.”

He stared at her, and she could see him absorbing it, trying to argue, trying to reach for the version of events where he was hurt too, where he had been abandoned too, where she had vanished and left him standing in the wreckage without explanation.

And maybe that version existed.

Maybe in his story, she was the one who disappeared.

Maybe in his family’s story, Karnation was the girl who broke their son and took the old closeness between two households with her.

Maybe in the neighbourhood’s story, they were just another couple who had loved too young and lost too loudly.

But in Karnation’s story, there had been a bathroom floor, a pregnancy test, her mother crying silently at the kitchen sink, a transfer application completed with trembling hands, and a baby boy born with a head full of dark curls and a face that made every nurse in the room say, Oh, he looks just like somebody.

Tyriq did not know that.

He was standing in front of her wounded by a book, by a breakup, by years of silence, and he had no idea he had a son asleep across town clutching a stuffed dinosaur under one arm.

The thought sobered her so violently that her anger vanished.

Not softened.

Vanished.

In its place came fear.

Tyriq must have seen it, because his expression shifted again.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Karnation.”

“Don’t.”

“I know your face.”

“No, you knew my face,” she said, forcing the words out cleanly even as her pulse started to climb. “You don’t know anything about me now.”

His gaze held hers.

“That’s what you think?”

“That’s what I know.”

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

The Dairy Queen sign hummed above them.

Cars whispered past on the road.

Somewhere behind the building, a machine whirred, making ice cream for people whose lives were not currently collapsing into a Greek tragedy with sprinkles.

Tyriq looked down at the cup in his hand, then back at her.

“I saw the announcement,” he said.

Her stomach dropped.

Of course he had.

“I assumed.”

“I didn’t know until tonight.”

That surprised her, though she refused to show it.

“You didn’t know you were cast?”

“I knew they wanted me. I didn’t know it was official. I didn’t know they were announcing tonight.”

“How lovely for both of us.”

His mouth tightened.

“I didn’t know you wrote him like that.”

Karnation went still.

The air changed.

“What?”

Tyriq’s eyes did not leave hers.

“Lorenzo.”

Her throat went dry.

“I write fiction.”

“Do you?”

The question was not cruel.

That made it worse.

He was looking at her with something too close to recognition, like maybe he had read enough, heard enough, felt enough in the pages to understand that the man he was about to play had not been invented from air.

Karnation lifted her chin.

“Yes.”

He stepped closer, slowly this time, giving her every opportunity to retreat.

She did not.

“Then why does he sound like me?”

There it was.

The thing she had known would come, eventually, just not beside a trash can, not with melted ice cream in the passenger seat, not on the same night the world found out before she had time to build armour around herself.

Karnation’s grip tightened around her clutch.

“Ego has always been your most consistent trait.”

Tyriq’s eyes narrowed faintly.

“You named him Lorenzo Anders.”

“And?”

“My middle name is Lorenzo.”

Her silence betrayed her.

His voice dropped.

“Anders was the street we grew up on.”

Karnation could hear her own heartbeat.

Loud.

Humiliating.

Alive.

Tyriq stared at her like the last few years had become a room he had just walked into and found full of his own fingerprints.

“You really thought I wouldn’t notice?”

“I thought we would never speak again.”

The honesty came out before she could dress it up.

Tyriq absorbed it like a hit.

For one second, neither of them looked like adults anymore, not the bestselling author and the famous actor, not the woman with secrets and the man with a contract, but two kids from Florida who had built a whole world out of proximity and then burned it down with pride.

“You wanted that?” he asked quietly.

Karnation looked at him, and because she had spent years surviving the consequences of his absence, because she had given birth without him, raised a child without him, made herself into a woman without the families that once held her up, and still somehow stood here with her knees threatening weakness because his voice had learned how to say her name in a lower register, she answered with the only truth that would not destroy them both.

“I wanted peace.”

Tyriq’s face shifted, pain breaking through before he could hide it.

“And did you get it?”

Karnation thought of Karter asleep under dinosaur sheets, of tiny shoes by the door, of sticky fingers on her cheeks, of laughter in the kitchen, of loneliness made luxurious because she had no choice but to gild the cage she woke up in every morning.

She thought of the books, the awards, the interviews, the house, the life, the polished version of herself everyone admired because nobody saw what it cost to keep shining.

Then she looked at Tyriq Withers, standing in front of her after years of silence, cast as the man she had created from the ache he left behind.

“No,” she said softly.

His eyes searched hers.

“Karnation…”

She stepped back then, because if he said her name like that again, the night might split open and everything she had buried might come crawling out before she was ready.

“I have to go.”

He did not stop her, not with his hands, not with his body, but his voice followed her like it always had.

“You staying in town?”

She opened her car door.

“That’s not your business.”

“It is if we’re working together.”

Karnation turned back to him slowly.

“We are not working together. You are acting in a film based on a book I wrote. There’s a difference.”

His gaze sharpened.

“You always this cold now?”

She smiled, but it did not touch her eyes.

“You always this late?”

That shut him up.

For a second, satisfaction flared through her, quick and ugly, but it burned out almost immediately, leaving only exhaustion behind.

Tyriq looked at her with his jaw tight and his eyes too dark, and Karnation knew—knew with the same bone-deep certainty that had made her freeze when he first spoke—that this was not over, that no amount of distance, fame, motherhood, book deals, or silence had prepared either of them for the violence of being real to each other again.

She slid into the driver’s seat.

Before she could close the door, he spoke one more time.

“I missed you.”

The words entered the car before she could shut them out.

Simple.

Unadorned.

Devastating.

Karnation sat there with one hand on the door, staring straight ahead through the windshield, because if she looked at him while those words were still warm between them, she might do something unforgivable, like believe him.

So she closed the door.

Started the car.

Put both hands on the wheel.

And when her phone lit up with Jazmyn calling again, when Tyriq still stood in the car park behind her, when Florida pressed close and humid around the windows like the past trying to get in, Karnation pulled out of the parking space without looking back.

Only when she reached the road did she let herself breathe.

Inhale.

Hold.

Exhale.

Compress, she reminded herself, though her hands were shaking now.

Remember the seven steps.

But the problem with the seven steps was that none of them explained what to do when the man you had spent years turning into fiction looked you in the eye beside a Dairy Queen trash can and told you he missed you.

And none of them, not one, prepared a woman for the fact that she would have to go home afterward, kiss a sleeping little boy with that same man’s face, and pretend the whole world had not just begun tilting toward the truth.

Your hearing suddenly went radio silent, it felt like you’d been plunged in the fucking twilight zone.

“Wait wait, I’m sorry— you did what? She’s fucking what?”

“Pregnant, Chiara, pregnant! Is that clear enough for you? I fucked up, alright? W-we were broken up and—“

“SO YOU CHEAT ON ME WITH A BITCH I DON’T KNOW AND GET HER FUCKING PREGNANT?! ARE YOU FUCKING—“

The hottest tears streamed down your cheeks with ease, your voice cracking as you screamed out. His end was silent.

Your sob was soft but it rocked you and shook your body in the driver’s seat of your car. You prayed no one could see you and thanked God for the darkening night skies.

“Out of all of the things you could put me through, I would’ve never thought about this. You are vile, you are the lowest of fucking low, and I fucking hate you”

“Chiara—“

“You shut the fuck up talking to me. As much as we go through what we do, I’d have never thought to hurt you this way, ever. But you know what, you have an obligation that exceeds way more than me, go do that. Fuck you and fuck that bitch”

You didn’t allow him to get another word in before hanging up the car phone.

You reached over into your glove compartment and grabbed a spare set of napkins, pulling down your sun visor to look yourself in the mirror.

Patting gently at your cheeks and under your eyes, at your black lined eyes that already ran and disappeared.

Sadly, this wasn’t the first time your love had broken your heart but the trajectory of the reason he was doing so was far greater than before.

It’s what had you still sitting in one of the bar booths as closing time neared. You drank what you could but even then, you didn’t have it in you to get drunk. You were too sad. Thankfully, Ward’s occupancy made it so everyone was in their own world, everyone just left you alone.

Good.

You tried to eat, tried to watch the game, tried to sip. But you cried more than that. Too depressed to move, too depressed to really acknowledge what was going on.

“Hey, the bar’s closed, I’m about to start locking these doors. Do you have a ride home?”

You looked up, a man approached. Your emotional, hazy vision had him hardly registering to your eyes but with the closer he got, the clearer he looked.

You recognized him as the bartender that greeted you when you when you first walked in.

“I’m sorry?” You mumbled.

“I asked if you had a ride home? Or are you sober enough to drive? It’s closing time and you’re the only one here”

Leaning out and looking around, you were surprised. Nobody else resided in the sports bar, it really was just you and this man. This man that sported dark denim jeans and a Henley. This man with scruff and stubble, sandy brown low cut hair, and—

“You have really pretty eyes”

The man chuckled and shook his head, “can I call somebody for you?”

Somebody. Besides Michelle, you had a somebody you could’ve called.. or so you thought. That alone had you tearing up, it wasn’t long before you were crying again. A soft sob escaped your throat, your hands reached up to cover your face.

“I’m sorry—“ you choked out, “sorry sorry sorry, n-no, you don’t h-have to call anyone. I drove myself and m-my last drink was water. ‘M just s-sad and tired but I live close, I can drive myself—“

You grabbed your purse and stood up, you didn’t expect for the bartender to gently stop you with a hand on your wrist, he sported a frown when you looked at him.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

You sniffled, “I-I don’t know if you’d get it”

The man only smiled and took a walk back to the booth, your wrist still in his grip. He sat down and you did the same, a bit reluctantly.

“Try me”

You coughed out a giggle, “you don’t even know my name”

“Then what’s your name?”

“Chiara”

“Chiara? Pretty. Chiara, I’m Ledger, it’s nice to meet you”

He held out his hand for you to shake, you ignored the roaring butterflies that spread wild in your chest. You took his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Ledger”

Cordially removing your hands from each other, you shifted in your seat.

“Well Chiara, I’ve seen many things in my bar and though you aren’t the first person to ever cry here, you are the first one to be last. Usually I’m hauling out a grown ass man here at two a.m. but a woman? I’m just a little curious”

His tone was lighthearted and you could tell he was trying to be welcoming and make you feel better.

“Lay it on me, I’m all ears for you”

For you? You tried not to blush. Was he flirting? Or just being really nice?

God, you wouldn’t have minded either. Ledger was easily one of the most handsome men you’ve ever seen in your life. Handsome was an understatement.

You sighed, “where do I even start?”

You didn’t mean to hold up Ledger Ward as much as you did. You weren’t even drunk but once you got started with your rants, it was hard to stop.

Two a.m. turned into three a.m. and Ledger was already familiar with parts of your personal life like he was another Michelle. He knew about your relationship.. or rather, ex relationship. He gave respectful advice and it was safe to say, Ledger wasn’t a big fan of your ex.

Or the new revelation that your ex is now a father and how he seemingly became one behind your back.

“And now that leads me here” you mumbled, already becoming emotional once again, “in the back of your bar crying and barely having the good time I wanted to have”

When a tears began rolling down your cheeks, you reached for the napkin you’d been using all night but Ledger Ward was faster.. and much more softer.

Call it him hating seeing a pretty woman cry. Both hands reached out to cup your face, his thumbs wiping away at the tears on your cheeks and under your eyes.

“No more of this, he doesn’t deserve it.. excuse my language but that fuckin’ guy, Jesus Christ. You sound like a pretty good woman, Chiara, and you sound like you’re at your best when you’re in love. To be treated the way he’s treating you is bullshit, to put it mildly”

You only stared into his focused eyes as they continued wiping at your face.

“Can you believe that somehow and someway, he still says that he loves me?”

Ledger immediately dismissed it, “you know that’s not true, right?” He held your face in a manner that was doing something to your beating heart, like he’s known you. “No real man that loves his woman will put her through the shit he’s put you through.. s’not love, Chiara.. and if it is, it’s not the kind you deserve”

Ledger felt you lean into his palms, eyes closed and nuzzling. Still something in him didn’t want to pull away from you. He didn’t know you and you didn’t know him for comfort to be this intense. But nobody was stopping each other.

“What kind of love do I deserve if it’s not this kind?”

Ledger paused, only for a beat.

“Someone who sees you for you.. who sees the way you give your heart and will do everything to cherish and protect it, so you’re not in the back of sports bars crying—“

Immediately you laughed, a genuine one that had your eyes crinkling and baring all of your teeth. It made Ledger’s own heart swell.

“I feel like if you were given a sense of security, you wouldn’t have to question the love you’re receiving. You don’t really seem that secure, sweetheart”

Sweetheart? Still cordial or flirting? But it seemed like the more you stared into Ledger’s greens, some things were being made clear than others.

Though he didn’t ask a question, you still shook your head no. “‘M really not, if I’m being honest”

Ledger also shook his head, his thumbs just ghosting over your cheekbones. “…too pretty to feel like that”

Call it a lapse in judgement.

Closing your hands over his wrists to use for leverage, you mildly, cautiously hoisted yourself forward and over the table.

Your face hovered over Ledger’s, noses brushing against each other, lips just centimeters apart. A spark turned into a charge, your eyes flickered from his lips to his eyes.

“Take what you need from me, you deserve it”

That sent you over.

The kiss was soft but had a heated, fervor to it. Your mouths fit perfectly and moved in a rhythm that was unlike anything you’d ever felt before.

Both of your lips moistened, the sounds of the smacks every time you pulled back for even a second sent straight to your loins.

One of Ledger’s hands stayed on your face while the other slithered to the back of your neck, keep you on him. You couldn’t help the whimper that buzzed in your throat, he was a damn good kisser.

When he pulled back, you stayed close. But the feeling that kept buzzing is what had you saying—

“Take me home, please”

When Ledger walked you to your front door, you were on him again. Arms slithered around his neck as his hands caressed your back.

The same hands that would slide down over your ass and under, subtly telling you to jump. And when you did, he held you tight. Still kissing you breathless, this time with an edge, with a dominance that had his tongue dancing furiously with yours.

Somehow you managed to unlock your door. Somehow you managed to lock it back even as Ledger was walking you through your house, still so drunk on you.

“Where’s your bed, sweetheart?”

“Just up the stairs and to the left”

Maybe it was the thrill of the moment that had your vision spotty. One moment Ledger had you under him, the feeling of your duvet on your back.

The next moment, you were stripping— his helping hands getting your jacket off, your shirt over your head, and reaching behind to unclip your bra. In the next, your needy hands reached out for his belt, desperately undoing it.

You never got to feel his cock in your hands, only when he was gently breaching past and stretching your walls. You were so noisy— the smallest whimpers, pleas, and cries that was music to Ledger’s ears.

He was completely hovered over you, stark naked like you. Your cover draped off of his shoulders, his hands on either side of your head.

When he dipped down to kiss you, you welcomed it. As if you weren’t already slick enough, you were growing wetter around him. It was easy for Ledger to fully bottom out.

His thrusts were shallow but meaningful. One pull back and a firm push back inside of you until he found a rhythm. It was enough to have your body jutting in the bed, in his hold.

One of his hands reached down to grasp the outside of your thigh. “Around.. put your legs around me, baby”

Of course you followed suit.

“You’re so fucking beautiful” Ledger muttered down to you, he stared fully into your eyes, close to piercing your soul. “So fucking beautiful”

There was a sparkle in his eye that you were trying to figure out. Meanwhile a soft layer of tears brewed in yours.

“Really?”

Ledger nodded, kissing you again, “you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met in my life.. in this town.. but there’s so much more than that, sweetheart”

He kissed your lips again. From your lips to your cheeks to your jaw, up to your ear.

“Sweet”

Kiss.

“Kind”

Kiss.

“Loyal”

Kiss.

“Loving”

Kiss.

“Caring”

Kiss.

All while you cried out from beneath him, your nails scratching at his back and tearing into his skin. Your ankles locked around each other, desperate to keep Ledger exactly where he was: so fucking deep inside of you.

But his words were hitting you straight in the heart. It was everything you wanted to hear, everything you needed your love to say to you.

Ledger pulled back from you and softly took a hold of your leg, draping it over his chest, your ankle hanging on his shoulder.

“Oh fuck” you cried, Ledger was back hovering over you, stuffing you with so much of his length now that he had you opened up. “Mhm— Ledger.. ‘s so— God, I c-can’t take it”

“Yes you can” he kissed you again, a mix of comfort and condescension to it, keeping at the pace that was making you lose your fucking mine. “‘Cause you’re my good girl, right? My beautiful, sweet, good girl, right? You won’t quit on me, right baby? Right, Chiara?”

Still he fucked you good, still he fucked you through your whines that grew louder. Welcomed the way you held onto him tighter.

You didn’t miss the primal like look in his dark greens as he stared down at you. You also didn’t miss his slick hand that crept up and gripped your chin.

“Your ex boyfriend ever fuck you this good?”

Immediately, you shook your head.

“Never”

“Naw? So why you cryin’ over him?”

You opened your mouth to respond but Ledger was thinking about something else. He was swift with the way he handled your body, picking you up in his arms and hauling on his feet.

He walked your body to your mirror and placed you before him, your back to his chest. Legs open, back arched, Ledger pushed back inside of you, picking up his rhythm and pace.

“Shit” you moaned, your hands held onto your dresser.

He slithered a hand into your hair and held on gently but firmly.

“Look at yourself and listen to me” The man behind you melted into your back, eyes staring at you through the mirror, his face in your neck.

“You don’t deserve the shit he puts you through, not when there’s a man like me that can show you way better.. and fuck you even better..”

Your eyes rolled to your head pathetically, hips subtly moving to fuck him back and match his thrusts.

“You hear me, baby?”

“Yes!”

“Good fuckin’ girl” he suckled your neck, still watching you, “there’s no better man for you out there than me and I can prove it. Just give me a chance”

Tears you didn’t know you were holding in suddenly streamed down your cheeks, you laid a hand over one of Ledger’s that gripped your hip. Tears of both pleasure and sadness.

“Please..” you muttered, “please don’t hurt me”

With his hand in your hair, Ledger gave you a soft tug to tilt your head back. His greens were now much more gentler as they peered into your watery ones.

Ledger Ward gave you a smoldering, passionate kiss. You could feel all of his intentions, feelings, and emotions on your lips and tongue.

“I promise I won’t”

Regret would swell in your chest three weeks later. Three weeks that you spent with Ledger, learning Ledger, enjoying Ledger… loving Ledger?

You hung out with him at his shifts at the bar, helped him close, ate food with him after hours. Not to mention sleeping over at your house and his every other night. Nights that almost always ended in the best kind of sex you’d ever had in your life.

Sex where Ledger always got you off more than twice and still had the energy afterwards to feed you, to shower with you, to help you relax in his arms under the moonlight.

But it was more than the physical. You texted every day, called whenever you both could. Ledger Ward was a funny, sweet, sensitive, and considerate guy. He was always up before you with a good morning text or asleep before you with a goodnight text.

He made you feel seen, loved, and appreciated.

But there was a part of you that still pulled back from giving Ledger your all. Maybe that’s why the regret in your chest hurt so bad.

Sitting in your car outside of Ward’s, you tried to calm your emotions as you knew you had to do this. Maybe the setting wasn’t appropriate but it has to be done.

Finally, you got out and approached the entrance. When you walked inside, the bell rang and immediately got Ledger’s attention. Ledger, who looked up from behind the bar and smiled brightly at you.

“Hey, baby! Come ‘round” when you walked to the bar top, Ledger greeted you with a soft kiss on the lips, further sinking your heart. “How are you?”

Swallowing, you gave him your best smile but even Ledger could see something was wrong. “G-Good! I’m good! How are you today?”

He tilted his head, “yeah? You look pale— are you feeling okay? Do you need anything to drink or eat?”

You couldn’t verbally answer him, he was so fucking sweet. Instead, familiar tears welled in your eyes. Ledger acted immediately.

Excusing himself from the bar top, he met you and took you by the wrist, walking to the back.

“What’s the matter, Chiara?”

Still the tears slid out of your eyes. You fell into his chest and wrapped your arms around his torso. Sobbing.

“I’m sorry.. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t be mad”

Ledger only frowned and held you close to him, rubbing your back.

“Hey, whatever it is, we can fix it, right? Do you want to talk about it?”

“He called me back.. and says he wants to work it out with me…”

Disappointment filled Ledger’s chest and plummeted his own heart. Still he held you, still he tried to relax you. He didn’t respond after a moment.

“And you want to give it another try? With him?”

He felt you meekly nod against his chest. The man couldn’t say he wasn’t sad. Neither of you were officially together with each other but Ledger hoped he was at least showing you what you were missing.

That was why letting you go was harder and why he really couldn’t fight for something that never was.

“I just—“ you pulled back to look at Ledger, “p-please don’t think that I don’t care about you because I do! Ledger, please, you’ve— you’ve been my confidant and my best friend through that shitshow and I am forever indebted to you. I just.. t-there’s history and—“

“And you don’t want to throw it away if there’s some way it can be fixed? I understand” his smile was sad and pathetic, still he leaned down and kissed your forehead, “I can’t say I’m happy but thank you for telling me”

You held him tighter, “are you mad at me?”

Ledger shook his head vigorously, “no, never”. He kissed your forehead again.

“All I ask is for you to not forget about me because I’ll never forget about you”

Currently — now.

Somehow Ledger managed to untangle himself from you and you still slept soundly. He quietly plucked the photos off of his mirror, grabbed his phone, and crept out onto his patio backyard.

Kurt Peterson was picking up the other line.

“Hey Ledge—“

“She knows me, Kurt” Ledger said in a hushed tone, pacing out on his grass, “she fucking knows me and I don’t remember her at all—“

“Woah, hey, calm down, calm down. Who is she? Who are we talking about, Ledger?”

“Chiara”

Kurt went silent for a moment. “What do you mean she knows you?”

“Like she has photos of us together from years ago, years ago before I almost lost my fuckin’ mind. 2022. She has print out, digital camera photos of us back then and I can’t remember a damn thing”

Kurt took a breath which in turn, inspired Ledger to do the same. Worked up and freaking out, he had to try to think clearly.

“Damnit that is right around the time you had your accident… well, I mean, isn’t this a good thing? Or can it be? I know you don’t remember anything but I think Chiara would love nothing more than to jog your memory, right?”

Ledger sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Kurt, can you at least try to see things at my level?”

“I get why you’re confused, buddy—“

“I don’t think you do! Because the only reason I’m freaked out is because she’s been acting like we’re strangers this entire time. If we were actually friends or more back before I lost part of my memory, why isn’t she bringing that up? Or hasn’t brought it up?”

That rendered Kurt silent.

“Yeah I can’t try to combat that, Ledge. Can I ask, how did you find these photos?”

It was Ledger’s turn to be silent, his heart immediately upping a speed. He opened his mouth to speak but Kurt filled the space.

“When do you plan on talking to her about this?”

He sighed, “definitely today because I’m too nerved about this. I’ll let you know how it goes”

When Ledger made his way back inside, he made a beeline to his bedroom to find you, only to see nothing. But the sound of his shower going gave him his answer.

His feet took him to his kitchen, opening his fridge and grabbing things to make the basic egg, bacon, and toast combination.

By the time his bedroom door opened and alerted him of your presence, the toast and the bacon were already done cooking. Ledger was focused lastly on the eggs.

You walked into the kitchen, hair wet, and dressed in one of Ledger’s plain white tees and underwear that peeked out some.

“Hey, good morning” Ledger smiled at you softly. He wasn’t expecting for you to walk up to him and plant a full one on his lips. Arms around his neck, on your tippy toes, you greeted him sweetly.

“Mhmph” Ledger groaned, he held your body to him with one arm, the other worked to scramble the eggs. “What was that for? I don’t mind but w-what was that for?”

You pulled back to look at him, “just wanted to say thank you for last night, I really appreciate you being there for me”

Ledger blushed softly and kissed your cheek, “I’ll always be here for you, Chi, you never have to question that”

This time you kissed his cheek, you stayed attached to him as he still scrambled the eggs.

“Cookin’ for us?”

Ledger smiled, “I figured we could use it after last night. I know it was a real emotional one and—“

You pressed your body to the man and dipped your face into his neck, chaining butterfly kisses to the side of his skin. Right side… the middle at the column of his throat… and finally the left side.

Ledger tried to clear his throat and focus, but your kisses became more grounding and intentional.

“— a-and I know you w-weren’t feeling.. the best.. I just w-wanted to do something nice for.. you.. oh.. Chiara, what’re you doing, sweetheart?”

Your lips moved up to his ear, “‘m not doing anything, baby, keep on talking to me, what were you saying? You’re cooking to make me feel better?”

Ledger let out a shaky breath as you continued, nibbling at his ear.

“Actually, Chi, t-there’s something I n-need to talk to you about. C-can we sit—“

You unraveled yourself from him but suddenly sunk down to your knees before him, hands teasingly creeping up his basketball short clad legs.

“Chiara—“

“You wanted to talk to me? Talk, I’m listening”

Except it felt like you weren’t. Not when you’d pulled his shorts down and came face to face with his dick, a half erection he was sporting.

“Oh.. fu— Chi, baby, please, ‘m trying to focus”

“Then focus, don’t mind me”

Opening your palm, you dribbled a healthy amount of spit and grabbed his dick with one hand, beginning to jerk his base. A firm fist, up and down, back and forth. His chest began to heave, his mind going foggy.

“I-I can’t, not when you’re touching me there. Fuck, sweetheart… what’s gotten in you this morning?”

You giggled and boldly kissed his tip, “‘just wanna make you feel good.. I think you deserve it..”

The man above you couldn’t respond even if he tried, not when your lips fully closed over the head of him and began blowing him, sucking like you were trying to kill him.

Pleasure danced everywhere in Ledger’s body despite him trying to fight it. But it was useless. He moved the skillet of cooked eggs off the eye, turned it off, and focused back on you.

You opened your mouth deeper to take more of Ledger, all while your hand on him still stroked and began caressing his balls. It wasn’t long until Ledger was threading his hands in your hair to hold your head.

“Fuck, Chiara.. just like that, please don’t stop..” Ledger moaned, tossing his head back.

You bobbed your head, taking him more, and creating a little mess. It might’ve been the sexiest thing Ledger’s ever seen from you. You were already a dream to look at but to see you so salacious…

Of course he was—

“Fuck, Chiara, ‘m gonna cum” He began gently pumping his hips, “just like that, just like that, just like that— mhmph fuck! Please keep going, baby, please..”

Even when his release coated your throat, you still kept your mouth on him. Still caressing him, still sucking him in, still killing him. When he finally relaxed, you said nothing.

Nothing as you kissed his thighs, nothing as you happily tucked his cock back into his shorts with a smile, nothing as you stood up and kissed him.

“You and me, tomorrow for dinner? Date night?”

Call it the post orgasm high that had Ledger nodding almost immediately. It was cute. Kissing him again, you disappeared into his bedroom.

This time it was Ledger that was silent. Silent as he watched you come back out in your leggings from the night before, your jacket, with your shoes on. You approached him and gave him another kiss.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night”

After you left, Ledger sat on his couch, the photos in hand. He couldn’t stop staring at them, especially the one of you two kissing.

Clearly your bond was deeper than being friends. Maybe it was why you hadn’t mentioned anything yet. But there was a comfort there big enough for you to just blow him in his kitchen, you could’ve told Ledger this secret.

His phone suddenly lit up beside him.

‘Chiara ❤️’ — Excited to see you tomorrow. Thank you again for being there for me during my lowest last night, you’re truly one of a kind ❤️

‘Chiara ❤️’ — I’m thinking Benny’s Steakhouse tomorrow night? I can call and make us a reservation. Let me know if that works for you :)

His eyes flickered from the screen to the photos, from the photos to the screen. Dinner suddenly sounded like a great idea. Ledger texted back.

‘That works great for me, see you tomorrow night ❤️’

And you surely would.

When Ledger picked you up from your house that next night, he had the photos in the pocket of his navy blue cargo pants.

You looked drop dead gorgeous as he helped you inside his truck, not before accepting your greeting kiss on the lips.

“You look great, Ledge”

“Thank you, sweetheart, you look even better”

The restaurant accommodated your reservation perfectly. You walked in with Ledger, your arm looped in his as the hostess walked you to your table.

Ever so the gentleman, Ledger helped you into your seat before taking his across from you. It was a nice table out in the open and in the midst of others that were seated in the same manner.

“I’ve never been here before but it seems really good, seems like you’ve got an eye for the places out here” Ledger smiled.

“Thank you! I mean, this town is nice and small enough where you can get away with finding places and trying them. There was a time in my life where I had some… time on my hands and after doing some driving around to clear my head, I found this spot. They stay open a lot later than other restaurants so after it happened— I mean, after driving, I walked in and they served me. I think you’ll like it here”

Ledger never tore his eyes from you as you rambled, you were so gorgeous, so soft spoken, and he loved how comfortable the two of you were getting.

From yesterday to tonight, Ledger knew he had to talk to you about the photos but he had to change his approach.

He was growing madly in love with you every day, he didn’t want to lose you, especially if there really was a good explanation for things.

“I think as long as you’re here with me, I’m gonna like it even more” he winked, acknowledging your soft blush. “So you tell me, what’s good here?”

Towards the middle end of the night, you and Ledger had already gotten your food and drinks. Maybe it was the good food and good company but it kept Ledger in good spirits.

He smiled and laughed genuinely, his heart raced the kind of race any time you also laughed or looked at him. It reminded him of how much he truly felt for you.

But as a moment of died down laughter came into the space, Ledger knew he had to take advantage of it.

Reaching out, he took hold of your hands, lifting them to his lips and kissing the fronts. “Chi, while we’re here, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about”

You nodded eagerly, “anything”

The man took a steadying breath, “I found these photos—“

“Well isn’t this just cute? My dead daughter’s ex boyfriend out and— look, Dan, he’s got himself a new one!”

Both you and Ledger looked to your left and approaching your table was a woman you’d never seen before.

But when you looked at Ledger, all color drained from his face. The obviously tipsy older woman got closer.

“I said you’re a bold one, right? Still got the nerve to be out and parading yourself to this town like you’re so clean and holy”

“Millie, please—“ Ledger tried.

“Please? I’m sure that’s what my daughter said to you plenty of times that night—“

“Ledger, who is this and what is she talking about?” You finally cut in. Ledger Ward was feeling swarmed.

“I’m no one important to you, my dear, it’s all about sweet Ledger boy, here!” She began getting belligerent, “my sweet boy at one point who turned out to be a good for nothing murd—“

“Miss Millie, stop!” Ledger demanded in a hushed tone.

“Or what? You’ll get me how you got my daughter? Is that it? I’ve still got my eye on you and I’m not losing it” Millie looked at you, “sweetie, if you knew what was good for you, I’d leave him where he stands, you don’t want to end up in a land field somewhere!”

Before the moment could get even worse, a security guard with the hostess appeared at your table.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the restaurant. Too many patrons here have complained of your noise and currently harassing this couple— you need to leave, right now”

Millie put up no fight to leave, she only left you and Ledger with a glance that was unfamiliar to one but very familiar to the other.

“What the hell was that—“

“C’mon, we’re leaving”

Ledger opened his wallet and dropped two hundred dollar bills on the cloth before reaching over and grabbing your hand.

“Ledger—“

“Let’s go, Chiara”

Still hand in hand, he ultimately dragged you to the truck and helped you inside before getting himself situated. Ledger said nothing as he started the truck and began driving the way back to his house.

“Ledger, please” you began, “who was that? And why was she talking to you like that?!”

But the man was too deep in his head to really hear you and want to respond. He ignored you, even when you followed him into his bedroom and asked again.

“Why aren’t you talking to me, baby? Please just talk to me and tell me what’s going on. You looked petrified and if there’s a way that I can help you, just please tell me!”

Still pulling at his heart, still hoping to hold and keep yours.

Ledger approached you and captured your lips in his, his arms securing around your body to keep yours close. His kiss was pleading, desperate, needy, it was easy for you to melt.

“I— p-please don’t make me talk about it.. I can’t, not yet.. I need you… please, Chi, please, I can’t be alone tonight”

He pecked at your lips and ran his hands down your back until they found your clothed ass. In the same breath, he began kissing your neck.

“Please, baby”

Back arching, chest pressed to his, and a moan slipping from your lips, how could you deny him?

It was how Ledger had your body on the edge of the bed, your dress bunched up to your waist, panties long gone (or in his pocket), and Ledger’s face buried in your pussy.

Gripping the thighs that was salaciously spread open, his tongue devoured and tore you apart. Warm, heavy, often frantic, but gentle and intentional. Ledger Ward ate you like a man in love.

And of course, you were noisy. Noisy and touchy. With your hands deep in his low cut, you cried out.

“‘S so good, baby, so fucking good… yes—oh! right there, right there, please!”

His mouth took you into a deep state of pleasure that you’d been missing for a long time. But what you probably loved the most was it felt like Ledger had already known your body.

The man felt the same way. You’d helped each other get stripped naked and a strong sense of nostalgia washed over Ledger as he hovered over you.

As you wrapped your legs around him, as he began sinking inside of you, inch by thick inch.

“You take me so well, sweetheart” Ledger groaned, leaning down to kiss you. He’d begun to move, shallow thrusts that had you clinging to his body.

“Only for you, baby, only for you” you whispered to him, “she loves you already… can you feel how wet I am?”

You brought one of his hands to rest on your clit, sopping and engorged.

“Can you feel what you do to me?” You muttered. Ledger nodded surely.

“You feel so fucking good, Chiara… so fucking good, I-I don’t know how long I’ll hang on” he kissed you again, “‘just wanna be good for you”

You moaned into the kiss, nails tearing into his back. When he pulled back, your eyes caught sight of his chest.

More specifically, the deep tissue scar that still had a color but was beginning to blend into his skin.

Your hand reached up and ghosted over it, entranced. “It’s healing well.. you’re healing well.. what happened?”

Ledger, still fucking you, looked down to meet your eyes. His greens doing dark but instead of unfamiliarity and why you were touching his trauma, he leaned more into you.

“Kenna stabbed me”

“Why?”

Tears well in Ledger’s eyes but his face hasn’t contorted into a sad emotion, he looked stoic and determined, his hips still moving and powering.

“She wanted to leave me.. I got angry”

Ledger didn’t know why you nodded but you nodded.. nor did he know why you responded:

“I know”

When you kissed him and ran your nails down his bare chest, it quickly shifted his mind. You kissed him hard, a small hint of possessiveness in the mix.

“I won’t leave you”

Ledger’s heart thumped, “you promise?”

You nodded immediately, “I promise”

“I love you” Ledger sputtered out, his thrusts now growing sharper and deeper, “I love you so much, baby, don’t ever leave… don’t ever leave me..”

When your release slammed into you, Ledger welcomed your screams into the corners of his bedroom. His name on your tongue like a prayer.

The way your back arched, breasts pressing into his chest or the way your dark tresses splayed all over his pillow because of your withering body. Your greedy, juicy walls throbbing and thrumming, closing around Ledger.

When his release came close, you tried to loosen your legs but Ledger clasped a hand over your thigh, shoving himself deeper inside of you. He shook his head, feeling your slight resistance.

“Please, just this one time” he pecked your cheek, “‘swear I won’t ask for it again, I just.. I need you.. wanna feel you..”

Another lapse in judgment. You nodded.

“Okay”

When you kissed him for the umpteenth time, that’s what had Ledger Ward finally letting go. Mounting you completely, Ledger continued thrusting until his body stilled.

“Mine mine mine mine mine” he whispered more to himself as a guttural groan tore from his throat.

Soon, his release was coating the deepest parts of you, stuffing you the fullest you’d ever been. So much too, some had already began seeping out and onto the sheets.

God, you were so fucked out and weak in Ledger’s hold. He kissed you for the final time of the night and easily maneuvered your body onto your side, his arms caging you to his chest.

Your last memory was the warm duvet coming over your shoulders and the sound of Ledger’s heartbeat.

The next morning had you waking up without Ledger. He was still in the house, you could hear frantic like pacing from the living room.

Taking your time getting situated due to your sore body, you grabbed a shirt from his dresser and threw it over your head.

You walked into living room as the news channel played on his TV. He hadn’t heard or seen you yet.

“In a more recent, troubling development, the city is investigating the death of a woman after her body was found behind a dumpster in the early hours of this morning. Police are asking if you’ve seen or heard anything to report it to this anonymous tip line”

When the news channel produced an image, your eyes widened.

“Is that Millie?”

Ledger turned to look at you, panic and tears in his eyes.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

“Damn baby, why didn’t you tell me you had all this good pussy?”

Cameron mumbled against your bare leg that were currently hiked over his broad shoulder, his voice dripping with admiration a lot sweeter than the way he was fucking you.

The question was rhetorical but emphasised just how much he was enjoying being inside of you.

Goosebumps broke all over the surface of your flushed and damp skin, choking on a whiny moan as your cunt tightly squeezed and pulsated around him. The throbbing sent a shiver down the length of his spine and settled in his bones. A flurry of chopped sobs poured from your mouth as your climax began to climb. You were so close. And he could feel it all.

You would have tried to answer his question but in truth - you didn’t know how to.

The two of you met during freshman in college - sharing the same physiotherapy classes and the two of you instantly clicked. When he first approached you - you couldn’t believe that he’d even talk to you. When you first arrived on campus, his name was uttered in every corner. He was the person to know because of his projected career. You had wanted to keep away from him - you didn’t like attention being drawn to you at all but Cameron just had to be enrolled on your course.

Even worse, he came to sit next to you.

You stilled at just making eye contact with him. Low sitting blue eyes, dimples deep as he smiled, rosy lips begging for attention and from his seated position alone you could tell that he was tall. He made sure that you couldn’t ignore him and you hated that fell for his charm, hook, line and sinker.

The attraction was shared and the chemistry intensified with each interaction but nothing ever came off it.

Football. Girlfriends. Endorsements. A great rookie career - all of it got in the way.

So friendship is what you settled for and you were grateful just to be a part of his journey.

Unfortunately for you, he was relentless. The friendship status did not matter to him at all and Cameron steadily flirted with you like the devil of temptation resided in his flesh. Always hanging around, giving you his undivided attention when you were close. Treating you just on the edges of a girlfriend, yet always teasing the word ‘friend’ in front of you. You always let it wash over you because being close to him in any capacity was worth it.

That attraction however, could not be denied and could not be hidden. And he’d picked up on it and he played with it - he played with you. He enjoyed teasing you. Kissing you on the neck, hands on your lower waist as he moved past you, hugs that lingered. Girlfriends be damned - you were the apple of his eye even if you denied what you were to him.

So that was how you found yourself in his penthouse - on a supposed regular night in with your best friend on his days off. So how you ended up in your current predicament was unbeknownst to you.

A movie, typical gossip, a game of tease.

From there all it took was a kiss.

A soft brush of your lips when he leaned down above you, whispering teasingly against your lips, fingers underneath your chin before gripping your jaw so that you couldn’t shift your eye contact away from him. So that he could see all of that want dripping out of your eyes.

“Do it.” You dared him.

And it was no surprise that he listened.

You had been so determined not to fall into his orbit and now you were on your back, sweating out your hairstyle, tank top ripped and panties pulled to the side as he manhandled you in every way. Your pussy stretched out and creaming around the thickest dick you’ve ever had in your life as you moaned in bliss. Fuck, you loved every second of it.

Cameron’s thrusts were deliciously brutal, his hips snapped into yours as your legs hang over his shoulders. He fucked you like you were a bitch in heat and you sounded just like one. Your mouth dropped open as your cries and whines could not be contained, sounding real pretty for him.

He breathed heavily through his nose at the sight your cream coating the length of his dick. Cam wedged his hands underneath the arch at the base of your back and gripped tight. He used your body as leverage to fuck into you even deeper.

The heat of the bedroom was making you delirious as much as the way his fat mushroom tip was pushing against your softest spots. You were so loud and Cameron drank all of your sounds by shushing you with rough kisses.

The wet clapping emitting from where your bodies connected was getting so loud, Cameron had to look down. His loud moan barely registered through the fog clouding your senses.

“You’re sooo fucking wet baby. Gushing all that good shit all over me, fuuuccckkk.”

You were looking up at him, doe eyed, a soft crease pinching in-between your eyebrows with your teeth biting onto your bottom lip as you tried to control it. He was hitting all of your good spots and it was so intense, it sat like a weight on your chest.

Then, Cameron pushed your legs back so that your knees were touching your ears and he moved to hover directly above you. He used his upper body to contort you into the perfect position for him - ready for his taking and you were in awe with how it left you feeling. The weight of pleasure sinking into your bones, deeper and deeper.

“O-oooh!” You gasped as you pulled on the sheets underneath your fingertips.

His beautiful, blue eyes never left your face as he watched your pretty face surrender into the pleasure he was delivering. Your eyebrows drew together tighter, as if you were about to cry, your lips forming into an ‘o’ form as he slowed down his strokes, letting you enjoy the feel of him. Inch by inch.

Soft curves and hard muscles colliding into each other. Naked,skin on skin - still, felt like there was a barrier between the two of you. The thought slamming into you, nothing will ever be enough, you will always want more. Cameron groaned as he felt the pain of your nails breaking into the skin of his back as you unintentionally brought him closer.

You were begging for him without words and that caused him to smirk in satisfaction. Cameron couldn’t believe you had been keeping this type of connection away from him. The type of connection that quenched your thirst but left you famished for more.

He was brought out of his thoughts by the feel of your trembling fingers tracing his bottom lip, tugging it free from his teeth. He placed a tender kiss on the inside pad of your thumb before his eyes drew back to where your bodies connected. The sight of it caused all of his blood to soar down to his aching dick.

Slathered all over his base was milky white. It built up generously and it accumulated so much the flapping wetness caused his eyes to roll to the back of his head. He couldn’t believe you’d ever get this wet.

“Yeahhh mamas, I can’t believe she’s this wet for me …”

Cameron doesn’t take his eyes off your cunt as he slammed back in, the wetness drawing a delicious drag with drag. He threw his head back as a deep groan left him. The sound was so primal it sent nasty shivers down your spine and settled in your pelvis.

But you didn’t move your hand away from his pelvis as he was folding you even deeper. In fact, Cameron, lowered his upper body until he was completely folded over yours. His pelvis ground against your clit, his trimmed hair brushing your clit - hard.

Cameron was wild in his lust.

He sucked bruising kisses into your neck, his tongue trailed hotly up to your mouth to claim it in a deep kiss. It was all consuming, overwhelming. His long tongue flattened against yours in maddening swipes, sucking the muscle sloppily into his own mouth which made you lightheaded.

Blood rushed to your ears as he ground his hips up again, hammering away at that spot inside you but not enough to make you cross eyed and your hand pressed on his abdomen.

Cameron kept his eyes on as you gasped desperately. Your eyes closed as he nipped at your bottom lip which caused you to sigh softly. His tongue darted out and soothed the sting of your bite before whispering inside your mouth- eyes glazed, “Move that hand, baby.”

You didn’t move your hand but he did it for you. He grabbed your wrist and trapped it above your head as he drilled into you. Your mind was mush the more he thrusted into you so you didn’t even try to think straight. Cameron was so caught up in the moment - not just from the heat of your pussy but how tight and how creamy you were.

Letting out a string of swears, Cameron captured them by bringing your mouth into another overwhelming kiss. His cock aching whilst he swallowed your wails as you twitched and ached around him.

Until you couldn’t take it anymore. Cam gave another harsh yet hard roll of his hips into your swollen opening while he was battering at that tender spot inside of you and then … you were coming.

And fuck! You were coming, hard. Your nails clawed at Cam’s rigged muscles as a swarm of stars completely eclipsed your vision whilst your body went into shock with wave after wave of vicious pleasure.

Your wails were so loud, you struggled to recognise your voice. But Cameron had a clear view to the ecstasy flooding your face he pumped his hips forward, pushing himself deeper into your body. Filthy words of praise and encouragement directly in your ear, prolonging your orgasm.

“That’s it, babygirl … I love the way you’re cumming all over me…”

Tears spilled from your eyes and you were close to passing out when Cam dropped his head into your chest and took one of your swollen nipples into his mouth, his thrusts slowing down in tempo as he shot his cum deep inside of your heat with a muffled groan.

He filled you up to the brim and then popped out your nipple out of his mouth with a satisfied sigh.

The both of you were riddled with tiredness, thighs were killing you, and your body was trembling like a leaf but a grin had etched onto your lips regardless as Cameron placed calming kisses everywhere his lips could touch.

He slowly pulled out, warm yet concerned eyes checking over you for any sign of discomfort as you basked in the glow of the aftermath. Your eyes closed as you sank into the softness of the blankets beneath you. You left his kisses on your cheeks in the tender way that you’d grown accustomed to.

“You okay sweet girl? I didn’t hurt you did I?”

“No, baby. I’m good.” You shook your head as you hummed in satisfaction. You felt him shift away from the bed, leaving you in your peaceful lonesome until you felt him wipe you down gently with a wet towel. You heard a thud as he tossed to rag onto on the floor when he was done.

You felt the bed dip beside you before Cameron slipped up behind you. Your hands reached behind you and brought him closer with a soft hum. You had crossed that line in your friendship and you couldn’t process what it meant for the future for the both of you. But you’d bask in whatever this moment meant for you.

Cameron nuzzled his face into the crook of your neck. “We’ll never just be friends after this.” He mumbled.

He was right about that. Nothing would ever be the same.

Thursday. 6:52 PM. Humidity. Rain. A depressing combination. Or relaxing. Depends on who you ask.

Droplets slid down the windshield. Then they were scared off by squeaking wipers.

Oh well.

Cracked leather squeaked beneath his thighs. The steering wheel whined beneath his palm. And the light, dammit, the streetlight glared at him like it’d been personally offended.

His nostrils flared. Teeth ground together. Jaw locked like a deadbolt.

A fool. Theodore Spencer—thought to be a fool.

His eyes cut toward the passenger seat. Worn leather. Cracks in the headrest. The carrier, chariot for the bundle of irises plucked carefully and wrapped tenderly.

His neck moved slowly. Eerily. Toward the house—her house.

She knew better. She should have. Than to leave the blinds open when engaging in secrets not meant to be told.

He could’ve laughed—he did. Loudly. Enough to rattle the air freshener hanging from the mirror. Enough to shake the car on its axis.

Because it was…funny. Ironically hilarious. Devastatingly humorous.

That’s what pain was. Humorous.

That’s what it had to be to look at it. To sit in it. To feel it before his heart leapt from his chest and slid under the wheel, prepared to be crushed more than it already had been.

And the sight was…sickening. Disgusting in the purest form. Shameful in the highest regard.

Trembling fingers found themselves against his bottom lip. He tapped—once. Then twice. Then three times.

He swallowed thickly.

It was a movie. Horror. He didn’t mean to attend. Didn’t want to.

Teddy didn’t like horror films. Iris knew that. So, he thought.

Because, why, why, would she do this? Have him sliding down sleet-covered roads and dashing past vehicles honking just to witness…this?

He nearly gagged.

Xavier. Iris. Xavier and Iris.

Teddy. On the outside. Watching.

The way her arms flailed and her chest heaved. Her face was beat-red beneath layers of foundation stained with tears. And Xavier, that fucking idiot, stood there. With his shoulders squared back and hands tucked in his pockets like he’d been humbly nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize—what did she see in him?

Comfort? Highly unlikely. A good lay? Debatable. Company? She had better.

…unless she wanted him.

No.

…

No.

What could it be, huh? She had tears streaming down her face, sobs lodged in her throat, and he didn’t have the decency to comfort her. Knowing damn well he was likely the problem.

But what did he do? What did he do?

He kissed her.

Of course he did. What other option did she have? When she’d accepted trash, he’d convinced her it was gold.

And Iris… She kissed him back. Like she wanted to. Needed to.

Teddy’s eyes dropped to his lap. He nodded once.

Okay.

When he glanced up again, their hands were intertwined. They turned the corner. The corner toward her bedroom.

Teddy’s mouth twisted sourly.

Then the text—” Raincheck? Under the weather.”

She was fine. She didn’t… Why lie? Just be honest.

I chose him over you.

you don’t have to lie. truth costs you nothing. am i a joke to you? i don’t…

The flowers cried on to the seat beside him. Lonely. Sad. Yeah. He understood.

The window squeaked as it sank into the car door. He bent over. Clutched the bouquet— like a bomb. And flung it on the concrete.

-