drpepper

he lets you do your best, his hand quickly becoming more than than simply guidance as he maneuvers you himself, a pretty little doll for him to use.

you'll try to get yourself off for hours if he'd let you, but he never does. he only indulges you up until your moans turn to whimpers and then to straight up whines. cause jack knows you'll never be able to give yourself what you need. he's just too big for you. so deep inside, filling you up so full that you can't move fast enough, never able to make it feel as good as he can.

but it's okay, because that's what he's here for. he smiles up at you all sweet like and ask, "you getting tired, pretty girl?"

and the moment you nod he's turning you over, hand splayed wide on the small of your back to keep his length fully inside you. jack situates himself so he's right between your spread legs, his hips grinding against yours. he lays his whole body weight on top of you, making you feel all warm and small and smothered in the very best ways.

jack abbot who laughs when he wraps those big, strong biceps around your head and smushes you between them, delighting in the excited little squeal you give in response. he fucks you just like that, holding you in his embrace, so close he can feel your heart beating fast against his sternum. 

his belly is soft, pressing into yours as he ruts his cock into your syrupy heat. you can feel and smell and see nothing but him, engulfed in all his safety. the graying curls at the base of his cock grow slick with your arousal, providing just enough friction against your clit that it only takes minutes before your walls clench around him.

jack abbot who talks you through it each and every time. who presses tender kisses against your cheeks and nose and forehead and whispers, "yeah, that feel good, baby? there you go. that's better, hm? just needed a little help. s'okay. i've got you. feel how deep i am? squeezin' me so tight." 

he pumps you full of cum and stays inside of you until his cock softens in the mess he's made, giving a last few slow, deep strokes before he finally pulls out.

jack abbot who holds you in his arms and smiles to himself when you lay your head on his chest and start snoring a few short minutes later, sleepy and sated and satisfied.

It's the third Tuesday since you first fucked. Olesya teased you at brunch the morning after, and you waved her off with an eye roll and a lie about how you were going to think about donors some more. The week after she didn't bring it up at all, which you take as a decisive win. You don't need her knowing. You don't need anyone knowing, and you're sure Ryland doesn't, either. After all, you promised him nobody would ever find out. Signed on the dotted line about it.

So when he walked into the bar that first Saturday after, you pretended at first not to notice. And when he went in for a hug, you acted like you weren't suddenly very aware of every place his body was pressed to yours, and every place he had touched you the day before, even though for a moment you were convinced everyone else could, too, like he'd left some kind of thermal map in his wake. You spoke with him only in a group, and you waited to leave until five minutes after he did, and walked another ten minutes to meet up at a different bar before letting him fuck you in the bathroom, and when you got home and showered and went to sleep that night you congratulated yourself on being very discreet.

Tonight you are, perhaps, less discreet.

It's not trivia, but you are at a bar. You've allowed yourself two drinks—you didn't drive, and also you think complete teetotalism might make Olya suspicious of the claim that you've put your baby quest on pause—and the drinks are making you a bit reckless with your eyes.

The drinks are making you linger on his hands, as he toys with a straw; his tongue, as he licks his bottom lip; the movement of his Adam's apple when he swallows.

You know what those hands feel like on your neck. You know what that tongue feels like between your thighs, and you know what his throat feels like beneath your mouth, and you are still deliciously sore from yesterday, when he visited you at your office after hours and picked you up and set you on the desk and pressed into you with your heels still on, and you are increasingly struck by the realization that you will never again know what it's like to live in a world where Ryland Grace has not been inside you.

There's a thrill to this, the sneaking around. The longer you do it, the less careful you feel yourself getting. Like you're daring yourself to get caught. Tonight, he waited only a very cursory twenty seven minutes before wandering across the bar to you.

“Smoke break?” he asked, gesturing towards the door.

“I don’t smoke,” you said, already getting up from your seat.

“I know.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“I could start. You have no idea how many vapes I have to confiscate every week.”

“That is, hands down, the unsexiest thing you’ve ever said,” you said. “Also, I think they call them juuls now?”

And then you were out the door, and around the corner, and any pretense of making conversation fled to the wayside, and now here you are, and he is looking at you like it’s the whole reason he came tonight at all.

His glasses are halfway on. His eyes are unbearably soft. It's the kind of look that cuts you to the quick every time, even though it's more or less his default, so you tug him closer and focus on the desire that blooms up behind the softness. Desire is bearable, you've learned. You know what to do with desire. Even now, a few weeks in, you cannot help but be a little thrilled by the knowledge of this, his desire for you, the physical proof of it hard and urgent against your hip.

It's almost enough to outweigh the pit in your stomach. 

This is the point, you know, where you should kiss. Under any normal circumstances, this is where the kiss would go. You know what it would feel like. You can feel the phantom of it on your lips. 

You're pretty sure, based on the way his eyes slip down for a moment, that he can, too. 

These are not normal circumstances. The circumstances you have drummed up for yourself include, in no particular order:

1) Resigning yourself to a life of happy singledom, wherein you raise a child by yourself

2) Sneaking around with your oldest friend in order to acquire said child (and, apparently, a baffling number of orgasms along the way)

3) Forbidding yourself from falling in love with him

4) In the interest of #3, forbidding yourself from kissing him on the mouth

So you don't kiss him. Just like you didn't kiss him in the bar bathroom, or against the wall of the foyer of his house the following Tuesday, or in the back seat of your car, or, on one memorable occasion, the front seat of his car (probably the most action it's seen in months).

Instead, you let your hands trace across his chest to settle on his arms. You turn him around, so that your positions are reversed. You give him a little push, hear the quiet exhale that escapes him when his back hits the wall.

You get down on your knees.

He gets his hands in your hair almost immediately. Not pulling, or pushing, just gathering. He combs back through it, catching any stray strands, and holds it up in the back of your head like a makeshift bun, and even in this he is so gentle, thumbs brushing at your temples, that all at once you have to put effort into keeping your hands from trembling as you undo the front of his jeans. You mostly succeed. Any remaining failure you choose to blame on the alcohol.

His underwear is gray this time. The same branded waistband. You are reminded of a few weeks ago—not when you were looking at his underwear, or even in the same room as it, but after you went home, when you were trying and failing to sleep, and you went down a rabbit hole of trying to find actual underwear with Bunsen burners on the band. It didn't take long to find.

You almost sent them to him, and then you stopped yourself.

It should have been an inside joke. A friendly gesture. To him, it would have been a friendly gesture. To you, it would have been yet more mortifying proof of your fundamental flaw, which is that you fall into things too hard, too fast, and you always have, and this is the one thing that you absolutely, under no circumstances, can fall into.

You tell yourself this as though it will somehow reverse the fact that you are already halfway down the cliff. You fell off this particular cliff twenty two years ago.

He's already hard when you free him from his underwear, hard and flushed and leaking at the tip. You lick your palm, run it over the head, smile at the sound this results in. A long, slow stroke up and down, repeated, because you like the feel of him in your hand, and you like the way his breath hitches, and you like this, this one, tiny way in which you can have any measure of power over him.

You retrace the movements of your hand with your tongue—first licking just the head, then tracing up along the entire length of him from base to tip, and he moans, unrestrained.

There's no reservation in him when he gets you alone, because he cares less. Because the stakes are lower. Because he has nothing to lose. You don't kid yourself into thinking this is anything more to him than a rebound; an opportunity to have easy sex after a breakup and do an old friend a favor. Two for one.

Does that mean you don't think he cares at all? No. Of course not. Ryland has always cared about you, has always tried to take care of you, even when he's done a shit job of it, because at the end of the day you are his friend, you are the little sister of his best friend from elementary school, you are the daughter of his mother's best friend from elementary school, and you see all of this in his eyes, you feel the weight of it settle over you like molasses, every time he looks at you.

When you look up at him, his glasses are three-quarters off. His hair is the exact kind of mussed it was when two years ago when you both walked into the bar.

You open your mouth. You take him in.

-

Two years ago

The hair is the first thing you see. The back of his head. Glasses over the ears.

You tell yourself you're imagining things. You tell yourself there are plenty of blond men. This is a lie; you reframe it. There are plenty of men in San Francisco. Some percentage of them must use hair dye. Some percentage of that percentage could be at this bar, on this night, in your hometown, and then he turns around and sees you and you see his brain glitch in the exact same way as yours.

"Hi," you say.

"Hi." His voice is a little lower than it was the last time you saw him. Lower and softer, even pitched as it is to carry the few feet across the bar. Of course, he was much younger, and much angrier, when you saw him last. You both were.

"What are you doing here?" you ask, crossing to him. You rest a hand on a stool, but don't sit. Sitting feels presumptuous.

"I live here. As of a few days ago. I'm back in the old house." He gestures at you with his beer. "And you…"

"Live here," you repeat. "As of a few months ago. Further out of the neighborhood, but I come here every week. They do a trivia night."

"I heard. Saturdays at eight. That's why I'm here."

"Of course." You stare at him. You can't help it. What helps is the fact that he is staring back, with just as little compunction. "Wow."

"Wow."

"Wow."

"Wow." He nods at the stool. "Do you want to sit?"

"Yeah. Yeah! Why not." You hook your jacket under the bar. "Espresso martini, and one of whatever he's having," you tell the bartender, and then turn back to Ryland. "Consider it a housewarming gift."

"You sure your husband won't mind?"

In lieu of a verbal response, you hold up your bare left hand, wiggling five bare fingers and pretending the question doesn't make the blood congeal in your veins.

"Oh. Shoot," he says. "I'm, um. Sorry."

You squint at him.

"What?" he asks.

"Shoot?"

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah, uh, my first ever performance review, I was told I needed to watch my language around the thirteen-year-olds. Some parents complained. Several, apparently. Stellar reviews otherwise. So since then I've. Adjusted."

"Thirteen-year-olds."

"I'm starting at Grover Cleveland in a few weeks. Mr. Clivers, you remember him, he retired, so now it's me, if you can believe it. Room two twenty. Teaching. I'm teaching, if that wasn't clear." His eyes slide back to your left hand. "And you're…separated?"

"Divorced." You twist at your ring finger with your free hand. "A few years."

"If I'd known—"

"I kept it pretty quiet." You shrug. "It's embarrassing. Admitting you were on a leash."

He doesn't answer that. He doesn't need to. You see the memory play back in his eyes.

You give him a smile that's not really a smile, and then: "I'm so sorry about your mom."

"Oh. Yeah. Thanks."

"The funeral. I wanted to, but. Things with Tyler were."

"Yeah."

"I felt shitty just sending a text, and then I. He'd. I didn't have your number in my phone anymore, and—"

"It's okay," he says. Gently. Like he really means it.

You give him a look. "It's really not."

"You're here now. Apology accepted."

"Did you get body snatched, or something?" You clap a hand to your mouth, but it's too late. "Sorry," you say, absolutely the least sorry you've ever been in your life, because he's also chuckling. "Sorry! You're just so…different." Your eyes drift over him, and you hold a hand up, waving it in a vague circle. "The same, but different. Very, like, mellow."

"So I've heard."

"What happened?"

He purses his lips. "Life," he says, bringing the bottle to his mouth.

"That's not an answer, that's a cliché."

"And if I ask what happened with the divorce?"

You raise your own drink in a toast, making a face meant to more or less convey touché, and take a long sip.

After a moment's silence, he says, "It was mostly the middle schoolers." You look at him blankly. "The middle schoolers happened. They are not nice."

"Is that so."

"Very creative with their insults."

"Taste of your own medicine, huh."

"I was never that brutal. Honestly, it's worse when they're not even trying. I mentioned NSYNC to a class last year, and they didn't know who that was, and then I said they were like One Direction, back in the day, and they also didn't really know who that was, and I said the band with that guy, the style guy, and they were all, like, he's in a band?"

"God, we're so old," you say, shaking your head. "Or you are, anyway."

He points the neck of his bottle at you. "Watch it."

"How long has that been a thing? The teaching?"

"This'll be my fourth year. I pissed off one too many people in the molecular biology academia pool. Guess you could say I splashed too close to the sun."

"Ah." You nod. "Life."

"Life," he agrees.

"Life." You stare. He stares back. "Sorry, I just. I'm still on the." The muscles in your cheeks are twitching. "Shoot is just. That's really good."

"I regularly and earnestly say fudge," he says, which breaks the seal. You giggle. You can't help it, and you don't want to help it, because he's giggling too, and the giggling turns to full hysterics, and possibly the people sitting at the bar around you think you're insane, and you don't care. You haven't seen Ryland Grace in nine years. You don't think you've laughed like this with him for fourteen.

"How regularly?" you barely get out. "How earnestly?"

"Way too much. To both." He claps. "You'll love this—I dropped a box on my toe the other day while moving, and I said, out loud, Christmas Eve."

"Christmas Eve!" Your mouth hurts from smiling so wide, and you press your hands to your cheeks. "Oh, that's gorgeous."

"I really meant it, too."

"You can't even take the Lord's name in vain? Since when is Grover Cleveland Catholic?"

"They're not. I'm just paranoid."

"No, of course, of course. You ever get a Jiminy Cricket in there?"

"I'll submit that one to the PTA for consideration." His eyes flicker back to your left hand again. Your fingers twitch as you fight the urge to cover it up. It's a hard habit to break. "It's really good to see you," he finally says.

"It's good to see you, too."

"I think the last time. I mean. I know the last time I saw you—"

"Wedding number five," you say grimly, holding up as many fingers.

"Right. I'm sorry. About everything I said. That time and—honestly, there's probably about twenty years' worth of stuff I could apologize for."

"It's okay."

"It's not. It's really, really not."

He's really, really right.

But also maybe not. If you'd been asked, nine years ago, if you could ever forgive Ryland Grace, you would have said no. Mostly because, at the time, he was seemingly incapable of apologizing for anything. Now, you can't help but look at him fondly. Time and memory are flattening the old wounds to scars, distant in the back of your mind, superseded by the fact of him sitting in front of you. Real. Breathing.

There are lines in his face that weren't there a decade ago. The last few bits of baby-faced softness are gone. His hair is longer than it used to be, and fluffy up top, like he recently ran his hand through it, and you want to run your hand through it. You tell yourself this is a normal product of being happy to see someone from your past. You almost buy it.

"Look," you say. "I moved back here because I needed a fresh start. The divorce had just gone through, and. I." Your fingers twitch. "The point is, all of that was a long time ago. Case in point: Greg, who I'm seeing now—in the flannel, over there—is very nice and very normal. And, get this, he actually likes when I have friends."

Something ticks behind his eyes. "Good. Good, that's. A real improvement."

"Yeah. So." You extend a hand. "Fresh start?"

He takes it. "Fresh start."

His hand is warm, and firm. You feel the callus from the way he holds a pencil. You feel the lines of his palm against yours. You feel things in your chest and your cheeks and the back of your neck that you should not be feeling during a handshake, and that you should definitely not be feeling three months into a relationship with a very nice and very normal guy.

"Or, you know, I'll do my best," he says. "Hard to forget the time you put Play-Doh in the microwa—

"Okay," you cut him off, freeing your hand to pick up your drink. Your fake indignance can't hide your real smile. "Maybe we go back to the part where you were trying to apologize."

-

Now

He tugs at your hair, and you moan around him. "Sorry," he says, immediately letting go. "Sorry."

You pull off, looking up at him briefly with his cock on your tongue, in a way that is, you have found over the years, very reliable in its ability to render a man speechless. 

"Do it again," you say, before swallowing him back down.

If he was going to say anything in response, it disappears into the groan he lets out, his head tipping back against the wall. To your delight, he does get his hands back into your hair. He pulls again, gentle. Hesitant.

There is no hesitance in your responding sound.

You can't take him all the way down right away. You don't even try; instead, you press the tip of him against the roof of your mouth, laving your tongue against the underside and letting your moans vibrate through him any time his fingers tighten in your hair. You are enjoying this far more than you had any expectations of. Maybe because it's him. Maybe because he has an objectively pretty dick, long and flushed and slightly curved at the end.

Or maybe it's just the sheer relief of finally, finally getting your mouth on him one way or another. You've resolved to never kiss him. You can at least have this.

You take him deeper slowly, in increments. You use your hand to cover the ground your mouth cannot, slick movements up and down the length of him, squeezing slightly every so often just to be a little mean. Just to get to hear what it sounds like, to hear how surprise briefly breaks his voice from groan to whimper, and to feel him try and fail to keep his hips from jerking into you.

By the time you get him deep enough that you don't need your hands anymore, he is so hard you wonder if it doesn't hurt, red and twitching, his pulse a real, tangible throb against your tongue. You have one hand on his hip, his ass, pressing through his jeans to urge him closer, and the other one tangled up in the hem of his shirt, pushing up to graze across his stomach, lean but soft, and you feel as the muscles beneath begin to tense.

"Okay. That's—ah—get up here."

You shake your head as much as you can with him in your mouth, which is not much, and pause only to say, "I'm busy."

"You—ah. Hang on, hang on."

He pulls you off of his cock with two hands fisted in your hair, and when you try to lean forward he holds you where you are. The tension of your hair wrapped around his fingers is delicious, hazy, and you feel the thrum of blood through your lips, your tongue, your throat. You look up at him, plaintive. "Is something wrong?"

"No, but I'm—I'm close. You should stand up."

"Why?" Your hands are still free, you remember. You bring one of them up. He groans, loosing one of his hands to catch yours before you can wrap it around him. It's not a foolproof plan; you have another hand, and you use it. You're gentle. Slow. Slow enough that he can think about it. A bead of precum rises at the tip, and you run your thumb over it. "You don't want to come in my mouth?"

"God," he breathes. "Yes, I want to, of course I want to, but that's not. I mean." Your tongue is lolling slightly out of your mouth, and you let your gaze flicker back and forth from his eyes to his cock, back and forth, back and forth, as you strain towards it. "The point. The whole point."

"Maybe we can make an exception," you say, then look up at him entirely. "It's going inside me either way, right?"

He lets out a low, shaky breath on a desperate vowel. "You can't say things like that."

"I don't have to say anything." You bring a hand to your mouth, and lick your palm, long and slow, savouring the taste of it, and then take two fingers into your mouth. "You're the one who keeps trying to make conversation." 

You bring your hand below your skirt. When you lean forward, this time, he doesn't pull you back.

Your fingers brush against your clit, over your underwear, as he reaches the back of your throat. It gives you something to focus on, something to distract from the overwhelm, as you breathe through your nose and relax your throat and press forward a little more, a little more. You're already wet, somehow. Very possibly you've been wet since before you got his pants open; from before he got you outside; from the moment you saw him in the bar and felt his hand pressed against the small of your back and imagined what that same hand would feel like, will feel like, later tonight when he presses into you.

You push your underwear to the side, slipping a finger in, then two, and match the rhythm and pace at which you are taking him with your mouth. It's simultaneously not enough—your fingers can't reach as far as his, can't curl at quite the same angles—and too much, too much stimuli, too many things competing for your attention as you let him fuck your mouth and pretend that's filling you where you need.

And the thing is—it's good. It's not enough, but it's good; you want more, but you're somehow satisfied, just like this, because you like to make him feel good, and because you trust that he will want to make you feel good, and the reciprocation may not be the whole point but it makes all the difference in the world.

The hand intertwined with yours tightens. He holds fast, gripping you as you grip at his waist, like that one point of contact is an anchor in the ocean. Like it's keeping him steady. Like you are keeping him steady, keeping him together, holding him the way he's always held you. The way he always manages to take you apart.

-

Eleven years ago

In your mom's defense, she really scaled down for her fifth wedding.

In lieu of a fancy venue, it's in the Grace's backyard, which is bigger than yours. Your mom is rewearing her first wedding dress, claiming that she'd been waiting for it come back in fashion. You're the maid of honor, having been passed the mantel by Mrs. Grace, who, thin and soft-spoken and freshly in remission after a grueling year of chemo, assured you that she was more than happy to take a backseat and let someone else plan the bridal shower for once.

You have put together and taken apart five separate plans for this wedding over the past six months. You are beyond relieved that things went off half as well as they did.

You were supposed to wear your last bridesmaid dress. Your last bridesmaid dress is several cup sizes old. So instead you went into the back of your childhood bedroom, and dug out something long and brown and satin, and steamed out five years' worth of wrinkles from where it had been living on the closet floor, and you wore it like it meant nothing to you at all.

Now you're wearing it sitting in a plastic lawn chair, swatting away mosquitos and watching the last few stragglers tear up the dance floor to Whitney Houston. Just like you watched them through "Sweet Caroline," and "September," and the Cupid Shuffle. Not that you mind sitting. It's good, for the maid of honor to oversee.

And, anyway, Tyler doesn't like dancing, and you feel bad leaving him at the table, even though he left for the bathroom and hasn't come back in three songs.

As always, your mom cried during the ceremony. As always, she claims its the final one. As always, you know she genuinely believes it. That's the thing about your mom: outside of her job, she isn't flighty, not really. She just loves hard. And you have an optimistic feeling, about Husband Number Five (he'll earn a name once they make it past the two year mark. You're optimistic, not stupid). With any luck, there'll only be two more weddings in your family's future: yours, and Josh's. Josh might never get married, which is fine, and you, much to your relief, are only going to have to date one person before you get married.

You're happy to be like your mother in every way but this. Her capacity for love is impressive, and exhausts you just to think about. You've only ever really had room in your heart for one person at a time.

Someone steps in front of you. "Hey."

"If this is about Aunt Irma throwing up in the bathroom," you say, looking very pointedly at your nails and very pointedly not at him, "then yes, I know, and I put Kristy on it, and if it's about which of the bridesmaids is single, the answer is no. Actually the answer is two, but I'm pretty sure they've already been dibs'd on, which is gross and terrible, but that's how it was conveyed to me, and if you were hoping for a different answer then you should have asked me this three days ago." You look up. "But also the answer then would have been no. Unless you've got your eye on Aunt Irma. She could probably use the win."

"Uh, I choose E?" He fidgets with his glasses, giving you a very sheepish, very smug, very him smile. "None of the above?"

He looks good from this angle.

He looks good from every angle, of course, that's always been the problem—and, worse, you're pretty sure grad school has made him aware of it. He's wearing a suit similar to his prom one, but not exact. He's grown since then. Same height, more shoulders. His glasses are all wrong, because they always are, in some new and exciting way. He has facial hair, too, a light beard that you know is soft to the touch from when his jaw brushed your temple, from when you hugged him hello, before Tyler cleared his throat and gently tugged you back.

You feel normal about all of this. You've had a solid five-year streak of feeling and acting very, very normal about and around Ryland Grace.

You see him when he comes over to get high with your brother in the basement on school breaks. You saw him a lot in the hospital, when his mom was there and your mom would visit. You've seen him bike down your street almost every day for the past two weeks. You do pleasant smiles, and civil hugs, and I've only ever seen you as a friend banter, and you do them well because you do only see him as a friend, because you have a fiancé and he has a revolving door of short-term girlfriends and it's been half a decade since you allowed yourself to hope for anything different.

It's not like how it used to be. Not really. You'll never be that close again. But that's okay. People change, and time passes, and life moves on. You, at the very adult age of twenty-three, know and understand this in a way you didn't at eighteen.

"Then what?" you ask. "No Blue Moons left in the cooler? You guys were on alcohol duty, that's all you."

He shakes his head, then gestures at the dance floor. "For old times' sake?" When you don't immediately stand, he adds, "Technically I still owe you one. From prom."

"A night I desperately want to relive," you deadpan.

"You're the one who wore the dress."

You glance over your shoulder. "I should wait for Tyler."

"Yeah, uh, I think he and Josh went around the side of the house? For a smoke?"

You're simultaneously annoyed and pleasantly surprised. You can count on no hands the number of times your brother and fiancé have voluntarily hung out. Still, you hesitate.

"Music's ending soon, right? I think this is the last song. Technically the song before this was supposed to be the last, but I pulled some strings." He nods in the direction of the DJ booth. "You haven't danced all night."

You look at the booth, and Colt behind it. You look at Ryland's hand. You look off towards the side of the house. You look up.

You give him your hand, and let him gently tug you to standing.

"These shoes are new," you warn as the two of you cross to the makeshift dance floor. "And expensive. You step on them, you're buying me a new pair."

He chuckles. "Yeah, sure." He brings you around to face him. One hand slides around your waist, warm through the fabric of your dress, resting respectfully above the small of your back. He keeps his other hand in yours, and you bring up your free hand to rest on his shoulder. "I'll put that top of list if my funding comes through."

"How is all of that going?" you ask as you slowly step in time. "You've been making some splashes, lately. In the molecular bio academia pool."

"Kiddie pool, with how fucking shallow it is." He brings your hand up to meet the other around his neck, and places both of his hands on your waist. "You've read my papers?"

"I'm thinking of going into medmal, when I graduate, so. Seems relevant."

"Right. Yeah, it's, it's going fine. It's good. I just need my PI to grow some balls. I started working under him a few months ago, but he knew who I was when I applied, and it's still like pulling teeth getting him to approve anything original."

You reach up and fix his glasses. He scrunches his nose, immediately fucking them up again. "By original, you mean splashy?"

"Hey, science takes cash. Splashy is good for getting money thrown at you, if you're not afraid of pissing people off."

"That's never been your problem, huh?"

He shrugs. You feel the movement of each muscle in his shoulders, his neck, beneath your hands.

"Maybe it wouldn't hurt to try catching some flies with honey," you say. "Like, your PI. Go along with his ideas for a little bit to get him to trust you more, and then start doing what you actually want to do."

He chuckles.

Your brows furrow, even as you laugh with him. "What?"

"Yeah, uh. Much as I appreciate the words of wisdom, I'm not sure I really need advice from the child bride."

You blink. Your feet are still moving only of their own accord. You'd leave the floor, if you weren't so convinced that you must have heard him wrong. "Sorry?"

"You're twenty three. What are you getting engaged for?"

"You sound like my mom. Who, by the way, got married at nineteen."

"Yeah, and look how well that turned out."

"Okay. Cool it. My point is, twenty three isn't even. I mean, I'm an adult. That's a normal age to get married."

"If you live in Wisconsin, maybe."

You swallow, and then continue the monologue you've had to deliver to pretty much everyone you know in the two months since Tyler proposed. "We're not even getting married until I'm done with school. That's another few years, at least. This is just a promise. It's a commitment."

"It seems more like a leash," he says. "You're moving across the country for him, you turned down Stanford—"

"Yale isn't exactly a consolation prize."

"It's not what you wanted. Plus, he's an asshole."

You laugh, short and bitter. "Got any evidence to support that particular hypothesis? Other than it takes one to know one?"

"It's not just me. Everyone thinks so. Josh hates him."

"Okay," you say, stung. It isn't like you need your brother to be best friends with the love of your life, but that's worlds away from hates. "Well, if Josh feels that way, he can tell me himself."

His eyes trace across your face. "You're always looking around for him."

You stop yourself mid-looking-around, furious at having been caught doing something perfectly innocuous. "Because he's my fiancé."

"Because he's your fiancé, or because you're scared he might catch you dancing with someone else?"

It's his tone that really pisses you off. How gently he says it. The edge is still there, but beneath it is a softness that's reflected across his entire face, his brows, his eyes, and the back of your neck is hot, and your arms are still around his neck, and you are so, so sick of Ryland Grace acting like he knows what's best for you.

"Because that's what you do when you love someone, Ryland," you say. "You look for them. You'd know that if you'd ever dated someone for more than three months at a time."

That lands. You can tell by the slight drop of that infinitely smug mouth. He tries to bluster his way through it. "Just because I'm not throwing myself at every half-decent option who comes along—"

"Throwing myself?" You step away. He lets you. "Nice, really nice."

He follows you the few steps off the dance floor. "No, I just mean—I'm not going to stick around with the wrong person just for the sake of not being alone."

You turn on him. "I am perfectly capable of being alone. I just don't have to be, because I'm not going to spend my life running away because I'm scared of being with the right person—"

You hear your name, in your fiancé's voice, from the end of the backyard, and flinch so sharply it's impossible to pretend it was anything else.

You step back. Your face is burning. You don't look at Ryland. You are intensely aware of the fact that he is looking at you, which means you are intensely aware of the moment he stops. "Thanks for the dance," you say.

"Right," he says. Then, more quietly, when you don't move, "Well, you heard him. Better go fetch."

You slap him.

Not very hard, but the sound of it—only a few people are looking at you, so it can't have been that loud, but it rings in your ears and your chest and the throb of your pulse through your palm. His cheek is pink with it. His glasses are askew. He doesn't bother making eye contact with you.

"Fuck you." It feels toothless, but you can't think of anything that will make the situation better or worse, so you force yourself to settle for toothless as you walk away.

He doesn't reach for you. He doesn't try to follow. He doesn't even call your name.

-

Now

He finishes with one hand in your hair and your name in his mouth, and you keep him in yours through the whole thing.

His free hand clings to yours, tight. Desperate. Wanting. The hand on your head doesn't push so much as it cradles, following you as you take the initiative to press forward, swallowing him down as deeply as you can, hollowing your cheeks until you can tell, by the sounds he makes and the shaking in his hips and his hands on your head, that it's too much, and only then do you pull off, breathing heavily, to rest your forehead against his thigh. You pull your own hand out from between your legs. You didn't get off; you didn't have the bandwidth to focus on it, which means now you are just wet and worked up and wanting.

When you shift, pressing your thighs together in a hopeless attempt at nothing, he takes it as a signal to help you to standing, giving you a better vantage point from which to appraise your handiwork. His chest is still rising and falling at post-orgasmic speeds. His hair, despite nobody touching it, is a disaster. His glasses are establishing their own area code.

He cups your face in one hand, gentle, and looks at you, and traces his thumb along your lower lip.

"Your lipstick," he says, apologetic.

You lean forward to kiss his neck, half to hear the sound it draws out of him and half to escape his thumb, his gaze, the softness of it.

"It's okay," you say against his skin. "It was a good use of it."

His hand slides around to the back of your head, your neck; the other takes the measure of your body, the landscape of it, running down over your back and your hips to land between your legs. His breath catches when he feels how wet you are.

He turns the both of you around, returning your back to the wall. "Can I—"

You nod into his neck.

His fingers trace over your underwear, feeling where you've soaked through the fabric, and you are making soft noises into his neck and you can feel it, you feel the moment when he's about to push your underwear to the side and—

Thunder. Far away thunder, but thunder.

You pull away from each other—not fully. Just enough to make eye contact. It's the most bearable eye contact you've made all night.

"Uber?" you ask.

He nods, already reaching for his phone. "I'll call."

-

Fifteen years ago

"Hey. It's me. Don't hang up."

"Josh isn't back in town until next week, you'll have to call him at school."

"I know."

The silence stretches. You don't hang up, but you don't help him, either.

"So," he finally says. "Freshman year. That's big. How's, uh, how were midterms?"

"What do you want, Ryland?"

"Brr."

"What?"

"Frosty. Like, you're being cold, like—it was a joke."

"Funny."

"You can't seriously still be mad about last year. Look, it was my first time going through a breakup, and I was still really messed up about it, and then you were. You were just—there."

"Great apology. You practice that one?"

"I'm trying to—"

"Look." You sigh, and then plaster on a smile so broad you know he'll hear it through the phone. "Just forget it, okay? That was ages ago. I don't even think about it anymore."

A pause. "Great," he finally says. "Okay."

"I'll tell Josh you called."

"I—"

You hang up, and flop back on the bed, and stare at the ceiling for a long, long time.

There's no reason for you to be upset about this. Prom was forever ago, and you've seen Ryland in passing plenty of times since then, and you haven't been angry. You've just been—distant. That's normal. That's fine. And, anyway, you have a boyfriend. You've had a boyfriend for about three months, and you're pretty sure you've cracked the code to happy, healthy, mature relationships.

Tyler brings food to class when you forget, and insists you sleep over so that you don't have to walk alone across campus in the dark. He kisses you in the middle of the quad, in front of everyone. When you walk into a party together, he keeps one protective arm slung over your neck, and when you go back to the dark of his attic dorm and twin XL bed you never have to worry that he's going to recoil from your touch. He's tall enough that you can wear heels, and smart enough to hold his own against you in an argument, and he makes you feel wanted.

He makes you feel wanted.

When you compare what you'd offered to Ryland—sneaking around behind everyone's backs for a few months—to this? You could laugh, really. So there's no reason why a twenty second phone call should leave you with tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. It doesn't make sense.

Then again, nothing you've ever felt about Ryland has really ever made sense.

So you cry anyway. You give yourself five minutes on a timer, and then you wipe your tears and dig out the informational pamphlets you received in the mail from various NorCal law programs, atop a backlog of Cosmopolitans (your mom leaves you her subscription when she's gone), and you flip through them all until your head is full of meal plans and finanical aid brackets and day-to-night looks, and nothing and nobody else.

-

Now

You love your shoe collection. In particular, you love the shoes you've chosen to wear tonight: a very sensible heel, perfect for the office and for a night out. They are strappy, but not too high. They are suede.

They are also, incidentally, terrible in anything but perfect weather.

You can walk fine in them—you're not eighteen anymore—and the storm still hasn't arrived quite to where you are, but it's muggy and grey and they're suede, for fuck's sake. You frown down at them as you stand on Ryland's front porch, waiting for him to find his keys.

"Shoot," he says, patting his pants agressively for the third consecutive time. You fight for your life not to tease him mercilessly about shoot. You've done it often enough in the past two years to straddle the line between inside joke and gauche. You settle for saving it to deploy at a later date. "I think—maybe they fell out in the car. Or else I left them at the bar?"

"Hopefully not behind the bar."

He groans, but he's smiling through it. "I think we've got to go through the back," he says, and so now you're following him up down the porch, up past the driveway, and the concrete is turning to mud and these are your favorite shoes.

He finds the spare key in short order, unlocks the door, notices you aren't right next to him anymore, and turns around. "What are you—oh, my god."

"They're suede," you say, fumbling with the buckle. It is, it turns out, much harder to unbuckle them when the humidity has rendered both your fingers and the fabric a little damp. "And the mud—I don't want to ruin them—"

You're in the air before you finish your sentence.

"You are just," he says, looking at you, then shakes his head, laughing, and you can't help but join him, laughing with your face pressed into his shoulder (he was much less muscular, the last time he carried you like this) at the absurdity of the situation as he carries you across his back lawn to the back door, and over the threshold.

"I can walk, you know," you say, as he kicks off his shoes without putting you down.

"Can is irrelevant," he says. "Like you said, they're suede."

"We're not in the mud anymore. This is hardwood."

"Hardwood could be terrible for suede."

"I think hardwood is pretty neutral, as far as suede is concerned."

"That's hardwood's PR answer," he says, and the bed is here, you've reached the bedroom, and he puts you down on the bed, and you sit, still a little giggly with your two drinks, and try again to unbuckle your shoes.

His hands settle over yours.

"Here," he says from his current position, which is apparently on his knees, on the ground, in front of you. "I can—" His fingers brush against your ankle as he undoes a buckle, pulls the strap back, eases the shoe off your foot, places it to the side.

As he tends to the other side, he presses his mouth to the inside of your knee, open, and as soon as the buckle is undone he lifts up his head and looks at you while he runs a free hand up your calf, up your thigh, under your skirt.

When he reaches your underwear, you let out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a whimper.

You are still wet from before, wet through the fabric, and his fingers press against the fabric and against the wet and against you and he is still looking at you. He looks at you as his thumb finds your clit, applying an amount of pressure that could charitably be called teasing. He looks at you as he pulls your underwear to the side and touches you directly, dragging a finger across your entrance but not pressing any further. He looks at you between kisses pressed in an upward trajectory along your thigh.

You aren't looking away. You don't know why you're not looking away, because the looking is unbearable. You just know that not looking is impossible.

He breaks eye contact to reach for your underwear. You lift your hips to allow him to pull it down, just until it's dangling from one ankle. He gets his hands more firmly around your hips at the same time he leans forward to get his mouth on you, he tugs you to the edge of the bed and you are flat on your back with your legs over his shoulders.

He tastes you like he is hungry for it.

Not that he ever lacked enthusiasm. Or technique, for that matter. A few weeks ago, he was good, genuinely good, at reading your reactions in the moment. Now he has done the reading. Now he shows you how terrifyingly quickly he has learned what you like, and occasionally that he has new ideas of things that you might like, and do like, and it doesn't take very much time before you are close. You were already close, on your knees outside, with him in your mouth, and your own fingers trembling and inadequate inside you. Now, he drags his own fingers along that same path, but it's more—more inside you, more intense for the fact that you have no way of knowing what he's going to do before he does it.

The orgasm shudders through you, gentle and languid, and you know he feels it because he keeps doing exactly what he's doing, not changing the rhythm, until you've crested the wave and you're coming down and he eases up to avoid overstimulating you.

He eases up. He does not stop.

"Hey," you say, reaching down to tug at his hair. This is maybe a mistake, because now the roles are reversed, and tugging his hair makes him moan into you. "I—oh."

He pulls off. His mouth only; his fingers are still inside you, slow. "I'm not done," he says, into the crease where hip meets thigh, and then, into your mons: "You never let me take my time with you."

"You take plenty of time with me," you say. The fact that you are producing coherent language at this point is a miracle worthy of canonization, because he is back on your clit, first with his tongue and then with his whole mouth, lips and tongue together, like he's kissing you.

"You never let me take as much time as I want." He curls his fingers a bit more, moving his hand with your hips as they lift off the bed a little. "You know, the contractions of the vaginal walls during orgasm help to draw sperm up deeper inside. Towards the uterus. Scientifically, this is useful to the cause. You can't argue with science."

"That doesn't make sense. That only works if there's sperm to. To. To draw up."

"I'm priming the engine," he says. "Putting one in the bank for later."

"That's not—that makes even less sense. That's, like, two half metaphors sandwiched into a quarter. Quarter metaphor," you say, and then you stop saying anything at all because he has his mouth back around your clit and he is sucking, and there are three fingers pushing into you instead of two.

Your muscles have all sorts of opinions on what the appropriate reaction to this situation is. The muscles south of your waist, especially—not just where he's currently the most focused on, but your legs (twitching), your toes (curling), your thighs pressing around his head with absolutely no input from your brain. He seemingly figured out how to circumvent your overstimulation fuse—while still riding the aftershocks of your first orgasm into the before-shocks of what appears to be a rapidly-approaching second—but you are sensitive. Shaky. The sounds you make are rapidly decreasing in dignity.

You press a hand to your mouth—half to stifle your own moans, half to give your mouth something to do—and you feel him shake his head, "mm-mm" muffled against you. One hand leaves your hip to reach up, feeling, grasping for yours. You give him your hand, slightly baffled.

He pulls back just enough to say, practically into you, "Don't." He squeezes your hand. "Let me hear you. I want to hear you. Please."

He gets his mouth back on you, and your head tips sideways. You can make out your reflection, just barely, in a sliver of window. He curls his fingers, and it pulls a moan out of you from somewhere deep in your chest, and you do not try to hold it back.

-

Sixteen years ago

Your mother is out of town, and so is your brother, so Mrs. Grace invites you over to get ready.

She lets you rifle through a box of old lipsticks, and laughs when you make a face at the more egreiously frost-forward options. Sun through the bathroom window. Donna Summer crooning in the background. Hair in a curling iron; AquaNet, acrid in your nose, a fine mist that hangs in the air for a moment before settling in a thin film on the bathroom sink and the bobby pins scattered across it. Mrs. Grace is full-cheeked and smiling, her long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, her fingers under your chin, delicate, as she brushes on a layer of eyeshadow. Whenever you think about her, years down the line, it will be like this.

"There." She pats your knee. "All done."

When you look at yourself in the mirror, you don't look that much different. You found your dress on consignment: bronze satin that gathers at the waist and falls like water to your ankles, which you have yet to twist in the shoes you borrowed from your mother's closet. The heels are three inches high. You have been practicing walking around the house in them all week, with mixed results. Mrs. Grace kept your makeup simple. You look a little more shimmery than usual, maybe, but—yourself.

When you come out to the living room, and see Ryland, his reaction (or lack thereof) confirms it. "You look nice," he says, and nothing more.

He looks nice. It's not that you've never seen him in a suit before, but you've never seen him in a suit for you. He didn't go to his own prom, you remember. Too busy. And the last time your mom got married was when you were sixteen. So it's been a few years. The suit is dark, and the tie is white, matching the boutonniere pinned to his lapel, and the corsage he pulls out of a box on the living room table.

"You never told me what color," he says. He reaches forward for your hand, and your heart freezes. "So I figured white was safe."

"Right." You let him slide the corsage on. Roses. "No, yeah, this is. This is great. Thanks."

"The car's ready out front, so—"

There's a flash from your left. Mrs. Grace, with the kind of disposable camera that she's still loyal to, despite the boys gifting her a digital camera for the holidays. "Not so fast."

Ryland groans, rolling his eyes. "Mom."

"Oh, shush. I didn't even get to do this with you last year."

"You got to with Colt. Same difference."

"Step in like that, perfect."

He stands just behind you, his hands resting gingerly on either side of your waist for a moment, before reaching further to take either one of your hands in his. You've taken dozens of photos with Ryland. You've hugged him dozens more times. There's no reason why this version of that same touch should be any different. Your pulse argues otherwise.

"No faces, Ry, you know I'll keep you here forever if you don't—"

"Mom."

"Smile!" The camera flashes. "One more!"

You feel his head turn, and you turn to look up at him. "Sorry," he mouths.

You're still smiling a little. "It's okay." You look forward just in time for another flash.

"Mom, we're going to be late."

"Alright, alright." She fidgets with the camera. "I won't be able to get them developed until next week, but—"

"I'm sure they're great, Carol." You run up to her—or wobble up to her—and give her a hug, and a kiss on the cheek. "Thank you. For all of this."

"Oh, it's nothing." She pinches your cheek. "You two stay out of trouble, all right? I'll be home all night if you need to call, but I DVR'd the Days finale, so don't. Spare key's in the back, usual spot, and I already made up the bed in the spare room for you."

"Thank you," you say again—and then follow Ryland, who's already out on the porch. With a not-insignificant amount of effort, you manage to walk down the stairs and get into the car, and you wave goodbye as he pulls back out of the driveway and down the street.

"Thanks for doing this," you say, after about thirty seconds of silence. "Even if it's just because your mom made you, or whatever."

"She didn't make me. I promised." He glances at you, then back to the road. He clears his throat. "It's cool if you don't remember. You were, like, ten."

"I was twelve. My mom's wedding. Second to last. I remember." You look at him. He doesn't look back. "It's, um, it's nice of your girlfriend. To be okay with it." You fidget with the volume on the radio. "She sounds great."

"Yeah. She isn't really my girlfriend right now. We're on a break. I mean. We were on a break. We're broken up now, or whatever. So it's not like she really has a right to care."

"Oh." You leave the radio dial alone, and fold your hands back in your lap. "I'm sorry."

“It’s fine. It's not a big deal. Happens all the time. You'll see, when you get to college."

You turn to face the window, so that you can roll your eyes without him seeing. "Sure."

It is very Ryland, to think he's figured out the way the entire world works in a nine-month span. You don't look forward to the person he'll be once he makes it through all of undergrad and starts grad school.

To his credit, though, he keeps any insufferability to a minimum the rest of the night.

He doesn't comment on the food (which is, objectively, terrible). He's sociable and pleasant to your friends, making jokes and asking about their graduation plans with a distinct (and, you suspect, effortful) lack of condescension. He dances with you without complaint, and rescues you from losing your balance on more than one occasion.

The only moment he objects to anything, really, is when one of your classmates tries to pass you a flask.

"No," he says, taking it from you and passing it to the couple next to you.

"What? Why?"

"I'm not drinking because I'm driving, and you're not drinking because you are eighteen."

"You're nineteen."

"And driving," he says.

When he briefly leaves to go to the bathroom, your friend Kristy passes you a cup full of punch. You take a sip. It's bad. You gulp down another six sips before he comes back from the bathroom, and you smile up at him perfectly innocently, and he gives you a look like he knows exactly what just happened.

"What did you do," he says.

"Nothing."

He picks up the cup, which is mostly empty, and takes a small sip. He makes a small face. Then he puts it back down, and sighs, and reaches a hand down.

"What?" you ask.

"We're going to get you some water, and then dance off whatever you just drank."

"I barely had any. And it was more fruit juice than tequila, anyway."

"Vodka," he corrects you. You roll your eyes, but you drink the water he gives you, and you stumble over to the dance floor, hand in hand, and all you can think is that this is a night you're going to want to remember forever.

Most of the music has been upbeat. You figure the chaperones don't want to have to worry about getting a floorful of hormonal teenagers to leave room for Jesus. But you can't help but look at Ryland, all elbows and knees, eyes squeezed shut as he moves so gracelessly it's a wonder his hair is still on his head, let alone his glasses—and you think about his hand in yours pulling you to the dance floor. You think about his arm around your waist when you were taking photos at his house, and the way it makes you feel to have his eyes on you, even just sideways for a second in the car, and you can't help but wonder what it would feel like to have all of that for a whole song. Unrushed.

The song ends. The lights dim. The music slows. He slows.

He looks at you.

The heavens open.

If by "the heavens," you mean "the ceiling of the high school gym." And if by "opens" you mean opens. The fire sprinklers are going off. Your hair is wet and your dress is wet and the floor is wet, and the water sends mascara stinging into your eyes, so now all you can hear is everyone screaming and all you can see is nothing.

A hand finds yours. You squeeze. He squeezes back.

"Come on," he says, just audible above the chaos, and you nearly slip and twist an ankle no fewer than three times as you wind your way through the crowd, out a side door, and into the relative calm (most people must have rushed for the main doors) of outside, the night air cool on your newly damp skin. Once you're outside, he lets go of your hand.

You rub at both of your eyes. "Oh, my God."

"Are you okay?" He sounds breathless, and there's genuine concern there, sure—but also a smile.

"Yes, I'm—God." You stop, laughing. "Shit." You rub until the stinging abates enough that you're able to open your eyes, just a little, your entire face a squint, and he looks over at you and starts laughing twice as hard. "Shut up."

"You look like a raccoon!"

"Yeah, and you look like a drowned rat," you say, which is sort of true in that his hair plastered to his head and his glasses are beaded with water and sitting at a full diagonal, and not at all true in that he is smiling and he is smiling at you and you don't think he's ever looked more beautiful.

He reapproaches you, fidgeting with his suit pocket. "Wait." He reaches, then hesitates, then commits to putting a hand on your face, your cheek.

There is a brief, gorgeous, terrifying moment of stillness.

Then he uses the handkerchief in his other hand to start swiping at your eyes.

He does it with all of the gentleness of a teenage boy who has never had to take off makeup in his life—which is to say he is slow, and he is careful, and he is using way too much pressure.

"Hey," you say, catching the handkerchief hand in yours. "Okay. Thank you, but—just let me—" He relinquishes it to you, the hand on your jaw lingering for one half-second longer before he steps back. "I can't believe you have a pocket square."

"Fuck off," he says, his voice fond and exasperated. "Car's over this way."

You follow him a few steps, still dabbing at your eyes. After a particularly treacherous step, you stop, and bend down, doing your damnedest to stay balanced on one foot as you tug at the straps of the other. "One sec."

He turns back. "What are you doing?"

"These aren't—the ground is too soft," you explain. "My heels. I'm taking them off."

"You can't just. Okay." Before you know it, he's back by your side, and there's an arm behind your back, and an arm beneath your knees, and your heels are not on your feet but also your feet are not on the ground.

"What are you—"

"You can barely walk in those things. I don't know why you even wore them."

"It's a—" You hiccup. "It's a rite of passage. My mom picked them out. Said they went with my dress."

It was the only thing she had time to help pick out. She cares a lot, your mom, she really does; that's why she's out of town all the time, picking up extra flights so that you and Josh don't have to worry quite so much about college. You know this. Still, in some of your more self-pitying moments, you can't help but wish she had the kind of job that kept her a little bit more in one place.

So yeah, you wore the shoes. And yeah, you can't walk in them, but that's seeming less and less like a bug and more like a feature if it's the thing that landed you here: cradled against his chest, one arm slung around his neck, your impossible shoes dangling from your other hand.

His face is closer to yours than it has been all night, so you see him visibly soften a bit. "They do go with your dress," he says. "They're pretty. I just don't want you to sprain something. Or step on a nail. Tetanus feels like bad prom date protocol."

"It's very chivalrous of you," you say. "That and the handkerchief."

"Shut up."

Bold with six and a half sips of punch, you press your lips quick to his cheek. Then you let your head flop back. "Put me down. I want to run."

"No running."

"Why not?"

"Because that would also be bad prom date protocol. And we're at the car already."

Three minutes later, when you are both in the car and wrapped in old camping blankets pulled from the trunk, he says, "We didn't dance."

"The blisters on my feet say otherwise."

"I mean a dance dance. A slow dance."

"Mm. Maybe there'll be dancing at the afterparty."

"Right. Where's that?" You give him the address. He pauses. "That's a hotel."

"Yeah. A bunch of people pooled together and got a suite, I guess."

"There's no way your mom is cool with that."

"She is somewhere over Nevada right now, so she doesn't really get to be un-cool with it. Plus, she heard you were coming and basically gave carte blanche to do whatever. But, um, you don't have to come, if you don't want. You can just drop me off. I think you've solidly fulfilled your prom date duties at this point."

"No. We're not going there. Unless you really want to, I guess?"

"No." It's the truth. You don't really have a desire to go to a hotel with a bunch of other eighteen-year-olds drinking and hooking up. You had thought that might be the kind of thing Ryland would want to do. "No, not really."

"Great." He puts the car into reverse. "I have an idea."

-

The beach is almost empty when you get there.

Far down, so far you can barely see them, is a group of kids having a bonfire. You leave your shoes in the car, and run down the sand until it shifts from powdery to packed, and you lay down in your dress and your wet hair and let the tide lap at your feet.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see him walk up to you. He sits. He lays down.

Above you, the sky is so dark it almost circles back around to lightness, a heavy purple-grey that you make an active effort to commit to memory.

"This is perfect," you say, after a while. "Thank you. For keeping your promise, even if your mom didn't make you. You didn't have to do that. I could have gone with someone else."

"I'm glad you didn't. It was good to have a weekend home. School is good, but. I missed this." He waves a hand up, at the sky. You understand what he means. "All of this. So, you know. Thanks for letting me crash your prom."

You hum. "It wasn't really crashing. We agreed, just. A long time ago." You look at him. He looks at you. You both smile, and then look back up at the purple sky.

His hand is an inch away from yours. You are so aware of it, embarassingly aware, as if there is some kind of electrical current that's pulsing from him, through the sea-damp earth, into you.

"And." You stop yourself. You start again, "If this was going to be my first d—I mean, my first time going to a dance, or whatever. I'm glad it was with you. I mean. You’re the first person I ever really liked."

He doesn't say anything.

"Back when we were kids," you rush to add. "Obviously. Sorry." You laugh. "I—that's embarrassing, or whatever, but I couldn’t say it before, and I know I probably shouldn’t have said anything because I don’t want things to be weird, I just—” 

You turn to look at him a second time, midsentence. This is the bravest thing you’ve ever done, and maybe the bravest thing you ever will do.

The best case scenario is something you don’t even let yourself dream about. The worst case scenario is that he looks at you with disgust, and you really don’t want to see him looking at you with disgust, but you have to know something about what he’s thinking, and so you turn your head and you don’t even get a chance to really even look at his expression before he kisses you.

He kisses you.

You’ve never kissed anyone before. You don’t know if you’re any good; you don’t know how to be any good. You just know his mouth is warm and soft against yours. Gentle. You think he might be wearing chapstick. You have no idea what to do with your hands.

His hands are more decisive, coming up to cup your face. This gives you something of a blueprint; you let your hands lift to his chest, then to mirror his, tentatively brushing against his neck, his jaw.

He pulls back—not far away enough to really look at you. Just enough to mark the end of that kiss, and separate the beginning of the next one, which is deeper and fiercer and has one of your arms winding back around his neck.

He uses one hand to pull you closer, the other still at your cheek. Your clothes still aren't dry from the fire sprinklers, and for a moment you could almost believe you are flush against him, nothing in between. You still aren't really sure what you're doing, but you understand, by some instinct built up by years of sneaking your mom's magazines and Harlequin books, that this is maybe where you're supposed to open your mouth.

So you do. Just slightly.

There is a distinct shift from warm to hot as he mirrors the movement. The hand on your cheek slides back around to the back of your head, the back of your neck, and the hand on the small of your back urges your body against his, and you make a sound, a small one, a soft one—

He stops.

You spend a second like that—still, clinging to each other. Panting slightly. Your heart is a hummingbird in your chest.

He pulls away. Far enough to look at you. The hand on your neck is back to your jaw, and the hand from your waist comes up to touch your cheek, tracing down to your mouth, thumb dragging across your lower lip.

"Your lipstick," he says. "Sorry."

"It's okay." It's barely a whisper.

"We should. Um." He swallows. His eyes don't meet yours. "Come on."

 He gets up. The night air hits, with a sudden chill, everywhere he was just pressed against you. He holds out a hand without looking at you, and helps you to standing, and starts back up over the little dunes.

You don't speak as you walk to the car.

You don't speak as you get in.

It isn't until several endlessly long minutes driving that you ask, "Where are we going?"

"Your house. I'm taking you home."

You pause. It takes you several skipped heartbeats to be able to formulate some kind of response. "My mom is out of town," you settle on, slowly. Cautiously.

"I know."

"Right." Your heart is in your stomach, and your stomach seems currently to be making a play for your throat. "I, um. You should know, I haven't. I mean, we can. We can do whatever you want. I want to. But I haven't, I mean, I haven't even kissed anyone before, so it might not—I'm probably not going to be as good as your ex—"

"What."

You look at him. He keeps his eyes firmly on the road. "What?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You're driving to my house."

"Yeah. I'm dropping you off."

You blink. "Nobody else is home."

"You're a big girl, you can handle a night alone." There's a layer of sarcasm that wasn't there before—and it's not that you haven't heard Ryland be sarcastic, and it's not even that you haven't heard him be condescending. But there's an edge to it, a hardness, that is new.

"That's not. I just thought—"

"I'm not hooking up with you."

"Okay." You nod. You don't know what the hell you're nodding at; mostly because you need to do something that isn't sitting still and listening to your entire nervous system explode. "Why not?"

"For starters, your brother will kill me."

"He doesn't have to know," you say, and you know that you should have more self respect than to say that, and you hate that you don't care. "I don't have to tell anyone, we can just. Until you go back to school, or just tonight, whatever you want."

"I'm not doing that," he says sharply.

There are several stoplight's worth of silence.

You hate how small your voice is when you ask, "Did I do something wrong?"

He sighs. It's the worst sound you've ever heard. "Everything you said before was really sweet. You've always been sweet." On his tongue, its impossible to hear it as anything but naive. "But you should be more careful, in college. There are a lot of guys who would take advantage of that."

"How is it taking advantage of me if I'm asking for it?" He doesn't answer. "Ryland, you don't really think you took—"

"No," he says sharply. "You're right. I didn't. And I'm not going to. So stop asking."

"Okay. I'm just a little confused. Why would you—"

He hits the breaks, harder than he has all night, and the car lurches to a stop. "God, I was just trying to be nice." The silence that follows is heavy. There's no air in your lungs. Very possibly there is no air in the car, or in San Francisco, or in the entire state of California. "Don't overthink it. I was doing you a favor."

You realize, dimly, that you're in front of your house, where he has driven so that you can get out of the car and take off your wet dress and climb into bed and spend the night alone in an empty house with the past thirty minutes on replay behind your eyes. You should unbuckle your seatbelt. You make no move to unbuckle your seatbelt.

"A favor," you say.

"Yeah," he says. He pauses. Then he clears his throat, and says, more confidently, "Yeah. Otherwise your first kiss would probably have been, like, with some random guy in a frat basement somewhere, you know? You deserve better than that."

"Right." You unbuckle your seatbelt, and open the door. "Right. Thanks a lot, Ryland, this was so much better than that."

You slam the car door shut behind you, muffling whatever it is he says next.

The sidewalk is wet beneath your bare feet. You drop your shoes in the foyer, and watch the shadows move on the wall as he pulls away and down the street.

You peel off your dress. You don't bother to shower. You just tug on an old shirt, and climb into bed, and press the side of your face into the pillow, and wait for it to be morning.

-

Now

You fight the urge to quiet your moans with the pillow, because he asked you to let him hear you, and you want him to hear you, and there isn't much to quiet, anyways. You are making sounds, but they are soft. Hitched breaths. Little rhythmic whines, in time with the pulls of his mouth on your clit. Something close to a please, when you feel the pleasure beginning to crest, and you clutch at his hand and at his hair as he finally, finally gets what he's been begging for, and the moan he lets out against you rolls through you like far-off thunder.

Now, after two, your body twitches away from him. Too much pleasure. Too much everything.

He leans back before you can push his head off. You are hazier than ever—eyelids low, mouth a little slack. He looks up at you, and you expect to see smugness on his face, and maybe there's a note of it but primarily he just looks—pleased. You'd almost say relieved, if that didn't feel like an odd adjective for the moment.

His mouth is still wet with you. His hand is still in yours, thumb tracing patterns across your fingertips. His other hand lies flat on your abdomen, slow, slow, slow strokes up and down as he rests his head on your thigh and looks up at you.

"Good?" he asks.

The answer is yes. You do not have any words left with which to answer him. Instead you grab at him with both hands, pulling him up, undoing his pants and his shirt with shaky fingers.

He's tugging at your shirt, too. You are a mess of hands, the two of you, a mess of hands and of lips—yours on his neck, his on your forehead—and you both get about half undressed from the waist up before you feel the full weight of him settle between your hips.

You haven't actually slept with him in a bed before, you realize.

You haven't slept with him in a bed, and you haven't slept with him fully naked, and, while you've certainly fucked face-to-face, you've never actually slept with him in missionary. The old-fashioned way. You know, traditional.

Without really thinking, you push at him. He pulls away immediately. "What? Are you okay?"

"Yes—just— " You manuever him, and he lets you, until he is flat on his back, and you are above him, knees to either side. If he has any problems with the sudden coup, you'd never know it from the unabashed delight on his face. And this is good. The delight is good, obviously, and so is everything else. You can see his face from here, but there's distance. Further-than-kissing-distance.

It's stupid. The whole rule is stupid, but it's a rule you've engineered, and so now this a necessary precaution. It's already been agony not kissing him tonight, and you know better than to think it'll be any easier once he's inside you.

You start with a slow grind. It's slick, almost frictionless with how wet you are, which is wet enough that he almost slides in every time the head passes over your entrance. You don't last long before reaching down and lining him up, and taking him in, in one long, not-quite-patient motion.

"Okay?" he asks, like always.

"Yeah." You are jelly-limbed on top of him, so relaxed from two orgasms that you don't particularly have it in you to do anything but take him all the way to the base. "It's good. I'm good." He twitches inside you, and you take a deep, shuddery breath. "It's a lot," you admit. "It never stops being a lot. You'd think I'd be used to it by now."

"Yeah. I know," he says. Some distant part of your brain wants to point out the ridiculousness of that claim. "But you can take it."

His hand settles lower on your waist, your hips, until his thumb can reach your clit. At the touch, you let out a slow, shuddery breath, and lower yourself forward, pressing your torso flush to his. His other arm winds around your waist, hand resting on your back.

His hands on your hips follow you—not urging in any particular direction, just holding, keeping his thumb on your clit as you start to move against him.

You start slow. You cannot stay slow for long. Not after an entire evening of wanting and waiting and close but not quite. You are relieved and you are desperate, and as you properly pick up the pace he begins to meet each movement of your hips with an upstroke of his own.

You shouldn't be able to come again so soon. You shouldn't even be able to get close.

But the angle. And the length of him. The weight. The sounds he's making against the side of your head, into your hair, and the steady circles he's rubbing into your clit; and his other hand on the small of your back, where it had rested when he hugged you tonight.

"You can take it," he repeats, more quietly now that his mouth is at a level with your ear, and the softness in his voice is indirect opposition to the way he is now fucking up into you from below. "I know you can. You always take it so well for me." You make a noise into his neck—asking, pleading—and you feel him nod. "You do, you do, you know you do, you always—you feel so good."

You're close. You're close, but not tipping over, because it is too soon for that, after all. But you are on the edge, you're riding the edge for longer than you thought possible, you just can't reach it.

"Can you," you say. It's muffled into his neck; you turn your head, slightly. "I need—fuck. I need."

The hand on your back slides up to your neck, holding. Grasping. The lightest pressure. "Here?"

"Yes. Yes, but." You grab at his other arm, pulling, so that your clit is pressed against his pelvis rather than his hand, and you guide that hand to your hip, your thigh.

He grabs, letting you feel where each finger indents the softest part of your ass. "Like this?"

"Yeah. Yes. And can you." You cling to him tighter. "Can you—hit."

He hesitates only briefly. The first smack is tentative. Light. Barely enough to make a sound.

"Harder." He tries again, and you hear the snap of it, in between the slap of his hips against yours. "Harder, please, please."

The third time is a proper slap, loud. It stings just right, just enough, an anchor amidst the overwhelming pleasure, and you nod into his shoulder with a little cry, again, again, and he hears you and he does it again and you come, hard.

When you start coming down from the high, he's still driving into you. The hand on your ass is rubbing, soothing, gentle back and forth.

"Thank you," you mumble, the words half-slurred against him. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

He's getting close too, you think. His moans are getting louder, his thrusts less controlled. You get your hands on his chest and press up to sitting, looking down at him.

His face is flushed. Rosy. Glasses fogged. His lips are parted, and he isn't bothering to censor any of the sounds coming from it, and you want so badly to lean down and swallow those sounds, and that is the one thing you cannot do, and you think you might lose your mind a little.

With what little wherewithal you have left, you reach down, covering his mouth with your hand. It doesn't actually do much to muffle him. You really don't mind. He's still looking at you. His eyes are fixed on yours, above your hand, his brows drawn. You feel something enormous in your chest. It beats at your ribs from the inside. It's too much. It's too much. You can't take him looking at you like that.

You lean down, and you press your lips against the back of your own hand. 

His hips stutter. He moans, low and louder than ever, so much so that you feel it in your chest and your hips and your palm through to your lips, and he comes into you hard and long with your hand against his mouth.

-

Sixteen years ago

Anyone who ever said senior year of high school is for coasting was lying. You've never had more work in your life. It's like your teachers are assigning you more in order to ward off senioritis. Like it even matters. Except it does matter, of course, because you need to keep your grades up in order to not lose your scholarship to Berkley, which is why you are now essentially flat on your stomach, cheek to carpet, hand smushed against your mouth, trying to dig out an essay from months and months ago that your AP Lit teacher for some reason wants you to rewrite.

"Aha!" You emerge with a bulging blue D-ring binder, triumphant. You wrinkle your nose at the dust bunnies clinging to your hand. Whatever. You found what you needed to find. You drop the binder on the floor, shake off your hand, and flop back on the bed.

The phone rings. You grab it without looking. "You've reached—"

"It's me."

"Colt! It's been too long."

"Ha, ha," Ryland says dryly. "You know that joke is even funnier the hundred and fifth time."

"Don't be pissy," you say. "What's up? I can grab Josh's dorm number from the kitchen, hang on, but you seriously have to write it down this time—"

"I'm calling for you. What color is your dress?"

"What?"

"Your prom dress. What color is it."

"Uh. I don't have one yet. Why?"

"So I can make sure my tie matches. I know that's a big deal, or whatever."

"…I wasn't aware that you were coming to prom. To my prom."

"Are you going with someone else?"

You've been asked, a few times. You haven't given any of your would-be dates an answer. "No."

"Cool, so just let me know when you pick a dress. I think I need to order the corsage or whatever ahead of time."

"You're coming to prom—"

"I'm taking you, yeah. Catch up."

"Will your girlfriend mind?"

He pauses. "Why would she mind? She knows we've been friends forever."

"Right. Is school….I mean, like, how are things? Otherwise?"

Someone shouts at him from off the phone. "Fuck off," he says to them, his voice muffled—and then he's back, close in your ear. "Look, I've got to go. Just tell my mom when you find a dress."

"I will. Bye, Ryland."

You hold the phone to your ear for a few seconds after he hangs up. Then you press it to your chest. You look at yourself in the mirror, tilting your head as though the version of you on the other side will have some kind of answers to the questions you are too afraid to even ask.

"It's not a big deal," you tell yourself, out loud, as you put the phone back in its cradle.

It isn't a big deal. He has a girlfriend. It wouldn't be a big deal even if he didn't have a girlfriend, because it's just Ryland. Ryland, calling to hold up his end of a pinky promise he made you six years ago.

You flop back on the bed, reaching up to try and touch your toes as your brain continues its crusade. It's just you. It's just Ryland. It's just prom. You've been friends since before you even knew what prom or a date even were. Nothing that could happen over the course of a single night could ever change that.

-

Now

You are once again on your back, a pillow under your hips and a blanket over you. During some of your less-horizontal hookups (see: bar bathroom, office desk, car), you've been giving yourself over to gravity's whims without worrying about it too much. Since you have access to an actual bed this time, though, you feel as though you might as well at least try following r/TryingForABaby's advice.

As though reading your mind, he says, "I can't believe it took us this long to reach an actual bed."

"Hm." You look around the master bedroom, as much as you can look around. The only light is from the moon and the streetlamps outside, filtered through the curtains into a gauzy silver glow. "You know what I can't believe? I think this is the only room in your house I'd never been in before."

"Yeah?" You hear his head shift on the pillow. "Yeah. I guess you're right. It's weird, right? The master bedroom. It took me a full year or something to move all of my stuff in."

"You spent a year in the bunk beds?"

"It was nice," he says defensively. "I'd never had the top bunk before. Colt always called dibs." He pauses. "And then I rolled off my first night, and I never used it again."

"Ouch."

"Took my tailbone two weeks to recover." He nudges your hip with his hand. It's almost funny, how tentative he becomes in the immediate aftermath. He'll touch you, sure. He'll squeeze your hand, and stroke your hair; but the two of you don't really cuddle. You take it as another sign that you are on the same page about what this all is. Casual. Or, if not casual, then purposeful. Strictly business, as he'd joked the first time. "Speaking of, are your knees okay?"

"What, from being on top? I'm not actually that old, you know. You may be ancient, but some of us are still a young and sprightly thirty-four."

"No, I mean. Back at the bar." His hand twitches, down, like he's going to touch your knee and then thinks better of it. "I shouldn't have let you do that."

"Let me?"

"At least if we were here, you could have had a pillow, something—"

You wave a hand. "I've been on my knees in worse places. Don't worry about it."

"Where could possibly be worse than concrete?"

"A frat basement, for starters."

It comes out harsher than you mean. Not in tone. It's the nakedness of the words, dropped into the silence like a stone into a pond. The room swallows them whole.

I didn't mean that, you want to say—but, of course, you did. That's the problem. You meant it. You meant it a lot, and you meant a lot by it. It's accusation and absolution, all in one. It's permission. It means look at what you did to me (that's not fair, you know, because what did he do, really, except kiss you one time and then decide he didn't want to anymore?). It means you could do anything to me, anything you want, and I would still let you after all this time. 

"That sounds uncomfortable," he says.

So he doesn't remember, then.

That shouldn't be disappointing. It shouldn't be. It's the kind of thing that should fade after a few years, let alone sixteen; the kind of thing you are embarrassed for still remembering after so long. And, anyway, you don't actually want to fight.

Still, it feels like swallowing something when you speak again. "I didn't mind. That's my point. Did you like it?"

"Obviously."

"Great. So did I. So it's all good." This time, you nudge his hip. "I'm pretty tough, you know. I won't break, if you're a little rough with me."

"Okay," he says. "Well, that's not the bar."

"Yeah, I know. I took the bar ages ago. Passed it my first try."

"You—" The joke makes him laugh, once, curtly, dragging a hand down over his face. Unfortunately, it doesn't derail his train of thought. "I mean, the bar for this," he says, gesturing between the two of you, "isn't I don't mind, or I won't break. That's not good enough. I can't do this if you're not getting anything out of it."

You push your lower lip into a moue. "I feel like it's pretty clear what I'm getting out of it."

"You know what I mean. If you're not going to enjoy it, then I can go out to the grocery store and pick up a turkey baster right now. That's part of the point, to me. "

"I am. Enjoying it. That's why I asked for it, all of it. And I thought you had a very strict BYOB policy."

"If you want a turkey baster, I will make sure you get a turkey baster."

"You've always tried to give me exactly what I wanted, huh?"

"Yeah, well. There were times when I could have done a better job."

“You." You roll over onto your side to look at him. "You do realize you're currently giving me a baby? A whole baby. That’s—I mean, it’s crazy I asked. It’s crazy you said yes.”

“It’s not that crazy.”

You flop back onto the mattress. You stare at the ceiling. “It’s pretty crazy."

"Maybe. But I don't mind." He goes quiet, in the way that you know means he's thinking about something. "I don't mind. Was that the bar with. Your ex. The big one. Did he—"

"Ryland."

"Yes?"

"We just."

"I know."

"Do you really want me to go into the details of my sex life with my ex-husband."

"On a personal level? No. But for research purposes of what does and doesn't work for you—"

"Okay, so Reddit doesn't count as research, but me telling you my memory verbally, off the cuff, does?" You keep your tone light. You are passing the light tone test with flying colors. "Eyewitness testimony is famously untrustworthy, you know. And, um. I don't really remember much of it, anyway."

"That sounds like a cop out."

"It's not," you say, and your tone is still light but with an undercurrent you can't control, and you know he hears it because he stops saying anything at all. "Um. I remember some things, but for the most part its fuzzy. I think I blocked a lot of it out." You laugh, quiet. Bitter. "I do remember that he wanted kids."

"That…makes sense. Seems like the kind of thing you should agree on, to get married."

"We didn't, though. Agree." The ceiling fan spins lazily overhead. "You asked me, ages ago, what caused the divorce. That's what it was."

Not the other stuff, you don't say, because you know you don't have to say it for him to hear it.

"We'd talked about it back when we were dating," you say instead. "We'd decided that we didn't want them. And then our last year together, I guess he changed his mind. Which, you know, he was allowed to do, what do you know when you're twenty, but he didn't. He didn't really tell me? It was just."

You have to think about what you say next. It's not the first time you've used the words, but it's the first time in a while, and the first time here, in the dark, with a body that was just inside you and is now an inch and a half away. You can hear him breathing. It's quiet, but you can hear it, and it's occasionally sending you back to a different bed, next to a different body, with a ring still on your finger, and it's making you lose the thread of the story.

You dig a nail into your palm. You coax yourself back.

You are here, in this room, next to the person you are next to. You find the thread of the story. You pull at it until the words unravel in the order you'd decided on several years ago, when you needed to explain this to your brother and your therapist and your journal in a way that would not make you cry.

"My birth control kept on not being where I'd left it, which I thought was just. You know. Me. Being forgetful." This was a place for people to laugh, you'd decided, when you'd practiced the telling of it. He doesn't laugh. No one ever does. "And then we had a scare, so finally I just decided to get my tubes tied, and he wouldn't sign off on it. Husbands still have to, apparently, did you know that? Like we were in the fifteen hundreds."

You sort of laugh. He doesn't.

"Anyway, he wouldn't give his permission, or whatever, and we fought about it, and I remember the next day—I mean, I'd barely slept, we were arguing all night—and I was just too exhausted to really feel angry anymore, and instead I just had this weird mixture of dread and relief, and I wasn't sure what the relief part was, until the next day I was taking the subway home and I saw this baby. A cute one. Like, Gerber baby cute. And I thought oh, maybe I do want kids one day, but not with Tyler."

The room is silent.

"Just. That easy. Just sitting on the 6 like, Astor Place is next, and also I don't want to have a baby with my husband. It was the most honest thought I'd had in years. And I knew if I went home, I wouldn't have that kind of clarity again, and my birth control would keep going missing, and the next scare wouldn't just be a scare, and I'd have to stop working, and—I don't know."

You press the heels of your hands to your eyes.

"Maybe I was being dramatic. But I got off the train at Grand Central, and instead my normal transfer I caught the Metro-North—God, I didn't even buy a ticket, just got on the train. It was so stupid, I almost cried when the conductor came up, because I didn't have enough cash on me and I didn't. I didn't want it to show up on the credit card. In case. But yeah, I showed up at Josh's door at, like, one in the morning, and. Everything after was a mess, obviously."

Your hands are still against your face. You don't say anything for what is less than two seconds, but feels like much longer, because you don't trust your voice to be steady.

Sorry," you say. Your voice isn't quite where you want it, but if you don't talk then he is going to talk, and you're not sure you're ready to hear what he may or may not say. "Sorry, none of that is what you asked, like, at all, I really just don't remember a lot of the other stuff, sex, and what I liked, or if I really like—I mean, we met when I was eighteen. All of my."

You pause. It is a short pause. It does not feel short. The room is silent. The room is roaring with the fan and the blood in your ears and the sound of him listening.

"Most of my firsts happened in that relationship," you say, carefully. "So. I don't know that I'll ever be able to parse out exactly what I would have liked, on my own, if I hadn't met him. But, um. When I started dating again, after the divorce, a while after, sometimes I would just. Go somewhere else. In the middle of it. And turns out a little bit of pain is really good for, like, reminding yourself that you have a body. It makes it easier to stay in the moment. And I do think it feels good, genuinely, but it's a little bit of a chicken-or-egg situation as to how much I just like it organically, and how much it's a matter of function, because now it's both."

He doesn't say anything.

"Apparently that's normal," you say. Reassuring him, maybe. Reassuring yourself. "Josh made me see this therapist, the year after. I was staying with him for a while, and—anyway. She said that's normal. That, and the memory gaps, too, after. Um. All of that."

There's a long, long silence.

Then he says, pleasantly, "I could kill him."

"Ryland."

"I'm not angry. I'm just stating it as fact. I really could kill him."

"Ryland."

"You wouldn't believe the stuff I have to MacGyver for labs, half the time I'm worried I'm going to accidentally make chlorine gas and poison the whole science wing. Or decapitate myself with a Rube Goldberg. Or something." You don't say anything. "Josh would help. Colt, too. I'm sure he'd have some great ideas. It's basically his job to get set on fire."

"Yeah."

"I probably shouldn't be telling you this. You should have plausible deniability, in case we need a lawyer."

"Josh is already a lawyer."

"Yeah, but he shouldn't defend himself. Not for such a grisly crime."

You crack a smile, finally. A tiny one. It feels a bit like tasting clear air after months of breathing nothing but ash. "I don't practice criminal law. You know that, right? It's important to me that you know that."

"You're smart. You'd pick it up."

"Pass." You twist your head in the direction of the wall clock. You can't make it out in the dark, but you still say, "It's late. I should get going soon."

"You know you can stay over, right?"

"Fine. But I call dibs on the top bunk," you say. You hear him chuckle. The sound, more than the joke, makes you smile. "No, look, I know you have an early start."

"Tomorrow? It's a bank holiday."

"Oh. Right. Well, I probably have to. I mean, there's always stuff in the office to." You shake your head. "Just give me ten more minutes of pillow time, and I'll be out of your hair."

Two seconds. Three. "Okay."

You chew on the inside of your cheek. "And I'm sorry for—" You press your hands back against your eyes, and are relieved to find them only a little wet. "All of that. Um. I don't know what—"

"Hey. Hey." His hand, touching the back of your wrist. Gently. Tentatively. You let him pull your hand away from your face. "It's okay. I mean, it's not okay that any of that—but you—you being here is okay. Whatever you want to talk about is okay."

Your hand curls back, out of his. Away from him. "I don't really want to talk about it anymore."

"That's okay too."

"Thanks," you say softly. It's all you can manage.

You sit in deafening silence for about a minute, and then: "If you don't want to talk, I actually." He claps—quiet—then gets up. "This is perfect."

He's only half-lit by the moon through the curtains as he hops around, trying to tug on a pair of pajama pants while he talks, and only half-succeeding at either. It shouldn't be charming. You are, regrettably, charmed.

"I found, while I was unpacking more boxes—attic boxes, not moving—the point is." He points at you. "Don't go anywhere."

"Wasn't planning on it." Even as you say it, you mentally track your shoes, on the floor; and your underwear, next to them; and your purse, abandoned on the couch on your way to the bedroom. You had your fair share of one-night stands, following the divorce, in between all the bad first dates and dead-end short-term relationships. You know how to make an exit.

He comes back holding a box before you can make an exit, and with his elbow manages to flip on the nightstand lamp. You both wince and blink furiously. When your eyes have more or less adjusted to the light, he is sitting very carefully on the edge of the bed.

"What's this?" you ask.

"Just some light reading." He takes something black and rectangular out of the box, and passes it to you. "Mom was religious about this stuff. Even when she was in the hospital, she'd have us bring these huge sterilite boxes of all of her craft stuff, and she would just go to town."

You open the scrapbook.

It starts off with baby pictures, of course. Too young for even you to tell the twins apart. Pictures of them with their mother. Not as you last saw her, but as you remember her. Pictures of them with their dad, who you never met.

Ryland—adult Ryland, real Ryland, the Ryland in the room with you—is still sitting on the edge of the bed, not touching you. You have spent most of the evening, you realize, with his hand on your waist or your wrist or your hair. The absence is strange. You gnaw on the inside of your cheek. "You look like you're about to fall off the bed," you say.

He hesitates. "You seemed like you might want some space."

You nod him over with a roll of your eyes. "Get over here."

He gets over there, sitting close enough next to you to look over your shoulder, while still leaving an inch or two of space.

"You can skip ahead," he says, reaching over. In leaning in, his other arm goes back behind you, resting across the headboard. He doesn't touch you. He also doesn't pull away when you lean against him. It isn't much a conscious decision as an inevitable one. You are tired, and he is warm and solid behind you, and you are still stubbornly clinging onto the belief that you can accept casual intimacy from him without drowning in want.

Pages flip. Photos of you. You, Ryland, Colt, Josh. Just the boys. Just you and the twins. Every possible configuration thereof. Running through sprinklers, and singing in school concerts, and holding up trick-or-treat hauls with gap-toothed triumph. Riding bikes. Falling off bikes. Graduations—yours, in addition to theirs. Elementary to middle school. Middle to high school. Wedding photos throughout—the boys in suits, you in a flower girl dress. The boys in suits, you in a puffy teal junior bridesmaid dress. The boys in suits, you in floor-length bronze satin.

Before high school graduation, there's a few of just you and Ryland. Bronze satin, again, but you're visibly younger, the both of you baby-faced in a way that, by your twenties, had already begun to fade. The living room as background. The window. The coffee table. The couch you straddled him on two and a half weeks ago.

Ryland, slipping white roses onto your wrist.

Ryland, standing behind you with hands, his and yours, clasped around your waist.

Ryland, seconds later, smiling down at you while you look into the camera.

"It makes you think," he says. "Thirty plus years. The photos make the memories more tactile, but they're just fragments. Moments of moments. There's so much stuff that happens in between that we just…forget."

"Yeah." You try to flip back to safe territory—bikes, suits, teal dress—and realize that such a thing doesn't exist. There is no safe territory. There is no part of your life, really, that he hasn't been present for, and vice versa, except for a decade in the middle that you can barely remember and would, most of the time, rather forget.

You close the book. You close your eyes.

You'll leave soon, you tell yourself. You'll go home. Sleep in your own bed. It's just that his chest is warm beneath your cheek, and his heart is steady beneath your ear, and you are so, so tired of pretending you want anything different.

"Yeah," you say. "Who even remembers that far back, anyway."

-

Twenty two years ago 

Your cheek is on his chest. His arms are around your waist. He is treating the dance like it might get him seasick. It has been the most awkward minute and forty five seconds of your life.

You have never been happier.

Every other step, his chin grazes the top of your head. It's a thrill every time. Ryland hit his growth spurt late—they both did, both twins—and you're still not quite accustomed to the height difference. You're pretty sure he isn't, either. Not the way Colt is.

But then, Colt has never been anything but perfectly at home in his own body. Colt is athletic, graceful, controlled. Ryland is, physically, none of these things. Ryland's posture is so bad that even his smile is crooked. Ryland trips over his own feet about as often as Colt trips over words while reading. It's like whoever split them up in utero did it intentionally off-kilter. Yin and yang. Unbalanced-ly balanced. 

All this to say: Colt was a great dance partner. Ryland has spent the past minute and forty-five seconds swaying side to side so stiffly its like he's barely moving at all, like he's being controlled by someone who has just been gifted a marionette and is trying very hard not to tangle the strings. He has also managed to step on your shiny patent leather shoes no fewer than seven times. It is not a very long song to begin with. He has been dancing with you for half of it.

You are relieved for your shoes, and otherwise disappointed, when the slow number is replaced by something upbeat. The adults around you seem excited enough. Your mother breaks out of the very long, very involved kiss she had been planting on her new husband to punch her hands up in the air and cheer, and allow the bridesmaids (Colt and Ryland's mother among them) to drag her to the center of the floor.

You and Ryland are in a corner of the dance floor, and for a few seconds he just stands there, so you also just stand there. You have spent what feels like a lifetime trying to copy Ryland Grace. What's a few more seconds?

"That wasn't even a whole song," he finally says. 

You look at him. He looks and sounds neutral—bored, in that way he began affecting pretty much as soon as he turned thirteen—so it's difficult to know if he means the remark as a complaint or a statement or what. 

"Maybe," you begin carefully, "we can do this again the next time my mom gets married."

"Okay," he agrees. His voice is still irritatingly level. There's a brief pause, and then, faster: "That might never happen, though. I overheard her telling my mom that this was the last time." 

You'll believe that when you see it. Your mother is beautiful, and gregarious, and loving, and works as a flight attendant. She has no shortage of men interested in her, and no shortage of interest in men. But it feels disloyal to say that (even to Ryland, who has seen all of this firsthand and thus knows it to be true), so you settle for a noncommittal shrug. 

"We'll dance at prom," he says. 

You look up at him. He's looking very determinedly at something on his shirt sleeve. His glasses are sliding down his nose. Those are new, too; he's still figuring out how to wear them. "Prom?"

"When we're in high school."

"Yeah, but my prom or your prom? We're in different grades, genius."

"Either. Both."

"What if you have a girlfriend? She'll want you to take her to prom."

"Ew." He scrunches up his nose. His glasses take this as an opportunity to go skydiving. By some miracle (the miracle being the strap his mom makes him attach to the arms of them, ever since that time he broke two pairs in as many days), they stay more or less on-slash-around his head. "I'm never getting a girlfriend."

Your heart sinks. "Okay." You chew your bottom lip, savoring the taste of the bubble-gum lipgloss your mom let the makeup artist use on you. That's one nice thing about your mom's weddings, is getting to feel pretty for a day. You can't wait to grow up and wear lipstick. "Well, I might have a boyfriend."

"Ugh. Fine. If you don't have a boyfriend, then I’ll take you to prom.”

"Promise?" You stick out your pinky finger. It's the kind of thing that, at twelve, you're sort of too old for, and that Ryland, at thirteen, is definitely too old for. He indulges you anyway. He always indulges you. Ryland's never done anything but give you exactly what you wanted.

"Promise," he says—then immediately lets go of your hand, like the indignity of doing a pinky promise as a teenager is causing him physical pain. You half expect him to wipe it off on the leg of his dress pants. He doesn't. He still doesn't look at you, either. "I can't believe I'm coming in second place to some guy you don't even know yet."

"Third place," you say. Finally, he looks at you. It's like a family-sized pack of glitter bursts in your chest. You try to keep any of it from showing in your eyes. Instead, you tilt your head, hoping your smile reads as mischievous rather than smitten. "Colt was born first.'

And then you run. You take off running past the dance floor; past the round tables with the lavender centerpieces you picked out; past sitting adults, whose reprimands Doppler away from you at lightspeed. You know he's following close behind. You know that when he catches you (he can, if he doesn't trip first), he'll grab your hand, and the thought of it makes you so giddy that you're tempted to let a hand trail behind.

No need. He reaches you.

The passenger door shut, and the quiet almost hurt.

No bass. No flashing lights. No Santos yelling from the dance floor, no Robby laughing somewhere behind you, no Liv’s hand squeezing yours before she disappeared into the night with Brown Eyes and a location pin turned on. Just the low rumble of Jack’s truck when he started it, the clean, warm scent of him in the cab, and the fact that your mouth still felt like his. 

Your pulse did something stupid.

He did not look at you right away. He adjusted the mirrors, checked the lot, and kept both hands exactly where they belonged, like the steering wheel was the only thing in the city with a chance of keeping him civilized. Then his eyes flicked to you.

“Seatbelt,” Jack said.

You looked at him.

His gaze stayed forward. “Don’t look at me like that. Seatbelt.”

Your mouth curved before you could stop it. “Bossy in the car too?”

Jack’s jaw flexed. He put the truck in reverse. “You’re about five seconds from finding out I’m bossy everywhere.”

Heat moved through you so fast you forgot how to answer. Jack saw that. His mouth barely moved, but something in his expression sharpened as he backed out of the parking space. You reached for the seatbelt. The click sounded too loud in the quiet cab.

“There,” you said.

Jack glanced over once. “Good.”

The word landed exactly where he meant it to. Your thighs pressed together before you could stop them. Jack looked back at the road, but his hand tightened on the wheel. You noticed. He noticed you noticing. Neither of you said anything for a full block.

The club disappeared behind you, swallowed by the dark streets and yellow streetlights. The city moved past the windows in broken pieces. Storefronts. Parked cars. A crosswalk. The reflection of Jack’s profile in the glass beside you.

He drove like he did everything else. Controlled. Focused. One hand on the wheel, the other resting low near the gearshift. His forearm flexed every time he turned, the tendons shifting beneath skin you had already had your mouth too close to and your fingers wrapped around.

You looked at his hands. You knew you should not. You did anyway.

Jack exhaled through his nose. “Don’t start.”

Your eyes lifted to his face. “I’m sitting here.”

“I know,” Jack said.

His voice had gone lower. “That’s the problem.”

Your stomach dipped. You turned toward the window because looking at him was starting to feel like touching him, and touching him was the one thing you could not do with his hands on the wheel and both of you trapped in the unbearable quiet between the club and his house.

Your reflection looked back at you in the glass. Mouth swollen. Eyes too bright. Hair a little mussed from his hands, his door, his body crowding yours against the truck. You touched your lower lip before you realized you were doing it.

Jack’s eyes cut toward you. “Don’t.” 

Your hand froze. Slowly, you looked at him. “Don’t what?”

Jack kept his eyes on the road, but his jaw was tight enough to tell on him.

“That,” Jack said.

You let your finger drag once over your lip before lowering your hand. His grip tightened on the wheel. The reaction moved through you like a spark catching.

“You’re very observant,” you said.

Jack’s mouth barely curved. “Been told.”

You shifted in your seat, turning toward him more fully. The movement was small. The space was not. His eyes flicked down for half a second, then back to the road.

“You always this careful?” you asked.

Jack’s answer came too fast. “No.”

Your breath caught. He glanced at you then. Only briefly. Long enough for you to see the heat there. Long enough for it to matter. Then he looked back at the road.

“Just with things I don’t want to fuck up,” Jack said.

The words hit harder than you expected. Not because they were sweet. They were not, exactly. They were too blunt for sweet. Too low. Too honest.  

Your teasing fell quiet in your throat.

Outside, the streetlights moved over his face in flashes, catching on the hard line of his jaw, the tired set of his eyes, the control he kept putting back together every time your gaze touched him.

The truck slowed at a red light. For one suspended second, there was no motion to hide behind. Jack looked over. Really looked. His gaze moved over your face, your mouth, the bare line of your throat where his lips had been in the parking lot. His expression did not soften exactly, but something in it changed. Something quieter. More dangerous.

“You can still change your mind,” Jack said.

Your pulse tripped. There it was. Not a warning. Not a test. A door left open.

You looked at him. “Did you?”

His jaw flexed. The light turned green. Jack looked back at the road and drove through it.

“No,” he said.

Your stomach dipped.

Then his eyes cut toward you, dark and steady. “But you can.”

For a second, you forgot to breathe. It should not have made you want him more. It did. So much that it almost annoyed you.

You looked down at your hands in your lap, then back at him. “I’m not changing my mind.”

Jack’s hand tightened once on the wheel. “Good.” 

The rest of the drive passed in a kind of unbearable quiet. Not awkward. Not empty. Just full of everything neither of you could do yet. Your knee shifted once toward the center console, and Jack’s eyes dropped to it. His thumb moved once against the steering wheel. You watched his hand. He watched the road. Both of you pretended that was enough.

It was not.

When he turned onto a quieter street, your pulse started climbing again. You knew without asking. His place. The truck slowed in front of a townhouse set back from the sidewalk, porch light glowing soft over the steps. It looked like him, somehow. Quiet. Solid. Not showy. Lived-in without being messy. The kind of place a man came home to when he did not want the world following him inside.

Jack pulled into the drive and put the truck in park. The engine cut off. The silence after it was worse. Neither of you moved. Jack’s hand rested on the keys. Yours rested on the seatbelt. The house sat dark and quiet in front of you, and suddenly the night felt very real. Not like a club. Not like a parking lot. Not like heat and music and bad decisions hidden under flashing lights.

This was his driveway. His house. His door. His life, waiting on the other side.

You turned toward him. Jack was already looking at you. His eyes dropped to your mouth. Yours dropped to his. For one breath, you thought he might kiss you right there. You wanted him to. You leaned closer before you could think better of it. Jack’s hand tightened around the keys.

“Inside,” he said.

Your mouth parted. The word went through you with a warm, sharp pull.

You looked at him. “Still not here?”

His gaze moved over your face, slow and heated. “Not in my driveway.” 

You smiled. “You have a lot of rules.”

Jack unbuckled his seatbelt. His eyes stayed on yours.

“You keep making new ones necessary,” Jack said.

Then he got out of the truck before you could answer. You sat there for half a second, pulse loud in your ears, staring through the windshield at his front door. Then Jack appeared at your side. He opened your door and held it, one hand braced on the frame, the other offered to you. Not because you needed help. Because he wanted to touch you. Because he had decided this was allowed.

You put your hand in his.

His fingers closed around yours, warm and firm, and your body remembered the exact pressure of them at your hip, your jaw, your throat. You stepped down from the truck. The ground felt less steady than it should have. Jack’s hand shifted to your waist immediately, catching you before you could even pretend you needed it. You landed close to him, too close, your hand still in his and your chest inches from his.

His eyes dropped.

Your breath caught. For a second, the driveway disappeared. There was only the porch light, the quiet, and Jack’s hand at your waist, holding you like he knew exactly how easy it would be to pull you back against the truck and finish what he had stopped in the parking lot.

His jaw flexed. Then he turned, keeping his hand at the small of your back as he guided you toward the front door. The walk was short. It did not feel short. Every step was a decision. Every brush of his hand against your back was a promise he had not made out loud.

At the door, Jack reached around you to unlock it. His chest brushed your shoulder. Barely. You closed your eyes. Jack paused behind you. Just for a second. 

Then the lock clicked.

 The door opened, and he let you step inside first. The house was quiet in a way that made your skin feel too warm. No music. No neon. No bodies moving around you. No laughter spilling from the bar or bass shaking through the floor. Just the soft click of the door shutting behind Jack. Just the sound of him locking it.

Just the sudden, impossible awareness that you were inside his house with your mouth still swollen from his and your pulse still too high to pretend this was casual.

Jack moved past you, close enough that his arm brushed yours, and set his keys down on the small table by the door. The sound was ordinary. Small. Final.

Then he turned back to you.

For one second, neither of you moved.

The only light came from somewhere deeper in the house, low and warm, catching along the side of his face and the black of his T-shirt. He looked different here than he had in the club. Still controlled. Still guarded. Still Jack. But quieter. More real.

Your breath felt too loud.

Jack’s eyes moved over your face. Your mouth. Your throat. The red top that had apparently been a problem all night. His jaw flexed.

You swallowed. “What?”

Jack crossed the space between you. 

That was the only warning you got.

His hand came to your jaw, firm and certain, and then his mouth was on yours again.

Your back hit the wall beside the door.

The sound you made disappeared into his mouth.

Jack followed you in, one hand braced against the wall near your head, the other sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck. He kissed you slower than he had in the parking lot, but that somehow made it worse. Deeper. More deliberate. Like he finally had time and intended to make every second of it count.

Your hands caught in his shirt. Jack made a low sound against your mouth when you pulled him closer, and the hand at your neck tightened just enough to make your stomach flip.

There was no truck door at your back now. No parking lot. No reason for him to stop. The thought made you arch into him before you could help it. Jack felt it. Of course he did. His mouth left yours and moved to your jaw, then lower, dragging heat down the side of your throat.

“Jack,” you breathed.

His hand pressed against your waist.

“Yeah,” Jack said against your skin. “I know.”

You did not know what he knew. That you wanted him. That you were already losing your mind. That every careful thing he did made you worse. Maybe all of it. Your hands moved over his shoulders, down his arms, finding the warm strength of him beneath the sleeves of his shirt. You felt the flex of his forearm under your palm, and Jack’s mouth curved against your neck.

“You still want this?” Jack asked.

You huffed a breathless laugh, almost offended he had to ask.

“Yes,” you said. “So badly.”

His hand tightened at your waist. “Good.” 

The word went through you.

Your knee knocked against his when you tried to shift closer, and your shoe caught awkwardly against the edge of the rug. You stumbled half an inch. Jack caught you immediately, one hand firm at your hip, his mouth still close enough to yours that you felt his laugh before you heard it.

You narrowed your eyes. “Don’t.”

His mouth twitched. “Didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did,” you replied. 

Jack’s expression shifted, amused and heated all at once. “That right?”

You pushed at his chest, but there was no force behind it. “Shut up.”

Jack kissed you again instead.

You forgot what you were arguing about.

Your shoe came off somewhere near the wall. Then the other. Jack stepped out of his own shoes without looking away from you, his mouth finding yours between every clumsy shift and half-laughing breath. It should have broken the tension. It did not. It made it worse. More real. More intimate. More like you were both trying to strip the night down to nothing but touch and heat and Jack’s hands on your body.

His fingers found the hem of your red top. He stopped. Not far away. Not cold. Just stopped. His mouth brushed yours once, barely there, and his eyes lifted to yours.

The question was silent. 

You answered by lifting your arms.

Jack’s jaw flexed. Then he pulled the top over your head.

The fabric disappeared somewhere near your shoes.

And Jack stopped again. Only for a second. But you felt it. The pause. The shift. The way his breath left him slower than before. There was nothing underneath but skin. Jack’s eyes dropped. His jaw went tight.

“Fuck,” he said.

The word was low. Rough. Almost unwilling. Heat rushed through you so hard your knees almost forgot their job.

Then Jack was on you again.

His mouth caught yours, hungry and deep, and his hands came back to your waist like he had run out of whatever thin patience had gotten you both inside. His palms slid over bare skin, up your ribs, across your back, learning the shape of you without apology now.

You made a sound against his mouth. Jack swallowed it. His hand spread at your back, dragging you closer, and the other moved up your side, thumb brushing high enough to make your breath catch. That was all the permission he seemed to need. 

His mouth left yours and found your throat again, hot and open, then lower, dragging over your collarbone with a rough breath that sounded too close to restraint breaking.

Your fingers caught in his hair. “Jack,” you breathed.

His hand tightened at your waist.

“Yeah,” Jack said against your skin. “I know.”

His mouth moved lower. The first touch of his lips against your chest made your back arch. A low sound left him, rough and pleased, and his hand slid to your lower back, holding you there as his mouth opened against you.

Your head tipped back. The wall was cool behind you. Jack was hot everywhere else. His tongue moved, slow and deliberate, and your knees threatened to become useless. You tugged at his hair without meaning to. Jack made another sound against your skin, and the vibration went through you.

“Careful,” he said, mouth still pressed to you.

Your laugh came out breathless and ruined. “I don’t want careful.”

Jack went still. His mouth lifted from your skin. For one second, you thought you had said the wrong thing. Then he looked up at you. His eyes were dark. Focused. Gone warm around the edges in a way that made your stomach dip.

“That’s not what careful means,” Jack said.

Your breath caught. His hand slid to your hip, firm enough to make the point.

“Careful means I’m paying attention,” Jack said.

His thumb pressed once into your skin. “Careful means I know exactly how hard you’re breathing.”

His mouth brushed your chest again, barely enough to count. “Exactly where you go quiet.”

Another kiss. Lower. Hotter. “Exactly what makes you pull my hair like that.”

Your fingers tightened in his hair before you could stop them. Jack’s mouth curved against your skin.

“There,” he murmured. “Like that.”

Heat rushed through you. You swallowed. “That’s not fair.”

Jack’s hand pressed into your lower back, keeping you arched into him.

“No,” Jack said. “It’s careful.”

Then he sucked, slow and firm, and the rest of your answer disappeared into a broken sound.

Your answer broke apart in your throat.

Jack stayed there for another second, mouth hot against you, hand firm at your back like he knew exactly how close your knees were to giving up.

Which was unfair. Because he was the reason. You dragged in a breath and tugged harder at his hair. Jack’s mouth lifted from your skin. His eyes found yours. Dark. Focused. Too pleased by what he had done to you.

“You look smug,” you said, but your voice had no strength behind it.

Jack’s thumb moved once against your waist. “Do I?”

“Yes.” You breathed. 

His mouth brushed yours. “Observant.”

You made a frustrated sound and caught the hem of his shirt again.

This time, Jack let you pull.

The black fabric dragged up his body, and your knuckles brushed warm skin, the firm plane of his stomach, the solid rise of his ribs. He helped only when your hands got impatient, reaching back and pulling the shirt over his head in one smooth motion before dropping it somewhere near yours. For one second, you forgot what you were doing.

The corner of Jack’s mouth shifted. “Problem?”

Your hands landed on his chest. 

“No,” you said, quieter than you meant to. “Not a problem.”

He was warm under your palms. Solid. Real. Not the fantasy you had built from forearms and black cotton and the way he leaned back in a booth like he owned the right to be tired. This was Jack without the shirt, without the club, without the convenient distance of a crowded room.

Your fingers moved over him slowly. His chest. His shoulders. The old scars and lived-in strength of a body that had been through things and kept going anyway. Jack watched your face as you touched him. You felt it immediately. Not insecurity, exactly. Not embarrassment.

But attention.

He was reading you with the same brutal focus he seemed to bring to everything else, waiting for the smallest shift. A flinch. A pause. Some sign that the reality of him was not what you had wanted.

He did not get one.

Your hands moved over his chest again, firmer this time, because now you could. Because you had wanted to know what he felt like all night. Because the answer was somehow better than your imagination, and your imagination had been doing impressive work.

Jack’s breath changed. You looked up at him. His eyes had gone darker, but there was something quieter under it now. Something more exposed. You touched his jaw. Jack turned his face just enough for his mouth to brush your palm.

The tenderness of it hit you so sharply that your teasing vanished. Then your hand slid down his chest. Lower. 

Jack’s hand closed gently around your wrist before your fingers reached his belt. 

You stilled immediately.

His breathing had changed again. Not colder. Not distant. Just careful in a different way.

You looked up at him. “Jack?”

His eyes stayed on yours. “There’s something you should know.”

For one awful second, you thought he was taking it back. You made yourself breathe. “Okay.”

Jack’s thumb moved once over the inside of your wrist.

“My right leg,” Jack said. “Below the knee.”

Your gaze flicked down before you could stop it. Not far. Not long. Then it came back to his face. He saw it.

“Prosthetic,” Jack said.

The word was plain. Controlled. Offered without apology. But something in his face had gone guarded in a way that made your chest ache. 

You did not move away. You did not let go of his hand. You did not look at him like anything had been taken from the room. Because nothing had. Your pulse was still too fast. Your skin was still too warm. His mouth was still too close, and you still wanted it back on yours badly enough to ache.

So you moved closer.

Slowly.

Close enough that he could stop you if he wanted.

He did not.

Your free hand touched his chest, light at first, then steadier when his breath caught.

“Okay,” you whispered.

You kissed the side of his neck.

Jack went still. Not cold. Not distant. Still.

Your mouth brushed the warm skin beneath his jaw, soft enough to ask, sure enough to answer.

“Tell me what you need,” you murmured against him.

Jack’s hand tightened around your wrist. Only once. His voice came lower. “I’ll handle it.”

You kissed him again, just below his ear, and felt his control shudder under your mouth.

“Okay,” you said.

Jack moved. Fast enough to steal your breath. His hand left your wrist and caught your jaw, firm and certain, and then his mouth was on yours again. Not careful in the slow way. Not hesitant. Not like the quiet had cooled anything down.

He kissed you like that one word had undone him more thoroughly than any teasing could have. Like the thing that finally broke his restraint was not your mouth at his neck or your hand near his belt, but the way you had listened.

The way you had stayed. The way you had said okay and meant it. Your back hit the wall again, and Jack followed, crowding you there with a rough sound low in his throat. His hand slid from your jaw to the side of your neck, his thumb beneath your chin, tilting you open for him.

You gave.

Jack felt it.

His kiss deepened, hot and hungry, and the hand at your waist dragged you closer until there was no space left between you.

When he broke the kiss, his mouth stayed close to yours. His breathing was rough. So was yours.

“Bedroom,” Jack said.

Your lips brushed his when you answered. “Okay.”

His eyes darkened at the word. Like it still did something to him. Like it might always. Jack kissed you once more, hard and brief, then took your hand. This time, when he led you deeper into the house, there was no pause at the door. No driveway. No almost.

Just Jack’s hand around yours, your shirt on the floor behind you, and the impossible knowledge that you were still going. That he still wanted you. That you still wanted him so badly it was starting to feel less like a choice and more like a condition.

The hallway was dim.

You caught pieces of his house as he moved you through it. A framed print on the wall. A pair of boots by the back door. A jacket thrown over the arm of a chair. A kitchen light left off. A living room that looked quiet and lived-in and entirely too Jack.

You wanted to see all of it later. 

Right now, Jack’s hand was warm around yours, and every step toward his bedroom made your pulse climb higher. He pushed the bedroom door open and let you in first. The room was dark except for the low light he turned on near the bed. Warm light spilled over rumpled sheets, a dresser, a chair in the corner, the ordinary intimacy of a space that belonged to him.

Your breath caught again.

Jack shut the door behind you. The click was softer this time. It still felt final. You turned toward him. He was already watching you. Shirtless. Mouth swollen. Hair slightly ruined from your hands. His gaze moved over you, bare from the waist up, standing in his bedroom like this was still something either of you could slow down.

Then Jack stepped closer.

His hand came to your waist again, familiar now, and the other brushed your hair back from your face with a gentleness that made the heat twist into something more dangerous.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

The question was quiet. Real. You nodded, then remembered him. Remembered the way his eyes sharpened when you tried to get away with less than words.

“Yes,” you said. “I’m okay.”

Jack studied your face for one more second. Then his thumb moved along your cheek.

“Good,” he said.

You smiled faintly. “There’s that word again.”

His mouth curved.

“Seems to work on you,” Jack said.

Your breath caught. His eyes dropped to your mouth.

Then he kissed you again.

The room seemed to shrink around it.

Jack’s hands found your waist, and yours found his shoulders, and for a few seconds there was nothing careful about the way you came together again. Your bare skin met the heat of his chest, and both of you made a sound at the contact. His was lower. Yours was less controlled. Jack noticed.

His mouth curved against yours. “There it is.”

You pulled back just enough to glare at him. “Do not sound smug.”

“I’m not,” Jack said.

“You are,” you said.

Jack’s hand slid down your side, slow and warm, and his thumb pressed into your hip. “Maybe a little.”

You bit his lower lip. Not hard. Enough. Jack’s smile disappeared. His hand tightened, and the next kiss was hotter, rougher, his mouth opening over yours as he stepped you backward toward the bed.

Your knees hit the mattress.

You sat because there was nowhere else to go. Jack followed, one hand braced beside your thigh, his body leaning over yours, mouth still on yours like he had not finished proving a point. You let yourself fall back onto your elbows, and Jack’s gaze dropped, moving over you with a heat that made your stomach pull tight.

Then he stopped.

Not abruptly. Not in a way that made the room cold. He just drew in a breath and pressed one last kiss to the corner of your mouth before straightening.

“I need a second,” Jack said.

You sat up immediately. “Okay.”

His eyes flicked to yours. Something passed over his face. Not surprise exactly. Closer to relief, maybe. You did not make him explain. You did not reach for him right away.

You just stayed where you were, sitting on the edge of his bed with your shirt somewhere by his front door and your heart beating too hard in your chest.

Jack turned slightly and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight. For a second, he was close enough that your knee brushed his thigh, and the ordinary intimacy of it hit harder than you expected. Not kissing. Not touching. Just being there in his room while he trusted you with the unglamorous part.

The real part.

Jack leaned forward and reached for his belt. You watched his face first.  His jaw was set, his eyes focused, his movements practiced and efficient. There was no ceremony to it. No apology. No invitation for you to make it softer than it was. So you did not. You let him handle it. Because he had said he would. Because you believed him.

He opened his belt, then the button of his jeans, moving with the same controlled precision he brought to everything else. You stayed quiet for exactly three seconds. Then you moved. Jack glanced over his shoulder as you shifted onto the bed behind him.

You settled on your knees, close enough that your bare chest brushed the warm skin of his back when you leaned in. His hand paused at his zipper. Your mouth touched the side of his neck. Jack’s shoulders went still. You kissed him again, softer this time, just below his ear.

His breath left him through his nose. “What are you doing?”

You let your lips move down to the slope of his shoulder. “Nothing.”

Jack huffed once. “That’s not nothing.”

You smiled against his skin and kissed lower, following the hard line of his shoulder, then the warm plane of his back.

He was solid beneath your mouth. Scarred in places. Tense in others. Real everywhere. Your hand slid carefully around his side, resting against his stomach, and you felt the muscles tighten beneath your palm. Jack’s head dropped forward a fraction.

“You’re making it hard to focus here,” he said.

Your answer was to open your mouth against his shoulder and bite him. Gently. Enough to feel. Enough to make his whole body react.

“Fuck,” Jack said.

The word came out rough and immediate. Your stomach flipped. You kissed the spot after, soft and pleased, and Jack turned his head just enough to look at you over his shoulder. His eyes were dark. Warning. Wanting.

“You think you’re cute?” Jack asked.

You let your mouth brush his shoulder again. “A little.”

His jaw flexed. “You’re trouble.” 

You smiled against his skin. “You keep saying that like you don’t like it.”

Jack stared at you for one heated second. Then he looked forward again, breathing a little harder than before.

“I’m trying to take my pants off,” Jack said.

You kissed down his back, slow enough to make his shoulders tense again. “I noticed.”

His hand closed over yours where it rested at his stomach.

“Behave,” Jack said.

The word should not have worked on you. It did. Your fingers curled lightly against him. Jack felt it. His thumb dragged once over your knuckles.

“Yeah,” he said, voice lower. “Thought so.”

You pressed one more kiss between his shoulder blades, then rested your forehead there for half a second. Not hiding. Not pitying. Just close. Jack’s grip on your hand changed. Softer now. Still firm.

You lifted your head. “I’m still here.”

He went quiet. You had not meant to say it like that. Maybe you had. Jack’s thumb stopped moving. For a second, the room held still around you. Then he brought your hand to his mouth and kissed your knuckles once.

Quick. Rough. Almost too small to count. But you felt it everywhere.

“I know,” Jack said.

Then he let go of your hand and finished handling his jeans.

You stayed behind him, kneeling on the bed, your hands resting loosely at your sides even though every part of you wanted to touch him again.

Jack moved with practiced efficiency. 

Jeans first. Then the rest. Then the prosthetic, handled and set aside with quiet care.

Just Jack, doing what he needed to do, exactly like he had said he would. You watched his shoulders while he moved. The shift of muscle. The old tension beneath his skin. The way his head angled slightly, focused and calm, like he had done this a thousand times and did not need you to make it easier by pretending not to notice. So you noticed. And you stayed.

When he was done, Jack sat there for half a second, one hand braced beside him on the mattress. You moved closer before you could overthink it. Your hand touched his shoulder. Lightly. Not asking for anything. Just there.

Jack turned his head. His eyes found yours over his shoulder. For one second, his expression was impossible to read. Then his gaze dropped to your mouth. That was easier to understand. You leaned in and kissed the corner of his jaw.

Jack’s eyes closed for half a breath. You felt it. The smallest surrender. Then it was gone. His hand came up, caught the side of your neck, and pulled you around into another kiss. You went willingly, shifting until you were beside him instead of behind him, one knee pressed into the mattress near his hip, your hand sliding over his chest as his mouth opened over yours.

The kiss was hot immediately.

No slow build. No careful return. Just the two of you crashing back into the thing you had interrupted, except now there was something else under it. Something steadier. More intimate. More dangerous than want by itself.

Jack’s hand moved down your back, then to your hip, pulling you closer until your bare chest met his again. You made a sound against his mouth. Jack swallowed it and turned into you, guiding you back against the bed. Your spine met the mattress. His mouth moved to your throat. Your hands went into his hair.

“Jack,” you said, already breathless again.

His teeth grazed the side of your neck. You arched. He felt it.

“You keep saying my name like that,” Jack said, voice rough against your skin.

Your fingers tightened in his hair. “Like what?”

His hand slid down your side. “Like you want me to do something about it.”

Your stomach flipped. You opened your mouth, but his hand moved to the button of your jeans before you could answer. He stopped there. Eyes on yours. The pause was not hesitation. 

It was a question.

Your breathing changed. Jack’s gaze sharpened.

“Words,” he said.

You hated him a little for how fast heat moved through you.

“Yes,” you said.

His thumb rested just beneath the waistband. “Yes, what?”

Your face warmed. Jack waited. Not impatient. Not smug. That was a lie. A little smug.

You swallowed and held his eyes. “Take them off.”

Jack’s expression changed. Barely. Enough to make your pulse jump.

“Good,” he said.

Then he did. Slowly. Too slowly. His fingers opened the button, drew the zipper down, and hooked into the waistband. He watched your face as he eased the denim over your hips, like every hitch in your breathing was something he intended to file away and use later.

You lifted your hips when his hands guided you. Jack’s eyes flicked up to yours.

“There it is,” he said.

Your breath caught. “What?”

His hands slid the jeans lower. “The part of you that listens.”

The words went through you so sharply your hips almost lifted again. Jack saw that too. His mouth curved, barely.

“Yeah,” Jack said, voice rough. “Thought so.”

You covered your face with one hand. Jack stopped immediately. His hand closed around your wrist and drew it away.

“Don’t hide from me,” Jack said.

You looked at him. He was not smiling now. Not teasing. His thumb moved once over your wrist.

“Not now,” he said.

Something in your chest went soft and hot at the same time.

“Okay,” you whispered.

Jack held your gaze for one second longer. Then he lowered his mouth to your stomach and kissed you there, just above where your jeans had stopped. Your breath caught. His mouth moved lower, following the denim as he eased it down your legs, kissing skin as he uncovered it. Not rushed. Not careless. Like he had meant what he said earlier.

Careful meant paying attention.

And Jack was paying attention to everything.

By the time your jeans joined the rest of your clothes, you were warm all over and unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with standing.

Jack did not move away.

His hands came back to your legs, sliding slowly up from your knees to your thighs, his gaze following the path like he had nowhere else to be and no intention of rushing. Your breathing caught when his thumbs brushed the edge of your underwear. Jack looked up at you. The pause was small. Barely a pause at all. Still, you felt the question in it. Your hands tightened in the sheets.

“Yes,” you said before he could ask.

His mouth curved.

“Good girl,” Jack said, low enough that the words felt like they belonged against your skin.

Then his fingers hooked into the fabric and drew it down your legs with the same infuriating patience he had used on your jeans. Slow. Controlled. Like he knew exactly what the waiting was doing to you. Like he liked it.

You lifted your hips when his hands guided you again, and this time Jack did not tease you for listening. Not with words. His eyes did it for him. By the time he tossed your underwear aside, your face was hot, your pulse was everywhere, and Jack looked entirely too satisfied with the state of you.

Then he looked up at your face, and whatever he saw there made his jaw flex.

“Come here,” Jack said.

You pushed yourself up on your elbows. He shifted back against the pillows, settling with the kind of practical ease that reminded you again that he knew his body. Knew what he needed. Knew exactly how to move without making you guess.

You thought he wanted you in his lap.

So you moved toward him. Jack’s hand caught your thigh.

“Not there,” he said.

You froze. His gaze lifted to yours. 

Then he nodded higher. “Up here.”

Your breath stopped. Jack watched as understanding hit your face. His mouth curved. Not smug.

No, that was a lie.

A little smug.

“Jack,” you said.

His eyes stayed on yours. “Hands on the headboard.” 

The words went straight through you. You stared at him. Jack stared back. Waiting. Patient in the most unfair way.

Your mouth felt dry. “You want—”

“Yes,” Jack said.

The answer was immediate. No hesitation. No embarrassment. No room for you to make it smaller than it was. Your thighs pressed together before you could stop them.

Jack saw, and his eyes darkened.

“Come here,” he said again.

This time, you moved. Slowly at first, because your body knew what he meant now, and knowing made every inch feel impossible. You climbed higher on the bed, knees sinking into the mattress on either side of his head, one hand reaching for the headboard because he had told you to.

Jack’s hands came to your thighs. Warm. Steady. Guiding.

Not pulling yet.

Just showing you where he wanted you. You settled above him, breath already trembling, fingers curling around the headboard.

Jack looked up at you. 

The sight of him there should not have done what it did to you.

But it did.

His hair was mussed from your hands. His mouth was swollen. His eyes were dark and focused, fixed on you like the rest of the room had stopped existing. Like this was not a novelty to him. Not a performance. Not some half-drunk idea born from a club and too much tension.

This was a decision. Jack’s decision. And he looked entirely too calm about it. You were not calm. You were barely breathing. His hands slid up your thighs. You hovered. Not much. Enough. Jack’s eyes flicked to your face.

“Don’t hover,” he said.

Your stomach flipped. “I’m not,” you said.

His brows lifted. You huffed a breath. “Okay, maybe a little.”

His thumb moved against your thigh. “Why?”

You swallowed. The answer got stuck for a second, not because you did not know it, but because saying it out loud made you feel too exposed. Jack waited.

You glanced down at him. “I don’t want to make it harder for you.”

His expression changed. Not offended. Not hurt. Clear.

“Then listen to me,” Jack said.

Your fingers tightened on the headboard. His hands slid higher, firm enough to make your breath catch.

“If I need something different, I’ll tell you,” he said.

You nodded, but he did not look satisfied.

“Words,” Jack said.

Your breath shook. “Okay.”

His gaze held yours.

“You told me to tell you what I needed,” Jack said. 

His hands tightened. “I’m telling you.”

Heat went through you so hard you almost forgot how to stay upright. Jack’s arms looped around your thighs. Not tentative. Not careful in the way you had misunderstood. Careful in the way he meant. Certain. Attentive. Devastating.

“Right now,” Jack said, voice rough, “I need you closer.”

Then he pulled you down to his mouth. 

Your breath broke.

Both hands tightened on the headboard as sensation shot through you, hot and sudden and so sharp your hips jerked before you could stop them.

Jack held you there.

His arms locked around your thighs, forearms firm against your legs, keeping you exactly where he wanted you as his mouth opened against you. Not hesitant. Not polite. Not even close.

His tongue moved against you, slow at first, deliberate enough to make your spine arch and your fingers grip the headboard harder.

You gasped his name.

The sound tore out of you before you could make it pretty. Jack made a low noise against you, pleased and rough, and the vibration went straight through your body. Then his tongue pressed firmer. More certain. Your elbows nearly bent. His arms tightened.

“No,” Jack said, voice rough against you. “Stay.”

You whimpered. There was no other word for it. You hated that. You loved that. Jack’s mouth curved against you like he knew both things were true.

“Good,” he said.

Then he went back to it. His tongue found the place that made your hips jerk and stayed there.

Your head dropped forward between your arms. Your fingers gripped the headboard hard enough to ache. The world narrowed to Jack’s mouth, Jack’s tongue, Jack’s hands, Jack’s arms around your thighs, Jack beneath you and somehow still in complete control.

You had never understood how someone could be under you and still make you feel like you were the one being taken apart. Now you did.

Jack knew exactly what he was doing. That was the problem. Not guessed. Not hoped. Knew. He found what made your breath catch and stayed there. He found what made your hips jerk and did it again. He found what made you go quiet and changed the pressure until sound broke out of you.

Careful meant paying attention. Careful meant he was learning you in real time and using every bit of it against you. His tongue dragged over you again, slower this time, and your body gave itself away with a full, helpless shudder. Jack’s hands shifted on your thighs.

“There,” he said, rough and low. “That’s better.”

You made a broken noise. You could feel him smile. Your hips moved before you could stop them. Once. Then again. The motion was small at first, almost accidental, your body chasing the pressure of his tongue before your brain could catch up and tell you to be embarrassed.

Jack went still for half a second. Not stopping. Reacting.

Then a rough sound left him, low and pleased, and his hands shifted on your thighs like he had just found something he liked far too much.

Your face burned. You almost froze. Jack felt it immediately. His arms tightened around your thighs.

“No,” Jack said.

Your breath caught. His tongue dragged over you again, slow and devastating, and your hips rocked into his mouth before you could stop them. Jack groaned. Actually groaned.

The sound went straight through you.

“Again,” Jack said.

The word hit you like a command. Like permission. Like praise. Your hands tightened on the headboard, and you did it again, rolling your hips against his mouth with a broken sound you could not keep in your chest.

Jack’s grip turned firmer.

His tongue met you this time, pressure perfect, rhythm changing to match yours like he had been waiting for you to stop holding back.

You were not hovering now. You were not careful now. You were moving against his mouth because he had told you to, because he wanted it, because the sound he made when you did it again made you feel powerful and ruined all at once.

Jack loved it.

You could tell. You could feel it in the way his hands held you there. In the way his mouth followed you. In the way his voice came rough and pleased against you.

“That’s it,” Jack said. “Take it.”

You were going to die here.

That seemed obvious.

You were going to die in Jack Abbot’s bed with your hands on his headboard and his arms locked around your thighs, and the most humiliating part was that you were probably going to thank him for it.

The thought shattered when he changed the angle.

His tongue moved harder, more focused, and your breath caught so sharply it hurt. Jack noticed.  He stayed there. Your body went tight. Your hands slipped against the headboard. Jack’s arms tightened again.

“Don’t pull away,” Jack said.

Your breath broke. “Jack—”

He hummed against you. Like he knew. Like he could feel it coming before you could make sense of it. Your thighs trembled around his head, and the sound that left you was barely a word.

“I’m gonna come,” you gasped.

Jack’s grip turned almost punishing. Not enough to hurt. Enough to hold. Enough to make it clear he had absolutely no intention of letting you go anywhere. A rough sound left him, low against you, and then he dragged you closer.

“I’ve got you,” Jack said, voice rough. “You’re doing so good.”

That did it.

The words hit you at the same time as his tongue, and your body broke open around the feeling.

“Jack—oh—fuck, Jack!” You came saying his name.

Not quietly. Not prettily. Not with any of the control you had been pretending to have. Jack held you through it. He did not let you disappear from it. Did not let you pull away from its force. His arms stayed firm around your thighs, his mouth softer now but still there, his tongue easing you through every last wave until your body trembled so hard you could barely keep your hands on the headboard.

By the time the last of it rolled through you, you were breathing like you had forgotten how air worked. Jack eased his hold slowly. Carefully. Actually carefully this time. His hands stayed steady at your thighs as he guided you down, like he knew your body had forgotten how to do simple things.

Which was fair.

It had.

You ended up half-kneeling over him, one hand still braced against the headboard, the other pressed to his shoulder, staring down at him like he had just ruined the entire concept of sex for everyone else.

Jack looked up at you. Mouth wet. Hair wrecked. Eyes dark and too pleased with himself. Worse, he had earned it.

Holy shit.

The thought arrived slowly, almost stupidly, through the static in your head.

Holy shit.

That was the best orgasm of your life.

Not close. Not even in the same category. Your body knew it before your brain could make language out of it. There was no polite way to compare it to anything else, no reasonable little caveat you could attach to make it less dramatic.

It had not been like that before. Ever. You were not even sure you had known it could feel like that.

Jack’s thumb moved once against your thigh. Your eyes refocused on his face. And that was the problem. Because you were in so much trouble.

You were going to want that again.

Not vaguely.

Not in some distant, theoretical way.

You were going to want it again tonight.

Tomorrow.

Every time you saw his hands.

Every time he said “Careful.”

Every time his eyes dropped to your mouth, like he knew exactly what you tasted like.

Again and again and again.

Jack’s mouth curved. “There you are.” 

You tried to answer. Nothing came out. Jack’s smile faded by a fraction. Not completely. Just enough. His hand slid from your thigh to your waist, then higher, steadying you with a touch that had gone less possessive and more careful in the way he had taught you to understand.

“Hey,” Jack said.

You blinked down at him. 

His eyes moved over your face, sharp now. Focused. “Are you okay?”

You nodded too quickly. Jack’s brows drew together.

“Words,” he said.

The command should not have affected you after that. It did anyway. You swallowed. “Yeah.”

His hand stayed at your waist. “Yeah?”

You let out a shaky laugh, half embarrassed, half still somewhere above your own body. “I’m okay.”

Jack studied you for one more second. “You sure?”

You nodded, slower this time. “I’m sure.”

His thumb moved once against your skin. Only then did the edge leave his face. Not all of it. Enough. You looked at him again.  His wet mouth, his dark eyes, the absolute wreckage of his hair from your hands and heat rushed back in so fast it nearly made you dizzy.

Jack noticed that too.

His mouth curved again, but softer this time. “Good.” 

Your laugh came out breathless. “Good?”

Jack’s hand tightened at your waist, grounding you.

“Good,” Jack said again. “Because we’re not done.”

The words went through you like a spark catching.

Your body was still trembling. Your breath still had not figured itself out. You were still half-kneeling over him, one hand on his shoulder, the other braced near his head, trying to understand how the hell you were supposed to keep functioning after that.

And Jack was looking at you like he had every intention of making it worse. You should have said something smart. Something teasing. Something that made you feel like you had even one piece of yourself left.

Instead, you kissed him. Hard. Messy. A little desperate.

Jack caught you with one hand at your waist and the other at the back of your neck, steadying you as your mouth opened over his. You tasted yourself on him, and the realization made your whole body go hot again, fast enough to make you dizzy. Jack made a rough sound against your mouth.

You pulled back just enough to breathe. “I want you.”

His eyes darkened. Your hand moved down his chest, over the warm, solid strength of him, lower this time without stopping. Jack’s breath changed. Not cautious now. Not guarded. Hungry.

“You sure?” Jack asked.

You looked at him. Really looked. At his swollen mouth. His wrecked hair. The way his hand stayed firm at your waist, grounding you even while his eyes made it very clear he wanted you spread out beneath him again.

“Yes,” you said. “I’m sure.”

Jack held your gaze for one second longer. Then he shifted, reaching toward the nightstand. You watched him open the drawer. Your stomach flipped at the ordinary sound of it. The slide of wood. The small pause.

The foil packet in his hand when he turned back to you. Protection should not have felt like part of the heat. With Jack, somehow, it did.

Practical. Certain. Adult.

Like he knew exactly what he was doing and had no interest in pretending otherwise.

His eyes flicked to yours. “Still yes?”

Your breath caught. You nodded, then corrected yourself before he could.

“Yes,” you said.

Jack’s mouth curved faintly. “Good.”

The word still worked on you. Annoyingly. Devastatingly.

He tore the packet open, and for a second your brain shorted out at the sight of his hands. Those hands. The same ones that had held your thighs open, guided your hips, kept you from pulling away when your own body tried to run from how good it felt. You were in so much trouble. You already knew that.

Jack rolled the condom on with efficient, practiced focus, and you hated how hot that was too. Everything he did was calm. Competent. Unrushed. Like he had all the time in the world to ruin you properly. When he looked back up, his gaze moved over your face.

“You with me?” Jack asked.

Your mouth felt dry. “Yes,” you said. “Very much with you.”

His hand came to your thigh. “Then come here.”

You moved before you had a chance to think better of it. Jack guided you into his lap, hands steady at your hips as you straddled him. The position should have made you feel in control. It did not. Not really. Not with the way he looked at you from beneath lowered lids. Not with the way his thumbs moved slowly against your skin. Not with the way he sat back against the headboard like patience was something he had weaponized.

Your hands settled on his chest. His skin was warm beneath your palms. His heart was beating faster than he looked like it was. That made something inside you turn over. Jack was not untouched by this. He was just better at hiding it.

You shifted above him, and his jaw tightened. There. You saw it. The crack. Small, but real.

Your pulse jumped. Jack’s eyes lifted to yours.

“You like that?” he asked.

You swallowed. “What?”

“Seeing what you do to me,” Jack said. 

Your fingers curled lightly against his chest. You wanted to lie. You could not.

“Yes,” you whispered.

Jack’s hands tightened at your hips. “Then look,” he said.

Your breath stopped. He guided you down slowly. So slowly, your whole body tensed with it. The first press of him into you made your eyes flutter, and Jack’s hands flexed at your hips immediately.

“Look at me,” Jack said.

You forced your eyes open. He was watching your face. Of course he was. The stretch of him filled your body inch by inch, slow and overwhelming, and your mouth fell open because there was no way to stay quiet through it.

Jack’s jaw locked.

His head tipped back against the headboard for half a second, and the sight of it almost ruined you. Then his eyes found yours again. Dark. Focused. Barely controlled.

“There you go,” Jack said, voice rough.

Your hands pressed harder against his chest. You sank down the rest of the way, and both of you went still. For one breath, there was nothing. No teasing. No smug little smile. No careful corrections. Just the two of you trying to survive the first full second of it. Jack’s thumbs pressed into your hips.

“Breathe,” he said.

You tried. It came out broken.

His mouth curved faintly, but his voice stayed rough. “Close enough.”

A laugh caught in your throat and turned into a moan when you shifted. Jack’s hands tightened. You felt him everywhere. Deep. Heavy. So real it made the room tilt. You looked down at him and thought, wildly, that this was what you had wanted in the club.

This exact thing. Jack beneath you. Jack watching you. Jack trying not to let you see how badly he wanted to take over.

You moved again. Slowly. His jaw flexed. You did it again. Jack’s breath left him through his nose. His eyes stayed on yours. Patient. Hungry. Dangerous. He was letting you have it.

That was the worst part.

He let you set the rhythm. Let you rock down against him, let you find what felt good, let you watch his control tighten and tighten and tighten beneath your hands. He let you see the exact second it started costing him.

You felt powerful for maybe thirty seconds. Maybe less. Then the angle caught something deep enough to make your rhythm falter. Jack’s mouth curved. Barely. Meanly.

“That all you’ve got?” he asked.

Your breath caught. The callback hit you low and hot. You glared at him, but it was ruined by the way your hips stuttered. Jack’s hands slid fully around your hips.

“Careful,” you said, breathless, trying to make it sound like a warning.

His eyes darkened. “We covered that.” 

Then he moved you. Your whole body jolted. His grip took over the rhythm you had lost, guiding you down onto him with a slow, firm pull that made your hands clutch at his chest.

“Jack,” you gasped.

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

“You wanted to see if I’d last,” Jack said.

His hands dragged your hips down again. Slow. Devastating. “Now you know.”

Your head dipped forward. He caught your jaw before you could hide. Not hard. Enough.

“Uh-uh,” Jack said. “I said look.”

You looked. You had to. His eyes were on you, dark and intent, watching every reaction like he had already decided to memorize them all and use them against you later.

Your thighs started to shake. He felt that too. Jack’s hands slowed, but the pressure did not ease. He let you feel every inch of him. Every drag. Every deep, overwhelming second. You were warm everywhere. Loose and trembling and still somehow wound too tight to breathe right.

Jack’s thumb moved at your hip.

“There,” he said, voice rough. “That’s it.”

You made a sound you did not recognize. His jaw tightened at it. The pleasure built differently this time. Not the sharp, blinding shock of his mouth. This was deeper. Heavier.

A slow heat gathering low in your body with every drag of him, every firm pull of his hands, every rough breath he let out when you moved just right. Your hands pressed hard against his chest.

“Jack,” you said.

His eyes sharpened. “Yeah?”

Your hips stuttered again. You tried to keep going. Tried to hold the rhythm. Tried to stay above him like you had any control left at all. Jack’s hands tightened.

“Oh,” he said, low and rough. “There you are.”

Your breath caught. He knew. Of course he knew.

“I’m—” you started.

Jack pulled you down harder, and the rest of the sentence broke into a moan. His mouth curved.

“You’re what?” he asked.

You hated him. You wanted him so badly you could barely see straight.

Your nails dragged lightly over his chest. “I’m close.”

Jack’s expression changed. The smugness did not disappear. It sharpened. His hands shifted on your hips, holding you steady as he guided you through another slow, devastating roll.

“Good,” Jack said.

Your whole body clenched. He felt it. His jaw flexed.

“Fuck,” he said, almost under his breath.

The sound of him losing that much control nearly did it by itself. Your rhythm faltered completely. Jack took over. From underneath you, somehow, he took over.

His hands held your hips exactly where he wanted them, guiding you down onto him again and again, each movement controlled and deep and timed like he knew your body better than you did.

Maybe he did. Maybe that was the problem. Your head fell forward. Jack’s hand came to your jaw again.

“Look at me,” he said.

Your eyes opened. Barely. Enough. His gaze locked on yours.

“There,” Jack said. “Stay with me.”

Your breath broke. “Jack—”

“I know,” he said.

His thumb moved against your jaw. “I’ve got you.”

You shook above him, thighs trembling, hands slipping against his chest. Jack held you there. Kept you moving. Kept you taking him. Kept you looking at him until there was nowhere for the feeling to go except through you.

“You’re doing so good,” Jack said.

That did it. Your body broke around him. You came with his name in your mouth, sharp and helpless, your hands clinging to his chest as Jack’s grip turned firm enough to keep you upright through every wave.

He watched you through all of it. His eyes dark. His jaw tight. His body locked beneath yours like watching you fall apart on top of him was testing every piece of control he had left.

“Fuck,” Jack said, rough and low. “That’s it.”

You were still shaking when Jack pulled you down into a kiss. Hot. Deep. Almost rough enough to steal the last of your balance. When he broke it, his mouth stayed against yours.

“Turn over,” Jack said.

Your whole body reacted. The words went through you before your brain could catch up. You stilled. Jack felt it immediately. His hand softened at your hip. His eyes searched your face.

“Only if you want it,” he said.

Your pulse hammered. You looked at him, at the care under the command, at the restraint under all that heat, and wanted him so sharply it nearly hurt.

“I want it,” you said.

His gaze held yours. “You sure?”

You nodded, then remembered. “I’m sure,” you said.

Jack kissed you once. Hard. Approving. Then his hands shifted, guiding you carefully off him and onto the mattress. There was nothing hurried about the way he moved you. Nothing careless. He was intense, yes. Hungry, yes. But every motion still carried that same infuriating attention.

Careful meant paying attention. You understood that now. You turned over because he had told you to. Because you wanted to. Because the sound he made when you did sent heat crawling up your spine.

Jack’s hand came to your hip. Then the other. He settled behind you, his palms spreading over your skin, and for one suspended second, he did not move. He just looked. You felt it. The weight of his gaze. The exact fantasy clicking into place. Your fingers twisted in the sheets.

“Jack?” you asked.

His hand tightened at your hip.

“This,” Jack said, voice rough at your shoulder. “This is what I kept thinking about.”

Your breath caught. His mouth brushed your skin.

“Your hips under my hands,” Jack said.

His fingers flexed. “Your mouth trying to stay quiet.”

Heat rushed through you. You pushed back without meaning to. Jack went very still. Then he laughed once. Low. Disbelieving. Rough enough to make your whole body tighten.

“Fuck,” Jack said. “You are trouble.”

Then he pushed back into you. Your arms nearly gave out. The angle was different. Deeper. Sharper. Enough that the air left your lungs all at once. Jack’s hands held your hips, keeping you exactly where he wanted you as he started to move. Not frantic. Not out of control. Worse than that. Controlled. Certain. Hard enough to make your fingers clutch at the sheets, slow enough to make you feel every second of it. You buried your face in the mattress to muffle a moan. Jack noticed. His hand slid up your spine.

“Don’t do that,” he said.

Your voice came out broken. “Do what?”

His mouth brushed your shoulder. “Go quiet on me.”

Your body clenched around him. Jack’s grip tightened.

“Oh,” he said, rough and low. “You like that too.”

You could not answer. Not properly. Not with him moving like that. Not with his hands on your hips and his voice at your back and the memory of his mouth still burning through your body.

“Words,” Jack said.

You dragged in a breath. “Yes.”

His hand slid around your waist. “Yes what?”

You made a helpless sound. Jack slowed. Cruel. Patient. Waiting.

Your fingers twisted in the sheets. “Yes, I like it.”

His mouth touched the back of your shoulder. “Good.”

Then he moved again, and your answer dissolved into a moan. It built differently this time. Not fast and blinding like before. This was deeper. Heavier. A slow heat gathering low in your body with every drag of him, every firm pull of his hands, every rough breath he let out against your skin.

Jack’s control was fraying. You could feel it now. In the way his grip tightened. In the way his breathing turned uneven. In the way his mouth found your shoulder and stayed there, open and hot, like he needed somewhere to put the sound building in his chest.

You pushed back again. His hips stuttered. Only once. But you felt it. Jack’s hand came down beside yours on the bed.

“Careful,” he said, but it was wrecked now.

Not the lesson from before. Not the warning from the truck. Something closer to a plea.

You smiled into the sheets, breathless and ruined. “I thought that wasn’t what careful meant.”

Jack’s hand slid to your jaw. He pulled you up. Not roughly. Not too fast. Just enough to bring your back against his chest, your body held upright by the steady grip of his hand at your jaw.

Not your throat. Your jaw. Firm. Certain. Keeping your face turned enough that he could see you. Keeping you with him. His other hand moved low over your stomach, spreading there with a pressure that made the feeling of him sharper, deeper, impossible to ignore.

Your breath broke. Jack felt it and his mouth brushed the side of your neck.

“There,” Jack said, voice rough against your ear. “Stay with me.”

You tried to nod. His hand at your jaw held you still.

“Words,” Jack said.

Your eyes fluttered. “I’m here.”

His hand pressed lower on your stomach. Just enough. Your whole body jolted. Jack’s breath went rough against your ear.

“You feel that?” he asked.

Your fingers scrambled for something to hold onto and found his forearm.

“Jack—”

His hand pressed again, careful and devastating. “You feel me?”

The sound that left you barely counted as an answer. Jack’s grip at your jaw tightened by a fraction.

“Words,” he said again.

Your whole body shook against him.

“Yes,” you gasped. “Fuck, yes, I feel you.”

A rough sound left him, and his forehead dropped briefly to your shoulder like the answer had done something to him too.

“Good,” Jack said.

Then he moved again, and there was nothing left in your head but him.

Only him. His chest against your back. His hand at your jaw. His arm around your body. The deep, relentless drag of him inside you, each thrust controlled enough to make you feel every second and rough enough to make your thoughts scatter before they could become words.

Your fingers locked around his forearm. Not pulling him away. Holding on.

His mouth brushed your cheek, your jaw, the corner of your mouth from the side.

His breathing was rough now. Uneven. The kind of uneven that made heat curl low in your stomach because Jack had been so controlled all night. So deliberate. So infuriatingly sure of himself.

And now he was starting to sound wrecked.

His hand pressed low over your stomach again, and the angle made your whole body jolt. You clenched around him. Jack swore against your throat.

“Fuck,” Jack said, low and broken.

The sound did something to you. Not composed. Not smug. Not careful. Broken. You turned your face toward him as much as his hold allowed, and his mouth caught yours in a kiss that was more breath than anything else, hot and messy and badly aimed.

It was not pretty.

Nothing about either of you was pretty anymore. Your body was trembling. His breathing was harsh. The sheets were twisted beneath your knees, and your skin was damp where his chest pressed to your back. His hand at your jaw held you there like he could not stand the thought of losing your face now, not when he was this close.

“Jack,” you said, and his name came out softer than you meant it to.

His rhythm stuttered. Only once. But you felt it. His forehead dropped to your shoulder.

“Don’t,” Jack said.

You swallowed. “Don’t what?”

His laugh was rough and breathless against your skin. “Say my name like that unless you want this to be over.”

Heat curled through you, slow and vicious. You should have let him have that. You should have been merciful. You were not.

“Jack,” you said again.

His whole body went tight behind you. The sound that left him was rough enough to make your stomach flip. Not quite a groan. Not quite your name. Something worse. Something dragged out of him. His hand left your stomach and caught your hip, holding you steady as he drove into you with less control than before.

“There,” Jack said, voice wrecked at your ear. “Fuck, there.”

Your fingers dug into his forearm. He felt it. His mouth pressed to your neck, open and hot, and the next sound he made was unmistakable. A groan. Deep. Rough. Dragged out of him. His hand tightened at your hip.

“I’m gonna fucking come,” Jack said, voice wrecked against your skin.

Your whole body went molten. The words hit you low and hot, and you turned your face toward him as much as his grip at your jaw allowed.

“Jack,” you whispered.

His rhythm stuttered. Only once. Then he drove into you again. Once. Twice. A third time, harder, his breath breaking against your neck.

“Oh fu—” Jack’s voice snapped off into a rough groan. “Oh, fuck.”

His hand at your jaw gentled even as the rest of him went tense behind you. 

He came like that.

 With his mouth against your skin. With that broken sound still caught in his throat. With your name rough and helpless on the next breath. You felt every second of it. The hard shudder through his body. The broken rhythm. The way his grip on your hip tightened, then loosened, then tightened again like he did not know whether to hold on or let himself fall apart.

He held you through it.

Or maybe you held him. Maybe it was both. For a few seconds, neither of you moved. Jack’s forehead rested against your shoulder. His breathing was harsh against your skin. Your own body still trembled in little aftershocks, too sensitive, too warm, too aware of every place he touched you. Then Jack’s hand slid from your jaw to your cheek. Gentle now. So gentle it almost hurt worse.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

You nodded before you remembered.

“Yes,” you said, voice hoarse. “I’m okay.”

His thumb brushed your cheek. “Sure?”

You let out a quiet, shaky laugh. “Jack.”

“That’s not an answer,” Jack said.

You turned your face toward him, tired and warm and still entirely too aware of him. “I’m sure.”

His eyes searched yours for another second. Then his mouth touched your shoulder. Soft. Brief. Nothing like the way he had kissed you before. 

“Okay,” Jack said.

He helped you down carefully, one hand at your waist, the other braced beside you. The shift made you hiss softly, and Jack stopped immediately. Your hand covered his.

“I’m okay,” you said.

His eyes flicked to yours. You managed a faint smile. “That one was preemptive.”

Jack huffed a breath that might have been a laugh if either of you had the energy for one.

“Smartass,” Jack said.

His voice was softer now. Still Jack. But softer. He moved away only long enough to deal with the condom and get a washcloth. Practical. Quiet. No performance, no awkwardness, no sudden distance after all that heat.

You stayed where you were for a second, cheek pressed to the sheets, trying to convince your body it belonged to you again. It was not going well.

Jack came back and sat beside you on the bed. The mattress dipped. His hand touched your hip first, warm and steady. “Can I?”

You nodded into the sheets, then caught yourself.

“Yes,” you said.

His mouth curved faintly. “Good.”

You did not have the strength to be annoyed by how much that still worked on you. He cleaned you up with the same infuriating care he seemed to bring to everything, his touch gentle enough to make your chest ache and matter-of-fact enough to keep you from feeling exposed.

That might have been the worst part. Or the best part. The way he did not make tenderness feel fragile. The way he made it feel practical. Expected. Like of course he would take care of you. Like of course he would not leave you to figure out what to do with yourself after he had taken you apart.

Your throat tightened. You blamed exhaustion. Mostly. When he finished, Jack tossed the washcloth into his laundry basket and looked down at you.

His hair was a disaster. His mouth was swollen. His eyes were still dark, but the edge had gentled into something quieter. You pushed yourself up slowly. Your arms felt untrustworthy.

Jack noticed and reached for you immediately, one hand steadying your waist.

You let him. That should have worried you. It did not. You sat back on your heels and looked around for your clothes, reality creeping in around the edges of the room.

Your jeans were somewhere on the floor. Your underwear too. Your red top was still by the front door. Fantastic. You shifted like you were going to climb off the bed. Jack’s hand stayed at your waist.

“Where are you going?” Jack asked.

You glanced back at him. “Just getting my clothes.”

His expression changed. Not much. Enough.

“You don’t have to,” Jack said.

You blinked. “I don’t?”

His thumb moved once against your side. “Not if you don’t want to.”

The room went very quiet. Your first instinct was to make a joke. To shrug it off. To say something easy and casual and painless, because that was what people did after nights like this, wasn’t it? They found their clothes, fixed their hair, checked their phone, made the night smaller before it started asking for anything.

But you could not make this small. Not with Jack looking at you like that. Not with his hand still warm at your waist. Not with your body still aching in ways that made your stomach flip every time you shifted. 

You were in trouble. Real trouble. Because it had been one night. One bad decision. One club. One black T-shirt. And already you knew. You were going to want him again. Again and again and again.

Jack’s eyes moved over your face, and whatever he saw there made his mouth soften.

“Hey,” Jack said.

You swallowed. “Yeah?”

He reached for the black T-shirt he had dropped near the bed and held it out to you.

“Put this on if you’re cold,” Jack said.

You looked at the shirt. Then at him. Something warm and dangerous moved through your chest.

“Bossy after sex too?” you asked.

Jack’s mouth curved.

“You complained less during,” Jack said.

A laugh broke out of you, tired and unsteady. Jack’s expression shifted at the sound. Like he liked it. Like he was relieved by it. You took the shirt from him and pulled it over your head. It fell soft and warm around you, smelling like him, and that should not have done anything to you after everything that had just happened.

It did anyway.

Jack watched you for a second too long. Then he shifted back against the pillows and opened one arm. Not demanding. Not assuming. Just offering.

You hesitated for half a breath.

Then you crawled back into bed. Jack’s arm closed around you when you settled against him, careful with your body, firm enough that you knew he wanted you there. Your cheek rested against his chest, and his hand moved slowly over your side, grounding and warm.

For a minute, neither of you said anything. The quiet was different now. Still charged. Still too intimate. But softer around the edges. You listened to his breathing settle beneath your ear.

Your eyes grew heavy despite yourself.

Then the thought slipped out before you could stop it.

“So,” you said, voice muffled against his chest. “That was careful?”

Jack’s hand paused on your side. Then his chest moved under your cheek with a quiet laugh.

“For now,” Jack said.

Your eyes opened. “For now?”

His hand resumed its slow path over your side.

“Sleep for a little while,” Jack said.

You tilted your head enough to look at him. “A little while?”

Jack’s thumb moved against your waist. His eyes met yours, dark and warm and entirely too sure of himself.

“You’ll need it,” Jack said.