SIT BACK AND ENJOY

Chicago had always been loud enough to drown out your thoughts.

This place seemed determined to make you listen to every single one of them.

The moving truck rolled slowly down Maple Street, its engine grumbling as though it, too, objected to the destination, and you rested your forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window while watching the neighbourhood reveal itself slowly. Every lawn had been trimmed within an inch of perfection. Every mailbox stood upright instead of leaning drunkenly toward the road. American flags fluttered from polished porches despite there being no holiday worth celebrating, and flowerbeds burst with arrangements of roses whose petals looked too immaculate to have survived wind or rain. Even the children riding bicycles seemed strangely choreographed, calling cheerful greetings to neighbours who knew each of their names, their laughter carrying through the warm spring air before disappearing beneath the distant toll of church bells.

Your father finally slowed the truck in front of a modest two-storey house with pale blue shutters and a wraparound porch. He turned off the engine without saying anything, gripping the steering wheel for several seconds while cigarette smoke drifted lazily from the one balanced between his fingers. The divorce had split everything neatly down the middle—house, furniture, bank accounts, holidays—but no one asked where eighteen-year-old daughters wanted to go. Your mother stayed in Chicago with the apartment she'd fought tooth and nail to keep. Your father accepted a new job three states away because "there was nothing left" back home.

"You can take whichever room you want," he said eventually, still looking through the windshield instead of at you.

It was such an ordinary sentence that it almost made you laugh.

Not Are you okay?

Not I'm sorry your life fell apart because ours did.

Typical.

You climbed out before he could say anything else, letting the truck door slam harder than necessary, and inhaled air that smelled overwhelmingly of freshly cut grass and damp earth instead of gasoline, hot concrete, and rain-soaked asphalt. The breeze carried the scent of lilacs from somewhere nearby, sweet enough to become cloying after only a few breaths, and the oppressive neatness of the neighbourhood wrapped itself around you with the suffocating gentleness of a freshly washed bedsheet.

It didn't feel real.

It felt staged, like someone had built an entire town from the collective memories of people who believed America had once been simpler than it actually was.

Your father lit another cigarette almost immediately after finishing the first.

"Apparently," he muttered, exhaling smoke toward the afternoon sky, "the pastor lives next door."

You followed his gaze without much interest.

The neighbouring house was much older than yours, its white clapboard walls softened by decades of climbing ivy that curled around the porch railings in thick emerald vines. Rose bushes bloomed beneath every window, their crimson blossoms almost unnaturally vibrant against the white paint. While rows of lavender swayed gently beside a stone pathway leading toward the front steps. 

A woman emerged from the garden carrying a wicker basket balanced against her hip, and even from across the lawn there was something effortlessly graceful about the way she moved, brushing loose strands of dark hair behind her ear before looking toward the moving truck with an expression that immediately softened into a welcoming smile.

She waved.

Your father waved back with awkward enthusiasm.

You offered the smallest possible nod.

The woman didn't seem offended by your lack of warmth. If anything, her smile only widened before she disappeared inside the house, leaving the front door open behind her as though expecting someone else to follow.

"You could try being polite," your father remarked.

"I nodded."

"You looked like you were attending a funeral."

"I kind of am."

The words escaped before you could stop them.

Your father didn't answer; he simply looked away, crushing the cigarette beneath his shoe with more force than necessary before opening the truck and beginning to unload boxes in silence.

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

Your bedroom overlooked the street.

It wasn't particularly large, but the slanted ceiling and wide window gave it the illusion of space, and if you ignored the floral wallpaper left behind by whoever had lived there before, it might even have been pleasant. You left every box untouched, stepping instead toward the window where the neighbourhood stretched beneath the late afternoon sun in quiet perfection. From here, the church dominated everything.

It stood only a short walk away, its white steeple rising confidently above the rooftops until it became the highest point in town, casting a long shadow that crept slowly across the surrounding streets as the sun drifted westward. The stained-glass windows caught the light in fractured colours, spilling ribbons of sapphire, crimson, and gold across the stone walls, and every hour the bell announced itself with unwavering certainty, as though reminding the entire town exactly where its heart resided.

You had never been particularly religious. 

Your mother claimed belief was something people found when they were desperate enough. Your father claimed nothing at all.

Still, there was something undeniably magnetic about the building—not welcoming, exactly, but impossible to ignore. It possessed the quiet confidence of institutions that had existed long before the people inside them and fully expected to remain standing long after everyone currently alive had become names carved into marble.

The longer you stood there, the more impossible it became to convince yourself that the church was simply another building.

Every street curved toward it, every sidewalk appeared to lead back to its weathered stone steps, and even the houses seemed arranged in quiet deference, as though generations of families had built their lives around its presence without ever questioning why. It reminded you less of a place of worship than of a watchtower, standing silently above the town with the patient certainty that everyone, eventually, regardless of where they wandered, would find themselves returning to its doors.

With a quiet sigh, you stepped away from the window and looked around your bedroom for the first time. Brown cardboard boxes towered against one wall with your mother's handwriting still scrawled across the tape in black marker—BOOKS, WINTER CLOTHES, BEDROOM—small pieces of a life that no longer existed packed away as though memories could be folded as neatly as sweaters. For a fleeting moment, you considered unpacking, imagining where your records might sit or which shelf your novels would occupy, but the thought felt strangely disloyal, as though arranging your belongings meant accepting that this house was something more permanent than a temporary stop on the way back home.

Because that was what you kept telling yourself.

You weren't staying.

Your father might believe in fresh starts, but you believed in endings, and sooner or later, this one would end too.

You left the boxes where they were.

Downstairs, the muffled scrape of furniture drifting across hardwood floors reminded you that your father had continued working without you. You could picture him perfectly without even looking—the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled to his elbows, another cigarette dangling absentmindedly between his lips despite promising your mother years ago that he'd quit, moving through the house with the determination of someone who believed staying busy was easier than admitting he didn't know what else to do with himself.

He had always been good at pretending. Pretending as if the shouting matches hadn't rattled the windows, that your mother's packed suitcases hadn't sat untouched by the front door for nearly a week before she finally carried them downstairs herself, that signing a stack of divorce papers in a lawyer's office on an unremarkable Tuesday afternoon was no different from signing for a parcel at the post office.

Some people cried when their marriages ended.

Your father had simply bought another pack of cigarettes.

You wandered downstairs without thinking much about where your feet were taking you, trailing your fingers lightly along the polished banister as unfamiliar floorboards creaked beneath your weight. The house carried that peculiar scent all recently vacated homes seemed to share, a mixture of fresh paint and old timber. 

Your father was standing in the kitchen with his back to you, staring blankly into an open cupboard that contained nothing except two chipped mugs the landlord had apparently forgotten to remove. For several moments, he didn't move at all. He simply stood there with one hand braced against the counter, cigarette smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling while the afternoon light spilled through the sink window and painted long rectangles across the floor.

For a fleeting second, he looked impossibly older than you remembered.

Not because of the grey beginning to thread through his dark hair or the pull of his permanent frown that exemplified a network of deep wrinkles, but because loneliness had a way of ageing people unevenly. It hollowed them out from the inside until they carried themselves like houses after a fire—still standing, somehow, but unmistakably changed.

He noticed you only when the floorboard beneath your foot groaned.

"There's a diner a few blocks over," he said, reaching automatically for his wallet. "I figured we'd get dinner there. Saves unpacking the kitchen tonight."

You leaned against the doorway.

"Sure."

He hesitated.

"You hungry?"

"I guess." You sighed.

Another silence settled between the two of you, stretching just long enough to become uncomfortable before he cleared his throat and slipped the wallet into his back pocket.

"People say the pie's good."

The comment felt almost painfully rehearsed, like something he'd read in a brochure on how fathers were supposed to speak to daughters after destroying their lives.

"That's reassuring."

"I thought so."

You almost smiled.

Almost.

Instead, you looked past him through the kitchen window.

The church steeple was visible even from here.

It rose above the rooftops in the distance, brilliant white beneath the lowering sun, impossible to escape no matter which direction you faced. The cross at its peak caught the fading light so intensely that for a moment it seemed suspended in the sky itself, detached from the building below, watching over the town with quiet indifference.

"Everything around here revolves around that place, doesn't it?" you asked without turning away from the window.

Your father followed your gaze.

"I suppose it does."

"That's depressing."

"It depends who you ask."

You let out a quiet hum.

"I wasn't asking."

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

The diner sat on the corner of Main Street, tucked between an old hardware store and a tiny bookshop whose faded sign looked as though it hadn't been replaced in decades. A little brass bell chimed above the door as you stepped inside.

It looked exactly how diners always looked in old American films, with red vinyl booths polished smooth by generations of customers, spinning chrome stools lined neatly along the counter, and waitresses who somehow remembered every regular's order before they'd even sat down. A jukebox stood silently in one corner, its coloured lights flickering despite no one feeding it coins, while framed photographs of local baseball teams and town parades crowded every inch of the walls.

The conversations stopped. Not all at once, but you felt it nonetheless.

Heads lifted almost imperceptibly from steaming coffee mugs and half-finished meals. Eyes lingered a fraction longer than politeness allowed before drifting away again, only to return moments later under the pretence of looking elsewhere. 

You were no longer just another girl.

You were the new girl.

The divorced man's daughter.

The strangers from Chicago.

Your father either didn't notice or chose not to. He slid into a booth near the window, picking up a laminated menu, prompting you to sit down too. Your fingers drifted absently over the frayed edge of the laminated menu, though you weren't really reading it. The words blurred together into an endless procession of burgers, meatloaf, club sandwiches and slices of homemade pie, all priced cheaply enough to suggest the recipes had remained unchanged for decades. It struck you that this diner, like everything else you'd seen since crossing the county line, seemed entirely uninterested in becoming something new.

A waitress appeared beside the table with two glasses of water balanced expertly on a round metal tray tucked against her shoulder. She looked to be in her late fifties, her greying hair pinned into a loose bun beneath a paper hat embroidered with the diner's name, and she smiled with the effortless familiarity of someone who had spent most of her life recognising faces before names.

"You folks must be the Parks," she said brightly, setting the glasses down without needing to ask whether you wanted lemon. "We've all been expecting you."

Your father looked up in surprise. "You have?"

"Oh, honey." She laughed softly, her voice oozing with honey. "Nothing much happens around here. New neighbours are practically headline news."

You lowered your eyes to the condensation gathering on your water glass, tracing a fingertip through the droplets before they slipped onto the tabletop. Somehow, hearing it confirmed felt infinitely worse than merely suspecting it.

The waitress scribbled something onto her notepad before looking between the two of you again.

"Your daddy's taking over at the engineering firm, isn't he?"

"That's right," your father replied politely.

"Well, we're happy to have you both. Lord knows this town could always use a few fresh faces."

Your father offered the strained smile he'd perfected over the last year. "Thank you."

She turned to you then, her expression softening almost instinctively.

"And you'll be starting at Saint Augustine's on Monday?"

You blinked. "I guess."

"You'll like it there."

The certainty with which she said it made something inside you churn.

"What if I don't?"

She paused for the briefest moment before smiling again, as though she believed every difficult thing could be solved with enough kindness.

"Oh," she said gently, "I'm sure you will."

When she finally wandered off toward another table, your father reached automatically for the sugar dispenser despite drinking his coffee black.

"You didn't have to answer like that."

"I answered."

"You know what I mean."

"No," you replied, lifting your glass. "I really don't."

He sighed quietly, rubbing a hand across his jaw before staring out the window instead of arguing further. It had become another habit of his lately, abandoning conversations the moment they threatened to become honest. You sometimes wondered whether it was because he genuinely wanted to avoid conflict or because he no longer trusted himself to say the right thing.

Outside, Main Street basked beneath the last warmth of the evening sun. A teenage boy wheeled his bicycle past the diner's window, one hand balancing a paper bag hooked over the handlebars while an older woman called after him from across the street, reminding him not to forget choir practice tomorrow evening. He lifted a hand in acknowledgement without even turning around, clearly having heard the reminder a hundred times before.

Choir practice.

You almost smiled to yourself; of course, there was choir practice.

Of course, there were church picnics and Sunday bake sales and Christmas pageants where everyone knew every line before the first rehearsal. You could already picture the bulletin boards covered in handwritten notices, casserole dishes appearing mysteriously whenever someone fell ill. 

The waitress returned with a steaming mug of coffee for your father and a basket of warm dinner rolls that she insisted had "just come out of the oven."

"They're on the house," she said with a wink. "Welcome to Maple Creek."

Your father thanked her.

You stared at the basket for a long moment before pulling one apart absentmindedly, watching gasps of steam escape into the air. The bread was still warm enough to burn your fingertips, tasting like someone's grandmother had been making them exactly the same way for fifty years, refusing to write the recipe down because she'd never needed to, measuring ingredients by instinct rather than teaspoons, and somehow producing the same perfect result every single time. You truly hated how good it was.

Your father noticed the expression that crossed your face before you had the chance to hide it, the smallest flicker of amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth as he reached for one himself. "See?" he said quietly, tearing his own roll in half. "The pie probably isn't lying either."

You looked up just long enough to roll your eyes.

"Don't get ahead of yourself."

"I'm just saying," he replied with a shrug that felt almost familiar, "the place has potential."

"The bread has potential."

"I'll take that as progress."

"It isn't."

He smiled anyway.

It was brief—gone almost as soon as it appeared—but for the first time since you'd crossed the state line, your father looked a little more like the man you remembered. Before the lawyers, before the cardboard boxes stacked shoulder-high in your old living room, before every conversation between your parents had become another carefully measured negotiation about who got what and when. There had been a time when he laughed easily, when Sunday mornings meant burnt pancakes and classic rock playing too loudly through the house while your mother complained that neither of you knew the meaning of an inside voice. Sometimes it frightened you how difficult it was becoming to remember those versions of them. 

The waitress returned, balancing two heavy plates against her forearm, a skill that could only come from years of doing the same job every single day. She placed your father's meatloaf before him first, thick slices drowned in peppered gravy beside a generous mound of mashed potatoes. She then set your cheeseburger and fries in front of you with a smile.

"Everything looks alright?"

"It looks fine," your father answered politely.

"You just let me know if you need anything. Ketchup's already on the table, and don't be shy about asking for more fries. Earl always makes too many."

She drifted away before either of you could respond, stopping at another booth to refill an elderly couple's coffee cups without needing to ask. The old man thanked her by name. She asked after his wife. Two booths over, someone else called her over just to tell her that his grandson had finally gotten into college, and she clasped both hands over her heart as though the news belonged to her own family.

You watched the exchange for longer than you meant to.

You had the uneasy feeling that, by tomorrow morning, half the town would know exactly where you'd eaten dinner on your first night. By the end of the week, they'd know which house you lived in, what car your father drove, and probably the fact that you'd barely spoken through the entire meal. In a place this small, stories didn't spread because people were cruel. They spread because there simply wasn't much else to talk about.

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

You learned later that the woman from earlier was Mrs Sim, the pastor’s wife. She arrived with a still-warm peach cobbler, which your father accepted with a gratitude that seemed genuine, the lines around his eyes softening as she spoke to him about the community, the quiet, the good schools. You lingered in the doorway of your new bedroom, arms crossed, watching the performance of small-town benevolence. Mrs Sim’s eyes eventually found yours. “You must be y/n,” she beamed. “My son, Jake, is about your age. I’ll send him over later to help with the heavier boxes. It’s so nice to have young people in the house next door again.”

Jake.

The name meant nothing to you; it was simply another piece of information about a place you hadn't asked to know.

A pastor's son.

Someone who probably belonged here in the same way everything else seemed to.

You imagined someone polite, someone with perfect manners and neatly folded clothes, someone who had grown up knowing exactly where he fit in the world because everyone around him had spent his entire life reminding him. The kind of person who would wave at strangers while driving, volunteer on weekends, and probably know every verse of every hymn before he was old enough to understand why he was singing them.

Someone who would look at you and immediately know you didn't belong.

"That's nice," you replied.

Your father gave you a look, but you ignored it.

Mrs Sim only smiled. "You'll meet him soon enough."

Mrs Sim's words lingered in the air even after she had finished speaking, though you weren't entirely sure why. There was nothing particularly significant about them. She had simply mentioned her son in passing, the same way someone might mention a neighbour's dog or a nearby restaurant or which grocery store had the freshest produce. It should have been forgettable, another harmless detail about a town you had no intention of becoming attached to. Yet somehow, the certainty in her voice bothered you. You'll meet him soon enough. Not if you want to. Not if you happen to. Just a quiet assumption that, eventually, your lives would cross because that was how things worked here. Everyone knew everyone. Everyone belonged to someone. Everyone had a place already waiting for them.

You wondered if that was what made small towns feel so comforting to the people who loved them. There was no uncertainty. No endless possibility of becoming someone entirely different from who you were yesterday. In places like Chicago, people disappeared and reinvented themselves all the time. They changed schools, changed neighbourhoods, changed friend groups, changed everything about themselves until sometimes even the people who knew them best couldn't recognise who they had become. Here, it seemed impossible to escape the version of yourself that other people had already decided existed. Your family history, your mistakes, your reputation, your name—all of it followed you down every street and through every doorway.

Maybe that was why everyone here smiled so easily.

They had never needed to wonder who they were.

The conversation continued downstairs, though you stopped listening. Your father asked Mrs. Sim about the school district, and she answered with the same gentle enthusiasm she seemed to offer everything else, explaining which teachers were wonderful, which streets were safest, which shops had been around for generations. She spoke about Maple Creek as though it wasn't simply a town but a living thing, something delicate that required care and loyalty. You watched your father absorb every word, nodding along with an expression of relief that you recognised immediately.

He wanted this to work.

That was the part you hated most.

If he had been miserable, if he had admitted he regretted moving, if he had looked around this unfamiliar house and said that maybe he had made a mistake, then perhaps you would have felt less alone in your resentment. But instead, he seemed lighter here. Not happy exactly, but closer to it than he had been in months. The possibility that this place could become something good for him felt unfair somehow, because while he was finding a reason to believe in a future here, you were still grieving the one you had lost.

You quietly stepped back into your room before either of them noticed, closing the door without making a sound.

The peach cobbler sat untouched on the kitchen counter.

You could smell it even from upstairs.

Another thing this town seemed determined to make impossible to dislike.

You hated that. You hated that the houses were beautiful, that the neighbours were kind, that the diner food was good, that your father looked slightly less broken every time someone welcomed him. You had spent the entire drive here building a version of Maple Creek in your mind—a place where you could justify being angry, where every smiling face could be dismissed as fake and every gesture of kindness could be interpreted as pity.

But what were you supposed to do when people were genuinely nice? Anger was easier when you had something to fight against.

You sat down on the edge of your bed, staring at the unopened boxes surrounding you, and pulled your knees toward your chest. The room was quiet except for the faint sounds of movement downstairs, the occasional creak of floorboards beneath your father's footsteps, and the distant hum of traffic passing along the main road.

Somewhere outside, a church bell rang.

You looked toward the window instinctively. You had never understood the comfort people found in places like that.

The idea of faith had always seemed strange to you—not because you thought people were foolish for believing, but because certainty itself felt like something you had never possessed. Some people moved through life convinced there was a plan waiting for them, that every heartbreak had meaning and every loss had a purpose. They believed things happened for a reason.

You had never been able to understand how.

Your parents had loved each other once.

At least, everyone said they had.

There were photographs proving it. Old videos, memories you carried from childhood of them dancing in the kitchen, laughing over burnt dinners, holding hands while walking through crowded streets. There had been a time when their marriage had seemed as permanent as the church standing at the centre of Maple Creek.

And then one day, somehow, it wasn't.

So what exactly was faith supposed to do with things that broke?

What was the point of believing something was sacred if it could still be destroyed?

The question followed you as you unpacked only the things you needed for the night. A toothbrush. Clean clothes. Your phone charger. The essentials required to pretend that tomorrow would be normal, even though nothing about your life felt remotely familiar anymore.

You avoided opening the box marked BEDROOM, avoided touching the photographs, avoided anything that felt too much like admitting you were staying.

Downstairs, your father eventually called goodnight, and you answered automatically.

Then you were alone.

The first night in the new house was quieter than you expected. Not peaceful—peace implied comfort—but quiet in a way that made every small sound noticeable. The pipes shifting behind the walls. The wind moving through the trees outside. The occasional footsteps of your father crossing the hallway below.

And beneath everything else, faint but unmistakable, the church bells. They rang once more before midnight.

You lay in the unfamiliar bed, staring at the ceiling, listening as the sound travelled through the darkness.

You didn't know anything about Maple Creek.

You didn't know its streets, its people, its traditions, or the boy whose name had been casually introduced to you before you had even met him.

For now, though, all you knew was that you were eighteen years old, three states away from everything you had ever known, living beside a church you didn't believe in, in a town that seemed determined to believe in you before you had even decided whether you wanted to believe in anything at all.

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

The next morning, Maple Creek looked almost deliberately beautiful.

You resented it immediately.

The sky was clear, the kind of bright blue that seemed almost too perfect to be real, and sunlight spilled across the streets as though the entire town had been carefully arranged for someone else's happiness. Birds moved between the trees, children walked toward school in groups, and neighbours greeted each other from opposite sides of the street with the casual familiarity of people who had been doing the same thing for years. There was something almost offensive about the way everything appeared untouched by the chaos that had brought you here. The lawns were freshly cut, the gardens were beginning to bloom with the first signs of spring, and every house seemed to sit peacefully beneath the morning light as though heartbreak, divorce, and starting over were things that happened somewhere far away to other people.

It was impossible to hate something that looked like it belonged in a memory.

You stood in the kitchen drinking coffee your father had made before getting ready for work. m He had already unpacked half the kitchen, organised the cupboards, and somehow found the patience to locate the coffee machine among dozens of unopened boxes that still crowded the dining room and hallway. It was such a typical thing for him to do that, despite everything, it almost made you smile. Your father had always dealt with uncertainty by creating order wherever he could. When things became unpredictable, he cleaned. When conversations became too difficult, he focused on practical tasks. When emotions became too overwhelming, he found something that could be measured, arranged, or fixed. He had spent the last year losing control over nearly every aspect of his life, and now that he had a new house with empty shelves and rooms waiting to be filled, he seemed determined to rebuild everything piece by piece.

You watched him move around the kitchen, placing mugs into cupboards and checking his work schedule on his phone, and you realised that this was probably the first time in months that he had looked like he knew what he was doing. It was strange seeing him like this. You had grown used to the version of him who sat silently at the dinner table, who stared at paperwork longer than necessary, who seemed to carry the weight of conversations he never dared to start. The divorce had changed both of your lives, but you had always been more focused on what you lost than you had forgotten he had lost something too.

That did not mean you were ready to forgive him for bringing you here.

It only meant you understood him slightly more than you wanted to.

"You should probably leave soon if you don't want to be late," he said, breaking the silence that had settled over the kitchen as he reached across the counter for his keys. He glanced briefly toward the clock hanging above the stove before looking back at you, his expression carrying the same quiet concern he had been trying to hide since the move. "First impressions are important."

You took another sip of your coffee, letting the warmth distract you from the uncomfortable feeling building in your chest. You glanced toward the clock above the stove, even though you already knew exactly what time it was.

"You already checked my schedule, didn't you?"

Your father paused for half a second, his fingers still wrapped around his keys, and that tiny hesitation gave him away immediately. He had always been terrible at pretending he wasn't overly involved. He tried to act casual, as though he hadn't spent the previous night reading through your school information or memorising your timetable, but you knew him too well. When he was worried, he disguised it as preparation.

"You need to admit that you would forget something important if I didn't."

You looked at him over the rim of your mug, unimpressed.

"I wouldn't."

A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, the kind that suggested he had been waiting for you to say exactly that.

"You forgot your passport before our flight to Florida."

You looked away.

"That was one time."

Your father leaned back against the kitchen counter, folding his arms across his chest.

"You forgot your wallet at a restaurant last summer."

"I got it back."

"After I drove back twenty minutes to get it."

You opened your mouth to argue, but he continued before you could.

"You left your phone on top of the car."

You immediately looked away.

"That happened once."

Your father's smile widened slightly, and for a moment, the heaviness that had followed both of you since the divorce disappeared. It was such a small thing, barely noticeable, but it reminded you of the person he used to be before everything became complicated. The father who teased you about losing things, who laughed when you became stubborn, who knew exactly when to push and when to leave you alone.

He picked up his briefcase from beside the kitchen table and moved toward the front door, but before he stepped outside, he stopped.

The hesitation was subtle. Most people probably wouldn't have noticed it, but you did. 

"Are you nervous?"

The question was simple, almost too simple, and that was what made it difficult to answer. You looked toward the front window instead of at him, watching a neighbour across the street wave to someone passing by. Everyone here seemed so certain of themselves, so comfortable in a world that already knew their names. Meanwhile, you were standing in a kitchen that still smelled like cardboard boxes and unfamiliar paint, preparing to walk into a school where nobody knew you except as the girl who had just arrived.

You could have lied.

You almost did.

"No."

Your father didn't say anything, he didn't need to.

The look he gave you carried the quiet disbelief of someone who had known you your entire life and could tell when you were pretending.

You sighed, setting your coffee mug down on the counter.

"Maybe a little."

It was the closest thing to admitting the reality that you were willing to offer.

His expression softened immediately, and for a second, you prepared yourself for the kind of speech parents always gave in moments like this. Something about how everything would be okay. Something about making friends and giving people a chance and remembering that everyone felt nervous sometimes. You expected reassurance because reassurance was what adults usually offered when they didn't know how else to help.

Instead, he simply nodded.

"That's normal."

You looked back at him, almost surprised by how little he said.

"That's it?"

He shrugged slightly, his fingers tightening around the handle of his briefcase.

"What do you want me to say?"

You looked down.

"I don't know."

The honesty of the answer seemed to surprise both of you.

Your father let out a quiet breath, his gaze drifting briefly around the house. The unopened boxes stacked near the hallway. The unfamiliar walls. The unfamiliar kitchen. For the first time, he looked less like someone who had brought you here with a plan and more like someone who was simply trying to figure everything out alongside you.

"Neither do I," he admitted.

The words settled between you. And strangely, they helped more than any perfect speech could have.

Because your father had spent so long trying to make everything seem manageable that you had almost forgotten he was also struggling. He didn't have some hidden answer for how to rebuild a family after it had fallen apart. He didn't know the secret to making a new town feel like home or how to erase the memories you had left behind. He was just another person standing in unfamiliar surroundings, hoping that somewhere along the way, he had made the right choice.

"I'll see you after school," he said eventually.

You nodded.

"Okay."

He opened the front door, letting in a rush of cool morning air that carried the scent of grass and flowers from the neighbouring garden. He stepped outside, then paused with one hand still resting against the doorframe.

"Y/n?"

You looked up.

"Try not to get suspended on your first day."

You stared at him.

"Seriously?"

A small smile appeared on his face, the first genuine one you had seen that morning.

"I'm just saying."

"I haven't even been there yet."

"I know my daughter." He smiled as you watched him walk down the front steps and toward his car, his briefcase held loosely in one hand while the morning sun stretched across the driveway

You grabbed your bag from beside your stool and checked your phone one last time before leaving. There were still messages from Chicago, but fewer than yesterday. The group chat that had been impossible to ignore during the drive had become quieter overnight, conversations naturally shifting toward things you weren't there to experience. Someone had posted a picture from a coffee shop you used to visit after school. Someone else had mentioned a teacher you had complained about for years. Tiny pieces of your old life continuing without you.

You stared at the screen for longer than you should have.

Then you locked your phone.

There was no point in torturing yourself with reminders of somewhere you couldn't return to.

At least, not yet.

You stepped outside, locking the front door behind you, and immediately became aware of the house beside yours. The pastor's home stood exactly as it had the previous evening, peaceful and untouched beneath the morning sunlight. The garden that had seemed almost excessive yesterday looked different now—not less perfect, but more alive. The roses beneath the windows moved slightly in the breeze, and the ivy climbing along the porch railing cast delicate shadows across the white wooden walls.

You wondered briefly what kind of person grew up in a house like that.

Not because you were interested, you reminded yourself of that.

It was just simply curiosity.

A house like that came with expectations. You knew enough about people to understand that. The pastor's son probably had a reputation before he was old enough to create one himself. People probably knew him as a child before they knew him as a person. They probably expected kindness from him, patience from him, goodness from him. They probably looked at him and saw his father's occupation before they saw anything else.

You wondered if that ever became exhausting.

The thought disappeared quickly.

You adjusted your bag over your shoulder and started walking toward school.

The route was shorter than you expected, which somehow annoyed you. You had imagined getting lost, having an excuse to turn around, having some dramatic reason to delay arriving at a place where you knew nobody. Instead, Maple Creek made everything inconveniently simple. The streets were easy to follow. The sidewalks were clean. The school appeared at the end of the road exactly where the map on your phone said it would be.

Even the town was refusing to give you a reason to hate it.

The school building was larger than you expected, though it carried the same old-fashioned charm as everything else in Maple Creek. Red brick walls covered in climbing greenery, tall windows reflecting the morning sunlight, neatly maintained gardens surrounding the entrance. It looked less like a school and more like a place people took photographs of during graduation.

You stood at the edge of the school grounds for a moment longer than necessary, letting the flow of students move around you as though you were standing still in the middle of a river. Everyone seemed to know exactly where they were going, which hallway they needed, which friends they were meeting, which teachers they needed to avoid before the first bell. There was a strange confidence in the way people moved through familiar places, the kind that only came from years of repetition. They weren't thinking about where to turn or whether they belonged there. They simply existed within the routine of it.

You missed that.

Not the school itself. Not the crowded hallways or the endless assignments or the people who had somehow made every small inconvenience feel like a personal crisis. But you missed knowing what to expect. You missed walking into a building where you knew which staircase was always empty between classes, which vending machine stole your money, which teachers would let you hand things in late without a lecture. You missed the comfort of being a person who already had a place, even if that place wasn't perfect.

Here, everything was unfamiliar.

And unfamiliar meant vulnerable.

You hated that feeling.

You followed the signs toward the main office, your shoes making quiet sounds against the polished floor as you entered the building. It was exactly what you expected inside. Framed photographs lined the walls, displaying graduating classes from decades before you were born, sports teams holding trophies with proud expressions, theatre productions captured mid-performance, students who had once walked through these same hallways and eventually left to create lives somewhere beyond the town.

It was strange seeing so much history preserved.

Back home, schools changed constantly. Posters were replaced, rooms were renovated, people came and went so quickly that it was easy to forget anyone had existed there before you. Here, the past seemed carefully protected. Maple Creek held onto things. It held onto houses, traditions, names, and memories with the kind of devotion usually reserved for things people were afraid of losing.

The thought followed you into the office, where a woman sitting behind the front desk looked up immediately. She had the same welcoming expression everyone here seemed to possess, the kind that made you suspicious because you couldn't understand why a stranger would look genuinely pleased to see you.

"You must be Y/n."

You stopped.

It was becoming unsettling how often people knew who you were before you had introduced yourself.

"Yeah."

The woman smiled and reached for a folder beside her computer. "I'm Mrs. Li. We spoke briefly with your father yesterday when your enrolment paperwork came through. Everything has been processed, and your schedule is inside.

She handed the folder across the desk.

You accepted it carefully, glancing down at your name printed neatly across the front.

"Thank you."

"You'll find everyone here is very welcoming," Mrs Li added.

There it was again.

The phrase everyone seemed determined to use.

Welcoming.

You wondered if there was a meeting where the entire town agreed on the same vocabulary.

You forced a small smile.

"I'll keep that in mind."

Mrs Li didn't seem offended by your lack of enthusiasm. If anything, her expression softened slightly, as though she understood more than you had said.

"Your first class is English. It's just down the hall and to the left. If you have any trouble finding anything, ask someone. We have a wonderful group of students here."

You nodded.

"Okay."

The hallway had become busier now, students moving between lockers and classrooms as the first bell approached. Conversations blended together around you, creating a constant stream of voices that you tried not to focus on. You kept your eyes on your schedule, pretending you didn't notice the occasional glance in your direction.

You knew what they were thinking.

Who is she?

Where did she come from?

Why is she here?

You had been the new girl before, but never like this.

In Chicago, being new meant being one person among thousands. There were always other transfers, other unfamiliar faces, other people trying to figure out where they belonged. Here, you felt like the entire town had watched your moving truck arrive. You weren't just a student who had transferred schools.

You reached your classroom and paused outside the door, hearing voices from inside. The urge to turn around was immediate and irrational. Not because you were afraid, but because walking through that door meant admitting this was real, that you were actually here and not on some sort of visit. You weren’t just passing through; this was your life now.

Eventually, you pushed the door open.

The classroom was brighter than you expected, sunlight spilling through the wide windows and casting shapes across the desks. Students looked up briefly as you entered before returning to their conversations, their curiosity subtle enough to be polite but obvious enough that you noticed. You had become aware, almost immediately, of how visible you were here. 

You made your way toward the empty seat near the window and placed your bag down, grateful for the small distance it gave you from everyone else. For the first few minutes, you simply sat there, watching the classroom. The teacher arranged papers on her desk. Students exchanged conversations that seemed to continue from yesterday, last week, and years ago.

The rest of the morning passed in a way that felt strangely unreal, as though you were watching yourself move through someone else's routine rather than actually participating in your own. Every classroom had its own rhythm that you didn't understand yet; every teacher seemed to know exactly how much time to spend explaining something, exactly when to move on, exactly which students would answer questions before they even raised their hands. 

You found yourself observing more than listening, studying the small details that revealed how deeply connected everyone was to this place. The girl in front of you had a sticker on her notebook from a local charity event. The boy beside the window wore a jacket with the school emblem stitched neatly onto the chest. Two students passing your desk exchanged a joke that clearly referenced something that had happened years ago, something you could not possibly understand because you had not been there to witness it.

By the time you checked your schedule again before your next class, you were already expecting another subject you would have to pretend to care about, another room where you would sit quietly and allow people to decide what they thought of you. Instead, your eyes stopped on the words printed beneath the next period.

Chapel.

You stared at it for several seconds, convinced that maybe you had misunderstood.

You looked back at the schedule.

Still there.

A mandatory chapel period.

Not an optional gathering. Not a once-a-week event. Not something students attended only if they wanted to participate. It was built directly into the school day with the same certainty as mathematics, English, or science, another requirement that everyone accepted without question.

You almost found it impressive.

Only a town like Maple Creek could create a school where religion was not simply something people practised, but something embedded so naturally into everyday life that nobody even considered questioning it.

Of course, they had a chapel.

You followed the other students toward the chapel building, trying not to let your expression reveal exactly what you were thinking. Nobody else seemed bothered. That was what caught your attention more than anything. They weren't walking there reluctantly. They weren't whispering complaints about having to attend. They weren't rolling their eyes or joking about finding a way to escape.

They simply went, like it was normal.

The chapel itself was beautiful, which added to your growing irritation. The building was old but carefully maintained, with dark wooden beams stretching across the ceiling and rows of polished benches facing a raised platform at the front. Sunlight filtered through stained-glass windows, breaking into fragments of blue, red, and gold that shifted slowly across the floor as the morning passed.

You took a seat near the back, naturally, the safest place for someone who had no intention of becoming involved.

The teacher at the front began speaking about faith, purpose, and community, and you tried to listen. You genuinely did. You weren't there to mock anyone or disrespect something that clearly mattered to the people around you. But there was a difference between understanding why something was important to others and feeling it yourself.

People always talked about faith like it was something that remained when everything else fell away, but what happened when the things you believed in failed you first? What happened when the people who promised they would always be there were suddenly the reason you had to leave your home? What happened when forever turned out to be something people said only because they wanted to believe it at the time?

Maybe that was why religion had always felt so distant to you. It wasn't because you hated it, and it wasn't because you thought people were foolish for believing in something greater than themselves. You understood the appeal of having something permanent to hold onto when everything around you felt temporary. The problem was that belief required a kind of trust you no longer knew how to give. You had spent too much time watching things people promised would last forever eventually fall apart, watching something that was supposed to be unbreakable become fragile enough to disappear. It was difficult to surrender yourself to the idea of certainty when your own life had become proof that certainty could be taken away without warning.

The clock above the doorway seemed to move more slowly with every passing minute, each second stretching longer than the one before it. You tried to convince yourself that you could sit there until the period ended. It was only one class. Forty minutes of listening, pretending, and doing what everyone else seemed completely comfortable doing.

But the longer you remained in that room, the more aware you became of how different you felt from everyone around you.

The chapel, which seemed to offer comfort to everyone else, began to feel strangely suffocating. You felt as though the room itself was asking something from you—some kind of acceptance, some willingness to belong, some acknowledgement that this was now your world too.

You looked around one more time, almost hoping to find someone else who looked as uncomfortable as you felt.

You didn't.

Every student seemed exactly where they were supposed to be.

Everyone seemed to have a place.

Except you.

The realisation irritated you more than it should have, and before you could talk yourself out of it, you quietly gathered your notebook and slipped your bag over your shoulder. You waited until the teacher turned her attention toward the front of the room before standing, moving carefully between the rows of benches and making your way toward the side exit. Nobody stopped you. Nobody questioned where you were going. For a moment, you wondered if that was because nobody noticed, or because in a place where everyone seemed to know everyone, you were still too new to matter.

Either option was strangely comforting.

The moment the chapel doors closed behind you, you exhaled.

The hallway outside was empty, and the sudden absence of voices felt like stepping out of a crowded room after holding your breath for too long.

You walked without a destination, following instinct rather than any actual plan, letting your feet carry you away from the main buildings where students gathered and teachers watched.

The further you walked, the quieter the school became.

Eventually, the polished pathways and carefully maintained gardens gave way to a less noticeable section of campus behind the sports fields. It was the kind of place people probably passed without ever really seeing, hidden behind a line of tall trees that separated it from the rest of the school grounds. The branches stretched overhead, creating patches of shade across the grass, while the old maintenance building stood quietly against the edge of the property, its brick walls worn by years of changing weather.

It wasn't somewhere students were supposed to be, which immediately made it somewhere you preferred.

There was something comforting about finding a place that hadn't been perfected. Unlike the rest of Maple Creek, which seemed determined to preserve every detail and present itself as something untouched, this corner of the school existed without trying to impress anyone. The grass grew unevenly. The walls carried marks left behind by time. Nobody had placed flowers here or added signs explaining its importance.

It was simply there.

And for the first time that morning, you felt like you could be too.

You leaned back against the wall, pulling the cigarette from your bag with the familiar ease of someone who had done this too many times to feel guilty anymore. You knew exactly what people would say if they saw you. You knew the assumptions that would immediately follow. The new girl from Chicago who couldn't even make it through her first day without breaking a rule. The divorced man's daughter who clearly had an attitude problem. The outsider who had arrived and immediately proved everyone right.

You almost laughed at the thought.

People loved being right about others.

It made them feel like they understood the world.

The lighter flickered in your hand, and for a moment the small flame was the only movement around you. You watched the cigarette catch before lowering your hand, allowing the smoke to disappear into the cool morning air. The irony wasn't lost on you.

You had escaped a chapel full of people searching for meaning only to find yourself hiding behind a building with a cigarette in your hand.

Maybe everyone had their own way of coping, and yours was just less socially acceptable.

For the first time that morning, you felt like you could breathe properly. There was no teacher watching you. No receptionist smiling at you like she already knew your entire story. No students glancing over and wondering where you came from.

Just complete silence.

You closed your eyes briefly, letting yourself enjoy the rare moment where nobody expected anything from you.

Then you heard footsteps.

At first, you assumed they belonged to another student who had discovered the same hiding place. You didn't bother moving. If anything, you were slightly annoyed that even your one quiet corner couldn't remain yours for longer than five minutes.

The footsteps came closer, slow and unhurried.

Not the hurried steps of someone trying to sneak away.

Someone who knew exactly where they were going.

You opened your eyes.

A boy stood a few feet away, one hand resting casually in the pocket of his uniform trousers, his expression difficult to read. He wasn't wearing the usual look people gave you when they caught you doing something wrong. There was no immediate judgement, no smug satisfaction, no excitement at having discovered someone breaking a rule. He didn't have the expression teachers usually wore when they found students somewhere they shouldn't be, that careful mixture of disappointment and authority that suggested they had already decided what kind of person you were before you had the chance to explain yourself.

Instead, he simply looked at you.

He appeared to be around your age, dressed in the same Saint Augustine's uniform as everyone else, though somehow he carried it differently. The other students you had seen that morning wore their uniforms like an extension of the school itself, every shirt neatly tucked, every tie perfectly adjusted, every detail reflecting the careful order that seemed to exist everywhere in Maple Creek. This boy didn't look careless, but there was something less deliberate about him. He looked comfortable, as though the uniform was simply something he wore rather than something he used to prove that he belonged.

His eyes briefly moved toward the cigarette between your fingers before returning to your face, and you waited for the inevitable reaction. You waited for the sigh, the disapproving expression, the comment about rules and responsibility and how this was not the kind of behaviour expected at a school like Saint Augustine's.

Instead, when he finally spoke, his voice was calmer than you expected.

"You know, I'm pretty sure this isn't exactly where you're supposed to be during chapel."

You stared at him for a moment, caught slightly off guard by the fact that his words sounded more like an observation than an accusation. The cigarette remained between your fingers, smoke curling lazily upward before disappearing into the cool air surrounding the trees.

"I'm aware," you replied.

Your tone was sharper than necessary, but you had already spent the entire morning surrounded by people who were trying to make you feel like you were being welcomed while simultaneously reminding you that you didn't belong. Defensiveness had become easier than politeness. It was a habit you had developed without realising, something you reached for before anyone had the opportunity to hurt you.

The boy didn't seem bothered.

If anything, he looked slightly amused.

"Good," he said simply.

You frowned.

That wasn't the response you were expecting.

Most people would have continued. They would have taken your attitude as an invitation to argue, because people often mistook defensiveness for a challenge. They liked proving they were right, especially when they believed they were helping.

You studied him for a moment before asking the question you already knew the answer to.

"Are you going to report me?"

The question came out automatically, almost like a test. You weren't actually interested in whether he would tell someone. You were interested in seeing what kind of person he was. Whether he was the kind who followed rules because they mattered to him or because breaking them gave him a reason to feel superior.

For a moment, he didn't answer.

His gaze moved briefly toward the school building in the distance, where students were still sitting inside the chapel, probably listening attentively to whatever lesson you had decided you couldn't endure.

Then he looked back at you.

"No."

The simplicity of the answer made you hesitate.

"Why?"

He shrugged slightly, his expression remaining thoughtful rather than dismissive.

"Because I don't think getting you in trouble is going to change anything."

You tilted your head slightly. "What does that mean?"

"It means," he said, looking toward the ground for a moment as though choosing his words carefully, "that if someone doesn't want to be somewhere, making them feel worse probably isn't going to make them suddenly want to be there."

You looked away, taking another slow drag before exhaling toward the trees.

"You're surprisingly understanding for someone at a religious school."

There was a slight pause, then he smiled faintly.

"Is that supposed to be an insult?"

You shrugged. "I'm not sure yet."

That earned a quiet laugh from him, and the sound surprised you because it wasn't the kind of laughter you expected from him.

"You thought I was going to give you a lecture."

"I mean, you're standing behind a church school talking to someone who skipped chapel and is smoking," you said, gesturing vaguely between the two of you as though the situation itself explained everything.

His eyebrows lifted slightly, not in disbelief, but in genuine thought, as though he was actually considering your words rather than waiting for his turn to respond. It was a strange reaction, and you found yourself watching him more closely because you couldn't figure out what he was trying to do.

"Do people usually do that?" he asked.

The question was so simple that it almost confused you.

You glanced away for a moment, looking toward the empty field beside the building where the morning sunlight stretched across the grass. "Usually."

You didn't need to explain what you meant.

He seemed to understand anyway.

"And does it work?"

The question caught you off guard.

Not because it was difficult, but because you had expected him to ask something else. You expected him to ask why you smoked, why you skipped chapel, why you seemed so determined to reject everything about the place you had just arrived in. You expected him to focus on the action itself, because that was what people usually did.

You looked back at him, studying his expression carefully.

"What?"

"Does it work when people lecture you?"

For a moment, you didn't answer.

The cigarette slowly burned between your fingers, the ash growing longer before falling quietly onto the ground beneath you. You opened your mouth, ready to give him the easy response. The sarcastic one. The answer you usually gave whenever someone asked a question that felt too close to the truth.

Something like depends who's asking.

Or clearly not, considering I'm still here.

But the words didn't come.

"No."

The answer came out quieter than you intended.

The boy didn't look surprised. He didn't look pleased, either, like he had somehow won an argument. He simply nodded slowly, as though your answer confirmed something he had already suspected.

"Then I don't see the point."

There was something unusual about the way he spoke, like he wasn't trying to convince you of anything. He wasn't saying it because he expected you to suddenly agree with him or because he wanted credit for being understanding. He said it like it was an obvious conclusion, like forcing someone to listen to advice they had no intention of accepting was just another way of making yourself feel useful.

You watched him carefully, trying to figure out what kind of person said things like that.

It was difficult because he didn't fit neatly into any of the categories you had already created for everyone in Maple Creek. You had expected people here to be predictable. You had expected the students at Saint Augustine's to be polite in the same rehearsed way the rest of the town was polite, carrying themselves with the quiet confidence of people who had never had to question whether they belonged. You expected judgment hidden beneath kindness, because that was what you had grown used to.

Before you could stop yourself, you spoke.

"You know, I don't think I ever got your name."

For a moment, something almost amused passed across his expression, like he hadn't realised until then that you had been standing there having an entire conversation without knowing who he was.

His eyes softened slightly, and he shifted his weight away from the wall, extending his hand in a gesture that felt strangely normal considering how unusual the circumstances were.

"I'm Jake."

You looked at him for a moment, your fingers still holding the cigarette as you tried to place where you had heard it before. It sounded familiar, but the thought disappeared before you could catch it. There were too many new names, too many new faces, too many pieces of information being thrown at you since arriving in Maple Creek.

You would remember eventually.

"Y/n." You replied.

He repeated your name quietly back to you, almost absentmindedly, like he was making sure he remembered it.

And you hated how much you noticed.

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

The walk home felt strangely shorter than it had that morning, and you found yourself resenting that more than you probably should have. The Sim house came into view as you turned onto Maple Street, standing beside yours exactly as it had the day before.

You looked at it only briefly before turning toward your own house.

You didn't have the energy to think about anything else.

The day had already been long enough.

You dropped your bag beside the stairs, kicking your shoes off before walking further inside. The living room looked slightly different from when you had left that morning, although you couldn't immediately identify what had changed. Your father had clearly spent the day trying to make the space feel more lived in. A few boxes had disappeared, the curtains had been opened, and the empty shelves that had made the room feel like a stranger's house were slowly beginning to fill with pieces of your old life.

It was strange watching him rebuild everything so quickly.

Your father had always been good at practical things.

He knew how to assemble furniture without reading instructions. He knew how to fix things that broke. But making it a home was something else entirely, it required something you couldn't unpack from a cardboard box. It required time, memories.

You found him in the kitchen, standing at the counter with his sleeves rolled up while sorting through paperwork beside a half-empty mug of coffee. He looked up when he heard you enter.

"You're home."

You leaned against the doorway.

"Unfortunately."

A small smile tugged at his mouth before disappearing almost immediately.

It was one of the things you noticed about your father. He rarely laughed properly anymore. Since the divorce, happiness seemed to appear in brief moments before he remembered there were still things to worry about.

"How was school?"

You knew what he wanted. He wanted some kind of reassurance that this hadn't been a mistake. That moving three states away hadn't made everything worse. That his decision to leave Chicago, to take the job, to start over, had actually been the right one.

You could have given him the answer he wanted.

You could have complained about everything and proven yourself right.

Instead, you placed your bag down beside the counter and shrugged.

"Fine."

The word was deliberately vague, and you knew it the moment it left your mouth.

Your father knew it too.

He looked up from the papers he had been sorting, his expression changing only slightly, but you noticed the shift anyway. He didn't look angry or disappointed. He didn't even look surprised. If anything, he looked like someone who had expected that answer before he had even asked the question.

"Fine?" he repeated, leaning back against the counter.

You opened the refrigerator door, more to give yourself something to do than because you actually wanted anything inside it. The shelves were organised with the same careful precision that seemed to define everything your father had done since arriving. Groceries were arranged neatly, containers were stacked, and everything had already found a place despite the fact that you still hadn't decided where half your belongings belonged.

"Yeah."

You could feel him watching you.

"You know, most people would probably use more than one word to describe their first day at a new school."

You didn’t reply, and he didn't ask again.

Instead, he simply returned to the papers on the counter, allowing the conversation to move on without forcing you to explain something you weren't ready to explain.

After a few moments, he glanced down at the papers before speaking again.

"The Sims stopped by earlier."

You glanced back at him, immediately recognising the name. The woman from next door had already made more of an impression on your first day than most people had managed to in years, mostly because she seemed almost impossibly comfortable in a way you couldn't understand. She had arrived with a warm peach cobbler, spoken to your father as though they were old friends rather than strangers who had only just met.

"The neighbours?" you asked, even though you already knew the answer.

Your father nodded, placing the papers aside and leaning back against the counter. "Yeah. They invited us over on Sunday."

There was something about the way he said it that immediately made you cautious. Not because you disliked the Sims specifically, but because you had started to understand that in Maple Creek, every friendly gesture seemed to come with some deeper connection to the town itself. 

You looked at him carefully.

"For what?"

Your father hesitated only briefly, but it was enough for you to notice. He had always been terrible at hiding things from you, especially when he knew the answer would probably annoy you. There was a certain expression he got when he was trying to approach a subject carefully, like he was mentally preparing himself for the reaction before the conversation had even started.

"Church."

You stared at him, waiting for him to laugh or explain that he was joking, but his expression remained completely serious. Of course, he was serious. This was Maple Creek, after all. You should have expected that the first invitation from the neighbours would involve the very building that seemed to watch over the entire town from its place above the rooftops.

Your father watched your expression carefully, already knowing exactly what you were 

"I don't know why we have to go," you said, trying to keep your voice neutral, although your father clearly heard the resistance underneath it.

He set his mug down slowly, and for the first time since you walked through the door, you saw the patience he had been holding onto begin to weaken. You knew your father well enough to understand that the church was not the real issue. The issue was everything that had come before it — the constant rejection of every attempt he made to make this place feel less unfamiliar, the way you had spent days insisting that Maple Creek was a mistake before you had even given it a chance.

"They're being kind," he said.

"I know."

"Then why does it bother you so much?"

You looked away because you didn't have a simple answer. It wasn't that you thought Mrs Sim was a bad person. She wasn't. It wasn't that you thought your father was wrong for wanting to meet people. He wasn't. The frustrating part was that everything about Maple Creek was making it harder for you to stay angry.

Your father watched you for a moment before letting out a quiet breath, the kind that carried more exhaustion than frustration. "You know, I understand that you're upset."

You stayed silent.

"I understand that you didn't want this. I understand that you miss Chicago and your friends and the life you had before everything changed. I understand that you feel like you were dragged here because of choices you didn't make."

"But you have to understand something too."

You looked back at him.

"I didn't choose this either."

The words made you pause.

Because you had spent so much time thinking about what you had lost that you had forgotten your father had lost something too. He had lost the same home, the same routines, the same version of your family that you missed. The difference was that while you had been angry, he had been trying to make sure there was still something left to save.

"I am trying," he continued, looking around the kitchen that still didn't quite feel like yours. "I'm trying to make this work. I'm trying to make this place feel like somewhere we live instead of somewhere we ended up."

The honesty of it made you uncomfortable because you didn't know what to do with it. Anger was easier. Anger gave you something to hold onto. But your father's frustration wasn't coming from a desire to control you. It was coming from the fact that he was tired of feeling like he was the only person willing to believe things could get better.

"I'm not asking you to love Maple Creek," he said after a moment. "I'm not asking you to suddenly become someone you're not. I'm just asking you to stop deciding that everything here is against you before you even know what it is."

The kitchen fell quiet again, filled only by the distant sound of the town outside and the faint ringing of the church bell in the distance. You hated that the timing almost felt intentional, as though Maple Creek itself was reminding you that it was still there, waiting patiently for you to stop fighting it.

But after a long moment, you finally sighed and looked back at your father.

"One Sunday."

The surprise that crossed his face was immediate, and you regretted agreeing almost as quickly as you saw it.

"Don't make it a big deal," you warned.

A small smile appeared on his face, the first one you had seen since the conversation started.

"I won't."

You narrowed your eyes slightly because you both knew that wasn't entirely true.

"You will."

He laughed quietly, shaking his head as he picked up his mug again.

"Maybe a little."

You grabbed your bag and headed toward the stairs before he could say anything else, still uncertain about whether agreeing had been a mistake. You still weren't looking forward to Sunday. You still didn't understand why this town seemed so determined to pull you into its routines, its traditions, its carefully preserved little world where everyone seemed to know exactly where they belonged.

But as you entered your bedroom later that evening and looked out through the window toward the church steeple standing above the rooftops, you found yourself wondering what exactly waited for you there.

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

The Sunday you were dreading seemed to come faster than you wished.

The pews creaked under the weight of the congregation as you sat rigid beside your father, the stiff collar of your dress scratching at your neck. The sermon droned on, the pastor's voice booming from the pulpit, but your attention drifted until the side door opened. A boy about your age slipped in late, Bible tucked under one arm, and took the empty seat two rows ahead. The moment his profile turned, your stomach dropped. It was him—the same guy who had caught you behind the school last week, cigarette between your fingers, smoke curling from your lips.

Jake.

For a moment, you wondered if he had noticed you, but he seemed completely absorbed in the service, carefully opening the worn Bible beneath his arm before offering a quiet apology to the elderly woman beside him for arriving late. She smiled as though she had forgiven him before he'd even spoken, patting his arm affectionately before turning her attention back toward the pulpit.

Every movement he made carried the unconscious ease of someone who had spent years within these walls. He knew exactly when to stand, when to sit, when to join the hymns without needing to glance at the page numbers announced from the front. Even the people around him seemed to move naturally around his presence, greeting him with small smiles whenever the congregation shifted or the peace was exchanged, as though he wasn't simply another student from school but somebody they had watched grow up.

You couldn't imagine what that felt like.

The service continued, the pastor's voice echoing beneath the high timber ceiling while coloured light from the stained-glass windows drifted slowly across the polished wooden floor. You tried—genuinely tried—to pay attention, but your concentration wandered almost immediately yet again, your gaze drawn back toward Jake every few minutes despite yourself. It wasn't curiosity anymore, at least not entirely. It was something closer to disbelief. The boy who had found you smoking behind the maintenance building somehow looked exactly the same here, yet completely different at the same time. 

Eventually the pastor closed his Bible, offering a final blessing before the congregation answered in practiced unison. Almost immediately the atmosphere changed. The solemn quiet dissolved into conversation as people rose from their seats, hymn books slid back into their holders, and families gathered in the aisles with the familiar ease of people who had repeated the same ritual every Sunday for decades. Children darted between rows of pews while older couples lingered to catch up.

Your father stood beside you, smoothing invisible creases from his shirt before offering you a hopeful glance.

"Come on," he murmured. "We should say hello."

You resisted the urge to sigh.

Instead, you followed him reluctantly through the growing crowd, offering polite nods whenever another unfamiliar face introduced themselves. Everyone smiled. Everyone seemed genuinely pleased that you were there.

It was exhausting.

Across the room, you caught sight of Mrs Sim weaving effortlessly through the congregation with the same warmth she'd shown the day she'd arrived at your house carrying a peach cobbler. The moment she noticed the two of you, her face lit up, and she crossed the room with surprising speed before your father had any chance of escaping.

"I'm so glad you came," she said brightly, clasping your father's hands between hers before turning that same smile toward you. "And you must be surviving your first week at school."

"Barely," you replied.

Mrs Sim laughed, apparently choosing to interpret your answer as a joke.

"I'm sure it'll get easier."

You weren't convinced.

"Oh," she said suddenly, looking over her shoulder. "Jake!"

You followed her gaze instinctively.

Jake had been speaking with an older man near the front of the church, but at the sound of his mother's voice, he excused himself immediately and made his way over, offering the man a polite smile before crossing the aisle. Up close, he looked exactly as he had behind the school, except for the blazer he'd pulled on over his shirt and the Bible still tucked beneath one arm.

"Jake," Mrs Sim said warmly as he reached the group, resting a gentle hand against his arm. "I'd like you to meet our new neighbours."

He turned obediently toward your father first, offering a polite smile before extending his hand. "Hi, sir. I'm Jake."

"Nice to meet you, Jake," your father replied, returning the handshake. "I'm Daniel, and this is my daughter." Only then did Jake's attention shift towards you.

Recognition crossed his face almost immediately, so brief that anyone else would have mistaken it for an ordinary pause, but you caught it anyway. His eyes widened the slightest fraction before settling, the corners of his mouth threatening a smile he seemed to think better of almost as quickly as it appeared. 

He hadn't expected you to be here.

You hadn't expected him either.

"Hi," he said after the briefest hesitation, extending his hand towards you exactly as though the two of you had never spoken before.

You looked at his outstretched hand for a second before taking it.

"Y/n."

"Jake."

The corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly, "It's... nice to meet you."

You caught the tiny pause before meet, and for a moment you wondered if anyone else had noticed it. Judging by the bright smile spreading across Mrs Sim's face, they hadn't.

Mrs Sim's smile widened with obvious satisfaction as she looked between the two of you, entirely convinced she had just witnessed the beginning of a perfectly ordinary introduction. "Isn't that lovely?" she said, clasping her hands together for a moment before turning her attention back to your father. "I've been telling Jake all week that he should properly come over and welcome you both, but between school and helping his father prepare for Sunday, we simply haven't had a moment."

Jake withdrew his hand slowly, offering his mother a small, almost sheepish smile that suggested this was hardly the first time she'd volunteered his time on his behalf. "Sorry about that," he said, his attention returning to you for only a moment before politely addressing your father again. "I should've introduced myself sooner."

"It's been a busy week for everyone," your father replied easily. "We're still finding boxes we forgot to unpack."

"I can imagine."

The conversation settled into an easy rhythm almost immediately, though you found yourself contributing very little. It wasn't intentional; there simply wasn't much to say. Your father and Mrs Sim seemed strangely well suited to one another's company, discussing the town with the comfortable enthusiasm of two people standing on opposite sides of the same experience—one eager to tell stories, the other grateful to hear them. Your father listened with genuine interest, asking questions whenever she paused, and you realised with some surprise that he was smiling more than you'd seen him smile since leaving Chicago.

"You survived your first week."

Jake's voice came quietly from beside you. You turned your head just enough to find him standing beside you, close enough to speak without raising his voice but careful not to crowd your space. He wasn't looking directly at you. Instead, his attention rested somewhere across the sanctuary where a little girl in polished black shoes chased her younger brother between the pews before their mother caught both of them with an exasperated laugh. The corners of Jake's mouth lifted ever so slightly at the sight, his expression carrying the quiet amusement of someone who had probably watched the same scene play out countless Sundays before.

"Barely," you admitted, your answer escaping with a dry honesty that surprised even you.

A quiet laugh escaped him before he could stop it, dissolving almost as quickly as it appeared. For a brief second, the carefully composed image everyone seemed to have of Jake dissolved, revealing someone your age rather than the pastor's son everyone else appeared to see.

"I figured," he said, the smile lingering faintly as he glanced down for a moment before looking back toward the sanctuary.

You studied him for a second, curiosity getting the better of you.

"You figured?"

His attention finally shifted towards you, and there it was again—that impossibly gentle expression that somehow never felt rehearsed. "Most people," he said with the faintest trace of amusement colouring his voice, "don't decide to skip chapel on their first day."

You couldn't help the quiet smile that tugged at the corner of your mouth, the memory arriving almost uninvited. You could still picture the look on his face when he'd stepped around the maintenance building and found you leaning against the brick wall with a cigarette balanced lazily between your fingers. You had been so certain you knew exactly how that conversation would unfold. You had expected disappointment, a lecture rehearsed from years of Sunday sermons, or at the very least the smug satisfaction of someone catching another person doing something they shouldn't.

"No," you replied, folding your arms loosely across your chest. "I figured I'd make an impression."

Jake's head dipped as another quiet laugh escaped him, this one accompanied by the smallest shake of his head. "You definitely managed that."

"Oh?" you asked, unable to resist. "I was under the impression you were trying very hard not to think about it."

"I was."

"But?"

"But..." He hesitated, searching for the right words with the same care he seemed to give everything he said. "You're not exactly easy to forget."

The admission seemed to surprise him almost as much as it surprised you. The words hung between you for a moment before a faint flush climbed slowly across his cheeks, and you watched the realisation dawn on him that he'd spoken aloud instead of keeping the thought to himself.

"I didn't mean—"

"I know what you meant."

His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, grateful that you hadn't chosen to make things more embarrassing than they already were. A sheepish smile tugged briefly at the corners of his mouth before he ducked his head, his fingers absentmindedly tightening around the worn spine of the Bible tucked beneath his arm. It was strangely endearing, watching someone who seemed so composed unravel over a sentence as innocent as that.

For a moment, neither of you spoke, then Mrs Sim's voice drifted across the sanctuary before either of you had the chance to say anything else.

"Jake, sweetheart," she called, waving him over with an affectionate smile. "Would you mind helping your father carry the coffee urn into the hall?"

Jake glanced over his shoulder toward his mother, then back at you, and for a moment he looked almost reluctant to leave. 

"I should probably..." he began, his voice trailing off as he nodded toward where his mother was waiting.

You glanced in the same direction before looking back at him.

"Go," you said, unable to hide the amusement in your voice. "Before she sends someone else over here to get you."

He adjusted the Bible beneath his arm, his fingers brushing over the worn leather cover as though he needed something to do with his hands.

"It was..." He paused, searching for the right words, and the hesitation was so unlike the confident, composed version of him everyone else seemed to know that it almost made you smile. "It was nice to officially meet you."

You looked at him for a moment, letting the irony sit between you.

"We're still pretending that's what happened?"

A small smile appeared on his face, one that he tried and failed to hide.

"...It was nice to officially meet you too."

Something about your answer seemed to genuinely please him. His smile widened, then he disappeared into the crowd, moving easily between familiar faces and Sunday conversations, stopping every few steps to greet someone who knew him by name. You watched him for a moment longer than you intended.

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

The weeks after that passed slowly enough that you almost didn't notice when Maple Creek began feeling less like a place you had been sent to and more like somewhere you actually existed.

You still missed Chicago in ways you didn't always admit. You missed the noise of the streets outside your old apartment, the constant movement of people who didn't know your name and didn't care enough to ask. In Maple Creek, everyone knew everything, or at least they acted like they did. The neighbours waved whenever you walked past. Teachers remembered your name. People asked how you were adjusting with genuine concern, and you never quite knew what to do with their kindness.

It wasn't that the town had suddenly become home. It hadn't. There were still mornings when you woke up convinced that if you looked out of your bedroom window, the familiar skyline of Chicago would somehow have returned overnight, replacing the church steeple that stood stubbornly above the rooftops. There were afternoons when you found yourself reaching instinctively for your phone to text friends who were no longer part of your daily life, only to remember that conversations became difficult when they were separated by three states and an entirely different routine. Life back home continued without you, just as yours continued without them, and there was something quietly devastating about how quickly people adapted to absence.

School settled into something resembling routine before you realised it had happened. The novelty of being the new girl faded as other distractions claimed everyone's attention, and the curious glances that had followed you through the corridors during your first week gradually disappeared. Teachers stopped introducing you to every class. People no longer whispered your name after you walked past. 

To your surprise, you found yourself sharing more classes with Jake than you had expected.

English, where the seating plan placed him one desk beside you after Mrs Henderson announced she wanted "fresh perspectives" before rearranging the entire room. History, where he somehow managed to answer questions without sounding like he was showing off, speaking only when the teacher called on him and never a moment longer. Even Chemistry, where your assigned lab partners changed every fortnight until, through what you suspected was extraordinarily bad luck, you ended up standing opposite him at the same scratched black laboratory bench.

"You look disappointed," he observed one afternoon while measuring chemicals into a graduated cylinder with infuriating precision.

"I was hoping for someone who'd let me do absolutely nothing."

The corner of his mouth lifted, though he kept his attention on the clear liquid slowly rising against the measurement lines.

Your eyebrows rose.

"You did?"

"No."

You let your head fall back with exaggerated disappointment.

"There goes my entire plan for the afternoon."

Jake finally glanced up, the faint smile still lingering on his face.

"You had a plan?"

"I usually don't," you admitted as you leaned against the bench, absentmindedly spinning an empty beaker between your hands. "That's probably the problem."

"I noticed."

You looked at him suspiciously.

"Was that supposed to be an insult?"

"No."

"It sounded like one."

"It wasn't."

"You didn't even deny noticing."

"I didn't think I had to."

For a second, you simply stared at him before a reluctant laugh escaped you. Jake smiled in return, before returning his attention to the experiment.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember why talking to him had once felt awkward.

The strange thing about Jake was that conversations with him never felt like conversations you had to win. He never treated your sarcasm like a challenge or an invitation to argue. Most people responded to your remarks by trying to outmatch them, determined to prove they were cleverer or funnier or somehow immune to the walls you built around yourself. Jake simply accepted them for what they were, answering with the same gentle humour every time until, before you realised it, you found yourself talking without thinking quite so carefully about every word.

You hated how easy that was becoming.

One morning you arrived at English to find the teacher running late, and Jake had absentmindedly saved the empty seat beside him without either of you acknowledging it. You would steal half his fries at lunch because, according to you, "sharing was a Christian virtue," and he'd sigh with theatrical disappointment before sliding the carton a little closer anyway. Another afternoon you discovered your pen had run out halfway through a history test, and before you could even ask, another one appeared silently on your desk. He never made a point of it. By the end of the lesson, he'd simply asked for it back with an absent-minded, "I only own two."

Neither of you ever spoke about it.

There simply came a point where being around one another stopped requiring an invitation.

By the time October settled over Maple Creek, the trees lining Main Street had begun surrendering their leaves one by one, covering the sidewalks in deep shades of amber and burnt gold that crunched beneath your shoes on the walk home. The afternoons grew cooler, sunlight fading earlier than it had only weeks before, and your routine settled into something that almost resembled normality. School. Home. Homework you pretended to hate. Dinner with your father, who looked a little less exhausted every evening.

One Friday evening, you arrived home to find the house smelling faintly of rosemary, garlic and something roasting in the oven. Music drifted quietly from the old radio your father had finally unpacked, filling the kitchen with the familiar sound of Fleetwood Mac while every available surface had somehow become covered with bowls, chopping boards and ingredients.

"What happened?" you asked, eyeing the organised chaos spread across every available surface.

Your father looked over his shoulder, the wooden spoon still resting in his hand, his brow creasing with mild confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"You cooked."

A quiet laugh escaped him as he returned his attention to the saucepan.

"I do know how."

"You ordered takeaway four nights this week."

"I was busy."

"And now?"

He hesitated for only a second before a small, almost satisfied smile settled across his face.

"I invited the Sims over for dinner."

The words landed with enough force that you straightened instinctively.

"You... invited them?"

"I did."

You stared at him for a long moment, trying to decide whether he was joking. Judging by the calm expression on his face as he sprinkled herbs into the saucepan, he wasn't.

"The pastor's family?"

"Our neighbours," he corrected gently.

You let out a slow sigh, dropping into one of the kitchen chairs as you rubbed a hand across your forehead.

"You really expect me to survive an entire evening of polite conversation?"

Your father smiled to himself as he stirred the sauce once more.

"I think you'll manage."

You narrowed your eyes at him.

"I think you're overestimating me."

His smile only grew. "Dinner's at six tomorrow."

You groaned quietly, letting your head fall back against the chair.

"I wasn't asking."

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

The following evening arrived with surprising speed, carrying with it the kind of nervous anticipation you refused to acknowledge. By half past five, the house had been transformed into something almost unrecognisable. The dining table, which had spent the better part of a month buried beneath unopened mail and half-unpacked boxes, now sat neatly arranged with your father's best plates and polished cutlery that hadn't seen daylight since Chicago. 

Your father had changed shirts twice.

You knew because you'd watched him do it.

The first one had apparently been "too wrinkled." The second, according to him, made him look like he was trying too hard. Eventually he'd settled on a navy button-down you'd seen him wear exactly twice before, smoothing imaginary creases from the sleeves every few minutes as he checked the oven for what had to be the sixth time.

"You know they're only coming for dinner," you observed from where you leaned against the kitchen doorway, watching him fuss over the table with growing amusement.

Without looking up, he adjusted one of the forks by what couldn't have been more than half a centimetre.

"I know."

The doorbell rang precisely at six.

Your father disappeared into the hallway before you had a chance to move, and moments later the sound of warm greetings drifted through the house, accompanied by the unmistakable laughter of Mrs Sim. You remained exactly where you were for another moment, taking a steadying breath before reluctantly following.

The Sims stood just inside the front entrance, autumn coats folded neatly over their arms after escaping the cool evening air. Mrs Sim was the first to notice you, her face brightening instantly as she crossed the hallway with the same effortless warmth she seemed to carry everywhere, wrapping you in a brief hug before you had any real opportunity to avoid it.

"Oh, sweetheart," she said, stepping back to admire you with an approving smile. "It's lovely to see you again."

You returned an awkward smile, still adjusting to people who expressed affection so freely.

"You too."

Pastor Sim stood nearby, extending a firm hand toward your father while thanking him again for the invitation. He carried himself with the same quiet authority you'd heard in his sermons, though stripped of the pulpit and formal robes, he seemed considerably less intimidating than he had on Sunday morning. He laughed easily, spoke gently, and thanked your father three separate times before stepping inside.

Jake lingered near the back of the group, waiting until everyone else had entered before quietly closing the front door behind them. Unlike church, where he'd worn pressed clothes and carried a Bible tucked neatly beneath one arm, tonight he looked comfortably ordinary. Holding a charcoal knit jumper over his arm, he wore a pale collared shirt whose sleeves had been rolled casually to his forearms, and his hair, usually kept neatly in place throughout the school day, had begun to curl slightly around his forehead in the cool evening air.

His eyes found yours almost immediately.

A small smile appeared before either of you spoke.

"Hi."

"Hi."

The greeting was simple, almost laughably so after weeks of sharing classrooms and conversations, but somehow it felt different here. There were no teachers nearby pretending not to overhear you, no church congregation moving around you, no hurried walk between classes limiting the conversation to a few passing words. This was your house. He was standing in your hallway.

"So..." you said, leaning casually against the hallway wall as the adults disappeared into the dining room. Your eyes moved over him with deliberate curiosity, taking in the fact that the boy who spent his days looking perfectly composed at school was now standing in your house looking slightly out of place. "This is how you spend your Saturday nights?"

Jake glanced towards the dining room before looking back at you, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. He seemed caught between defending himself and admitting you had a point.

"Apparently."

Before you could say something back, Mrs Sim called for both of you from the dining room, and Jake gestured for you to go ahead.

You looked at him suspiciously as you walked past.

"Just manners?"

He smiled.

"Just manners."

Dinner was easier than you expected.

You had prepared yourself for an evening of uncomfortable silence and forced conversation, the kind where every question felt like an interrogation and every answer had to be carefully chosen. Instead, the night moved naturally. Your father and Pastor Sim carried most of the conversation, discussing the town, work, and everything you had missed during your first few weeks in Maple Creek. Mrs Sim filled in the quieter moments with stories about the neighbourhood, laughing whenever your father admitted something embarrassing about adjusting to a smaller town.

You mostly listened. Jake sat across from you, occasionally catching your eye when the adults became too invested in their conversation. Each time, there was a quiet understanding between you both—a shared amusement at the fact that neither of you had expected the evening to be as normal as it was.

By the time the dinner had ended, the plates were cleared away, the last traces of conversation drifting from the kitchen as your father and the Sims continued talking.

You had just started relaxing into the evening when your father returned from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel as he glanced between you and Jake.

"You know what?" he said, wiping his hands on a towel. "You should show Jake your vinyl collection."

You looked up immediately.

"My what?"

Your father ignored the disbelief in your voice, leaning casually against the doorway.

"You spent all that time organising them last week."

You narrowed your eyes at him, already knowing exactly what he was doing.

Jake glanced towards you, a small smile forming. 

"I'd like to see them." He responded.

"Fine.", you sighed, standing from your chair. 

Your father smiled in victory.

"But if you judge my music taste," you added, pointing at Jake, "I'm making you leave."

A quiet laugh escaped him as he followed you towards the stairs.

You led the worn wooden stairs creak under Jake's weight as you guided him up to your room. You could feel the heat of his gaze on the back of your neck, a palpable thing that had nothing to do with the heat of the evening. "My dad has a few old gospel records," he said, his voice softer than it had been downstairs. "But they're predictable. The same messages."

You pushed your bedroom door open, "Predictable is boring," you stated, your tone leaving no room for argument as you gestured for him to enter. He stepped over the threshold like he was crossing into another world, his eyes wide as they took in the turntable on your desk.

You watched his throat work as he swallowed.

You pulled a record from its sleeve, toying with the black disk in your hands. "This one," you said, not asking, as you placed it on the platter and lowered the needle. A slow, grinding bassline filled the room, something primal that seemed to push against the walls. Jake flinched, just slightly. "Listen," you instructed, standing close enough that your arm brushed his. You didn't move away. "Hear the difference?."

He stared at the spinning record, but his attention was fractured, pulled to where your skin met the crisp cotton of his polo shirt. "It's intense," he managed, his voice tight. You turned to face him fully, closing the small distance. You saw the conflict in his eyes, the lifetime of doctrine warring with a raw, waking curiosity.

"You don't have to analyse it, Jake," you murmured, your hand coming up to not quite touch his cheek. You let it hover. "You just have to experience it." His breath caught. His eyes fluttered shut for a second, and when they opened, the look in them was one of surrender. You finally let your fingertips graze his jawline. He leaned into it, ever so slightly.

Your other hand found his, prying his fingers open from the fist he hadn't realized he'd made. You guided his palm, placing it flat against the album cover on your desk. "This is what you wanted, isn't it?" you asked, the music swelling around you both. He didn't speak. He only nodded, a slow, deliberate dip of his chin, his eyes locked on yours.

The song ended with a final, resonant thrum, and the sudden silence felt louder than the music. Jake’s hand remained on the album cover, his knuckles pale. You watched him, the rise and fall of his chest beneath his starched shirt a little too quick. You didn’t move your fingers from his jaw. The air in the room grew thick, charged with the things he’d been taught to confess and repent.

You finally broke the contact, turning back to the turntable. You lifted the tonearm, the click of the switch cutting off the faint surface noise. “There’s more,” you said, your voice a low murmur, not looking at him as you flipped through the crate, the cardboard sleeves stacked against each other. You could feel him watching you, his eyes following your every move.

You selected another record, this one with a stark, abstract cover in deep reds and blacks. “This one builds slower,” you explained, your back still to him as you slid the vinyl out. “It takes its time. It makes you wait for it.” You placed it on the platter, setting the needle down with care, and a single, clean piano note echoed through the speakers, followed by another, spaced apart by a breath of silence. Jake let out a slow exhale behind you. You heard the soft rustle of his clothes as he shifted his weight.

You turned then, leaning back against the edge of your desk, crossing your ankles. You studied him openly—the way his hair fell a little too perfectly over his forehead, the rigid set of his shoulders that was beginning to soften. His eyes were fixed on the record as it spun, but you knew he wasn’t really seeing it. He was listening, truly listening, to the music.

“Do you understand now?” you asked, your voice barely above the level of the unfolding melody. His gaze flickered to yours, and in the low light from your desk lamp, you saw the first crack in his composure, a fine, hairline fracture. He gave another small, silent nod. You held his look for a long moment, then let your eyes drift back to the spinning black disk, letting the music fill the space where words would have been a trespass.

His fingers slowly curled, lifting from the album cover. He brought his hand back to his side, but it didn’t hang with its usual relaxed posture. It was a fist again, though looser this time, as if holding onto the ghost of the sensation. The piano melody wove around a slow, deliberate drumbeat. He took a half-step forward, then stopped, as if an invisible line on your floor marked a boundary he wasn’t sure he was allowed to cross.

You didn’t invite him closer. You simply watched, your expression neutral, giving him nothing but the space to choose. His eyes traveled from the turntable to your face, then down to your lips, before snapping back up, a faint flush coloring his neck. The music built, layer upon layer, a sonic cathedral of something entirely secular. It was beautiful in a way that felt dangerous to him, you could tell.

“Where did you find this?” he finally asked, his voice rough. It was the first question he’d dared to ask since entering your room. It wasn’t about the music, not really.

“A little shop downtown,” you answered, your tone casual. “The owner knows what I like.” You uncrossed your ankles and stood up straight, taking a single, slow step toward him. He didn’t retreat. The distance between you was now just a matter of a few inches. You could see the rapid pulse at the base of his throat.

“It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard,” he admitted, the confession seeming to cost him something. His gaze dropped to your collar, to the hollow of your throat, before he forced it back to your eyes. He was trying so hard to be polite, to maintain eye contact, even as every instinct was pulling him elsewhere.

You reached out again, this time not towards his face, but towards the stiff collar of his polo shirt. You didn’t grab it. You merely hooked a single finger under the fabric, just beside his neck, and gave the slightest tug. His breath hitched audibly, a sharp sound swallowed by the swelling music. His entire body went still, a deer caught in headlights.

A slow, wry smile touched his lips, a flicker of his usual self breaking through the tension. “Checking the thread count?” he asked, his voice a rough whisper that carried a surprising hint of humor. It was a defense mechanism, a quick-witted retreat into something safe and mundane, but it faltered as your finger remained, the back of your knuckle resting against the pounding pulse in his throat.

You released the collar, your finger brushing the warm skin of his collarbone as you withdrew. “Just seeing if it’s as ruined as your demeanor,” you replied, matching his tone but letting your gaze drop meaningfully to his lips. The color in his cheeks deepened, but he held your look. The music built around you, a complex tapestry of sound that felt like it was weaving the two of you together in the dim light.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “My mom insists on a specific laundry routine. Says a crisp appearance reflects a… an ordered mind.” The words were a confession and an offering, a glimpse into the world of rules that shaped him. He was letting you in, piece by piece, even as his body trembled on the precipice.

Your hands came up to frame his face, your thumbs stroking over his cheekbones. He leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment. You kissed him, your mouth demanding against his, and after a moment of stillness, Jake responded with a desperate, hungry fervor that shattered his careful composure. His hands came up, hovering awkwardly at your sides before finally settling on your waist, his fingers digging into the fabric of your shirt. A low groan vibrated from his chest into yours. You walked him backward until his legs hit the edge of your bed, and he sat down with a soft thump, breaking the kiss only because he had to.

You stood between his knees, looking down at him. His lips were swollen, his breath coming in short pants. You reached for the hem of his polo shirt again. This time, you didn’t tease. You pulled it up and over his head in one smooth motion, tossing it aside. His chest was pale and smooth, his skin heating under your gaze. Your fingers went to the button of his chinos. He watched, mesmerized, as you undid it, then the zipper. You hooked your fingers into the waistband of his pants and his briefs. “Lift,” you commanded softly.

He obeyed instantly, raising his hips so you could strip the last barriers from him. He was fully, beautifully exposed, sitting on the edge of your bed. You let your eyes travel over him, a slow, appreciative look that made him shiver. Then you sank to your knees on the floor before him. His eyes widened, a soft “oh” escaping him. You didn’t make him wait. You took him into your mouth, your tongue sweeping a broad, wet stroke along his length. His whole body jerked, a choked cry tearing from his throat. His hands flew to your hair, not pushing or pulling, just tangling in the strands as if he needed to hold onto something solid.

You set a slow, deep rhythm, your mouth a warm, slick haven. His hips began to move in tiny, helpless thrusts, a rhythm as old as time but entirely new to him in this context. His breaths were ragged prayers, gasps of “please” and “God” that had nothing to do with the divinity he’d been raised to worship and everything to do to the sinful paradise you were building with your lips and tongue. You could feel the tension coiling tightly in him, his thighs trembling against your shoulders. Just as he was teetering on the edge, you pulled back, leaving him gasping and bereft. You looked up at him, your chin glistening. “My turn,” you whispered, and you rose to guide him back onto the bed.

He hesitated for only a second, his face flushed with shame and arousal. “I… I shouldn’t,” he whispered, voice trembling. “This is wrong… I was taught to resist this kind of temptation.” Yet his body betrayed him. His cock twitched visibly, already leaking at the tip, and he didn’t resist when you pushed him onto his back. He lay there obediently, arms at his sides, fingers clutching the sheets like he was praying for strength. His eyes flicked up to meet yours, wide and pleading. “Tell me what to do,” he said softly. “I’ll do it. I’ll be good for you.”

You guided him onto his back, and he went without resistance, settling against the sheets with his arms loose at his sides. His chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths. His cock lay hard against his stomach, flushed dark and twitching with every pulse of his heartbeat. You climbed over him, straddling his hips, and his eyes followed your every movement like he was watching something forbidden yet irresistible.

"I shouldn't," he whispered again, the words catching in his throat. "It's a sin. I've prayed against this... against wanting it." His voice cracked on the last word, but his hips lifted slightly, seeking contact even as he spoke against it. His hands stayed where they were, fingers digging into the bedding, waiting for your command.

You leaned down until your lips brushed his ear. "Then pray while I use you," you told him. A soft, broken sound escaped him, half a whimper and half a moan. You reached between your bodies, wrapped your fingers around his cock, and lined him up. His whole frame tensed as the head pressed against your entrance.

"Please," he breathed. "Tell me I'm allowed. Tell me to take it."

"Push up," you ordered.

He obeyed at once. His hips rose in one smooth thrust, sliding into you with a single, desperate motion. The moment he was buried to the hilt, a strangled prayer tore from his lips—half-formed words of repentance mixed with raw need. You stayed still above him, letting him feel every inch of your heat gripping him, while his thighs trembled beneath you.

"Move," you said.

He started with shallow, careful thrusts, trying to keep some measure of control, but it quickly unraveled. His hips snapped upward harder, chasing the slick friction, each stroke punctuated by soft, guilty gasps of "God" and "forgive me." His hands finally left the sheets to grip your hips, not to guide you but to hold on as if you were the only thing anchoring him. Every time he bottomed out, his eyes squeezed shut like he was both praying for strength and begging for more.

You leaned forward, pressing your chest to his, and whispered against his mouth, "You're being so good for me. So obedient."

A shudder ran through him. "I want to be good," he panted. "I want to please you. Even if it's wrong. Even if I have to confess later." His thrusts grew faster, more urgent, the wet sound of your bodies meeting filling the room. Pre-cum leaked steadily from him inside you, mixing with your own slickness. His abs flexed with every movement, the muscles in his arms standing out as he held you.

You sat up again, rolling your hips in a slow circle that made him cry out. "Don't come yet," you warned.

He nodded frantically, biting his lower lip hard enough to leave marks. "I won't. I won't until you say. I'll hold it. I'll be good." His cock throbbed inside you, right on the edge, but he forced his hips to slow, following your command even as his entire body shook with the effort. Sweat beaded on his forehead and chest. His eyes stayed locked on yours, wide, glassy, and completely surrendered.

You stayed seated on him, savoring the way his cock pulsed inside you with every desperate heartbeat. His grip on your hips tightened, but he kept his thrusts shallow and controlled exactly as you ordered. Sweat glistened across his pale chest, and his lips moved in silent prayer even while his body betrayed every word of it.

"Good boy," you murmured, rolling your hips in a slow grind that dragged a broken moan from his throat. "Keep praying. Let me hear it."

His voice cracked as he obeyed. "Forgive me... Lord, forgive me for this... for wanting it so much..." Each word dissolved into a gasp when you clenched around him. His thighs quivered beneath you, and his cock twitched hard, threatening to spill, but he fought it back with visible effort.

You leaned down and kissed him hard, swallowing the next plea. When you pulled back, a thin strand of saliva connected your mouths. "Now fuck me properly," you told him. "Hard. Don't stop until I tell you."

The permission hit him like a command from above. His hips snapped up in one powerful thrust that drove the air from his lungs. He buried himself to the hilt again and again, the wet slap of skin filling the room. His fingers dug into your flesh hard enough to leave marks as he used every ounce of strength to obey. Each stroke punched a ragged sound from him—half curse, half prayer.

"Yes... yes, use me," he panted. "I'm yours... I'm so sorry, God, but I'm yours right now." His eyes stayed locked on yours, glassy with guilt and lust. Pre-cum leaked steadily from him, mixing with your slickness and making every thrust louder, filthier.

You reached between your bodies and rubbed your clit in tight circles while he pounded into you. The sight of him—flushed, sweating, desperate—pushed you closer. "Don't come," you warned again. "Not until I do."

He nodded frantically, jaw clenched, veins standing out in his neck. His rhythm never faltered even as his whole body shook with the effort of holding back. "I won't... I promise... I'll be good... I'll wait..." His cock swelled inside you, so close to the edge it hurt to watch, but he kept driving upward exactly as you wanted.

You rode him faster, chasing your own release while he suffered beautifully beneath you. His prayers had dissolved into wordless, broken sounds. Every thrust hit deep, the head of his cock dragging against that perfect spot inside you until your thighs started to tremble.

"Now," you gasped. "Come with me."

The permission shattered what little control he had left. His hips jerked upward in one final, brutal thrust as he came hard, flooding you with hot pulses. A loud, guilty cry tore from his throat—your name mixed with another broken apology to God. His cock throbbed violently inside you, emptying everything he had while his body arched off the bed. You clenched around him and came right after, your walls pulsing and milking every drop from him.

He kept thrusting weakly through both orgasms, unable to stop even after he was spent. When the last aftershocks faded, he collapsed back against the sheets, chest heaving, eyes squeezed shut in shame and relief. His softening cock still twitched inside you, sensitive and overstimulated.

You stayed on top of him, letting him feel the mess he'd made. After a long moment he opened his eyes, looking up at you with raw, wrecked devotion.

"Thank you," he whispered. "For... for letting me. Even though I shouldn't have." 

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

You hadn't expected Jake to become so desperate for you. Then again, you couldn't argue against it since the boy had never touched anything until that night in your bedroom. That night had been your experiment, a little game to see if the golden boy preacher’s son would crack, and he had shattered. Now, three weeks later, the crack had become a canyon, and he was falling through it daily, reaching for you.

He appeared at your usual smoke spot, his crisp button-down looking absurd against the scarred wall. His hands were shoved deep in his khaki pockets, his shoulders tense. "The archives in the library basement," he said, his voice low and urgent, skipping any greeting. "The theology section. No one goes there on Wednesday afternoons." His eyes, usually so clear and certain, were clouded with a need that looked like physical pain. You took a long drag of your cigarette, blowing the smoke out slowly, watching him flinch. Not from the smoke, but from the delay.

It became a pattern. A folded note tucked into your sociology textbook with a time and a location scrawled in his neat handwriting: *Boiler room, 3 PM.* A text message that just read *Empty classroom, second floor, east wing. Now.* He never asked if you wanted to. He simply presented the opportunity, a sinner offering his own temptation, his voice always carrying that same ragged edge. You’d find him there, pacing or standing perfectly still, his jaw clenched so tight you thought it might break. The moment he saw you, the calm would evaporate, replaced by a frantic energy as he fumbled with his belt, or yours, his prayers forgotten, replaced by whispered pleas against your skin.

You met him in the designated broom closet. It was cramped, smelling of lemon cleaner and dust. He had you pressed against the shelves before the door clicked shut, his mouth hot and demanding on yours, his hands pulling at your clothes with a clumsy haste. "I can't stop thinking about it," he gasped against your neck, his hips already moving against you. "About you. That's all I think about." His confession was torn from him, as he learned your body with a fervor he'd once reserved for scripture, each touch a new verse in a gospel of his own damnation.

Afterward, he would help you dress with trembling hands, his fingers brushing your skin as if memorizing it. He’d smooth his own hair, try to rearrange his face into something resembling the composed Jake everyone else saw. But the look in his eyes gave him away—a hollowed-out, hungry thing. "Tomorrow," he'd say, not as a question, but as a statement of fact, a necessary appointment for his survival. "The photo development lab. During the yearbook committee meeting."

You saw him at a campus ministry barbecue two days later. He was flipping burgers, laughing politely, the perfect picture of clean-cut devotion. His eyes scanned the crowd, found you leaning against a tree at the edge of the lawn. He held your gaze for a fraction of a second too long, and the plastic spatula in his hand snapped clean in two. He looked down at the broken pieces, then back at you, a slow flush creeping up his neck. He turned back to the grill, abandoning the ruined burger, and walked away from the crowd without a word to anyone.

The broken spatula was the first public crack. He didn't come to the smoke spot for two days, and you assumed maybe the guilt had finally won, that the prayer circles and his father’s disappointed eyes had rebuilt the wall. You were almost disappointed. Then, on the third day, as you were leaving a late class, a hand closed around your wrist from the shadow of a doorway. It was Jake, but he looked ravaged. Dark circles smudged under his eyes, his hair was uncharacteristically messy, and his collar was undone.

"Walk with me," he said, his voice hoarse. It wasn't a request. He didn't let go of your wrist as he steered you away from the main paths, toward the old greenhouse at the edge of the botanical gardens. It was locked for the night, but he produced a key from his pocket. Inside, the air was thick and humid, and he finally released you, turning to face you under the ghostly light filtering through the glass ceiling. "I tried," he breathed out, the words sounding ripped from his chest. "I prayed. I read. I went to confession." A harsh, humorless laugh escaped him. "It just made it worse. All I could think about was the smell of your skin in that closet."

He reached for you then, but his touch was different. It wasn't the frantic groping of before. His hands framed your face, his thumbs stroking your cheeks with a terrifying tenderness. "You ruined me," he whispered, his forehead leaning against yours. "Do you understand that? Completely. And I don't want to be fixed." His mouth found yours, and this kiss was a slow, deep claim, devoid of its earlier panic. It was a surrender. He guided you down onto a bed of soft peat moss behind a tray of orchids, his movements deliberate.

He took his time. He peeled your clothes away with a reverence that was more unsettling than his prior desperation. He mapped every inch of you with his lips and tongue, whispering things that sounded like prayers but weren't. "This is my communion," he murmured against your stomach, his breath hot. "This is my only truth." When he finally entered you, it was with a slow, devastating roll of his hips that made you cry out, the sound swallowed by the dense air. He moved with a focused intensity, his eyes locked on yours, watching every flicker of pleasure on your face as if studying for a final exam.

After lying tangled together on the borrowed jacket he’d spread beneath you, he didn't scramble to leave. He traced idle patterns on your arm, his head on your chest. "My father is giving the sermon at the downtown mission on Friday night," he said, his voice quiet in the humid dark. "The office in the back will be empty. The door locks." He stated matter-of-factly. The dependency had crystallized into something calm and absolute.

◌ֹ   💭  ִ  ՞

Your father stood at the stove, absently stirring a saucepan while an old Fleetwood Mac song played softly from the radio, the familiar melody blending with the quiet clink of cutlery as you wandered in to grab your jacket from the back of a chair.

"You've been going out a lot lately."

His voice was casual, almost conversational, though you could feel him watching for your reaction.

You shrugged one shoulder as you zipped up your jacket.

"So?"

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before he looked back at the saucepan, stirring it slowly.

"I don't know..." he said after a moment, choosing his words carefully. "You just seem happier."

Your hand paused around your keys, turning to look at him properly, a faint crease appearing between your brows, "Really?"

He nodded once, meeting your eyes for only a second before his attention drifted back to dinner, "I think so."

You let out a quiet breath, leaning your hip against the counter as though considering the possibility for the first time.

"...I didn't notice."

"I don't think you were supposed to."

The silence that followed settled easily between you, neither awkward nor heavy. The saucepan continued to bubble softly on the stove while somewhere outside, a car rolled slowly down Maple Street.

You pushed yourself away from the counter, slinging your jacket over your shoulders.

"You're not going to ask where I'm going?"

Your father smiled to himself, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

"I thought about it." He admitted.

"And?"

He looked back at you then, amusement warming his expression.

"I figured you'd tell me it was none of my business."

A slow grin spread across your face, "See you later."

"Don't stay out too late," he called after you, though there wasn't much authority behind it anymore.

You glanced back over your shoulder, a teasing smile still lingering on your face.

"No promises."

The downtown mission was cold and smelled of old wood and candle wax. He was waiting for you in the dark, a silhouette against the faint light from the stained-glass window depicting the crucifixion. He didn't speak, he simply took your hand and led you to the low, padded kneeler at the front of the small room. He guided you to kneel, then knelt beside you, not before the altar, but facing you. His hands trembled as he reached for the hem of your skirt, pushing the fabric up your thighs.

His repentance began with his mouth between your legs, there on the kneeler, his whispered prayers lost against your skin. Each flick of his tongue was a plea for forgiveness, each deep, worshiping stroke a confession of his weakness. He drank from you like communion, his hands gripping your hips to hold you steady as he sought his own form of absolution in your taste. When your back arched and a stifled moan escaped your lips, he only pressed closer, his own need evident in the desperate sounds vibrating against you.

After, as you trembled, he rose to his feet. He unzipped his dress pants with a soft hiss that was obscenely loud in the quiet. He took your hand and wrapped your fingers around him, his own hand covering yours, showing you the rhythm. "Do it," he breathed, his eyes clenched shut, his head tilted back toward the vaulted ceiling. "Let me feel you… take your penance from me." Your hand moved on him, slow at first, then faster at his urging, his hips jerking into your fist. His other hand came up to cover your mouth, muffling the sound of his own ragged, broken gasps as he spilled over your fingers, his release hot and sudden in the dim, holy space.

He sank back onto his heels, breathing heavily, his forehead resting against your shoulder. The silence returned, thick and heavy. He pulled a pristine white handkerchief from his pocket, the kind he always carried, and carefully wiped your hand clean. Then he wiped himself, folded the soiled cloth, and tucked it back into his pocket without a word. He stood, straightened his clothes, and ran a hand through his hair. He looked at you, still kneeling on the padded bench, your skirt rumpled, and in his eyes was a profound, unsettling peace. The crisis had passed. The sin was complete. He offered you a hand up, his touch now steady.

Sunday night found you in the back pew of the very same church, the evening service sparsely attended. Jake was at the pulpit, his voice clear and strong, speaking about grace and the burden of temptation. He looked every inch the devoted son, his suit crisp, his expression serene. His eyes scanned the congregation and landed on you. There was no flicker of recognition, no secret smile. His gaze passed over you as if you were a stranger. The sermon ended. The final hymn was sung. People filed out, offering him quiet greetings which he returned with gentle nods.

You waited until the last person had left, until the sexton had dimmed the lights and exited, leaving only the eternal flame flickering near the altar. The heavy door clicked shut. Jake remained at the front, his back to you, staring up at the cross. You stood and walked down the center aisle, the sound of your footsteps swallowed by the cavernous space. He didn't turn. You stopped a few feet behind him. For a long moment, there was only the faint hum of the building's electricity.

"Tell me you're sorry," you said, your voice soft but echoing slightly in the empty church.

He finally turned. In the dim light, his face was unreadable. He took a step toward you, then another, closing the distance. He didn't touch you. He simply looked down at you, his expression a mask of perfect, placid devotion. "I am washed clean," he stated, his voice low and even. Then his hand came up, not to your face, but to the top button of his own shirt. He undid it. Then the next. He took your hand and placed it flat against his bare chest, over the frantic, hammering beat of his heart. His skin was fever-hot. His eyes never left yours. The lie was a physical thing between you, trembling under your palm.

"I haven't been able to sleep," he rasped, his voice sounding ruined. "Every time I closed my eyes, I felt you. Every time I spoke of purity, I could taste you on my tongue."

He didn't kiss you softly. He claimed your mouth with a bruising intensity, his tongue demanding entrance as if he were trying to consume you. There was a desperate edge to him now; the seal had been broken, and the floodgates were wide open. He wasn't just a man resisting temptation anymore—he was a man who had tasted the forbidden fruit and found he couldn't survive without it.

His hands were frantic, sliding up your thighs with a familiarity that made your heart race. He knew exactly where you were most sensitive, exactly how to touch you to make you arch your back and moan his name into the silence of the church.

"You've ruined me," he groaned against your skin, his lips trailing fire down your neck to the swell of your breast. "I go to the altar and all I can think about is the way you scream when I'm deep inside you. I'm a liar. A hypocrite. And I don't care."

He reached down, his fingers trembling slightly as he freed himself from his trousers. He was already rock-hard, pulsing with a need that eclipsed any sense of divine duty. He gripped your hips, pulling you to the very edge of the table so he could align himself with you.

He looked you in the eyes, his expression a mix of agony and ecstasy. "Tell me you want this," he commanded, his voice a low, dangerous vibrate. "Tell me you want me to forget everything but the way you feel."

As you whispered your consent, he drove into you in one fluid, powerful motion, filling you completely. He let out a guttural sound—half-sob, half-growl—as he buried himself in you, his forehead crashing against yours. The rhythm was savage, a relentless pounding that shook the heavy table, the sound of your colliding bodies echoing through the hallowed halls.

For Jake, this wasn't just sex; it was a desecration, and every thrust felt like a deeper plunge into a beautiful, shimmering hell. He clung to you as if you were the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth, his movements becoming faster, more desperate, as he chased the blinding peak that would leave him shattered and ruined once again.

The sound of the mahogany table groaning under the weight of their colliding bodies filled the room, a rhythmic, visceral thud that drowned out the distant chiming of the church bells. Jake was no longer the composed man of God; he was a storm of sweat and desperation, his breath coming in jagged, ragged gasps that sounded like prayers to a different kind of deity.

He gripped your hips so hard his fingers left crescent marks on your skin, anchoring you as he drove into you with a relentless, punishing force. Every thrust was deeper than the last, hitting a spot that made your vision blur and your toes curl. You could feel the sheer size of him filling you, stretching you, the friction building a heat that threatened to consume you both.

"I can't... I can't stop," he groaned, his voice a guttural wreck. He shifted his angle, lifting one of your legs and hooking it over his shoulder to plunge even deeper. The sensation was overwhelming, a piercing, electric pleasure that radiated through your entire body.

You wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him down, your nails digging into his shoulders through the thin fabric of his shirt. You whispered his name—not as a plea, but as a command—and the sound of it seemed to break the last shred of his restraint.

Jake’s movements became frantic, a blur of motion and heat. He was chasing a release that felt like it would tear him apart. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, his teeth grazing your skin, his voice a low, shaking moan of "Oh God, oh God..."—though now, it wasn't a prayer. It was a surrender.

The tension reached a breaking point. You felt the first wave of your orgasm crash over you, tightening your walls around him in a series of rhythmic, pulsing contractions. The feeling of you gripping him was the final trigger. Jake let out a loud, unrestrained cry—a sound of pure, unadulterated release—as he thrust one last time, buried as deep as he could possibly go.

He shuddered violently, his entire body locking up as he spilled himself inside you in hot, heavy bursts. He collapsed against you, his chest heaving, his heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. For several long minutes, the only sound in the vestry was the sound of two people trying to remember how to breathe.

As he slowly pulled away, the cold air hit your skin, but the heat between you remained. Jake didn't move immediately. He stayed there, his forehead resting against yours, his eyes clouded with a mixture of absolute bliss and a crushing, lingering guilt.

He looked down at the wreckage of their clothes, then back at you, a dark, hungry smile playing on his lips. He leaned in, kissing you softly.

"I'm condemned," he whispered, "And I think I'm going to spend the rest of my life making sure we both burn for this."

you fall back onto the bed, fingers tangling in jake’s hair as he makes a humming sound against you, the vibrations sends sparks up your spine.

jake is good at this, always has been, but tonight he’s showing off. his tongue traces slow circles around you before flicking at your opening and dragging up, seeking out the place where you need him most.

“oh”, you whine. “oh fuck.”

“the clitoris”, he says against you, pulling his head back enough to meet your gaze, eyes becoming glossy as if he wants something more. “did you know it has over eight thousand nerve endings? the most of any part of the human body.”

“jake.” you threaten, fingers finding his temple as he continues to suck gently on your clit, his other hand splayed over the juncture of your thigh and hip.

“its educational,” he teases.

you laugh, a high pitched giggle that turns into a moan when jake sucks your clit into his mouth. your hips buck upwards as he braces himself over you.

“you’re such a nerd,” you manage to say through your moans.

“you are dating a nerd,” he says against your skin. “you knew what you were getting into.”

jake eases two fingers into you as you groan, your head falling back. he uses the stretch of his fingers to find the place deep inside you that makes your whole body twitch. his fingers are long and beautifully angled, curling in just the right way to send another pulse of sensation through you.

“see?” he murmurs, his mouth pressing a kiss to your inner thigh. “angles and vectors, all geometry.”

“shut up,” you gasp, your mouth forming an ‘o’ shape as you try to catch your breath. “ah— jake!”

“the g-spot is actually part of the clitoral structure,” he says, his fingers sliding in and out as his mouth finds your core again. “it all connects.”

“jake, i swear—”

“did you know that the clitoris is shaped like a wishbone?” he asks, tracing slow patterns along you with his tongue, working you over from bottom to top. you forget what you were about to say when he begins rolling his tongue over your clit in fast, shallow strokes.

you are so close, already writhing, and jake knows it, he always knows it. he knows your body the way he knows his textbooks, every little sound and reaction to a chapter he memorizes with devotion.

“you’re gonna come for me, baby?”

jake asks, his voice thick with something between amusement and need as his tongue skates over your thigh. “on my face? are you really going to do it? let’s test it, shall we?”

“your— fuck, glasses—!”

“forget the glasses.”

they are completely fogged over now, all opaque. its absurd, really, the way his tongue flicks over you in short bursts while his fingers curl inside you, making you dizzy with need. you can barely focus on what he says next.

“take them off,” you whine, practically begging. “jake— ”

“cant, im too busy recalling the theory of..” he says, practically purring. you find yourself laughing and whimpering at the same time.

“that doesnt even— thats not how it—”

“maybe physics isnt my strongest subject.” jake sighs dramatically before his tongue licks insistently at your folds, his fingers pumping in and out at a steady pace. he manages to ignore the fog on his glasses long enough for you to climax, shuddering and whimpering his name as your thighs shake on either side of his head. jake hums against your skin.

“come on, baby,” he groans, voice rough. “let me taste it. let me have it.”

“ah— jake!”

“i’ve got you. i’ve got you.”

your orgasm rolls over you, until you are gasping your release into the air, your back arching violently. your fingers dig into jakes scalp, his hair splayed out on either side of your hips. jake licks at you determinedly until your whimpers die down, your body limp, exhausted.

you push his head away weakly.

jake grins, finally lifting himself off of you, his chin glistening. he peeks up at you, the lenses blurred with condensation.

“see?” he says, sliding them up his nose. “perfectly functional.”

“you can’t see a thing.” you scoff.

“i can see enough, princess.”

jake leans over you, his head hovering just above your torso as he peppering kisses all over your body. you taste yourself on his lips when his glasses press against your cheek, warm and fuzzy.

you lift his head by the back of his skull, kissing him thoroughly before sliding his glasses off his face.

“hey,” he whines, blinking up at you. his lashes cast shadows across his cheeks. jake’s face is softer without the frames.

“i was going for a look.” he mumbles softly.

you raise your eyebrows, “the look was clouded nerd who cant see.”

“hey, that’s a classic aesthetic!”

you laugh, pulling him down on top of you. jake melts against you, kissing your collarbone, his fingers finding the sensitive spot at the juncture of your thigh and hip.

“i could go again,” he murmurs, voice heavy with intent. “we could run another trial. for science.”

“for science,” you repeat, laughing when jake’s fingers push into you once more, coaxing another moan from your lips as his glasses sit on the nightstand, forgotten.

You weren’t exactly sure how you ended up in the position you were currently in.

It was the next evening, and Jake had you pinned against the eucalyptus tree again, your dress pushed up around your waist. He was between your thighs, one leg hooked over his shoulder, sucking and licking at your wet folds like you were the only thing keeping him alive.

It started innocently enough. Jake had struggled to keep his hands off you all day, especially since your late-night rendezvous at the eucalyptus tree the previous night. You tried to pretend Jake wasn’t undeniably horny every time he looked at you, especially given the fact that you were constantly surrounded by his family members, but he was making it very difficult.

However, Jake cracked after dinner, and he tugged you out into the backyard. The sun was still hovering above the horizon, the golden beams filtering through the lush trees, illuminating just how needy Jake was for you. Your heart was hammering in your chest at the idea of being caught, but you hadn’t been caught the night before. Surely, nobody would find you—right?

“Jake, oh my god,” you breathed, your eyes rolling back as he jutted his tongue in and out of your entrance. You tangled your hands in his hair, slowly rolling your hips against his face to intensify the waves of pleasure. One hand grasped your hip as the other kneaded your breast, and you knew he was going to have you cumming on his tongue before you knew it.

However, you never got the chance. Somehow, neither of you heard the back door open and close or the footsteps of one of his cousins traipsing through the grass. The only thing you heard was the cry of horror that pulled you out of your pleasure and back to reality.

“What the fuck?” his cousin’s voice rang through the air.

Jake pulled away from you in a lustful haze, the criminalizing evidence of what he had been doing splattered across his face. He rushed to cover you up, to preserve some semblance of your dignity, but it was too late. His cousin was running back towards the house, and he gave you an apologetic look before running after her.

You stayed rooted to the spot you were in for longer than you cared to admit. You tried to ignore the embarrassment rising in your chest, and you were surprised to feel that tears were beginning to prick your eyes from just how mortified you were. Jake’s cousin, whose name you did not know, had found you both in a very compromising position, especially given Jake’s work as an idol and your work as a makeup artist for ENHYPEN. You figured she wouldn’t say anything, but the thought still filled you with dread. Your relationship with Jake was a tight-lipped secret, and it had been risky for you to come home with him at all. Both of your careers could be at stake if she said anything.

“Y/n?”

You turned your head, looking at your boyfriend as he approached you slowly.

“Jakey,” you sighed. He opened his arms for you, and you fell into them. “Did you talk to her?”

Jake slowly traced circles on your back with his slender fingers. “Yeah, she said she won’t tell anyone. She also said she won’t be able to look us in the eyes for a couple years.”

You snorted, his words a welcome reprieve from the negative emotions swirling inside you. “Well, I won’t be able to look her in the eyes either. Guess we’ll just have to each other forever.”

Jake leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “Guess so. Anyway, nobody else knows what happened. I made sure of that. We can go back inside and not worry.”

“I’m going to worry anyway, but I appreciate your thoughtfulness,” you said, lifting your head to look at your boyfriend. “But from now until we leave? Absolutely no sex. No touching. I can’t do that again.”

You could see Jake’s smile waver slightly. “Like, not even kisses are allowed? But we still have four days left until we go back to Seoul!”

“No buts,” you said, your voice firm. “You are not allowed to touch me whatsoever until we get back home.”

“Okay, I think I can do that,” Jake breathed. “How hard can it be?”

Evidently, the answer to Jake’s question was that it would be extremely hard. Impossible, even.

After one day, you could tell that Jake was struggling, but he was still able to function. After two days, he was having a harder time staying focused on his day-to-day activities. However, by the last day, he looked as if he were dying. His eyes glazed over every time he looked at you, and you had to maintain the distance between you two to ensure that he didn’t get tempted. You knew that if he started touching you, he wouldn’t be able to stop—no matter who was watching.

“Y/n,” Jake said shakily. You were standing in the kitchen, washing dishes after dinner. The rest of his family was outside playing a game of rugby, and you hadn’t even realized that Jake had snuck inside until he spoke.

“Jake, no,” you stated plainly, not even looking at him. “We can’t be alone, especially here. We’re going home tomorrow, and I know you can wait.”

“I can’t,” he whined. “I’m fucking dying, y/n. I can’t think or function right now.”

You looked up at him, and you could’ve sworn you saw tears gathering in his eyes. You had never seen Jake this needy, and you enjoyed it more than you let on. You set down the plate you were washing and gazed up at him through your lashes.

“So desperate, aren’t you, Jakey?” You raised a finger, tracing his abs through his cotton t-shirt as you stared up at him. He shuddered, his eyes fluttering closed as a soft moan escaped his lips.

“Y/n, please,” he stammered, his voice high-pitched in a way you had never heard before. “Can’t we just sneak into the bathroom? I’ll be fast, I promise. Nobody will even know we’re gone.”

“You know the rules, Jaeyun,” you whispered, his Korean name rolling off your tongue in the way you knew drove him crazy. “I said no touching, and I meant it.”

You lowered your eyes, and you could see just how hard he was. His clothed length was straining painfully against his pants, and you gave him a small smirk. You slowly moved your hand towards his cock, but you stopped just before you were touching him. You saw him twitch in his pants, and he swore viciously.

“You’re the fucking worst, y/n,” he whimpered.

“I know, but you love me,” you responded with a shrug. “I’m gonna go join the rugby game—looks pretty fun.”

“I can’t believe you,” he said, and you could tell just how badly he wanted you—needed you. However, as badly as you wanted him too, you couldn’t risk getting caught again. There were still far too many people still in the house for you to feel comfortable doing anything.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” he sighed, palming himself through his pants, and you knew exactly what he was going to do.

“Okay, see you outside?”

Jake nodded tersely, and you watched him turn on his heel and disappear into the bathroom down the corridor. After you heard the door lock, you glanced outside before tip-toeing after him. Once you reached the bathroom door, you stopped, holding your breath as you pushed your ear against it.

Inside, you heard the quiet slick of Jake already jerking himself off desperately accompanied by shallow breaths. You could imagine how he looked—leaning against the wall with his eyes squeezed shut, shirt between his teeth, and his pants around his knees as he pleasured himself to the thought of you. You felt yourself become increasingly turned on the longer you stood there, and your legs clenched as you heard his breaths turn to full-fledged moans. He was already close.

It was only another moment until you knew Jake had found his release. He let out a series of long, strangled noises as he came, and it took everything in you to not open the door and wrap your lips around his cock, swallowing every drop of his load.

Once he had finished, and you heard him pulling up his pants, you snuck away as quietly as possible before stepping outside, ignoring the intense throbbing between your legs.

When the time came for you and Jake to return home the next afternoon, you found that you were surprisingly sad to leave Jake’s family and childhood home behind. You had adored getting to spend a week of the holiday season with them, and it was also a welcome break from the December cold in Seoul.

Of course, because of who Jake was, you had to return home in a private jet. He had fought the company, begging them to let him feel like a normal person when returning to his home country, but they had refused to budge. You felt bad for your boyfriend, as you knew he craved a sense of normalcy, but you realized very quickly into your return flight that Jake was now grateful you had been forced to take the private jet.

“Y/n,” Jake sang moments after takeoff. You had already cracked open your book, and you were determined to finish it on the flight before returning to your hectic life as a k-pop makeup artist.

“Yes, Jakey?” you asked, not taking your eyes off your book.

You felt his fingers graze your thigh, and you shook your head. “Absolutely not. There are other people on this plane.”

“Please?” he groaned. “I can’t wait any longer. I’m going to explode.”

You raised your eyes to his slowly, giving him a droll look. “You can wait ten hours.”

“Ten hours!” Jake exclaimed, throwing his head back and letting out a frustrated groan.

“You’ll be fine, Jaeyun,” you told him, returning your eyes to your book. “Once we’re back home, we can have the best sex of your life—I promise.”

Jake sighed before leaning back in his seat, grabbing his phone and beginning to type something.

A few hours later, after dinner had been served and the sun had set, you glanced at Jake to find that you could see the perfectly defined outline of his hardened cock in his pants. His eyes were closed, legs stretched out and hands linked behind his head, but you could tell from his breathing that he was anything but sleeping.

“Jake?” you murmured.

“Hmm?” he responded, his eyes still closed.

“Is there a reason you’re so hard?”

“Not really,” he said nonchalantly. “Just my incredibly sexy girlfriend sitting across from me on a private jet with nobody else around.”

You found a small smile spreading across your face, and you closed your book and tossed it on the chair next to you. Jake’s eyes were still pressed closed, and you tilted your head to the side curiously as you took him in. The lights in the jet had been dimmed to allow you to sleep, but at the moment, sleep was the last thing you wanted. Jake's muscles strained against his black shirt and sweatpants, and you absolutely loved the way his broad shoulders tapered down to his incredibly thin waist. He was so incredibly hot without even trying.

You leaned back in your seat, stretching your limbs before extending your leg toward him. You slowly rested your foot atop Jake’s hardened cock, and you loved the way his entire body stiffened.

“Y/n, what the hell are you doing?” he asked, his breath catching in his throat. “I know you’re having fun teasing me, but I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself if you keep this up.”

“When did I say I want you to stop?”

Jake’s eyes opened before narrowing. “About four hours ago.”

“Well, that was four hours ago,” you shrugged, rubbing your foot along his length. “This is now.”

“Are you sure?” he breathed. “I don’t want you to feel forced.”

“I think you’ve been patient enough that I can reward you—don’t you agree?”

Jake’s cock twitched against your foot. “I don’t know—you tell me.”

You lifted your leg, placing it back on the ground and standing. You stared down at Jake, tugging the waistband of your shorts down until they fell to the floor around your ankles, revealing the lacy black thong you were wearing. Jake sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes darkening with desire.

You stepped over to Jake’s seat, straddling his hips as you lowered yourself down on top of his clothed hardness.

“Oh, y/n,” he groaned, raising a shaky hand to your waist. “You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted this.”

“Well, you know what they say,” you said, slowly grinding your core against him. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Does it?”

“I don’t know, but it definitely makes your dick grow harder.”

Jake snorted a laugh, but it was quickly overtaken by a moan as you increased the pace of your hips. Even through his sweatpants, the tip of his dick rubbed against your clit, and you let out a sinful sound at the delicious sensation. Jake’s hand found the back of your neck, and he tugged you towards him until your lips crashed together in a frenzy. After the days spent apart, where you weren’t allowed to touch, taste, or enjoy each other, all decorum and dignity had disappeared. You and Jake were no longer a k-pop idol and his makeup artist girlfriend—you were two normal people, desperate to drop your defenses and allow your bodies to finally entwine.

Jake roughly pulled your shirt over your head, and he immediately undid the clasp of your bra before tossing it to the floor and taking your breast into his mouth. You gasped as he nipped the sensitive skin there, his other hand grabbing your ass with more desire than ever before.

“Mmph, Jaeyun,” you cried, his tongue swirling your nipple.

His hips bucked as his Korean name escaped your lips, and an animalistic groan radiated from deep in his chest. “Say my name again, baby. Say it for me.”

“Jaeyun!” you repeated breathlessly, rolling your hips against him.

“Need to taste you,” he growled against your breast. Before you knew what was happening, Jake had lifted you up, your head resting in his lap, back arched midair, and legs draped over his shoulders. Jake had never put you in this position before, and you could almost weep from how wonderful it felt when he finally connected his mouth with your slick.

Jake propped you up with his hands, the toned muscles in his arms straining to keep you exactly where he wanted you. He let out a low groan against you as he sucked and licked your clit, and you didn’t even bother trying to conceal your moans. Let the flight attendants know what they would see if they entered the main cabin—you no longer cared.

“Ah—ah, Jaeyun, shit!” you swore as he used his tongue to repeatedly lick up your center. He slurped up every drop of your wetness, the saltiness spreading across his tongue and making him go crazy for you. You knew how desperate he had been for you during your vacation, and you could imagine no better way to finally release the pent up tension than to have him worship you between your legs.

It wasn’t long before you noticed the familiar feeling of your climax spreading within you, starting between your legs before rising into your chest and neck. You let out a harsh cry as you came against Jake’s tongue, and he lapped up the wetness that gushed from you. His hands tightened around you, the only thing keeping you rooted in reality as the aftershocks of your release left you trembling.

“How do you feel?” Jake asked, gently lowering you so that you were laying in his lap.

“O-oh my god,” was all you could say. Jake grinned deviously, and he lifted you so that you were sitting in his lap again.

“Do you want me inside you?” he murmured against your ear before nipping it.

“So bad, Jaeyun,” you shuddered. “More than anything.”

“It’s good to know that you’re just as desperate as me,” he chuckled, pushing his pants down to allow his already leaking length to spring free. “I was starting to worry.”

“I think I’m just better at hiding how badly I need you,” you told him before pressing your lips to his. He kissed you hungrily for a moment, rolling your nipple between his forefinger and thumb. He then guided your hips to his length, and you lifted your hips just enough to allow him to line himself up with your entrance. Once you felt the familiar sensation of his tip pressed against you, you slowly lowered your hips down, engulfing his aching cock with your wet warmth.

“Oh, shit,” Jake groaned slowly, leaning his head back against the headrest as he watched himself disappear inside you. “Oh my fucking god, y/n.”

“Feel good, Jaeyun?” you asked, stopping once he was fully inside you. “Did you miss my pussy?”

“More than anything,” he stuttered. Just like the night before, you could’ve sworn you saw tears in his eyes. However, this time, you said nothing about it. You relished in seeing just how wrecked your boyfriend was for you.

“Should I fuck you?” you whispered, tracing your fingers along the lines of his chest.

“Please.”

You smirked before you started to move on top of him. Your movements were painfully slow and controlled, and you watched as Jake desperately tried to stop himself from placing his hands on your hips and speeding you up. You wanted him to remember just how lucky he was to have you, even if he hadn’t been allowed to touch you the last few days.

“Y/n, please,” he whimpered, his eyes full of tears and want. His breaths were shaky, and you wondered if he would actually cry from how badly he wanted you. You decided to figure it out.

“Please what, Jaeyun?” you murmured, still moving your hips excruciatingly slowly. Your pussy dragged along his cock in a way that you knew would have him feeling every centimeter of you, driving him crazy until he took control.

“Please let me fuck you,” he said, his tears finally spilling onto his cheeks. “I need it so fucking bad, please, please, please.”

You lifted a hand to wipe the tears from his cheek, and only then did you start to fuck him faster. He immediately let out a series of broken sobs, the sensation of his girlfriend finally allowing him to be inside her sending him to a place he had never been.

You had never seen Jake like this—normally, he was in control, dominant in a way that you loved. However, when he was deprived of you? You had him weeping and begging just for the chance to feel you around him.

“Jesus Christ, baby,” Jake whimpered. You came to a stop atop him, and you looked down at him curiously.

“What, Jaeyun? Something wrong?”

“You’re trying to kill me,” he said, his eyes hazy with tears and lust.

You continued to stare at him, not moving at all, wondering how long it would be until he finally broke. To his credit, it was longer than you expected, but you could tell from the way his breaths became more shallow that he was about to lose himself. And you let him.

When his control snapped, he transformed into a different person entirely. He wrapped his arms around you roughly, pulling you towards him as he began to buck his hips up into you wildly. You let out a series of loud cries with each thrust, his cock slamming into you with a fervor you had never experienced.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jake sobbed, desperately thrusting you like he would die if stopped. “You feel s’ fucking good, baby. Oh my god, I love you so fucking much.”

“I— love— you— too—,” your words came out clipped with each snap of his hips, his cock brushing against your cervix while simultaneously rubbing against the spot inside you that had your eyes rolling back in your head. You could feel your hair falling out of your ponytail with each thrust, but you didn’t care. Jake absolutely loved when he wrecked you during sex, and now, you were wrecking him too.

“Pussy s’ good,” he wept, his fingertips digging into the soft flesh of your back. “Love fucking this pussy, baby. It’s all mine—nobody else can fuck you like I do, yeah?”

“Y-yes,” you stammered. “God, nobody fucks me like you Jaeyun. Nobody.”

“Good,” he snapped, and you knew that you had activated his possessive side. Jake knew you had been with other men in the past, and it seemed like whenever he remembered that during sex, he became more animalistic than you knew possible. As he ruthlessly fucked you, he lifted his mouth to your neck and bit down possessively. He was marking you as his, and he wanted everyone to know it.

“I’m close, baby,” he groaned against your neck after a moment. “Where do you want it?”

“On my chest,” you said breathlessly. Jake continued thrusting wildly, his moans pitching up, before he quickly pulled out of you. As soon as his cock left you, it sprang upward, and you watched as his cum immediately began to shoot from his pink tip.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jake sputtered, his eyes pressed closed as he painted both of your chests white with his load. Your breath caught in your throat as you watched his dick twitch, more cum than you had ever seen spurting from him with each pulse.

Once he was finally done, he opened his eyes and gaped at what he had done. “Jesus,” he panted. “Did I do that?”

You let out a soft laugh. “I think you did.”

“How the hell are we gonna clean this up?”

You gave Jake a mischievous smirk before lowering yourself down to his stomach and chest. He eyed you curiously, but he immediately let out a soft gasp as you began to lick all the cum from his chiseled torso. You relished in the look he gave you as you licked up every drop, and when you were done, you swallowed before lifting your head once more and kissing him deeply.

“That was really fucking hot,” he said when you pulled back to catch your breath.

“Then I’ll just have to do it again, won’t I?”

Jake’s hands traced up and down your back as he looked at you lovingly. “The cum eating part, or the sex deprivation part?”

“I was thinking both,” you breathed against his lips.

“I think you’re trying to kill me,” he sighed, but when he connected your lips, you could feel just how much he loved and wanted you.

“I guess I’ll stop. If I kill you, who’s going to fuck me?”

Jake’s eyes darkened, and his grip became more possessive yet again. “Absolutely nobody. You’re mine, y/n. Now and forever.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

You run your fingers through his hair, slow and absent, scratching lightly at his scalp the way you know makes him melt. He hums in response, a tiny, content sound that you feel more than hear, and his arms tighten a fraction around your waist, pulling himself closer, burrowing deeper into you like he's trying to crawl inside your ribcage and live there.

It had been an impossibly long day.

Rehearsals that started before the sun came up and didn't end until the studio lights were the only thing keeping the room from going dark. Run-throughs and spot-checks and the choreographer saying "one more time" what felt like forty-seven more times.

Your own body was a landscape of aches, your hip flexors burning, your calves tight as piano wires, but Jake had it worse.

You'd watched him during the final full run, the way his landings were just a beat too heavy, the way his arms lagged a half-second behind the count on the last chorus, the way he pressed his palm flat against the mirror afterwards and just breathed for a long, trembling moment before anyone could notice.

He'd pushed through it, because that's what Jake does, because that's what all of you do, but you could see the weariness in the slump of his shoulders on the shuttle back to the hotel, the way his head tipped back against the window and his eyes fluttered shut before the vehicle had even left the parking lot.

So when you'd texted him "netflix and chill?" an hour after you'd both dragged yourselves back to your respective rooms, you'd meant it in the most literal, innocent way possible. A movie. Some company. Maybe he'd fall asleep on your shoulder and you'd let him, because he looked like he needed it and because you liked the weight of him, the trust of it, the way he went soft and pliant and unguarded only around you.

But then he'd shown up at your door not even two minutes later, still in his practice sweats and a worn t-shirt, hair damp from the shower, and the way he'd looked at you, all heavy-lidded and almost helpless, had told you everything you needed to know about what kind of night this was going to be before either of you said a word.

And now here you are.

Propped up against the headboard with your legs stretched out on the hotel bed, some romcom playing on the laptop balanced on the mattress beside you, the volume turned low enough that it's basically just background noise.

Jake is lying half on top of you, his body a long, warm line of weight and heat against your side, his head on your chest, his arms around your waist, and it's sweet, it's so sweet, except for the part where his hands have started to wander.

It happened gradually.

Innocently, even, if you were being generous.

A palm settling on your ribcage that slowly migrated south. A thumb that started tracing idle circles on the curve of your waist and then drifted upward, inch by patient inch, until it was brushing the underside of your breast through your shirt.

Then he wasn't even pretending to be subtle about it anymore, his hand just full-on cupping you, kneading the soft flesh through the cotton, squeezing gently and then a little less gently, his fingers pressing into you with a lazy, possessive hunger that he probably wasn't even fully aware of.

Jake has always been like this.

A freak in the most understated, unassuming way, the kind that sneaks up on you. He doesn't leer or grab or make crude jokes the way some guys do. He just touches, constantly, like he's physically incapable of keeping his hands off you when you're within arm's reach, and the touching always starts soft and then devolves into something more. A hand on your thigh during dinner that creeps higher. An arm around your shoulders that turns into fingers tracing your collarbone. A back hug that becomes his palms sliding up your ribs to cup your breasts while he presses his face into your neck and breathes you in like you're the only oxygen in the room.

You'd clocked it early.

Way back, before you were even together, before you were anything more than two dancers from different groups who kept ending up at the same afterparties, competitions, and late-night food runs. You'd noticed the way his gaze would drift to your body when he thought you weren't looking, the way his hands would twitch at his sides like he was stopping himself from reaching out. You'd noticed the way he'd look at you on stage, during those moments when both your groups were backstage waiting for results, the way his eyes would track the movement of your body like he was memorizing the choreography of your hips for later.

Jake has always been obsessed with your body. That's just a fact, the way gravity is a fact, the way the grass is green is a fact. It's not something he hides well and it's not something he tries particularly hard to hide. He tells you constantly, in words, in touches, and in the way he looks at you like you're something holy, something he can't believe he gets to have. He loves the curve of your waist, the softness of your stomach, the shape of your breasts, the thickness of your thighs. He loves all of it with an enthusiasm that borders on worship, and he's never, not once, made you feel like there was anything about your body that needed changing, hiding, or apologizing for.

Right now, though, his hands are making it very difficult to focus on the movie, which you've already lost the plot of entirely. His fingers are kneading your breast through your shirt with a slow, rhythmic pressure, his palm squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing, and every time his thumb brushes over your nipple through the fabric, a tiny spark of heat shoots down your spine and settles warm and heavy between your thighs.

"Jake," you say, and your voice comes out softer than you intended.

"Hmm?" He doesn't lift his head from your chest. His fingers don't stop.

"You're being some freak again."

A pause. Then, very quietly, almost sheepishly: "I know."

His hand still doesn't move. If anything, his fingers squeeze a little tighter, and you feel your nipple pebble against his palm through the thin cotton, and you know he feels it too because his breath hitches, just slightly, a tiny stutter of air against your collarbone.

"Baby," you try again, and there's a warning in it this time, the kind that could go either way, could mean stop or could mean keep going but you better be ready for the consequences.

"I can't help it," he mumbles into your chest, and his voice is muffled and warm and so genuinely pitiful that you almost laugh. "You're just so soft. And you smell good. And you're right here, and I'm tired, and you feel so nice, and I just—I want to touch you."

He says it like a confession. Like it's something he's been fighting against and losing. And you know, you know the solution to this, because you've been here before, many times, in many variations.

When Jake gets like this, when his hands won't stop and his breathing goes shallow and his body presses closer and closer like he's trying to fuse the two of you into one person, there's only one thing that calms him down.

You shift beneath him, and he makes a small, protesting sound at the movement, his arms tightening around your waist, but you're gentle but firm as you guide him upright. He goes easily, pliant, his body following your hands like he'd follow them anywhere.

You position him so he's sitting against the headboard, his back to it, his legs stretched out in front of him, and you watch the way he looks up at you, all dark, sleepy eyes and swollen lips and that particular expression he gets when he's needy and trying not to show it.

"C'mere," he says, reaching for you, and his voice is rough and low and it does things to you that you'll never admit out loud.

You swing your leg over his lap and settle onto his thighs, straddling him, and the position puts you above him, looking down, while he has to tilt his chin up to meet your eyes. The laptop is still playing beside you, the romcom's soundtrack filling the room with something bright and incongruous.

The air conditioning hums overhead, cool air prickling at the bare skin of your arms and the strip of your stomach where your shirt has ridden up, making you shiver slightly, making you aware of every inch of your body and every inch of his.

"We're just going to sit like this for a bit," you tell him, and your voice is steady, controlled, the way it always is when you're taking care of him. "Okay? Just this. To help you calm down."

"Okay," he whispers, and he's already nodding, already agreeing, because Jake never argues when you take charge, never pushes back when you set the terms. He just sinks into it, into you, like you're the only solid thing in a world that's constantly shifting under his feet.

You reach between your bodies and hook your thumbs under the waistband of his sweats, tugging them down just enough, and he lifts his hips to help you without being asked, a small, eager movement that makes something warm and possessive curl in your stomach.

His cock is half-hard already, thick and warm against his thigh, and you wrap your hand around him briefly, just a single stroke, feeling him twitch and swell in your palm, before you guide him toward your entrance.

You're not wearing anything under your shorts, and you push the fabric aside, position him at your opening, and then you sink down.

Slowly. So slowly. Inch by inch, feeling the stretch of him, the thick, hot pressure of him filling you up, and the sound Jake makes is something between a gasp and a whimper, a broken, breathless thing that escapes from his throat like you've pulled it out of him by force. His hands fly to your hips, gripping but not pulling, just holding, like he needs something to anchor him while you take him apart piece by piece.

"Fuck," he breathes, his head tipping back against the headboard, his eyes squeezing shut. "God, you feel—you feel so good, so warm, so—"

"Shh," you soothe, and you're fully seated now, your hips flush against his, his cock buried to the hilt inside you, and you can feel him throbbing, feel the way he's already getting harder, the way his body is responding to the tight, wet heat of you even though you haven't moved. "Just stay still. Just feel it."

He nods, his jaw clenched, his fingers digging into your hips hard enough that you know there'll be little half-moons pressed into your skin like signatures. You can feel him trembling, tiny, involuntary shivers running through his thighs beneath yours, and you run your hands up his arms, over his shoulders, smoothing down the tension you find there, and he melts under your touch, his grip loosening, his breath slowing.

This is literally the thing about cockwarming Jake.

It's not just about the physical sensation, though that's part of it, the fullness of him inside you, the way your walls grip him, the way you can feel every pulse, twitch, and throb of his cock against your most sensitive places without either of you moving. It's about this, the way he goes quiet, soft, and completely, utterly surrendered underneath you. The way he gives you everything, every last scrap of control, and trusts you to hold it for him.

You pull the blanket from the foot of the bed and drape it over both of you, tucking it around your shoulders, and the warmth of it combined with the heat of his body against yours is immediately, overwhelmingly soothing.

The air conditioning continues its quiet assault, cold air prickling at your exposed shoulders, the top of your head, and the sliver of your ankle where the blanket doesn't quite reach, a sharp contrast to the furnace of him beneath you, inside you.

The movie plays on, forgotten, the laptop's distant hum mixing with the sound of both of you breathing.

For a while, you just sit there. You inside him, him inside you, your bodies fitted together like puzzle pieces, the kind that snap into place with a satisfying finality. You can feel his heartbeat against your chest, or maybe it's your heartbeat you're feeling, the two of them so synced up you can't tell the difference anymore.

His hands have migrated from your hips to your waist, his arms wrapping around you loosely, pulling you close, and his face is pressed into the curve of your neck, his breath warm and slow against your skin.

"Mmm," he hums, and the sound is drowsy, content, like a cat that's found the one sunny spot in the entire house. "This is nice. You're nice. Everything is nice."

A laugh escapes you, quiet and fond. "You're so cute when you're like this."

"Like what?"

"All soft and needy."

He makes a small, embarrassed sound against your neck, and you feel his cock twitch inside you, and oh, that's interesting. You file that away for later, the fact that calling him needy makes him harder, makes his hips jerk in a tiny, involuntary thrust that presses him just a little deeper.

"Jake," you warn gently, and he stills immediately.

"Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to move. It just—you feel so tight, I can't—"

"It's okay." You card your fingers through his hair, scratching at his scalp, and he shivers and sighs and melts further into you. "You're doing so well. Being so good for me."

He keens.

Actually keens, a thin, high sound that he tries to swallow but can't quite manage, and his arms tighten around your waist, and you feel his whole body flex and shudder under you.

Jake has always been a whiny person, you found that out way before you ever got together, back when he'd whine about early call times, sore muscles, and bad catering at competitions, but this specific variety of whine, the one that comes from deep in his chest when you praise him, is something you discovered later and have been devotedly cataloguing ever since.

"Baby," he mumbles into your neck, and his voice is thick, syrupy, like he's half-asleep and half-desperate. "Can I kiss you? Please?"

"You don't have to ask," you say, tilting his chin up with your fingers.

His mouth finds yours like it's coming home.

The kiss starts soft, slow, the way everything has been tonight.

His lips are warm and slightly chapped, and they move against yours with a tenderness that makes your chest ache, the kind of tenderness that says I love you I love you I love you without a single word.

You kiss him back, your hands cradling his jaw, your thumbs tracing the sharp line of it, and he makes a small, pleased sound into your mouth that vibrates through both of you.

Then the kiss deepens.

His lips part against yours and your tongue slides against his, wet and hot and slow, and the shift in the air is immediate, palpable, like someone turning up the temperature in the room by ten degrees.

You feel his cock pulse inside you, feel him swelling, getting impossibly harder, and a low groan rumbles through his chest and into yours. Your own body responds, your walls clenching around him, your arousal slicking the space where you're joined, and the sensation of being filled while kissing him, of being so completely connected, is enough to make your head spin.

You're kissing him deeper now, hungrier, your fingers sliding from his jaw into his hair, gripping, tugging slightly, and he gasps into your mouth and his hips roll up into yours, just once, a single, grinding thrust that makes you both moan.

The blanket shifts around your shoulders, the cool air rushing in to meet your heated skin, and the contrast, the cold on your shoulders and the heat between your legs, is maddening.

And then your hair falls in your face.

It happens between one kiss and the next, the long strands slipping from behind your ear and tumbling down between you like a curtain, catching on Jake's lips, tickling his cheek, getting in the way of his mouth finding yours.

You huff in frustration, reaching up to push it back, but Jake's hand gets there first.

He pulls back just enough to look at you, his eyes dark and hazy and impossibly soft, and his fingers gather your hair gently, carefully, like he's handling something precious.

He sweeps it all to one side of your neck, smoothing it down over your shoulder, and then you feel his other hand at your nape, his fingers finding the hair tie on his wrist, the one he always wears, the black one that's become as much a part of his daily uniform as his practice shoes.

He stretches it between his fingers and then gathers your hair into a low ponytail, securing it with practiced ease, like he's done this a hundred times before, because he has, because Jake is always the one fixing your hair when it gets in your face, always the one with the hair tie when you forgot yours, always the one paying attention to the small things so you don't have to.

"Pretty," he murmurs, and the word is so simple, so sincere, so completely unguarded that it steals the breath from your lungs. He's looking at you the way he always looks at you, like you hung the moon and the stars and every constellation in between, and his thumb brushes your cheekbone once, feather-light, before his hand settles back on your waist.

"Jake," you breathe, and you don't know what you were going to say after that, maybe nothing, maybe everything, but it doesn't matter because you're kissing him again, harder this time, more urgent, your hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt and pulling him closer even though closer isn't physically possible when he's already inside you.

The kiss is messier now, wetter, all tongues and teeth and the slick sounds of your mouths moving together in the quiet room.

You can feel him throbbing inside you, feel his cock twitching and straining, and your hips are moving without your permission, grinding in slow, tiny circles that don't lift off him but shift him inside you, pressing him against different places, making you feel him in different ways.

Each movement draws a sound from one of you, a gasp or a moan or a shuddering exhale that the other swallows.

"Baby," Jake whimpers against your lips, and his voice is wrecked, barely there, just breath and want and need all tangled up together. "I need—please, can I move? I want to move, I need you, I want—"

"I know," you whisper back, and you lift your hips and sink back down, and the sound he makes is devastating, a broken, choked-off moan that he buries in your neck. "I've got you."

You start to ride him.

Slowly at first, torturously slowly, lifting your hips until only the tip of him is inside you and then sinking back down, taking him to the root, feeling every inch of the stretch, every ridge and vein of him dragging against your walls.

The blanket is pooled around your waists now, shifting with every movement, and the air conditioning hits the sweat gathering on your shoulders and the back of your neck, making you shiver, making your skin prickle with goosebumps that have nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the man underneath you.

The sound of it is obscene in the best way, the wet, slick noise of your body taking him in, the soft slap of skin against skin when you bottom out, the creak of the hotel bed beneath you, and beneath it all, the distant, tinny sound of the movie still playing on the laptop, completely ignored.

"Feel so good," Jake gasps, and his head is thrown back against the headboard, his throat exposed, his lips swollen and wet from your kisses. His hands are on your hips, holding, his fingers pressing into your flesh like he needs something to ground him, like he might float away if he doesn't anchor himself to you. "You feel so fucking good, I can't—you're so tight, so wet, oh my god—"

"Really?" You clench around him deliberately, squeezing his cock with your walls, and he yelps, actually yelps, a sharp, high sound that makes heat pool low in your stomach. "You like that, baby? Like how I feel around you?"

"Yes—god, yes—fuck, I love it—I love you—I love you so much—"

"I know you do." You lean in and kiss the hinge of his jaw, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, and he turns his head to catch your lips, kissing you messy and desperate and deep. "My pretty boy. My good boy. Taking me so well. Being so fucking patient for me."

He whines into your mouth, a high, keening sound that dissolves into a moan when you grind down onto him, circling your hips, pressing his cock against that spot inside you that makes your vision blur.

Your hands are braced on his shoulders, your fingers digging into the solid muscle beneath his worn t-shirt, and you can feel the way his entire body is trembling, the effort it's taking him to not just grab your hips and thrust up into you the way he desperately wants to.

"You can move," you tell him, your mouth against his ear, your breath hot on his skin. "Move with me."

And he does.

His hips snap up to meet yours, and the change in rhythm is immediate, electric, his cock driving into you deeper and harder than before, and the sound that escapes you is ragged and startled and so fucking needy.

He's not rough, Jake is never rough with you, not really, but there's a desperation to the way he moves now, an urgency, like he's been holding back for so long and the dam is finally cracking.

"Shit—you feel—feel amazing—mmm—" The words tumble out of him in broken fragments, punctuated by thrusts and gasps and the lewd, wet sounds of your bodies moving together. "So good, baby, you're so good to me, so good —"

"Jake—" Your voice comes out wrecked, barely a voice at all, just breath and heat and the shape of his name. The pleasure is building, a tight, coiling heat in your stomach that spreads outward with every thrust, every grind, every time his cock hits that spot that makes your thighs shake and your cunt clench around him.

"Close," he gasps, and his rhythm is faltering now, his thrusts getting shorter, faster, more erratic, his fingers digging so hard into your hips you know there'll be marks tomorrow and you don't care, you want them, you want every mark and every bruise and every physical proof that you're his and he's yours. "I'm close, I'm—can I—please—"

"Not yet," you say, and your voice is steady even though your body is shaking, even though every nerve ending is screaming at you to let go, to fall, to crash over the edge with him. "Wait for me. Can you do that? Can you be good and wait for me?"

"I'll try," he whimpers, and his eyes are squeezed shut, his jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp relief, and he looks like he's fighting a war inside himself, every muscle taut with the effort of holding back. "I'll try, I'll be good, I—fuck—you're so tight, you're clenching so hard, I can't—"

"You can," you tell him, and you take his face in your hands, tilting his chin up, forcing him to look at you, and the raw, open vulnerability in his eyes, the desperate, helpless need, makes your heart clench and your cunt clench and both of them are too much. "You can, because you're mine, and you're going to come when I tell you to. Okay?"

"Okay," he breathes, and the word is a surrender, a prayer, the most honest thing he's ever said. "Okay. Yours. I'm yours, baby."

You speed up, grinding down onto him harder, faster, chasing the edge now, feeling it rush up to meet you, and Jake's hands slide from your hips to your thighs, gripping the soft flesh there, squeezing, his fingers pressing into you the way he always does, like he can't believe you're real, like he needs to feel every inch of you to convince himself this isn't a dream. His cock is hitting that spot inside you with every thrust now, relentless, devastating, and the coil in your stomach is wound so tight you think you might shatter.

"Baby," you gasp, and your forehead drops to his, your breath mingling, your noses brushing, so close you can see the wetness gathering in the corners of his eyes, the way his lashes are clumped together, the way he's looking at you like you're the entire universe compressed into a single person. "I'm close. Come with me. Now."

He breaks.

A sob tears from his throat, your name and a moan and something that might be I love you all tangled together into a sound you'll never forget, and his hips buck up into you one final, desperate time, and you feel him come, feel his cock pulse inside you, hot and thick, feel him filling you up, rope after rope, the warmth of it spreading through you, and the sensation is enough to push you over the edge right after him.

Your orgasm crashes through you in waves, your walls clamping down around his cock in pulsing, rhythmic contractions, and you're moaning his name into the space between your mouths, your fingers fisted in his hair, your body shaking apart on top of him while he holds you through it, his arms wrapped around you so tight, so tight, like he's terrified you'll disappear if he lets go.

The aftershocks ripple through you for what feels like an eternity, your body twitching and trembling against his, his cock still inside you, softening slowly, still pulsing with the last echoes of his release.

You can feel him leaking out of you, the warm, sticky evidence of what you've done pooling where your bodies are pressed together, and it should be messy and inconvenient and probably require a towel, but right now, in this moment, it just feels right. It feels like the most natural thing in the world.

You collapse against his chest, your face pressed into his neck, your breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps. His arms stay around you, his hands smoothing up and down your spine, gentle, soothing, and you can feel his heart hammering against your chest, or maybe that's yours, you still can't tell the difference.

"Wow," Jake whispers after a long moment, and his voice is hoarse and wrecked and there's a laugh hiding underneath it, the kind of laugh that comes after something so good you almost can't believe it happened.

"Yeah," you agree, and you press a lazy, open-mouthed kiss to the side of his neck, just because you can. "Wow."

"I love you," he says, and he says it so easily, so casually, like it's the simplest and most obvious fact in the entire world. "Like, a lot. Like, an embarrassing amount. Like, I was literally just thinking about it while we were—you know—and I was like, wow, I really love her, and then I almost started crying in the middle of it, which would have been really weird, but—"

"Jake."

"Yes, pretty?"

"Shut it and hold me."

He laughs, soft, warm, and bright, and his arms tighten around you, and he presses a kiss to the top of your head, right at the crown where your ponytail is gathered, and you feel him smile against your hair.

"Okay," he murmurs. "I can do that."

The movie is still playing on the laptop beside you, the credits rolling now, a soft, forgettable pop song accompanying the names of people you'll never think about again.

The air conditioning hums its quiet, constant drone overhead, cool air drifting down over the blanket that's still tangled around your waists, prickling at the bare skin of your shoulders.

Jake's heartbeat is slowing beneath your ear, settling into something steady and calm, and his breathing has gone slow and deep, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that makes you drowsy, that makes you want to close your eyes and sink into him and never come back up.

You shift slightly, adjusting the blanket so it covers both of you properly, and Jake makes a small, protesting sound at the movement before settling again, his face buried in your hair, his arms loose around your waist.

He's still inside you, soft now, warm and comfortable, and you don't move off him, don't want to, not yet, because this, this right here, this feeling of being so completely tangled up in another person that you can't tell where you end and he begins, this is everything.

This is literally the one thing you never knew you needed until Jake showed up and gave it to you without even being asked.

"Hey," he says, quiet and drowsy against your temple.

"Hmm?"

"Thank you for texting me tonight."

A smile pulls at your lips, soft and private. "Thank you for showing up quickly."

"I would've been faster but I couldn't find my room key."

"You're ridiculous."

"Ridiculously in love with you obviously," he says, and you can hear the grin in his voice, the dumb, cheesy, perfect grin that he always gets when he's about to say something corny and he knows it and he doesn't care.

"Oh my goodness." You lift your head just enough to look at him, at the warm, sleepy, satisfied look on his face, the mess of his hair, the way his lips are still swollen and red. "You're the worst."

"The worst boyfriend or the worst in general?"

"Both."

"Harsh." But he's smiling, that soft, crooked smile that makes your chest feel too small for your heart, and he leans in and kisses you, gentle and slow and tasting like nothing and everything, and you kiss him back, and it's sweet, so sweet, sweet enough to make your teeth ache.

When you pull apart, you rest your forehead against his, your noses brushing, and you just breathe together for a moment, in and out, in and out, the sound of it filling the small space between you.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asks, and his voice is barely a murmur, barely a sound at all, just the shape of the words against your lips.

"Same time tomorrow," you confirm.

He smiles again.

You feel it more than see it, the way his lips curve against yours, the way the corners crinkle, the way his arms squeeze you just a little tighter.

Outside the window, the city hums with a life that has nothing to do with you, and the air conditioning keeps up its quiet, steady drone, and the laptop screen has gone dark, and the only light in the room is the faint, blue-white glow of the moon through the curtains, painting everything silver and soft and half-dreamed.

Jake's breathing evens out beneath you, slow and deep and steady, and you know he's falling asleep, because that's what Jake always does after, he crashes, his body giving out before his mind can catch up, and you let him, you hold him through it, your fingers tracing lazy patterns on the warm skin of his back under his shirt.

You'll move eventually. You'll clean up and change the sheets and complain about the hotel's thread count and steal all the pillows and fall asleep properly, like normal people, instead of tangled together in a pile of blankets and limbs and each other.

But not yet.

Not yet.

⭐️ ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

标签 : @simsimluver @maishee @grdientlips @yejisair777 @kristynaaah @heesroses @vmpiricou @seungiesdoll @malibluess @stwryun @hooniluhv @rikisn @hazeheart12 @exclipszz @melancholatte @bluepains @gojopolo @jasmineeeee1009 @ming1luvr @ni-k1ttie @enzsstuff01 @ixnotmee @emvss @simjaeyunslut @luvlyjaemin @kikizzz0 @ilovhoonie @starboyhee @prettygirlthings-world @jaesim @luv4dani | send an ask if you’d like to be added ˙𐃷˙

💿 ࿐ . . nothing by bruno major

✷ NOTE : thank you all so, so much for reading ! i hope you enjoyed this little world for a while ♡ all of this is purely a work of fiction & doesn’t reflect reality at all . . likes, reblogs, and feedback are deeply cherished and very, very appreciated on here !

⋆˙⟡ a/n :: i just spent the last 4 hours in a flow state writing this, and i think i got a little carried away lol. this is probably my favorite thing i've ever written. please enjoy ;)

“You’ll never guess who’s going to be speaking at the company dinner tonight!”

You glanced up from your computer screen to your best friend and secretary, Eunkyung, who had just burst into your office. You were working on finishing a report that you needed to have done before you left work for the day, and you took a deep breath to remind yourself that it was not the end of the world to be interrupted.

“Who?” you asked, trying to make yourself sound intrigued. The large corporation you worked for had a few company-wide dinners a year, and they always hosted them in the most elaborate venues in Seoul. You knew from a memo that had been sent out that morning that tonight’s venue was a ballroom inside a five-star hotel. You always expected the worst part of each company dinner to be having to talk to people you couldn’t care less about, but somehow, the worst part was always the speaker they brought in.

“It’s someone we went to high school with.”

This piqued your interest, and you focused your full attention on Eunkyung. “What? Who?”

“Sim Jaeyun.”

You let out an amused scoff at that. “You mean Jake? I haven’t thought about him in ten years.”

“I know,” Eunkyung gushed, stepping forward and sitting in one of the two chairs in front of your desk. “I overheard some interns talking about it in the copy room, and they sounded very excited about it.

“Excited about Jake?” you laughed under your breath, raising your eyebrows before returning your eyes to your computer. “Wasn’t he a huge dork? And I don’t remember him being particularly cute, either.”

“I think he was on the soccer team,” Eunkyung said, placing a finger on her chin as she tried to remember as much about him as she could. “He was definitely smart, but that’s really all I remember. He was never one of the boys that caught my eye.”

“That’s surprising considering that every single boy caught your eye,” you mused, your eyes flicking to your friend’s face.

“Yah! They did not!” Eunkyung exclaimed, standing back up and glaring at you before making her way to the door. “Whatever, y/n. I’ll see you tonight. Wear your black dress–I’m sure Jake will love it.”

“Why the hell would I try to impress Jake Sim?”

“I don’t know, those interns sounded very excited about being able to see Jake tonight.”

“Yeah, well, they’re young. As long as a man has a pulse, they’ll fawn over him.”

Eunkyung cast you an amused look before stepping out of your office. “Whatever you say. Bye.”

You watched her go before returning your eyes to your report. Even if the thought of seeing Jake Sim after ten years intrigued you, you were sure that he was still the same dorky kid he had been in high school. You smirked before beginning to type once more.

–

When you stepped into the ballroom that evening, you paused in the archway to take it in. Vaulted ceilings gave way to tiered crystalline chandeliers, bathing the space in a warm, intimate glow. Spread throughout the room were circular tables, all black and decorated with ornate floral centerpieces that you knew must have cost a fortune. Against the back wall, a stage rose elegantly above the ground, and the space where Jake would speak was framed by even more florals. You wondered if these extravagant decorations would outshine the man who was supposed to be the center of the evening.

“Y/n? Are you coming or not?” Eunkyung whispered in your ear. You turned your head to the right, laying eyes on her. She was dressed in a fabulous gown of deep emerald green, and you gave her a small smile before nodding.

“Sorry, just got distracted,” you told her, allowing her to grasp your wrist in her gloved hand. She tugged you toward the seating chart, and you were pleased to find that you had been placed at the same table as your best friend. However, as you scanned the long list of names, a frown found its way onto your face as you realized who else would be sitting at your table.

Just below Eunkyung’s name, in large gold letters, read: Sim Jaeyun, guest of honor.

It appeared that Eunkyung had noticed the same thing, because she looked at you with wide eyes. “Do you think they did that on purpose?”

“How would they know that we all went to high school together? I doubt we’re paying our event planner enough to discover those sorts of connections.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said, and you both made your way to your table. You weaved through a variety of people, both familiar and unfamiliar, and you gave them all your famous smile and a small bow as you passed. Part of the reason you had been so quickly promoted was due to your ruthless work ethic, but you also knew exactly how to charm whoever necessary to get exactly what you wanted.

Once you and Eunkyung had sat at your table, she glanced around and then smiled. “Do you think he’s here yet?” she whispered.

You rolled your eyes, taking a sip of the champagne that had just been poured for you by one of the many servers. “Why should I care? I have more important things in my life to think about than Jake Sim.”

“You don’t think it’s exciting?” she asked, continuing to look around at the people milling about the ballroom. “Finally seeing someone you haven’t thought about in ten years at a company dinner? And the difference now is that you’re a sexy, grown-ass woman who was recently made an executive at her company?”

You narrowed your eyes. “Eunkyung, what are you getting at?”

“I don’t know,” she giggled, giving you a slight nudge. “You always talk about how you need to get back out there, and this feels like the perfect opportunity.”

“You’re such a hopeless romantic,” you sighed, rolling your eyes. However, a small hint of a smile found its way onto your face. “Even if I did want to meet someone, why the hell would I want it to be some guy that I went to high school with?”

Just as you finished speaking, you noticed that Eunkyung’s gaze was now focused on something just behind you, and her eyes widened. Before you even had the chance to speak, you heard a smooth voice come from behind you. One that had just a hint of an Australian accent that you could’ve sworn sounded familiar.

“Is this seat taken?”

You turned toward the voice, lifting your gaze. Once you laid eyes on him, your breath caught in your throat.

The man staring at you now was perhaps the most handsome person you had ever seen. Plump lips, black hair styled just enough to look effortless, a chiseled jawline, a black suit perfectly tailored to highlight the broad shoulders and muscular frame of his body… and the thing that enticed you the most: his confidence in the way he held himself.

You couldn’t look away. 

“No,” you said breathlessly. “It’s all yours.”

He gave you a pert smile before raising a hand to pull out the chair, and your lips parted slightly at the defined veins you found there. As you watched him sit down, his movements more graceful than you knew possible, you noticed that there was something slightly familiar about him. You frowned as you watched him, and you shook your head slightly. There was no way you would forget someone like him.

Who the hell was this man, and how had you never met him before? You wished you had spent more time looking at the names of those you would be sitting with instead of worrying about Jake Sim.

“Is this glass mine?” he asked as he gestured toward a champagne flute, and you realized with embarrassment that you had been staring at him. You cursed internally, begging yourself to pull it together. Nobody made you react like this. Ever.

“Yes,” you told him, your voice cool. “I believe they poured it just before you came over here.”

“I see.” He grasped the delicate glass in his slender fingers, and you forced yourself to look away, lest you look like a fool again. “I don’t usually care for champagne, but when in Rome.”

“I don’t either,” you responded, your own perfectly manicured fingers still wrapped loosely around the stem of your own glass. “But I feel like I’ll get judged if I don’t drink it. You never know who's watching.”

He eyed you curiously as he lifted the flute to his lips and took a sip. You watched the column of his neck as he swallowed, and your gaze lingered on him for a moment too long. Once he set the glass back down, he tilted his head slightly and looked you up and down. “Have we met before?”

“Not that I know of,” you responded with a shrug. You hoped that you still appeared detached—uninterested. “But it’s a pleasure to finally meet you—ah, I never asked your name.”

He looked as if he were about to speak, but at that moment, an older man approached him and murmured something in his ear. He nodded and stood before looking down at you. “I apologize, I’ll have to get your name later. There’s something I need to do first.”

You nodded, and you watched him adjust the cuffs of his suit before he disappeared into the crowd. Once he was gone, you glanced at Eunkyung, who looked as if she were about to burst with excitement. You gently kicked her under the table, shaking your head almost imperceptibly.

“He is totally into you!” she hissed, clapping her hands together quietly. “The way he looked at you… Jesus Christ, if someone looked at me that way, I’d be pulling them into the closet.”

“Eunkyung, this is why I can’t take you anywhere,” you said, but you knew you were smiling. She grasped your shoulder in her cool hand and shook you slightly, and you let out a small huff of a laugh.

“When he gets back over here, I expect you to lay your claim on him immediately,” she said, glancing at the people who were beginning to take a seat at your table. “You and I both saw how fucking hot he is. You don’t want anyone else getting to him before you.”

“I know, I know.”

You noticed that the talking that had filled the room just a moment ago had quieted into a soft murmur, and you craned your neck to see if Jake had made his way to the stage yet.

“Do you see him?” Eunkyung whispered to you as the lights in the ballroom dimmed.

You could tell that a figure was now standing on-stage, but the spotlight had not yet turned on. A few curious voices filled the air, wondering why the speaker had been left shrouded in darkness—and mystery.

Then, the spotlight slowly turned on, illuminating the man who now stood on the stage.

“Good evening, everyone,” he said, flashing a dazzling smile at the crowd. “My name is Sim Jaeyun, and I am honored to be here with you all.”

Sim Jaeyun. Your eyes widened as the realization hit you.

“When I was invited by the Young Group to speak here tonight, I was flattered. To be featured as the guest of honor at an event hosted by a prestigious company such as the Young Group is a wonderful gift. If I'm being honest, I spent too many hours figuring out exactly what I wanted to say to a group of lovely people such as all of you.”

Scattered laughter sounded throughout the room, but you didn’t even notice–you were still frozen.

“As I rewrote this speech more times than I care to admit, I realized that, ten years ago, I did not think that someone like me would ever be the one to speak at an event like this. I was never the person that anyone expected to be here. I was never the loudest in the room growing up, and I actually struggled to feel as if I belonged in any room at all. However, I learned quickly in my career that you don’t need to be the loudest in any room–you just need to be the most consistent.

“And that is what I would like to speak about tonight: consistency. As I’m sure you’re all aware, our life in business is never linear. There will always be setbacks, unexpected challenges, and hurdles that you must be able to combat. Now, you may ask, how do we respond to these complications?”

Jake smiled, and you could have sworn that his eyes landed on yours for just a moment. “With a company as successful as the Young Group, I’m sure you have all figured out the answer to this question, but I would like to share my thoughts with you regardless. If you were to ask me, I would say that the key to success is being consistent and tenacious in the way that you face each challenge. In my six years in the industry since I graduated top of my class from Seoul National University, it has been my consistency and discipline that has gotten me into rooms such as this one.”

He paused for a moment, a small smile playing on his lips, and you could almost feel the draw of the audience as they waited for his next words.

“In business, failure is inevitable. If you’re not failing, you’re frankly not trying hard enough. Everything we do is a calculated risk, and there will always be errors. What truly matters at the end of the day is what you do with those errors. Will you allow them to define you? Will you allow them to make you give up? Or will you use them as a stepping stone to eventual success?

“Now, I won’t speak for much longer, as I’m certain I just heard someone’s stomach growl–” more laughter echoed through the room. “But I want to challenge you to reflect on something tonight: what do you do when you face setbacks? Do you give up, or do you allow it to hone you into the best version of yourself you can be? Thank you, and enjoy your evening.”

Thunderous applause immediately broke out throughout the ballroom as he exited the stage, but it was as if you couldn’t hear it. Your eyes were still glued to the spot where Jake had just been standing, and you couldn’t formulate a single thought. Your mind flashed back to the Jake Sim you had last seen ten years ago, and you couldn't fathom that he had turned into the man who had just spoken on stage. Evidently, a lot could change in ten years.

“Your speech was incredibly well done,” you heard a voice say. You shook your head slightly in an attempt to return to reality, and you noticed that Jake had effortlessly slid into the seat beside you once again. As those at the table around you congratulated him on a job well done, servers began to place steaming entrees on each table. There was so much going on around you that you couldn’t focus—a rare loss in composure that you weren’t used to. You noticed that Eunkyung had excused herself to use the restroom, which forced you to focus on something besides the swirling thoughts inside your head.

After a moment, Jake turned to you and gave you a small smile. “Well, you now know my name. Do I get the pleasure of knowing yours in return?”

You took a breath and collected yourself before sitting up straight and raising the corner of your mouth. “My name is Kim Y/n.”

You watched as he tried to place the familiar name, and once he did, his lips parted into a warm smile. “Y/n? We went to high school together, didn’t we?”

“I believe we did,” you responded, tracing your finger along the rim of your champagne glass. “If I’m being honest, I didn’t recognize you until you were up on stage.”

Jake’s gaze tracked the movement of your finger, and you saw a slight twitch in his neck. “I didn’t recognize you, either. I suppose we’ve both changed a lot, haven’t we?”

“I guess we have.”

You simply stared at each other for a moment, neither speaking, before Jake glanced away and grabbed his fork. “So, y/n, how have you been? What do you do for Young Group?”

“I was actually just promoted to be the Director of Corporate Strategy last month," you said, taking your own fork in your hand. “It’s been an interesting shift, but I truly love what I do. Where are you working now?”

“I recently became the Managing Director of Lee Group’s Asia-Pacific operations.” He carefully pierced a piece of tender steak with his fork before lifting it to his mouth. “I spend a lot of time abroad due to my position, but I love being able to travel across the region freely. It’s been a great way to combine work as well as pleasure.”

As the word pleasure left his lips, you felt a warmth spread through your chest. You watched as he ate the piece of steak, his jaw flexing each time he chewed, and you found that you couldn’t look away.

“I’ve always wanted to travel for work,” you said, looking down at the salad in front of you. “I’ve been given the opportunity to visit the States a couple times, but that’s it. I think it would be enthralling to be able to travel as much as you do.”

“It definitely broadens your horizons, which is especially helpful after a sheltered childhood,” he said. “Growing up both here and Australia was fun, but there’s so much more to the world. I pity anyone who hasn’t gotten to experience it.”

“Do you pity me, then?” you asked, cocking your head to the side. “Compared to you, I’ve seen so little.”

“I don’t know, y/n—would you like to be pitied?” he asked, his words tantalizing to you in a way that was unfamiliar. “Because you don’t strike me as the type of woman who does.”

“If being pitied gets me what I want, then I don’t mind at all.”

“And you strike me as someone who always gets what she wants.”

At that moment, Eunkyung returned from the restroom—interrupting the increasing tension of your conversation with Jake.

“Jaeyun, I don’t know if you remember me, but I also went to high school with you,” she said, smiling warmly at him. “My name is Park Eunkyung.”

“Eunkyung? No way!” he laughed, his perfect teeth showing yet again. “We had biology and chemistry together, didn’t we?”

“I think so,” she responded. “Have you two been catching up while I was gone?”

Jake eyed you, and your heart throbbed at the way his gaze lingered on you. “Something like that.”

As the three of you finished your dinner, you all continued reminiscing on your awkward high school years. Everything Jake said seemed effortless, dripping in charisma and humor that drew you to him more with every word he spoke. After dinner concluded, the plates were cleared away, more champagne was poured, and the mingling that you usually avoided began.

“Would you like to make the rounds with me?” Jake asked you, standing and offering you a hand. “I have a list of people I need to greet, but I honestly hate getting stuck in conversations without someone to help me escape if I need to.”

You let out a laugh at this and glanced at Eunkyung, who had a huge smile plastered on her face. You nodded, grabbing Jake's hand and allowing him to pull you to your feet. As you stood, you were wobbly on your stilettos due to the alcohol coursing through your veins, but Jake quickly steadied you by placing a hand on your lower back. His touch was more intoxicating than any drink you had ever consumed, and you tried to pretend that the small gesture did affect you as much as it did.

As Jake made his way through the ballroom with you by his side, you realized more and more just how respected he was within your company. He was congratulated on his new promotion as well as declared the target of much admiration, and as you watched him converse with ease, you couldn’t help but admire him, too. This was not the Jake Sim you remembered, but you were extremely grateful that you had been given the chance to see him again after all this time. He was magnetic, and you were drawn to him more than you cared to admit.

As the evening inevitably marched towards its conclusion, Jake stopped by the back wall and gazed at the sea of people in front of you. “Well, I think that was everyone.”

“That was… impressive,” you said as you watched people slowly say their goodbyes before filtering out of the ballroom. “I usually leave right after dinner, but you managed to talk to every single person in this room.”

Jake gave you a small smile. “You know, I only did that because I was the guest of honor. They’d never invite me back if I spoke and left.”

“Good point.” You shrugged, glancing up at Jake’s face. Despite the intense nature of the evening, he still looked as effortlessly handsome as he had the first moment you had laid eyes on him hours ago. “I can’t believe you’re really here.”

He eyed you curiously. “What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” you started, searching for the right words. “You’re just so… different now. So accomplished. It’s impressive, I guess.”

“Are you one of the people I mentioned in my speech who doubted me ten years ago?”

You reddened, looking away. “Of course not! We were just so different back then, I guess I never imagined… this.”

“Y/n, I’m kidding,” he said. He grabbed your chin lightly and tilted it upward so that you were looking at him again. “Even if you had been, I don’t care. You heard what I said up there–I never needed anyone to tell me they believed in me or thought I could do whatever I wanted. I’ve always believed in myself, and that’s always been enough.”

Your head swam at the intensity in Jake’s eyes, the way his glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose and how he had rolled the sleeves of his suit up at some point during the night. Nothing turned you on more than a man who was confident and self-assured. You weren’t sure if it was the alcohol or the fact that you hadn’t been with anyone in awhile, but your body lit up with Jake staring at you the way he was. Like you were something to be devoured.

“Y/n,” Jake breathed. “I’m glad I ran into you tonight.”

“Me too.” A pause, and you wondered if you would regret the boldness of your words. “Until tonight, I never realized how badly I wanted you.”

You could tell from the way that he looked at you that his entire body was taught with desire, and he took a deep breath before taking your wrist in his hand and pulling you into the empty corridor just beyond the ballroom. You glanced behind you, checking that nobody had seen you disappear, before Jake dragged you into an empty, dimly lit supply closet.

“Jake?” you whispered as he locked the door behind you. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I can’t wait any longer, y/n,” he exhaled, backing you against the door and leaning down to connect your lips. His kiss was hungry–hungrier than you knew to be possible, and his hand immediately found its way to your chest. The black satin gown you were wearing was low-cut yet elegant, with a deep v that went down to your ribcage. When his fingers found your hardened nipples, he let out a low groan before biting your lip.

You let out a soft cry, wrapping your arms around Jake’s neck. You parted your lips to allow him to explore your mouth with his tongue, and he took no time at all to accept the invitation. Your tongues clashed in a passionate dance, the sweet taste of the champagne finding its way onto your tongue. He kissed you with reckless abandon, and every cell in your body screamed your desire.

As you and Jake continued to kiss feverishly, you slowly rocked your hips into his. You were encouraged by the hardness you found there, and you gripped his lower back in an attempt to draw him even closer to you despite the layers of clothing between your bodies.

“Oh, baby,” Jake groaned against your mouth. His hips moved against yours roughly, both of you breathing heavily as you rubbed your most sensitive parts against each other. “Feels so fuckin’ good when you grind against me like that.”

Jake’s hand found its way beneath the top of your dress, and he grasped your right breast in his warm hand. You quickened the rolling of your hips, throwing your head back so that it hit the door behind you. “J-jesus!” you forced out. “Jake, p-please, I need you so bad.”

The intensity of Jake’s moves only increased for just a moment before he suddenly paused. You were both panting heavily, your body still pressed flush to his. “Wait.”

“What’s wrong?” you breathed, running your hand through Jake’s hair as you gazed up at him.  He already looked so wrecked for you.

“I can’t fuck you for the first time in a supply closet,” he said, swallowing. “I want to do this right.”

“Where do you want to go instead?”

“We’re in a hotel, y/n,” he said before kissing you briefly. “Let’s just get a room for the night.”

“What if someone notices?” you asked, worry etching its way across your face.

“Who cares?” he whispered, his eyes earnest. “I need you so fucking bad, baby. Please.”

You thought for a moment, weighing your options. Your body sang with desire for Jake, and you didn’t think you would ever forgive yourself if you didn’t spend the night with him, and from the way he looked at you, you knew he was desperate for you to say yes. You sighed before pushing him away lightly, running your fingers through your tousled hair. “Fine. But I’m waiting by the elevators while you get the room.”

Jake grinned at you. “Deal.”

You both made sure the other looked presentable before stepping out of the supply closet. Mercifully, the corridor was empty, and you allowed Jake to lead you toward the lobby. Once you reached the gorgeous room, you stepped away from Jake and made your way to the elevators while he worked on reserving a room. You leaned against the cool marble of the wall, hoping you weren’t still flushed from your escapade in the supply closet. You gave a small, cool smile to everyone who passed by.

As Jake walked over to you, room key in hand, you pretended to not know him. You smoothed your features into unimpressed boredom, and as you and Jake stepped into the elevator, you made your way to the opposite side as him. A few people were still mingling in the lobby, and the last thing you needed was for your carefully constructed demeanor to be jeopardized by your late-night rendezvous with Jake Sim.

Once the doors had closed and the elevator began to ascend, your eyes flicked to Jake. Before you even knew what was happening, he had closed the gap between you, his lips on yours again. Your eyes fluttered closed as he palmed your ass through your dress, letting out a soft moan against his mouth. As the elevator shot up to the top floor, you and Jake entwined yourselves again, and it was almost torturous having to separate again as you reached your floor. 

Once the doors opened, you took a deep breath and stepped into the beautifully decorated corridor. Jake gestured for you to follow him, and you looked around briefly before following him. Luckily, the floors were covered in a surprisingly plush carpet, which muffled the sound of your heels as you followed him to your room. Jake unlocked the door quickly and pushed it open so that you could enter.

When you stepped into the room, you realized that Jake hadn’t just gotten you any room. He had booked the notorious Presidential Suite, with a kitchen, sitting room, conference table, and massive bedroom. It seemed as if every wall of the suite was covered in windows that allowed you to see the extensive skyline of Seoul as it stretched out before you.

“Jake, this is crazy,” you said, turning around so that you could see him. “You really want me that bad?”

Your eyes landed on Jake to find that he had already removed his shoes, and he was in the middle of loosening his tie before stripping off his suit jacket.

“You have no fucking idea,” he growled, stalking towards you with a look in his eyes that made you even more wet than you already were. His lips captured yours again, but his kiss was different now. Instead of being in a supply closet, Jake had you alone in the nicest hotel suite in Seoul, and he was going to make use of every square inch of space to show you just how badly he needed you.

Jake’s mouth only lingered on your lips for a moment before he made his way down to your neck, and you gasped sharply as he immediately began to suck on the soft flesh there. You grasped his muscular bicep, arching you back from the hunger with which he ravished you. It was only another second before Jake’s hand found its way into the slit of your dress, and his fingers grazed the wetness between your thighs.

“So wet for me,” Jake’s ragged voice came, his fingers slowly beginning to rub the sensitive bundle of nerves at your apex. “Fuckin’ love how wet you are for me, baby.”

You whimpered at the variety of different sensations, from Jake biting and sucking on your neck to his fingers working between your legs. It had been so long since you had been with someone in this way, allowing someone to see you at your most vulnerable. You spent all your time focused on your career, as you had set your sights on your current position years before it even became available. You were cunning, ambitious, and you had completely neglected this side of you–the side that loved to spend a night having your body worshipped by someone else. You had never expected the first person you slept with in a year to be Jake Sim, but you had always loved surprises.

Jake’s fingers continued to stroke against your clit before he slowly pushed two of his fingers inside you. You let out a cry at the feeling of him inside you, his digits curling and rubbing just right against the spot that had you seeing stars. His fingers worked within you for a moment, your breath repeatedly catching in your throat, before he pushed you onto the couch with his fingers still inside you. As your back hit the plush leather, Jake leaned forward and continued to mark your chest and neck as he fucked you with his fingers.

You had half a mind to feel embarrassed for how quickly you felt your orgasm rising in you, but you realized you didn’t care. Jake was doing everything he could to pleasure you, and he somehow knew all the spots that would send you over the edge faster than you could blink. You began to writhe underneath him as your orgasm threatened to crash over you.

“Baby, I’m g-gonna cum,” you whined, your body convulsing from the pleasure of everything Jake was doing to you.

“I need you to cum for me, angel,” Jake said against the fresh love bite that he had just left on your breast.

That was all it took. You found your peak against Jake’s fingers, and the shockwaves that rocked through your body had your vision going black at the edges. However, as you rode out your climax, Jake did not stop pumping his fingers inside you. He continued on with the same ferocity.

“Jake,” you gasped. “It’s too much. Baby, it’s too much.”

However, Jake kept going. You had never experienced anything like this before, and you cried out from the overstimulation of Jake’s relentlessness.

“B-baby, holy fuck!” Your legs spread even wider, your hips lifting into the air as wet noises filtered into your ears. “I can’t–Jaeyun, baby, p-please! I can’t take it!”

Before you knew it, another orgasm wracked your body. You screamed as it tore through you, and you roughly pushed Jake off of you as you continued to tremble.

“Jesus Christ,” you panted, sitting up and raising your eyes to Jake’s.

“Jaeyun?” Jake smirked. “Nobody ever calls me that unless I’m in a meeting.”

You stood, grabbing Jake’s tie and tightening it against his neck. “That’s what you get for overstimulating me, you asshole.”

“Don’t lie–you loved it. You could’ve stopped me.”

You snarled at how proud he seemed of himself, but you knew he was right. Even if it had been a lot, you loved every fucking second of it. Nobody had ever dared to take control of you in the bedroom like that, and it turned you on more than you cared to admit. “Fuck you, Sim Jaeyun.”

“That’s the goal, isn’t it?” he smiled. You narrowed your eyes at him before stripping his tie off and quickly unbuttoning his dress shirt. He raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Is this something you do often? You seem to have a lot of practice.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” you growled, pushing him into the bathroom. You flicked the light on carelessly before shoving him against the wall so that he was looking into the mirror, taking in the curve of your back and hips in the reflection.

“What are you gonna do now, princess?” Jake hummed.

“Are you always such a cocky asshole during sex?” you asked, tearing his belt away. “Because at the dinner, you were quite the charmer.”

“I already did the hard part of charming you, so now I get to enjoy how pissed off you get when I tease you.”

You glared at Jake as you lowered yourself to the floor, your face directly in front of his bulge. You tugged his pants down before gazing up at him through your lashes and using your teeth to remove his underwear. He swore viciously, his length springing free. His cock was already flushed and glistening, and you slowly dragged your tongue along it as you continued to stare at him.

“This is what you get for being an asshole,” you said before taking his twitching cock into your mouth. You hummed in satisfaction at the noises that left his lips, as they were so different from his growled commands. With your pretty lips wrapped around his cock, sucking and licking every inch of him, a string of high-pitched whimpers filled the air.

You traced your fingers up and down Jake’s bare chest, your mouth sloppily moving around him. You used your other hand to grasp the part of his cock that your mouth couldn’t reach, and you pumped slowly up and down as you continued to fuck him with your mouth. His moans were music to your ears, and they only encouraged you to continue.

As your movements grew sloppier, Jake gathered your hair into his fist and bucked his hips into your mouth. You gagged slightly at how far his cock went into your throat.

“You look s’ fucking good takin my cock like that, angel,” Jake whimpered, hand still tightly grasping your long hair. The sensation of him pulling your hair made your pussy throb, and you knew that you couldn’t wait much longer to have Jake inside you. You removed your lips from his cock with a pop before standing up. Jake immediately grabbed your hips and turned you around, pressing you to the sink and grinding his wet cock into your still-clothed ass as he pressed a hot kiss to your mouth.

“This dress needs to go,” he murmured against your lips, using one hand to undo the zipper. It dropped to the floor in one fluid movement, resting in a beautiful pool of black satin surrounding your feet. The second you felt the cool air hit your skin, Jake’s hand smacked your ass. He grasped your left tit with his other hand, and he brought his mouth to your ear. “How badly do you want me to fuck you, baby?”

“So bad,” you mumbled, your words barely audible between your moans. However, it seemed that this did not satisfy Jake, as he turned you around and grasped your jaw lightly.

“What’d you say, princess? I couldn't hear you.”

“I want you to fuck me so bad, Jaeyun,” you ground out.

He smirked, and you could tell that he adored it when you called him by his Korean name. You could also tell that he was satisfied with your answer, as he picked you up and tossed you on his shoulder before carrying you out of the bathroom. He smacked your ass a few more times before plopping you down atop the conference table, pressing a hungry kiss to your lips.

“Gonna fuck you on this conference table, baby.”

“Ah–f-fuck!” you cried as he thrust into you in one swift motion. He buried himself deep within you, not moving for just a moment before he began to roll his hips into yours. Every time the tip of his cock rubbed against your gummy walls, you let out a broken noise. His cock was bigger than his height suggested, and you regretted the last ten years you had spent not fucking Jake Sim every chance you got. You were already addicted to the feeling of him inside you, and you had no idea how you had survived for so long without him.

Jake’s pace was rapid, relentless, and you didn’t even realize that you were scratching up his back with your freshly manicured nails. The only thing you knew was the feeling of his body pressed against yours and the sensation of his cock snapping into you repeatedly. He was even more turned on by you scratching him, which only led to him quickening his pace.

“Pussy s’ fuckin’ good,” he groaned, throwing his head back in pleasure. “I fuckin’ love this pussy so fuckin’ much, angel. You’re never gonna sleep again–I’m g-gonna fuck you forever.”

Stars swam across your vision as Jake repeatedly hit your cervix, and the sensation accompanied by the way his hand still played with your nipples made you nauseous. You pressed your eyes closed, whimpering.

“Mmmph, fuck.” Jake’s voice was a rumble that came from deep within his chest, and you knew he was getting close. From the way his movements became more vigorous, goosebumps erupting across his chest, it was only a matter of time until he went over the edge.

“Cum inside me, Jaeyun,” you gasped out, your body rocking as Jake continued to thrust into you. “I-I’m on the pill, so p-please fill me with your cum baby. I need it s-so fuckin’ bad. I need all your cum.”

Jake placed both hands on your shoulders, holding you steady as he thrust into you harder than you knew to be humanly possible. Clipped cries left your lips, and it only took a moment before Jake began moaning your name.

“Y/n, fuck, baby, I’m gonna cum,” he whimpered, and he let out a loud moan as his hips stilled, pumping you full of his cum. His body pulsed with each ejaculation, and you couldn’t help but gasp as he came deep within you.

“That was... crazy,” you breathed, gazing at Jake through half-lidded eyes. He nodded, still trying to regain his breath. After a moment, his eyes found yours.

“I’m not done with you yet.”

You didn’t even have time to ask what he was doing before Jake had you pressed against the window behind the conference table, your leg hooked over his shoulder as he licked your pussy. The area between your thighs was an absolute mess, covered in remnants of saliva, your arousal, and his cum, but Jake didn’t care. He sucked at your folds like it was the only thing keeping him alive.

You rocked your hips against Jake’s tongue as it flicked against your clit, and you lifted a hand above your head before pressing it to the window. Your other hand found its way into Jake’s soft hair, and he gazed up at your fucked-out face as he worked his tongue against and inside you. If Jake’s goal had been to give you a night you would never forget, he had exceeded all of your expectations. Over the past ten years, nobody had made love to you like Jake, and you never wanted another person in your bed but him.

As you reached your third climax of the evening, Jake kept his mouth clamped to your pussy to ensure that he didn’t miss any liquid coming out of you. He lapped up every drop before swallowing it hungrily, and he made sure your orgasm was fully over before standing and kissing you.

“Holy shit, Jaeyun,” you said, your body feeling completely limp. “That was fucking insane.”

“I’ll be ready to go again in fifteen minutes,” Jake murmured, pressing another kiss to your forehead.

Your eyes flew open, and you huffed a laugh. “Seriously?”

“I would never joke about anything as serious as this.”

You stared at him in disbelief for a moment before you realized he was entirely serious. “Where do you get your stamina from?”

“It comes from remembering that I lost out on ten years of fucking you, and now I need to make up for lost time.”

You laughed, truly laughed, and pressed your forehead to Jake’s. You weren’t sure if you and Jake were ever going to make up for the ten years together that you had missed, but you were certainly going to try.