Xamiah

There is a particular kind of light that only exists for about twenty minutes each evening, when the sun drops low enough to turn everything it touches into something warmer and softer than it actually is. ‘Golden hour’, people call it. Your favourite time of day.

It bleeds through the gaps in the fence now, falling in long amber strips across the garden making the whole yard look like something out of a painting that nobody would believe was real life. But it is. It’s yours. Every ordinary, extraordinary inch of it.

The porch swing moves in a gentle, rhythmic drift beneath you, the old chain giving its familiar low creak with every push of your foot. It’s a sound you’ve come to love, this house’s quiet language. The creak of the third stair. The way the kitchen window sticks in the heat. The particular way Billy’s key sounds in the lock when he’s arriving home from work, the slight jangle before the click that always makes Leo’s head snap up like a puppy hearing its favourite person come home.

Your hand moves in slow circles over your prominent bump. The baby shifts sometimes now, an elbow or a heel pressing briefly against the inside of your palm like a small, curious hello. You’ve started talking to her at night, when the house goes quiet. You don’t know why you’re so certain she’s a girl. You just are.

Out in the garden, there’s a war being waged.

“You’re gonna pay for that!” Billy shouts, and Leo’s shriek of laughter tears across the yard in response, high and bright and completely unafraid. He’s seven now - oh, how the time flew by. You watch him bolt behind the willow tree like it might actually save him, clutching his water gun to his chest with the dead serious tactical face of a child who has absolutely no strategy whatsoever.

Billy rounds the corner at a jog, his shirt already soaked through and clinging, curls dark with water, a grin carved wide across his face. He’s got no shoes on. Neither does Leo. The grass is wet enough that Leo slips on his next pivot and goes down hard on one knee. Your breath catches for half a second before his laughter erupts louder than before, face pressed gleefully into grass.

“I slipped!” he howls, delighted by his own disaster, rolling over to look at the sky like he’s won something.

Billy stops above him, hands on his knees, breathing heavy from the chase. “You okay, bud?”

“I’m fine-uh!” Leo announces, dramatically exaggerating his words and already scrambling back up with absolutely no regard for the grass staining his knees. He turns around, points his water gun at Billy’s chest from approximately two feet away, and pulls the trigger with a war cry.

Billy takes it full in the face.

He stands there, dripping, one eye still shut from the blast, mouth twitching.

Leo looks at him.

The garden holds its breath.

And then… Billy lunges.

“Dad!” Leo screams, all joy, no fear, he tears off across the lawn in hysterics as Billy chases him with long, easy strides, letting him think, for just a moment, that he might actually get away.

Dad.

The word moves through you the way it always does, warm and weighty and quietly miraculous. Leo had started saying it so naturally, so early on. Not because anyone told him to, not because it had been explained and negotiated and assigned. Just because Billy showed up. Every single day, he showed up. And one afternoon Leo had simply looked at him and the word was already there, as if it had always been true.

Maybe it had.

You watch them chase around the tree again, dodging long flowing branches, water guns abandoned somewhere in the grass. The whole fight develops into Billy hoisting Leo upside down by his ankles while Leo screams himself breathless with laughter, little hands flailing, face gone red. Your heart physically aches with how much room they take up in it.

You think - as often as you do in moments like these - about the girl you used to be.

She’d sit at the edge of a pool with her feet in the water, a toddler splashing in the shallows, and feel the weight of a hundred sideways glances. She’d walked down school hallways with her bump showing and learned to carry her shame like luggage she couldn’t put down. She’d been made to feel like a cautionary tale. A punchline. A lesson in what happened to girls who weren’t careful enough, good enough, smart enough to avoid their own undoing.

She’d been so tired.

Not the tired that sleep fixes. The kind that settles into your bones and makes you wonder if anyone will ever see past what happened to you.

You’d never wished on that lake again after the coins ran out.

Billy was the one who took you back.

It was a Friday evening in late October, three months after that first dinner at Enzo’s. The air had been cooling and the water had been flat and silver, the whole world gone quiet in that particular way autumn has. He’d produced a coin from his jacket pocket, pressing it into your palm without a word. You’d closed your eyes and thrown it, refusing to tell him what you’d wished for.

A year after that, in that exact same place, Billy got down on one knee.

You said yes before he’d even finished asking.

The wedding was everything you had ever dreamed of as a little girl. Your Mother wept from the moment you appeared at the top of the aisle and didn’t really stop until the reception, dabbing her eyes with a napkin she’d ruined entirely by the first dance. Leo walked ahead of you in a little suit. He’d been so damn proud of his job as ring bearer, taking it serious for all of thirty seconds before breaking into a grin when he spotted his best friend Billy waiting at the altar.

Billy’s stepsister, Max, was one of your few bridesmaids. She had arrived in your life all sharp edges and guards, then, slowly but surely, she became one of your favourite people in it. She’d taken to Leo immediately, the two of them gravitating toward each other with the easy, instinctive energy of kindred spirits. Now, Max makes the perfect auntie. She adores your son and the feeling is entirely mutual.

That same ring sits paired now with a second gold band to match Billy’s, and every time the light catches it you’re reminded of that perfect day.

It was, without question, the beginning of your happily ever after.

In regard to Leo’s biological father, if you could even call him that, he was arrested two summers ago now. It turned out, with a weariness that had hit you somewhere between rage and grief, that you were far from the only one. Several women had come forward. Several names you’d never know. The case had even been in the local paper, your Mom rang you the morning it was printed, but you hadn’t needed to read it. You’d already known exactly what kind of man he was.

Justice, when it finally arrived, had felt less like triumph and more like exhaling for the first time in years. A long, slow release of something you hadn’t realized you’d been holding. Not for you, because you’d moved so far beyond him that his existence barely registered most days. But for those other women. For the girls who’d had no one to believe them. You’d thought about them for a long time after. Still do sometimes.

Leo would never know. You and Billy agreed on that the way you agree on most things that mattered. He had a father. He had Billy. That was the beginning and end of it.

Out in the garden, Billy has set Leo back on his feet, and your son is now attempting to stuff a fistful of grass down the back of Billy’s collar while he stands there pretending he can’t feel it, delivering a very serious monologue to the sky. Leo is giggling so hard he can barely keep his grip. His wild curls bounce with every shake of his shoulders.

He looks so much like you.

Though, he’s got Billy’s laugh. You’d noticed it as time passed. It has that particular brightness in it, the way it tips open without apology.

The two of them are as thick as thieves and you wouldn’t want it any other way.

Billy catches you starring. He always does.

He holds your son upright by the back of his shirt like a suitcase, Leo’s feet still kicking helplessly mid-air, and points at you across the garden with a grin that’s spent years becoming your favourite sight.

“She’s laughing at us,” he calls to Leo, accusatory, delighted.

Leo twists to look at you, indignant. “Mom! Whose side are you on?!”

“My own!” you call back teasingly, knowing how it’d wind him up.

Leo makes a noise of profound betrayal. Billy sets him down and ruffles his hair, then makes his way toward the porch with that unhurried, easy gait. His shirt is soaked. His feet are bare and grass stained. There’s a smear of something muddy along his jaw that he either doesn’t know about nor care to address.

He kneels down beside you, his hand finding your bump immediately, palm flat and gentle. He doesn’t say anything at first. He just watches Leo in the garden, dragging his water gun back across the lawn with renewed purpose, already plotting his next offensive.

“How are you feeling?” Billy asks, voice gentle and content, still slightly out of breath.

“Good.” You smile placing your hand on top of his. “Tired.”

“You want to go in?”

“No, not yet.”

He nods in understanding, his thumb tracing a slow arc. Leo shouts something at the fence post - you’re fairly certain he’s declared war on the garden hose now - and Billy exhales through his nose letting out a quiet laugh of amusement.

“He’s feral,” he says, with the unmistakable tone of a man who is completely, helplessly proud of this.

“He’s only got you to thank for that.”

“Psshht” He makes a noise of protest, laughing despite himself.

Then he shifts, leaning forward, and presses a soft kiss on your tummy. He lingers there for a moment before tilting his face up to look at you, chin resting ever so gently against the curve of your stomach, eyes warm.

“I wonder if she’ll be the same.”

You look down at him and pull a face. “God, no.” Your voice is as sarcastic as anything. “I don’t know how much more I can take.”

He laughs and you melt into each other the way you always do. Easy. Inevitable. Like exhaling.

The laughter settles into something quieter, softer. Your fingers find their way into his damp curls and you think, not for the first time, about how different he’ll be with her. He already is, in some small ways.

“She’s going to have you wrapped around her little finger,” you chuckle.

He hums, low and unbothered, like he’s already accepted this fate and made peace with it.

You smile to yourself, turning it over in your mind - this big, protective, devoted man rendered entirely powerless by a baby girl who isn’t even here yet - and then a sudden thought rises up and tips into laughter before you can stop it.

“And then she’ll grow up,” you say, grinning, “and kick your ass.”

Billy lets out a bark of laughter, head dropping forward.

“Yeah,” he admits, after a moment, still smiling at the ground. “Yeah, she will.”

The garden fills in the rest for you. Leo’s distant victory narration, the soft rush of the hose, a bird singing somewhere in the willow tree. Billy tilts his head back against the swing, eyes closed, the last of the golden light settling across his face like it’s right where it wants to be.

You watch him for a moment. This man. Your man. Peaceful in a way you never expected before all this.

You think it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

You can’t wait for the coming years, to watch your little family grow. Two became three, became four and with it, a life you never thought you’d get to have.

Your wish came true.

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟐,𝟏𝟐𝟗

___

There have been plenty of times in my nineteen fucked up years on this planet when I've realised - too late - that I was completely, hopelessly screwed.

One of those 'Oh Shit!' moments when it hits you that nothing you do or say will change what's coming next. When all you can do is stand there, frozen, wishing the ground would just swallow you whole.

But this? This is not one of those moments.

For once in my life, I know exactly what’s coming next, and I’m not afraid of it. I’m not bracing for impact. I’m not waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the moment the universe remembers who I am and corrects itself accordingly. The ground beneath me feels solid for the first time in as long as I can remember, and I have no desire whatsoever for it to swallow me whole.

Just like the possibilities, the road ahead is endless.

Not in the way roads used to feel endless, with all dead ends, wrong turns and the creeping certainty that nothing good was waiting on the other side. This is different. This road stretches out like a promise. Flat and golden and wide open in every direction, the kind of road that doesn’t apologize for going on forever because forever is exactly the point.

Billy’s Camaro cuts through it like it owns every inch of asphalt. I’d never actually been in this car before, at least, not that I remember anyway. Now I’m here, bare feet up on the dash, the window rolled all the way down, and I think it might be the coolest I’ve ever felt in my entire life. The leather is warm from the sun. The whole car smells of cigarettes and our mixed perfume, a scent of which I could bottle up and keep forever.

The music is loud. Not background noise loud. The kind of loud that takes up space on purpose, that drowns out everything you weren’t planning to think about anyway.

Outside, the landscape has been escaping from the dullness of grey, green and brown all morning. The trees thinned away days ago, somewhere around the second state line, and what replaced them was flat scrubland.

The sun is getting low. It’s coming in sideways now, pouring itself across everything at that particular angle that makes the whole world look like it’s been dipped in gold. Everything the light touches looks absolutely ethereal.

I hang my arm out the window and let the air catch it. My fingers spread wide, and the warm wind pushes back, rushing up my palm, threading between my knuckles like it’s trying to hold on. I tip my wrist and feel the drag of it, the lift, and for a moment I’m not doing anything at all except feeling the speed of the car, the heat of the afternoon and the precise, impossible weight of being exactly where I am.

I have a cigarette going, held loosely between two fingers, I bring it to my mouth and take a long drag. The smoke curls back into the car and I watch it dissolve against the headliner before it gets snatched out the window by the rushing air. Billy has one too, I’ve learned now that he always smokes when he drives. He’s got one hand on the wheel and one elbow out his window, tapping out ash as he races onward.

It’s been a few days since we left. Three maybe? I think this is our fourth. Time has flown by the same way it always does when you’re enjoying yourself. I should complain how unfair that is, but we’ve got a whole lifetime ahead of us and that works out pretty well.

We’d left before sunrise.

Not dramatically, nor with any particular ceremony. Just the two of us moving through the pre-dawn quiet with the specific efficiency of people who have learned not to attach to the places they leave behind. Camp wanted rid of us, and we wanted rid of camp.

I packed light, I always pack light, it’s a reflex worn smooth from years of not having enough to make weight worth worrying about.

Hopper had been there in our final moments. He was waiting in the gravel outside when we carried the last of the bags out. As always, his arms were crossed tight across his chest but his expression showed cracks of emotions he’d rather not be caught having.

He helped load the trunk with Billy. They worked in that particular comfortable silence of two people who understand each other better than either would easily admit. I stood to one side and watched them, feeling something I didn’t yet have the words for.

Hopper hugged me before we left. That was the part that nearly ruined me. It wasn’t a stiff obligatory thing either, far from the kind of hug that’s mostly shoulders and apology. He pulled me in like he meant it, one large hand at the back of my head, I felt the exhale move through him like he’d been holding it for months. I pressed my face into the fabric of his beige shirt and it dawned on me… he is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a Father. To someone who went to bat for me not because it was their job or their requirement, but because they simply couldn’t watch me disappear into the system and pretend it hadn’t happened.

I didn’t realise that at the start, maybe I didn’t want to, but now I do.

He’d looked at me afterward, hands on my shoulders, somewhere between proud and pained. “Stay in touch kid.” He’d said. Not a request and not quite an order. Something in between. A hope dressed up as an instruction.

I promised him I’d write. And I meant it. I’ll find a post office in whatever town we stop by on the journey and I’ll sit down and find the words. I’m not sure I ever had someone worth writing to before. Now, leaving Nightwing, I have four.

I watched Hop in the side mirror until the road curved and took him from view.

I’ll stay in touch, Dad. I promise.

The camp disappeared in pieces after that. The sign first, then the tree line, then… nothing. No landmark. No trace. Just road.

I’d spent so long planning my escape, so long fighting for my freedom, so long knowing damn well that the moment I got out I’d never look back.

And then it was simply behind us, getting smaller, becoming nothing.

Like every other place that had ever held me.

Gone.

It’s funny how things change. Hell, I think if someone had told me back then that the person I’d have been leaving with was ‘Mr Hargrove’ I’d have said they were mad.

I didn’t like him to begin with - I want to be clear about that, because it matters. It’s the part that makes the rest of it make any kind of sense.

From the moment I laid eyes on Billy, I’d seen the enemy in the most convenient, least complicated sense of the word. Authority figure. Obstacle. Someone to resist on principle because resisting was the only thing I’d ever been reliably good at. The arrogance, the clipboard, the way he moved through that camp like he owned it.

I’d hated him before I had any real reason to.

He’d been a bastard sometimes. That was true. Uncompromising in the specific way of someone who’s been soft before and got burned badly enough to stop. Cold in a way that only makes sense once you’ve read his file, once you understand what that coldness was protecting. And I’d matched him, because that was all I knew how to do.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever really despised him at all, or if I just despised how quickly he got under my skin.

I take another drag and decide it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is this - I fell completely, devastatingly in love with him. And he with me, in a way that still catches me off guard sometimes, the way he looks at me like I’m something worth looking at. It’s too large and too real and it arrived in a form I never would have recognised if someone had tried to describe it to me in advance. I thought love was something that happened to other people. I thought it was a con. I thought, if I’m being honest, that I was probably not the sort of person it would ever stop long enough to want.

I was wrong.

Billy doesn’t seem troubled by the weight of having been the person to prove me wrong. He seems, if anything, quietly certain about it. Like he knew before I did. And… knowing Billy, he probably did.

My cigarette is almost done now, burning low between my fingers. I reach into my jacket pocket for a stick of gum to get that aftertaste out of my mouth once it’s done with. Instead, my fingers close around something else.

A folded up piece of paper.

I know what it is before I’ve even opened my hand fully.

It’s the one the camp director had handed me across the desk like it was some parting gift. Like, ‘Here, take your damage with you on the way out, don’t bother us anymore’.

A single ripped out page covering a neat, clinical summary of everything that has supposedly gone wrong with Lydia Westbrook. A peephole version of my life that bares almost no resemblance to the one I’ve actually lived.

I hadn’t read it. I’d shoved it in my pocket that day without giving it a second glance, and I’ve been carrying it around ever since without quite being able to throw it away.

I stare down at it for a long moment. The symbolic weight of it so much more than paper.

The wind comes in through the window and lifts the corner of it slightly, like a question unanswered.

“You finally gonna read that?”

Billy’s voice finds me underneath the music as I see him out the corner of my eye reach forward to turn the volume down.

I pull the cigarette from my mouth.

“Nope.”

It’s already decided.

I tilt the burning end toward the paper, touching it gently to the corner. It catches immediately. A small bright point that blooms fast along the fold line, turning the edge into a deep brown and igniting into a small flame. I watch it go. The paper curling as it burns.

“None of that matters anymore.”

I hold it just long enough to appreciate the act, then I lean past the window and finally let go. I watch it through the mirror tumbling away behind us, a bright fire spinning in our wake before the road swallows it up entirely.

“That’s my girl.”

There’s that laugh that I love hearing from him. It catches on to me, spreading into something I can’t hold back even if I tried. I laugh too, not so much because anything is funny. It’s because I am finally free.

Billy flips the music back up, louder than before, and the engine opens up beneath us, the blue Camaro surging forward at high speed. The force of it pushing me back into the seat.

Suddenly, I see a small dot in the otherwise empty road, standing out like a lighthouse through fog.

We approach.

Closer…

Closer…

And there it is.

It’s a sign at the side of the road, green and white and perfectly ordinary, the kind that exists at the border of every state in the country and means nothing to most people passing it.

It means everything to me.

I can’t take my eyes off of it as we pass by. I feel something settle in my chest that has not been settled in as long as I can remember. Not the relief of escape - I know what that feels like, and it always comes with the aftertaste of whatever you were running from. This is something else. Something that sits differently. Something that feels like the beginning of an answer to a question I stopped letting myself ask a long time ago.

I close my eyes and tip my face toward the window and let the sun have me - all of it, the warmth and the gold and the particular kindness of light that doesn’t discriminate. That falls on everything equally without asking whether or not it deserves it. For the first time in my nineteen long years on this planet, I think maybe I do.

I feel a gentle hand place on top of mine.

Billy.

I open my eyes and we turn to each other while the rest of the world blurs into motion and background noise, there’s something in his face that I know is mirrored in mine. A quiet, certain knowledge that…

This isn’t the end of our story.

It’s only just the beginning.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

‘Welcome to California’

___

~ The End ~

___

𝐀/𝐍: 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐚 𝐰𝐫𝐚𝐩! 𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐝, 𝐈 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐖𝐎𝐖! 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐢𝐜.

𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐫. 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐠𝐮𝐲𝐬 𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐓𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐩𝐚𝐝. 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐞.

𝐒𝐨 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐲, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮. 𝐒𝐨, 𝐬𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡.

𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐧𝐨𝐰, 𝐬𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐝!

- 𝐗𝐚𝐦𝐢 <𝟑

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟐,𝟑𝟏𝟑

The atmosphere inside the camp director’s office is absolutely suffocating. It presses against the walls, fills every corner, soaks into the carpet and the faded certificates hanging crooked in their frames. Outside is now at complete darkness, the rest of the camp most likely asleep and completely oblivious with no idea what is happening inside this very room.

The director sits behind his desk like a magistrate preparing a verdict, one hand resting on his forehead, the other holding a cigarette that’s burning itself down to nothing between his fingers. He’s a man in his late fifties who clearly once believed in what this program was supposed to be, and the disappointment radiating off him now is the specific kind that comes from having that belief tested in the worst possible way. Thick rimmed glasses. Heavy sideburns gone silver at the edges. Ash falling unnoticed onto a stack of scattered papers.

Beside him, Dr Leslie stands clutching her clipboard to her chest like it might protect her from whatever this is. Her expression has moved through shock and arrived somewhere in the vicinity of bewildered. It’s the look of someone who thought she understood a situation, who thought she was tracking progress, and has now discovered she knew nothing of the sort.

Hopper is against the back wall with his arms folded, he’s yet to say a thing, just lets Dr Leslie recount her events of this scandal that they’ve been bestowed upon. He doesn’t need to take up space. He does it anyway, simply by existing in a room. His eyes move between them all with the slow, measured patience of someone who has learned that the most information comes when you wait.

And then, there’s the two of them.

Lydia and Billy stand side by side in front of the desk, close enough that their arms almost touch but not quite. Their hair is still damp. Their clothes cling slightly at the shoulders and the collar, the evidence of the lake still written on their bodies in ways they can’t undo.

The director draws a long, slow breath through his cigarette and lets the smoke out through his nose. He looks at Billy the way a man looks at something he thought he understood.

“I don’t even know where to begin with this.”

His voice is controlled, but only barely. The hand on his forehead tightens. He sets the cigarette against the edge of an overloaded ashtray and looks up.

“You’re a member of staff, Hargrove. A position of authority.” There’s a pause, weighted with everything that word implies: responsibility, professionalism, duty. “And this-” he gestures between them, nose wrinkling like the concept itself has an odour “-is how you choose to conduct yourself?”

He picks the cigarette back up. Takes another drag. Doesn’t look away.

Billy doesn’t flinch. He stands with his hands at his sides and his jaw set tight. He says nothing, because anything he says right now will be used against him and he knows it.

Dr Leslie turns to Lydia, and there is genuine grief in her eyes.

“Lydia, I- I thought you were making real progress.” Her voice wavers at the edges. “What happened?”

“I am.” The words come out of Lydia quick and defensive, arms folding across her chest like a shield snapping into place. Not a full sentence. Not an explanation. Just the flat refusal to be put in the category they’re building for her.

The director exaggerates a scoff. “Oh, don’t insult me.”

“This isn’t what you think.” Billy finally speaks up.

“It’s exactly what I think, Hargrove.” The camp director leans forward. The desk creaking under the shift of his weight. He points a fat finger at him while glaring through the rim of his glasses. “You’ve crossed a line that should never have even been approached.”

Dr Leslie steps in then, her voice softening into something that’s clearly meant to be kind but lands wrong regardless. “Lydia, sweetheart, you’re vulnerable right now. This kind of attachment, especially in a place like this, it can feel-”

“No.” The word lands like a fist on a table. Lydia’s arm shoots out, hands gesturing, something scorching hot and frustrated breaking the surface of her expression. “Don’t. Don’t you dare.” Her voice cracks on the edges but doesn’t collapse. “You always do this with me. Pick apart my brain as if you even know me at all. You have no fucking clue wh-”

“That’s enough!”

The director’s voice cuts through the room sharp enough to stop everything. Lydia’s jaw snaps shut. Her chest is heaving.

He turns to Billy.

“You’ve compromised this entire program.” The quiet in his voice now is more unnerving than the volume. “Do you have any idea what would happen if word of this got out?”

Billy grits his teeth.

The director waits. “Do you?”

“Yes… sir.” Billy’s words come out flat and measured.

From his position against the wall, Hopper finally moves. It’s barely anything, a shifting of weight at most, but in a room this still it registers like sound. His eyes track over Lydia’s face. Assessing her, looking for something specific.

“Alright.” His voice is gruff but unhurried. He’s not speaking to diffuse anything. He’s speaking because he’s decided something. “Let me talk to the kid. Alone.”

The director looks at him like he’s misheard. “Jim, this isn’t-”

“Alone.”

Not a request. Not a suggestion. The silence that follows it is the silence of someone who has learned exactly when to stop talking.

The director exhales sharply. Nodding begrudgingly like it costs him something. He takes a long, slow drag of his cigarette and looks Lydia up and down judgementally.

Hopper tilts his head toward the door but Lydia hesitates. She turns to look at Billy only for a second, mixture of apology and concern plastered across her face.

Finally, she follows him out.

The door shuts behind them. And through it, muffled but audible, she hears the mumble of Billy’s voice followed by the director’s outburst.

“Love her? Love her?! Don’t be stupid boy, what would you know about love? You seem to forget where you came from.”

Lydia stops dead in her tracks.

Her head snaps back toward the door, and the thing that happens to her face in that moment isn’t something she couldn’t describe if asked. It’s fury and protectiveness and something else underneath both of those. It’s something raw and old in her that the director has just accidentally put his hand directly onto.

She’s already turning. Her feet have already made the decision. She takes one step back toward the door-

Hopper’s hand lands on her shoulder and waits there until she finally turns around.

He walks a few steps ahead first, hands in his pockets, like he needs the distance to figure out how to start. Then he stops and when he looks at her, something in his expression is different from how he looked in there. Stripped of the hardened authority. Like a loving father looking at his daughter.

“What’s going on, kid?”

The question is simple. It shouldn’t be able to do anything to her and yet something in Lydia’s shoulders drops, a tension bleeding out that she didn’t realise she’d been carrying. She doesn’t answer. She keeps her face still and her arms crossed and she looks at the ground like it’s safer than looking at him.

“It’ll be a lot worse for him if you don’t speak... you know that.”

The implication lands like a gut punch, immediate. Lydia’s mind moves fast through the logic of it, through the risk, through the scandal. But… why is this scandalous? They’re both adults after all.

She exhales heavily.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Lydia, If he pushed you into anything-”

“No.” The word is final. absolute. The kind that comes from knowing your own truth so completely that the suggestion of anything else feels like a language you don’t speak. “No. God. It’s not like that at all.”

Hopper studies her. His eyes do the thing they’ve always done all these years of knowing her through difficult circumstances, moving over her face like he’s reading something beneath the surface, checking for fractures. Looking for fear. For uncertainty.

Yet… he doesn’t find it. At all, in fact.

“…You sure?”

She steps forward. Just slightly. And when she speaks, the defensiveness is gone. What’s underneath it is something she never lets anyone other than Billy see, something unguarded and real and fragile in its honesty.

“I’m happy.”

The words fall into the space between them and stay there. Lydia watches the moment as it lands.

Hopper’s known this girl for years. He’s pulled her out of bars and off the streets and even the worst of situations that could have, should have ended her. He’s sat across from her in his office while she refused to look at him, while she answered questions with silences and shrugs and the particular contained fury of someone who expects, over and over again, to be failed. He’s watched her fight everyone who tried to help her simply because helping had always come with a price she couldn’t pay.

He has never heard her say that before.

‘I’m happy’

Not once.

He clears his throat, looking away for a second. Then, he resets, decides to not dwell on the achievement because that’s just not how Lydia works. So? He changes subject.

“Do you know that Dr Leslie’s been keeping in touch with me?”

Lydia shrugs. “I sorta’ guessed so.”

“Well.” He shifts his weight, hands still in his pockets. “I came here today to see for myself how you were doing… We were even discussing discharging you.”

The word catches her off guard. It’s the thing she has wanted since the moment the bus pulled through those gates. The thing she ran toward, literally, more than once. Freedom. The word she’s been carrying for as long as she can remember. It settles in front of her now, offered cleanly, with no conditions attached.

But now she doesn’t want it. Not without him at least.

The realisation moves through her quietly, the way the most important things always do. No fanfare. Just the sudden, clear knowledge that something has changed within her so completely that she can’t locate the person who would have grabbed that offer with both hands and run.

“Mhm,” she manages.

Hopper watches her face carefully. He’s not a man who misses much, and he doesn’t miss this.

“Is he the reason?”

The answer comes without hesitation, without armour, without any of the careful distance she has maintained between herself and every person who has ever asked her anything.

“He’s my every reason.”

Her voice then shifts, becomes something urgent, something almost frantic, like the words are running ahead of her caution. “And I know what this looks like, I know it’s messy, but-” She stops. Swallows. Tries again, quieter. “Please. Please don’t take this away from me.”

Hopper opens his mouth.

“Lydia.”

“Please.”

She has never asked him for anything, let alone pleaded. She has never asked anyone for anything. The asking itself is its own kind of surrender and she does it anyway, standing in this fluorescent-lit corridor in damp clothes, looking at the one adult who has seemingly never given up on her.

He looks into her eyes for a long moment. In all the times he’s sat across from Lydia Westbrook he has seen anger and defiance and the particular blankness of someone who has learned that feeling things openly costs too much. He has never seen this. He has never seen her close enough to tears with wanting something to stay.

She is, he thinks, entirely unaware of how different she looks from the girl he had to hunt down to return to her foster home all those years ago.

“And you’re sure you’re safe?” His voice is very careful. “You want this?”

She holds his gaze and doesn’t waver.

“More than I want my freedom.”

A long, well needed pause settles over the corridor. Hopper exhales through his nose, a slow, controlled sound, and runs one large hand over his mouth and jaw. He looks at the ceiling for a second. Then back at her.

“Alright… Alright.” He nods toward the office. “Let’s go back in.”

Billy’s eyes find Lydia the moment the door opens. They always do. The scan is automatic, as though watching over her has become as instinctive as breathing. His expression doesn’t change, but something in it softens at the sight of her.

Hopper steps forward, planting himself between the two of them and the desk.

“So.”

He lets the word sit. Looks at the director without any particular urgency.

“Let’s say… hypothetically, they did want to pursue something here.” A beat, perfectly timed. “I mean. They are both adults.”

The director stares at him like he’s just gone mad. He reaches for yet another cigarette with the resignation of someone who has given up on the idea of a ‘smoke free’ afternoon.

“Absolutely not.” He mumbles as he flicks his lighter.

“I’m just asking the question.”

“And I’m giving you an answer.” The cigarette catches. He exhales. “This camp has a reputation to uphold. We are not running some kind of-” He gestures, a comprehensive sweep that seems to encompass every possible objection. “free for all.”

“It would completely undermine the structure we’ve worked hard to build here and-” Dr Leslie buts in.

“Exactly.” The director agrees before she can finish. He takes a long, slow drag, and turns his head toward her like he’s sharing a joke that isn’t funny. “Unless, of course….” something almost like amusement enters his voice, the dismissive laugh of a man who considers the possibility so remote it barely deserves a sentence “Mr Hargrove is willing to step down from his position.”

“Done.” He isn’t finished speaking when Billy says it. Theres absolutely no hesitation whatsoever.

The director’s laugh dies in his throat. He turns back to Billy very slowly, and peers at him through the thick glass of his lenses as though he might have misheard.

“…Excuse me?”

“I quit.”

Dr Leslie practically squeaks in shock. “Billy, that’s- that’s not something you just decide in the heat of the moment-“

“Yeah, well I just did.”

He says it without raising his voice. Without performing anything. He turns his head and he looks at Lydia, and the look is not dramatic or showy or constructed for an audience. It is simply the look of a person who has made a decision so clear to him that nothing else compares.

‘If that’s what it takes to be with her’.

He doesn’t say it out loud. He doesn’t have to. It’s written bold on his face.

‘Then so be it’.

The director looks like a machine that has been given an instruction it cannot process.

Hopper says nothing. His eyes are on Lydia, watching the way she receives this. There is something in his expression that belongs to a man who has carried a worry about this particular girl for a very long time, and is watching, slowly, that weight begin to lift.

“This is ridiculous.” The director finds his voice again. “You’re throwing away your entire position for-”

Billy’s voice cuts in sharper this time, there’s no fucks given, no holding on left, he’s already quit.

“For something that actually matters.”

His words are followed by a long, pondering silence. Lydia feels as though her heart could explode at any minute. Hearing the sheer, unfiltered passion Billy has for her practically makes her knees weak.

The director sets down his cigarette. Folds his hands. Looks at Lydia, and when he speaks the bluster is mostly gone, replaced by something more direct.

“…And you? You’re okay with this?”

Every eye in the room lands on her at once.

“Because you’ll be out of our hair when this is done. It’ll be out of our control. So it’s not something you can take lightly, girl.”

He holds her gaze.

“So I’ll ask you again.” His voice is firm now. The last firmness he has left. “Are you okay with this?”

Lydia doesn’t answer straight away.

She doesn’t look at the director. Doesn’t look at Dr Leslie. Doesn’t even look at Hopper, though she can feel the particular quality of his attention like warmth on the side of her face.

She looks at Billy.

And there it is. Small, barely there, but entirely real.

A smile.

The kind that’s just slightly breathless, like she’s arrived somewhere after a long walk and can’t quite believe she’s finally standing here. Defiant in the way that only things earned the hard way get to be defiant.

Billy sees it. And something happens to him. The tension leaves his shoulders first, then his jaw unclenches. That constant readiness, that strong, ‘braced for impact’ posture he has carried in this room simply goes. Like it was only ever waiting for this.

His eyes soften. Really soften. In a way that has nothing to do with the room or the people in it or the enormity of what just happened and everything to do with the specific fact that she is looking at him like that, and he is the reason for it, and he still cannot entirely believe that is true.

He looks almost stunned. A quiet huff of breath escapes him. Involuntary. Not quite a laugh but carrying the same quality as one, the kind that only happens when relief hits too fast and too hard and the body doesn’t know what else to do with it.

Lydia turns back to the director. Her voice is steady.

“Yeah.”

A beat.

“Yeah, I am.”

She gives off a small shrug like she’s thought about this for a long time and eventually arrived at this answer, and isn’t about to apologise for it either.

“I know what I’m doing. And I’m not gonna stand here and pretend I don’t just because it makes this dump look better.”

Billy’s head dips. His hand comes up over his mouth and he looks away, snickering to himself for just a second.

The director looks at them both. Something in his expression settles into a resignation that isn’t without its own complications. He has run this program for decades. He has seen a great many things. He clears his throat.

“Well then.” His voice has lost the edge. What’s left is tired and surrendering. “That settles it.”

Dr Leslie opens her mouth. “Lydia, you have to understand what this-”

“She understands.”

Hopper answers for her.

“She’s smart enough to make her own decisions. Ain’t that right, kid?”

Lydia’s smile this time is different, it reaches her bright eyes and stays there.

The director pulls a thick folder from somewhere under a stack on his desk, flips through it with practiced efficiency and finally tears out a single page. He reaches across the desk and holds it toward Lydia without ceremony.

She takes it.

Her own face looks back up at her from the top of the page, the intake photograph, taken the day she arrived, still half-furious and braced for the worst. Below it, her name. Her history. The condensed, clinical version of everything that has brought her here.

She doesn’t look at it for more than a second. She doesn’t need to.

“This cannot reflect back on the camp.” The director’s voice has found its authority again, applied now to logistics. He looks at Billy. “If you’re serious about stepping down, you’re off duty, effective immediately. You’ll hand in your badge, your keys. Everything.”

Billy nods. “Obviously.”

Dr Leslie turns to Lydia, and her voice is careful in the way of someone picking their way across uncertain ground. “And Lydia… you’re being excluded from the program.”

“Good.” Lydia responds without thinking.

The director draws breath like he’s about to clap back but is stopped by Hopper who glares him down. Instead, he closes his mouth and exhales through his nose. He Clenches one fist against the desk for a moment, then releases it.

“You’re both dismissed.”

Back at the cabin, the door swings shut behind them and for a while they simply stand there, looking at each other in disbelief.

Billy is the first to speak, “Fuck, Lydia…” He shakes his head shock. “You just-” He stops to grin. “You actually said all that in there.”

Lydia rolls her eyes sarcastically. The warmth underneath it is impossible to hide.

“Don’t make it a big deal or anything.” She teases.

“Too late.”

Billy suddenly crosses the space between them, both hands cupping her face. The kiss is electric, charged by the fact that they don’t have to hide anymore, from knowing there is no one to walk in, no pretence to maintain, no careful distance to keep.

When he pulls back, he doesn’t go far. His hands stay where they are. He looks her deep in the eye.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Of course.” She smiles. “Are you?”

He doesn’t hesitate. Not even for a fraction of a second. “Absolutely.”

His hands tighten gently against her cheeks, and they’re kissing again, their entire history folded into one long, real, unhurried kiss that belongs to nobody but the two of them.

When they finally pull apart their lips are swollen and they’re left smiling like two idiots.

Finally, Billy asks that all important question.

“But, where do we go from here?”

Lydia responds with a knowing smile.

“I have somewhere in mind.”

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟑,𝟔𝟐𝟔

___

‘Why did I agree to this?’

It’s the first thought that runs through my mind as I follow Billy outside through the tree line, past any possible view point from the main camp. I clutch a soft towel towards my chest, it giving me a secondary source of comfort. The woods on this side of the camp are a lot thicker, quieter, privater. It’s peaceful, but I can’t quite settle.

My heart races as my eyes dart around the unfamiliar surroundings. Billy, on the other hand, looks like he doesn’t have a single worry or doubt in his body.

Me? I have several.

“We could be seen,” I say to the back of his head.

“We won’t be seen.” He claps back, never halting.

“I don’t have anything to swim in.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Billy-”

“Lydia.”

The way he says my name is infuriating. Like he knows exactly what it does to me. I open my mouth, but stumble on my words, instead letting out a long sigh. Guess the cat caught my tongue… this time.

We continue walking, my mind flicking through every hazard of the water - some I know, others I’ve probably invented. I pull the towel a little tighter to my chest as a sudden thought intrudes.

“Fuck! There could be leeches!”

Billy slows just enough to glance back at me over his shoulder, and there’s that look. His brows furrow but a wicked smile is planted on his face. He manages to look so judgmental yet so amused and absolutely perfect at the same time. “Don’t be silly.” He laughs. “If there were any, the fish would’ve ate ‘em.”

“Fish?!”

“Babe.” He says it like he’s being patient with someone he finds very endearing. “Relax. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.”

That doesn’t help at all.

I’m still trying to decide how I feel about that when he adds, “Besides, it’s the urchins you’ve gotta’ watch out for.”

I stop walking entirely. “The what!?”

He laughs, teasing and not remotely sorry. “I’m just messing with you. We’re not in California yet. Don’t worry.”

Cool. Yep. No worries at all. Absolutely zero worries.

I resume walking and immediately start to fucking worry.

The whole ‘urchin thing’ is still sitting in the back of my mind, which is ridiculous, because we’re in Indiana. Land locked Indiana. Urchins are a coastal issue… right? A California issue. Not a Camp Nightwing, middle of the woods, issue. I know that. I’m aware of that.

Well, on the bright side, at least there are no sharks.

…are there sharks in Indiana?

Fuck, this is ridiculous! I should’ve never watched that stupid movie.

The trees thin slightly ahead causing the light to morph into that particular amber glow that only exists in the short window before the sun sets and hands the day over to darkness. I follow as Billy pushes past the last thick cluster of pines and just… stops. And so do I.

We look upon a lake that sits in a hollow of the woods. It’s beautiful, like I’ve just stepped into a Claude Monet painting. It’s not the one the main camp’s uses, nothing like it. This one is smaller and entirely hidden, surrounded on every side by trees that lean inward like a canopy. The water is perfectly still in places and alive in others, catching the last of the golden light in long rippling ribbons that gently break apart and reform over and over. There’s no dock, no rope swing, and not a single plastic kayak in sight. There’s no sign that anyone has ever stood here and had the privilege of taking in its beauty.

A breath I didn’t know I was holding sighs out of me before I can stop it as Billy’s hand finds mine. He doesn’t say a word, just takes it gently, fingers lacing through each others. He carefully leads me forward toward the edge. I hesitate for a second, but trust him enough to follow with caution.

There’s a fallen log that conveniently rests nearby the bank. He takes the towel from my hands without asking and drapes it over the log alongside his own.

Then, he turns to face me.

“Well?”

His voice is almost sheepish as he searches my eyes for approval. I let out another sigh and look out at the water and the way it glistens.

“It’s… beautiful.” I smile.

Something moves in his expression. Pride, maybe. Or even just the satisfaction of someone showing another person a thing they love.

“I told you I knew a place.”

“You did.” I look back at him. Inevitably, the nerves find their way back in. “But Billy, I can’t-”

“Listen,” His tone is calm and reassuring. “I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

He holds my gaze for just a beat longer than necessary, long enough to make it stick. Then, the corner of his mouth tips up, followed by a wink and before I’ve even had the chance to blush, his hands find the hem of his shirt. I watch in awe as he pulls it up and off in one easy motion. The muscles across his stomach shift, catching the sunlight like something that was designed specifically to be admired. Broad and tan and effortless in that way that makes me feel all sorts of fluttery.

My eyes follow as he tosses the shirt onto the log and suddenly my attentions back to the water, then to the tree line. It dawns on me how bad this would look if we were ever seen. My head darts around, checking all directions.

“This is a bad idea…”

“Relax.” He says it quietly. “No one ever comes to this area. It’s just me and you babe.”

Billy moves to unbuckle his belt and does it with all the confidence of a man who’s used to stripping out in the open like this - hell, maybe he is. I attempt to look away, to find something to distract me from… well... it doesn’t matter, I fail anyway. My eyes come back the same way they keep doing. Helplessly. Involuntarily. He steps out of the denim and I find myself tracking the heavy, defined press of him against the black fabric of his boxers. It’s an outline I recognize with the specific awareness of someone who has very recent, very detailed information of Every. Single. Inch.-

“Enjoying the view?”

My eyes snap up.

Billy looks so pleased with himself as he stares down at me with that know-all expression. My mouth opens. A word starts and doesn’t finish. I’m blushing and we both know it and there’s not a single thing I can do about it.

He closes the distance between us without any particular urgency, like he has all the time in the world. Both hands find the outer edges of my arms and he grips them softly, stoking down. Bending down slightly, his lips find my neck, just beneath my jaw. He leaves a trail of small, deliberate kisses that aren’t exactly hungry, just attentive.

My body goes very still, the way it does when something is too good and the instinct is to hold it in place, keep it from passing. But my eyes keep moving over his shoulder to the tree line. Scanning the edges and the shadows between trees. I can practically feel my pulse under his mouth.

“Hey.” His lips brush the words into my skin. “I’ve got you.”

I don’t know how he knows. He just does.

His hands find the hem of my shirt next, and he pulls it up slowly, watching my face for the full duration with an expression that asks without asking. I lift my arms and the fabric comes off and the warm evening air hits my skin and he takes a step back.

Billy’s eyes move over me slowly, no performance in it, just attention. Pure, unhurried, devastating attention.

“God, you’re beautiful.”

I feel the heat spread up to my cheekbones. I look down bashfully and then I immediately wish I hadn’t, because I can see quite clearly through his boxers that he is not at all unaffected by this.

Billy clears his throat and straights up, totally aware of his new ‘problem’. “Come on. I’ll meet you in there.”

He turns and walks to the water’s edge and steps in like it’s nothing. I watch the water rise. First around his ankles, calves, then knees and thighs. Suddenly, he steps down and lets himself float back, arms spreading wide on the surface, head tipped up toward the sky. His eyes find mine and he just… waits. Patient. Steady. Like time isn’t an issue and never was.

My heart races inside my chest.

Okay… okay, breathe.

I look at the water. I look at the towels on the log. I look back toward where the cabin sits behind its partial screen of trees.

Come on, come on.

No turning back now. I reach for my jean shorts with hands so shaky it makes it difficult. I push them down and step out, choosing to leave them folded over the log with a precision that is completely unnecessary given the circumstances.

I’m stood in my underwear with two choices, stand here like a total idiot and embarrass myself for being scared, or, get in.

“You can do it baby.”

Billy says from the water, it’s completely unhelpful in terms of the actual fear but doing something entirely different to the part of me that isn’t afraid. I edge my toe to the surface and hiss through my teeth at the cold.

“It’s fine.” he says.

“It’s freezing.”

“It’s not~” he lies through his teeth, the last word trailing off into a teasing drawl. “Come on, don’t be scared.”

That’s all he had to say. Billy knows exactly which buttons to push, and my stubbornness is the biggest one. I square my shoulders, grit my teeth, and finally take the first step.

The water climbs my ankles. My shins. I keep going, slowly, arms lifting slightly out at my sides as though sheer spatial awareness might compensate for the depth. Billy stands up ahead of me as I get closer, water sliding off him in long sheets. On him the water sits at his navel. On me, as I step down to meet him, it climbs higher, just a few inches below the fabric of my bra.

I breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth, focused entirely on not thinking about what’s beneath the surface.

“There,” he says, when I finally stop moving.“See?”

“Don’t celebrate yet,” I manage. “A few more steps and I’ll drown.”

“You’re not going to drown,” Billy watches me with that infuriatingly calm expression, totally relaxed as if we were standing in a living room rather than a dangerous body of water.

“You don’t know that,” I counter, looking down at the dark, murky depth where my feet should be, feeling the silt shift beneath my toes.

“I’m standing right here.”

We stare each other off for what seems like forever. His features look absolutely perfect in the golden lighting, especially his ocean eyes that have brightened into a lighter blue.

“Try floating,” he says, after a moment. “Like this.” He leans back to show me, the water takes him effortlessly, his feet rising, his body flat, eyes still on me.

Easy. Right?

I steadily attempt to replicate it. I lean back, feeling the water rise against my ears. My feet try to follow the instruction my brain is giving them, lifting just slightly off the bottom, and for approximately one beautiful half-second I feel weightless… and then the very reasonable part of my brain that has always known I am going to die drowning sends up a flare, and I tip sideways. The world goes under.

Cold. Dark. The rush of bubbles and panic and-

Billy’s arms wrap around me. Solid and instant, hauling me upright before I’ve had time to properly sink. I’m standing, sputtering, blinking water out of my eyes with what I can only assume is a manic expression on my face.

I stand there for a second and realise that I’m in approximately three feet of water… I nearly drowned in three feet of water.

“I feel ridiculous,” I say.

“You’re doing great.”

“Easy for you to say.” I wipe my face with one hand. “Mr California.” I mock, before bringing my hand down across the surface and splash a wall of water directly into his face.

The silence that follows is immediate. Absolute.

He blinks. Water drips from his nose, from his chin, from the ends of his hair. Then, his eyes flash with something amused. “Is that right?”

Suddenly, he brings both hands up and sends a wave back at me that is catastrophically larger than what I sent at him. I let out a gasp at the sudden shock.

“Billy!”

He bursts out laughing and I genuinely try to be annoyed about it. I put on my best stern face and hold it for approximately three seconds before breaking.

So I splash him again.

He retaliates immediately, his entire arm back-handing the surface in a wave that hits me full in the face. I get it in my mouth, up my nose, in my ear. I surface spluttering and shrieking his name followed by a string of curses. He fires something back that gets swallowed by the noise and I don’t catch it but it’s clearly very funny to him.

For a few minutes we’re wrapped up in the chaos and laughter. No one watching. Nothing pressing in from the outside. Just me and him having fun.

When it finally settles, we’re both breathing hard.

“You need to face your fear,” he says.

“I’m not scared.”

“You are.”

“Fuck off, I’m not.” I insist, thought it’s clear it’s a lie.

“Lydia.” Billy tilts his head, something between a smile and a challenge sitting on his mouth. “You’re such a bad liar.”

“You’re such an asshole-”

He grabs me.

Before I’ve finished the sentence, before I’ve registered the intention behind the movement, his arms are already around me and he’s walking backward and the water is climbing fast.

Suddenly, my body makes its own decisions without consulting me, arms locking around his neck, legs wrapping around his waist on pure reflexive instinct, pulling myself up and against him.

“No! Don’t you dare!” The panic has stripped my voice down to something small and tight and not remotely joking. “Billy. Take us back. Right now.”

“Just teasing, sweetheart.” His hands find my hips beneath the surface, hoisting me higher. “Wanted to prove a point.”

“Okay! Okay! Point proven, take us back-”

I feel my grip around his waist slip and I squeeze my thighs to find get a more stable hold. Then, I feel him go still. Not the careful stillness of someone concentrating. Something else. His hands tighten on my hips and I become suddenly, acutely aware of exactly where my body is positioned against his. The way the water has settled us together. The way every small movement I make to keep myself above the surface translates directly into-

Oh.

He makes a sound. Low, involuntary, barely there. The kind of sound that isn’t meant to escape and does anyway.

A beat of silence.

He clears his throat. “Uh... babe…” His voice has dropped into a register I recognize. “Just stop moving for a sec’.” Another beat, strained at the edges. “You’re… kinda’ distracting me.”

Heat blooms up my neck and into my face and I press my lips together hard, saying absolutely nothing because I know I’ll only make it worse. He turns without further commentary and walks us steadily back toward shallower ground, I unwind my legs with whatever dignity I have left and we find our footing once again.

We stay in the lake until the light dims, playing in the water. We don’t call it that, but that’s what it is. Splashing and bad attempts at technique and me gripping his arm every time a piece of lake grass grazes my calf. His hand on my back when I try the float again, eventually letting the water take my weight while he holds the space around me.

Soon, we’re stood in the stillness, the water a mirror of fading gold and soft pink. In the quiet, my heart feels anchored for the first time. I look at him and realize I’m not just safe, I’m home.

“What are you afraid of?” I ask.

I don’t know exactly what made me ask it. Only that the question rises naturally out of the quiet, the way things do when you’re still enough for long enough. I’ve stripped away my fear, now I want to know his.

“Losing you,” he whispers.

My heart sinks at the weight of his words, a bittersweet ache forming in my chest. Tears prick at my eyes, though not from sadness but from the overwhelming realization that someone finally sees me as something worth losing. I reach up, resting my wet hand against the warmth of his cheek.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I tell him, my voice steady with a trust I've never felt before. “I’m yours. You’ll never lose me.”

The air between us vanishes. He pulls me closer, his hand sliding into my hair as his lips meet mine. It’s not urgent nor frantic. Nothing like the archery shed or the wall or any of the other times we’ve lost our grip on the careful distance we were supposed to keep. This is slow, meaningful, the long kind.

We’re standing in a lake at golden hour kissing like we have nowhere in the world to be and nothing in the world to fear and I think… I think this is what love feels like.

I could stay in this moment forever. I would choose to. I am choosing to, right now, with both hands, with everything I have-

“Ah-hem.”

Someone clears their throat.

Loudly.

Deliberately.

The sound cracks through the quiet like a stone through glass, and we break apart so fast the water sloshes between us. We release each other frantically and turn toward the sound.

Shit!

Standing at the bank is a silhouette I know all to well. A large one. A very familiar, deeply inconvenient one, arms crossed over his chest with the patience of a man who has been standing there long enough to have formed a clear opinion about what he witnessed.

Hopper, Chief Jim Hopper.

Beside him, one step back, is Dr Leslie. She looks, without any ambiguity, absolutely fucking mortified.

My heart plummets and I can only imagine how Billy is feeling in this moment.

I want to sink to the bottom of the lake and hide, hoping this will all just go away. But no. We’ve been caught. We’re absolutely, utterly fucked.

Hopper unfolds his arms slowly and tucks his thumbs into his belt loops. He surveys the scene. The lake. The towels on the log. The two of us standing chest-deep in the water in our underwear with all the evidence of the last thirty seconds still written plainly across our faces.

There’s no denying this. No way out.

He takes a breath. Then, in the voice of a man who has seen many things and has chosen, on this particular evening, to be mostly calm about it, “Well then. You pair best get out… now.”

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟑,𝟐𝟗𝟒

___

The pasta plates have been sitting on the coffee table for two hours.

Billy and I had lazily set them down after dinner with full intentions of eventually getting up and washing them. ‘Just give it a sec,’ we’d both agreed, ‘let’s just let our food go down’ though, that was just an excuse. We remain how we have been since finishing our food, tangled up in each other on the couch where we belong.

The dirty forks are crossed over the sauce stained ceramic in a way that I find stupidly beautiful. It’s evidence of a meal he made me from scratch, standing in that narrow kitchen with a dish towel thrown over his shoulder, posing as a proper chef. He kept asking me, checking and checking, whether or not I wanted garlic bread and then made it anyway when I assured him I didn’t mind. When he plated it up and brought it out to me, he looked so pleased with himself I could melt.

It was honestly the best tasting meal I’ve had here. The slop they serve in the cafeteria is quite literally pale in comparison.

I’m snuggled up against him, my back to his chest, his legs stretched out along the length of the couch with mine slotted between them. Billy’s hand moves through my hair in this slow, unconscious way that I don’t think he even knows the impact of he’s doing.

The cabin is quiet. Outside, the last of the evening activities are winding down somewhere beyond the tree line, luckily today I only had three to muddle through before I could come back here and spend time with a completely unfiltered Billy. Is honestly been bliss. With him, it’s a different world to what it is out there. I genuinely think I could stay in this exact position in his arms for the rest of my life and not feel cheated out of a single thing.

“I love you.” he says into my hair, and it’s the fourth time in the last hour. Maybe the fifth.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

We keep saying it. I don’t even know when it started or who said it first after the major confession yesterday, but it’s become this thing we do now, slipping it into the gaps between sentences as naturally as blinking.

“I love you,” I say back, and I feel him press his lips to the top of my head.

He’s been giddy. That’s the only word for it. Billy Hargrove, who I have watched maintain an almost supernatural composure for the better part of the summer, has been soft and stupidly giddy since last night, and there’s something so privately wonderful about being the only person in the world who knows that about him. He keeps smiling at nothing. The first time he said those three words to me, he did it with his whole chest, and then he laughed a little, surprised at himself, and I laughed too, and something cracked open between us that I don’t think will ever fully close again.

The thought of Rachel, Lauren and Jackson flashes my mind the way it did last night before bed. I looked outside the bedroom window and saw the pitch black sky and how dark it was out there. I worry for them. Are they safe? Are they sheltered? Are they warm? Did they make it out of Indiana? God I hope they made it… I hope they came out the other side, far far away from Hawkins. I hope Rachel will keep that confident charm and use it to make new friends wherever she goes. I hope Lauren is keeping them safe, staying as alert and observant as she always is. And Jackson… I hope he finds his family. I hope he doesn’t hold a grudge with me for loving another. I hope he goes as far as I know he will… they all will.

I chose to stay and I would choose it again if I were ever standing at the same crossroads. I’d choose Billy in a heartbeat.

“You’d love it there.”

Billy’s voice pulls me back into the room. I blink a few times and immediately wonder ‘where’? But I don’t say it out loud. I don’t want him to worry or think I’m not interested in what he has to say - I am, of course I am, my thoughts just tend to trail off. So I just let the question sit unanswered inside me and wait.

“Cali is…” He pauses, like he’s reaching for the right word, which isn’t something Billy does often. He usually knows exactly what he means and says it with complete authority, no hesitation, no fumbling. But this is different. This is something he actually cares about. “It’s something else.”

California. Of course. I feel a small smile pull at my mouth as the pieces settle.

I think of the last time I snuck into the Hawkins cinema, how I’d slipped into the back row just as the opening reel was rolling. ‘American Graffiti’. I hadn’t chose the film, anything would’ve suited me at the time. I didn’t expect much, but I loved every second. Two hours of California summers and swish cars and youth and music. I sat there in the dark with my knees pulled up to my chest thinking, that’s where I should be. That’s the world I was supposed to get.

“I bet,” I say. “When I saw American Graffiti at the movies, it was my total dream to run away there someday.”

The short, reminiscent laugh that moves through him is low and easy, I feel it in his chest against my back. “Yeah,” he says, “it’s exactly like that. But with way more beach.”

I smile, sitting up because I want to see his face when he talks about this. I shift and turn, folding my legs beneath me, settling back to see him properly. He looks good. He always looks good, but right now he’s at his best. I tilt my head, watching him with that warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest. “You really do love that west coast, huh?”

“God,” he exhales, “I can’t even tell you how much.”

Billy goes quiet after that, but not the uncomfortable kind of quiet. I can tell he’s somewhere else for a moment, standing on that sandy beach, lapping up that Californian sunshine. I watch his eyes go slightly distant, watch the particular cast that memory puts on a person’s face.

Then he comes back.

“I learned to surf when I was around four,” he adds. His voice is slower now and a lot more gentle. “Mom got me my very own board. I remember it was this… tiny, little thing, but perfect for me.”

A pause. And in the pause I can almost see it, the small surf board, the two of them together by the sea.

“She used to take me out on weekends when it was just me and her. She’d hold the back of the board until I caught my balance and then let go without telling me. I’d be going for like ten seconds before I even realised she wasn’t there anymore.” His mouth curves at the memory. “I fell off every time. Every single time, just completely wiped out. I used to get so frustrated.”

I think about that. Standing on something small and moving while the dangerous waters shift beneath you, no warning, the ground just… gone. My stomach flips at the image. “Were you not scared?”

Billy lets out a laugh at my concern. “No. I think I scared her more, honestly.” There’s a warmth to it that he probably doesn’t notice he’s letting out. “Once I got the hang of it, you’d never get me out of the sea.”

“Sounds like you were a right water baby,” I say, and I’m grinning, because the image of a tinier version of Billy falling off over and over and refusing to stop is one of the best things I’ve ever been given.

“Oh, definitely.” He says it like a fact, like a badge of honour. “At one point I even considered becoming a lifeguard at the community pool, just to get that feeling back, y’know? Any excuse to stay in the water.”

Yeah, I think, and I mean to say it lightly, the way you agree to something without thinking. But something in me catches on the word before it gets out properly. That feeling… water… floating… swimming… I don’t have a version of that. I’ve never had a version of that. I don’t know what water feels like to be completely relaxed at even the mere thought of it.

“Yeah,” I say anyway, and it comes out slightly flat, and I look down at my hands, messing with the hem of my shirt.

I feel his eyes on me before he says anything.

“You’ve gone quiet.”

I look up. He’s got his head tilted just slightly, watching me with that particular focus that still, even now, catches me off guard. The way he actually pays attention, the way nothing gets past him. I feel warmth crawl up the back of my neck.

“Huh? Oh-… it’s… nothing.”

He reaches out and puts his hand on my knee, warm and steady, and just leaves it there. “Lydia.” His thumb moves back and forth in the smallest possible motion. “Come on… Tell me.”

I shake my head, half a smile already on my face because I know what I’m not telling him is super embarrassing. I open my mouth without knowing yet what shape the words are going to take, and then I look down at his hand on my knee. The way it sits there without any pressure, without any agenda, just present, just easy.

“Fine.” I exhale through my nose. “I, uh- I can’t exactly…”

I pause.

He waits.

“Swim.”

His hand lifts off my knee.

“What?”

I bury my face in both hands. “Mhm.”

“Like-” I can hear him recalibrating in real time, the brief silence of a person rearranging information. “Like at all?”

“Like at all.” Muffled, from inside my hands.

Does he seriously believe that I was in a place long enough to learn anything extracurricular?

“Lydia.” He says my name with this weight that is somehow both concerned and utterly bewildered, like I’ve just told him I’ve never seen the sun. “How-”

I drop my hands and look at him with the most patient, even expression I can manage. “How many beaches are in Indiana, Billy?”

The silence that follows is extremely satisfying.

“…Fair enough,” he says. And then, almost immediately, “But still. Most people in Cali were swimming before they could even walk.”

“There’s no way that’s true.”

“No, really-” he says it with the confidence of a man who has never once been wrong about anything, “babies have a natural reflex to. It’s a real thing.”

I shrug, because I genuinely have no response to that. “Beats me.”

Quiet settles between us, and then I watch something happen in his expression. A thought arriving, some idea clicking into place behind his eyes, lighting them up from the inside in a way that I know already, I know immediately, is going to result in something I’m not prepared for. He looks at me with this slow, tilted edge to his mouth, and something in my stomach drops pleasantly.

“What?” I question flatly.

The smirk widens, and his eyes sweep over me with that particular brand of unhurried, deliberate attention that he deploys when he already knows exactly what he wants and is simply enjoying the approach. “I could teach you,” he says, voice dropping just enough to make the words feel like they’re for me specifically and no one else on earth. “I know all the styles.” He pauses, lets that sit. “Freestyle. Butterfly.” Another long, flirtatious pause. “Breaststroke.”

I stare at him, judging his astonishing way of turning one of my biggest fears into a way to somehow flirt. “No, thank you, I really don’t-”

Both palms come down flat on his knees with a decisive slap and he’s on his feet before the sentence is out of my mouth. “We’ll do it now.”

“What-”

He holds his hand out toward me, open, waiting. I look at it, then up at him, and I keep my own hands exactly where they are in my lap, fingers laced, going absolutely nowhere. He tips his chin toward the door. “Come on. It’ll be fun… besides, I know a place.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Lydia~.”

“I said-”

And then both of my hands are in his, because he simply reached down and took them, no further argument, just his hands closing around mine and the gentle and completely unfair upward pull of someone who has decided this is happening. I don’t stand. I make him work for it, just a little. But I don’t pull away either.

“Billy.” I warn.

“Don’t make me carry you.”

I look up at him, my brows pulled together in protest. He looks down at me, simply watching, patiently waiting.

“Trust me,” he says, softly. “Trust me.”

I give it one more second, weighing the odds…

“Fine.”

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟐,𝟐𝟑𝟔

___

I’ve been reading / writing fanfiction since I was like 10 years old and I have literally never finished a full fic before - they usually just ended up abandoned somewhere in my notes app and rarely ever posted. So the fact that this one is actually reaching the end is so surreal (Only 4 more chapters to go!)

Genuinely, I couldn’t have done it without you guys. I know it’s a little controversial to admit this but the likes, reposts and comments is what has kept me motivated to keep going.

I also wanna give a special mention / shoutout to @hbkchokeme and @aliendustpee who have both quite literally been here since the start. I always look out for your interactions with new chapters, like it literally makes me smile every single time :)

BUT!!! Don’t worry I’m not disappearing after this finishes! I actually have another Billy Hargrove longfic that’s been sitting in my drafts since like… 2021??? So I can’t wait to finally dust that one off and rework it to eventually share with you all. Plus, I’ve also got a few one shots up my sleeve too!

Anyway, thank you again for all the love on this fic, it genuinely means the world to me.

Stay tuned! <3

She runs.

Though not for any finishing title at the end of the cross country course. Nor because there’s a leader with a clipboard waiting on the other end of the trail to record her time and tick her name off a list. It’s got nothing to do with this mundane activity that was forced upon her. Lydia runs because standing at that gate any longer would have absolutely destroyed her, and running away is the only thing she’s ever known.

Which is what makes this all the more real.

The door was wide open, the freedom, the fresh start, everything she’d ever dreamed of within her grasp. And yet… all she could think of was him. For once in her life, there was someone worth staying for.

The trail blurs into streaks of green as she pushes harder than ever. Tears streaming down her cheeks, her legs aching, breath ragged, heart drumming in her chest and a metallic taste of the blood in her lungs. She’s faster than she’s ever been, fuelled by a raw, complex mix of emotion: sadness, relief, fear, confusion, clarity. All of it driving her forward.

The camp grounds come into view as the tree line drops away, but Lydia doesn’t slow. She carries on, cutting away from the direction of the cross country group without a second thought, without a backwards glance. Let them mark her absent. Let someone come looking. She genuinely, honestly cannot bring herself to care about any of that right now.

She’s looking for him.

Her eyes scan the grounds as she runs, scanning the paths, the open fields, the gaps between cabins. She’s not even entirely sure what she’s going to say when she finds him. The words have not yet formed. There is no plan. She is all impulse and adrenaline and weeks of accumulated feeling crashing through her chest. She stopped caring about caution approximately the same moment she stood at that gate and chose to stay.

Lydia rounds the eastern path, past the equipment shed, past the notice board with its colour coded schedule she’s memorised without meaning to and then… finally… she spots Billy.

‘He’s alone, thank god.’

That’s the first thing she registers and relief washes over her, she wouldn’t have known what to do nor say if he had company.

He’s on the path ahead, moving at an unhurried pace, one hand is holding a walkie-talkie to his jaw, the other is placed at his side as he hooks his thumb around a loop in his jeans. His head is tilted slightly, listening to whoever’s on the other end. He’s in the zone, professional, contained, perfectly in order and completely unaware.

Lydia quickly approaches, then stops dead. Her chest heaving, the raw scrape of her throat where crying and cold air have done their damage makes it almost impossible to breathe right. She’s standing directly in his path, not even six feet between them, tears still tracking down her face and not a single coherent plan for what she does next.

She just stands there.

Billy glances up with the automatic awareness of someone whose job requires knowing what’s going on around him. The second their eyes meet, whatever expression he’d been wearing drops clean off his face. Gone completely between one breath and the next. His brows immediately pull together and his gaze moves over her in one fast sweep. She looks like she’s just run straight through a storm.

Her hair clings damply to her temples, strands plastered to flushed skin. Her chest rises and falls in uneven bursts, breaths shaking their way out of her lungs like they hurt.

And her face-

Tears.

Actual tears are rolling down her cheeks.

She stands there in the middle of the path with no group, no explanation, not a trace of the usual armour she wears so well. In all the months he’s known her, he’s never seen her in a state like this.

The radio crackles in his hand before either of them can say a word.

“-need confirmation on cone placement, east perimeter field B, twenty metres from boundary. Over.”

Billy doesn’t even glance down, his eyes stay locked on Lydia.

“Copy that,” he says quickly into the radio, voice suddenly distracted. “Over and out.”

He drops it. Doesn’t think about it, doesn’t clip it away, just lets go. It hits the dirt path with a hollow plastic sound and he’s already moving, crossing the space between them in a few long strides. Both hands wrap around the sides of her arms in a carful, steady grip.

He bends. Lowers himself to her level, puts his face right there in front of hers, close enough to read every single thing she’s not saying.

“Hey… hey,” He soothes her gently, his voice softening. It’s nothing of like the professional drawl he used moments ago. Nothing for anyone else’s ears. “Baby wh-” His eyes search her face frantically, scanning every inch like he’s trying to locate the source of the damage.

Lydia tries to answer. Her mouth opens. Nothing comes out. All that escapes her is a small, broken breath. She shakes her head helplessly.

“Listen to me.” His hands shift slightly, grip adjusting, thumbs pressing with the smallest, deliberate pressure against the outside of her arms. “What’s wrong?”

Her chin does the thing. The terrible, involuntary, humiliating thing her chin does when she is trying very hard not to cry any more than she already has, this tiny tremble she can’t control no matter how much she’d like to.

“Okay,” he says, quietly trying to understand. And then without making a production of it, without drawing it out, he does a fast scan of the path in both directions and tilts his head once, a small, certain gesture toward the near side of the storage cabin that’s just off the path, just out of open view, the kind of privacy they need right now.

“Come on… over here.”

Billy gently guides her toward the narrow space between two cabins tucked just out of sight from the main path.

The moment they step behind it, the world narrows down to something more manageable.

Billy turns to face her, close, both of them tucked into this pocket of almost privacy, and his hands return to her arms and he dips his head again to find her eyes.

“Breathe,” he says.

She does. One breath, uneven at the edges. Then another.

“Slow,” Billy continues, voice steady now, grounding. “That’s it. Just breathe.”

Soon, she calms herself down enough to tell him what’s happened.

It comes out rough at first, fighting through the tightness in her throat, the words arriving in pieces that don’t quite connect. The cross country run. The way their little group steered off trail. And then, most importantly…

“There was a gate,” she says.

Billy’s brow furrows. “A gate?”

“Yeah...” She swallows hard, closing her eyes and lets the tears stream down as she shakes her head. “I didn’t understand what we were doing there. And then Jackson-.”

That’s as far as she gets.

“Jackson did this?” He’s looking at the sheer state that she’s in, at the fact that the last name out of her mouth belongs to a boy, and he’s connected those dots with the swift, certain logic of someone who is not going to wait around for the full picture before deciding he doesn’t like it. “Lydia, if he hurt you-“

“No- Billy-” She shakes her head, a wet, slightly breathless sound escaping her. “Let me finish.”

He stops. Just like that. The tension in his jaw doesn’t fully disappear but his hands loosen on her arms, and she watches him make the conscious effort to pull himself back.

She takes a breath.

“He was prying the gate open. That’s all.”

Billy closes his mouth. His expression shifts, the sharp edge of it blunting as she holds his gaze, and after a beat he gives a short nod for her to continue.

“It was like… they all knew something, and I didn’t.”

Lydia pauses. Billy watches her face, waiting with that focused, unhurried patience he reserves for things that actually matter to him.

“So I asked them.” Another pause, smaller this time. Her eyes drop for just a second before coming back up to his. “And… they told me.”

He’s very still. Reading her. Preparing himself for whatever’s coming.

“We’re going to New York.”

Something passes across Billy’s face. A short breath escapes him, half a laugh, the involuntary kind, arriving before his brain has fully processed what his ears just heard. The corner of his mouth lifts subtly, the automatic response to what he’s clearly assumed is a joke.

And then he looks at the dried tear tracks and the red rimmed eyes and the expression on her face that has not a trace of humour in it.

His face drops.

”…You’re serious.”

“I had no idea,” Lydia continues, her voice steadier now, the telling of it doing something to organise the chaos in her chest. “But it turns out they’d been planning it this whole time.” She pauses, and an absentminded smile forms at her lips, soft and involuntary, the kind that arrives when you’re still surprised by how much someone cared. “They even waited for the right time to take me with them.”

Billy’s brows draw together, just slightly, his head tilting a fraction to one side. He’s not quite understanding the full picture yet, still piecing it together. But her smile has somewhat returned, and it catches him off guard enough that the corner of his own mouth moves in response.

“There was a train,” she says, the smile fading back into something more serious as the weight of it returns. “Just past the gate. Rachel had figured out the schedule. Jackson got it open wide enough. Lauren had all this cash-” She shakes her head, a small disbelieving breath escaping her as she raises both hands and gestures at how big the stack was. “Billy, I have never seen so much money in my life. She just pulled it out of her jacket like it was nothing.”

Something in Lydia’s teary expression shifts into one of pride. Even now, even through all of this, it’s there. Quiet, certain and completely genuine.

“They really had it all figured out.”

A beat.

She exhales slowly, her eyes dropping to the space between them.

“But I… I couldn’t go.”

Silence.

Not the uncomfortable kind. The kind that has weight to it, that means something, that both of them sit inside without rushing to fill it. The distant sound of camp life carries on around the corner, indifferent and unaware. Neither of them move.

“I couldn’t move a single step.” Her voice has dropped to barely above a murmur. “In fact, I didn’t even contemplate it.”

She looks up at him through her lashes, aware of how she must look. Red-eyed and earnest, stripped of every clever thing she’d normally reach for right about now. The girl who always has a line ready, always has an exit, always makes sure the moment doesn’t get heavier than she can carry alone. It’s gone.

“You didn’t?” Billy says, though it comes out quieter than he intends. The truth is he’s thought about it more than once, the very real possibility that one day Lydia would run again. That the right exit would appear and she’d take it. After all, he couldn’t blame her, that’s what he would’ve done too if things were different.

He’d tried so desperately to make peace with it.

But now she’s standing here telling him she had the door wide open.

And she walked away from it.

“I stayed because of you.”

The words land and stay, not leaving room for misinterpretation. Six words, clean and irreversible, and Lydia’s given them to him without flinching.

For a long moment Billy doesn’t speak. His eyes light up and mouth opens but nothing comes out. The words, whatever they were going to be, dissolve into a smile. Speechless in a way that Billy Hargrove, in her experience, simply never is.

He closes his mouth. His tongue runs briefly over his lower lip.

“Say that again.”

Lydia lets out a short, shaky breath.

“I’ll do you one better,” she says. “But I need you to understand something first.”

Billy waits. He would wait all day. She can tell.

“I have never said this to anyone.” She holds his gaze as she says it, making sure it lands properly, making sure he understands the full weight of what that means coming from her specifically. From a girl who has kept everything at arm’s length for so long that arm’s length started to feel like home. “Not once. Not even close. So that’s how you know I mean it.”

She shifts her weight, and there’s something almost nervous in it, something young and unpolished that she doesn’t bother to hide. “And I’m not good at these things, okay? So bear with me.”

Lydia takes deep breath.

“When I first met you, I hated you.” She says it plainly, no apology in it. “Like, genuinely couldn’t stand you. I thought you were this mean, pretentious asshole who got under my skin from the second I walked through those gates.” The corner of her mouth twitches. “And then that night at the bar happened. And I learned something about you.”

She pauses. If she were being honest - and apparently today she’s being devastatingly, catastrophically honest - she couldn’t even tell you exactly when it happened. Only that one day she looked at him and the hatred had somewhere along the way quietly packed its bags and left, and moved something else in without asking her permission.

“And I guess after that you… grew on me.” Her smile is brighter now, self-aware and a little helpless. “Which, for the record, is your fault entirely.”

Her eyes stay on his.

“So what I’m trying to say is…” She stops. Steadies herself. Looks at him like she’s making a decision she’s already made. “You’re a fucking jerk.”

…

“But I love you.”

She barely gets the last word out before he moves.

There’s no hesitation, no careful measured response, he simply closes the space between them. One hand finds her jaw and the other catches her waist. Billy kisses her. Hard and warm and completely certain, the kind of kiss that doesn’t ask anything because it already knows, the kind that has weeks and months of carefully managed restraint folded into it and doesn’t bother pretending otherwise.

Lydia makes a sound against his mouth, it’s relief. Her hands grasp at the front of his shirt. He walks her back without breaking the kiss, then her back hits the outside wall of the cabin with a soft thud. She pulls him desperately closer, and he complies without hesitation.

For a while they stay like that. Pressed together in this narrow gap between cabins with the whole of camp carrying on right around the corner.

Suddenly, a sound.

A flapping of wings.

A large bird drops out of nowhere and lands on the ground just feet away from them.

They both jump. Pull apart. Lydia’s hand flies to her chest.

They look at the bird and it looks back with the profound disinterest of a creature that has no concept of what it just interrupted and would not care even if it did.

And then they laugh.

Billy drops his forehead against hers, his hand coming up to stroke her cheek, and they stand there like that, foreheads pressed together, laughing quietly at a bird. It’s ridiculous and perfect and nothing like anything Lydia ever imagined this would feel like.

Soon, Billy pulls back just enough to look at her properly. His hand is still at her cheek, his thumb moving in one slow, absent pass across her skin. He searches her face for a moment, unhurried.

His next words change their relationship for the greater good.

“I fucking love you too, Lydia.”

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟐,𝟔𝟗𝟒

___

‘Why is it that weekends can’t last forever?’

It’s a question I imagine most people ask themselves every Monday morning, that universal dread of returning to routine, to responsibility, to the grinding monotony of obligations. But for me. Today. It feels extra cruel.

Two days. That’s all I get with him. Two days where he isn’t married to the responsibilities of camp. Two days where I don’t have to pretend I don’t notice him. Where I don’t have to swallow my feelings down and pretend everything’s A-OK. Two days where he can be entirely mine. Not sir. Not ‘Mr Hargrove’. Just Billy… though, calling him ‘sir’ in our spare time isn’t exactly off the table.

And now, it’s fucking Monday again.

I’ve never been someone who clings. That’s not who I am, not who I’ve ever been. You don’t grow up the way I did and come out the other side with healthy attachment habits. You come out knowing how to leave. Knowing how to pack light and move fast and not look back. I perfected the art of not needing anyone before most kids had figured out how to ride a bike. So what the hell is happening to me? Why does every second away from him feel like a lifetime?

He’s gotten under my skin. That’s the only explanation. Billy Hargrove has somehow burrowed under all that careful armour I spent nineteen years constructing, and now every time we separate it feels… wrong.

And to make it worse, he’s not hosting my activity today.

Cross country. Of course it is.

I love running… but Camp Nightwing has this special talent for sucking the life out of everything you actually enjoy.

My legs have been burning for the last twelve minutes, and the twelve before that, the fire spreading up from my calves through the backs of my thighs in that deep, particular way that tells you your body has officially stopped finding this fun. Sweat’s plastered to the back of my neck, dripping down my spine, and every breath I suck in feels cold and sharp in my lungs, but it does nothing to cool me down. The trail is narrow, trees crowding in so close that the air stinks of old pine and damp bark.

I’m following Rachel.

Or, more accurately, I’m following Rachel, who is following Jackson, who is following a direction that stopped matching the marked trail signs about five minutes ago.

I noticed from the moment our little group we’ve formed took a sharp turn along a faded pathway. I didn’t stop nor question anything. If a little detour means I’m not doing this lame activity, that suits me just fine. And hey, the old me would be proud. I need a little rebellion every know and then to remind myself of who I am.

Lauren glances back at me over her shoulder, checking I’m still there, and I give her a nod. She grins then turns back around.

The four of us make our way deeper in, off the beaten path now, ducking for the low hanging branches and stepping over the fat, exposed roots that ridge up from the earth like knuckles. The light changes under the denser canopy. It’s greener, dimmer, filtered through the overhead layers in shifting patches that move with the breeze. My breathing slows from the punishing pace of the run, evening out into something more manageable. My legs still ache. I ignore them.

Suddenly Jackson stops.

He’s standing in a small clearing and there, half swallowed by bramble and the creeping tangle of ivy, sits a row of railings with a gate. A barrier designed to keep out… or, more likely, to keep in.

It’s old. Silvery grey. The metal gone dull with rust at the joins. A chain that should keep it sealed wrapped loosely around the post and the latch but clearly not doing its job. It sags open only by a few inches, the links pulled apart just enough to suggest someone has been here before and tried very hard to do so. Past it, through the gap and the undergrowth beyond, I can see nothing definitive. Seemingly, it’s just more forest.

“Here it is,” Jackson says, and there’s a satisfaction in his voice that tells me this is exactly what he expected. “Told you.”

He bends to the gate before the words have finished landing, getting his hands around the metal, shifting his weight. His shoulders bunch. The chain rasps. Rachel and Lauren exchange a look beside me, bright and conspiratorial, the look of people who are very much in on whatever this is.

I am not in on whatever this is.

I watch Jackson work at the gate with renewed purpose. I watch Rachel press her hand to her mouth to contain a smile. And I feel it… that dawning, that particular shift in understanding that hasn’t finished forming yet but is almost there… almost-

“Uh. What’s going on?” My voice comes out cautiously.

Rachel spins on me with a grin she cannot contain. She looks proud of herself. The sheer joy taking over her whole face. “Surprise!” she announces, arms spread wide like she’s unveiling something magnificent. “I knew you’d love it!”

I look between them. Between Rachel, fizzing with barely contained glee; Lauren, trying to look casual and mostly failing; Jackson, still crouched at the gate, leveraging his weight against it with the focused intensity of a man who has decided this will happen if it kills him. I look at all three of them as they talk amongst themselves, feeling like this is some inside joke I’m not in on.

“Is anyone gonna tell me what’s going on here?”

They all turn to face me at once. Even Jackson stops what he’s doing. He lets out a long, heavy sigh and straightens up, brushing his palms against his shorts… rudely but I’ll choose to ignore it for now.

“We’re going to New York, baby!” Rachel announces.

The words hit me directly in the chest.

Surely not-

That’s impossible.

“New York?! Wh-”

“I heard a rumour,” Rachel cuts in, stepping forward, her energy barely contained, vibrating through every syllable. “There’s a train nearby. Takes you out of state. Supposedly comes every Monday.” She pauses, just long enough for effect, and her smile stretches. “Well… turns out I was right! It’s just past this gate.” She gestures, one arm sweeping toward Jackson and his metalwork. “We’re getting out of here, Lydia!”

The words land. And then they keep landing, the way certain things do, you hear them and understand them and they sound exactly like everything you would have wanted… once. Not so long ago. A version of you that is not quite as far away as you’d like, turning to look at the exit with her whole body, already running before the thought has finished forming.

I go quiet.

My heart plummets. I feel it - actually feel it, that slow, sickening drop, like something heavy cut loose from a great height. And then, before I’ve even decided to think about him, he’s just there. Billy. Not as a reason. Not as an argument I’m constructing in my own defence. Just him. The specific warmth of the past few weeks bleeding through every other thought. His cabin, his voice, the way the nights have rearranged themselves around him without my permission. The way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not watching. The way I somehow went from swearing I hated him to lying awake cataloguing all the ways that was never really true. From sworn enemies from the very start to something so much more terrifying. I’ve never felt it before. Not once. Not for anyone. I don’t even want to name it. But it’s his, whatever it is. It has only ever been his.

Some time ago. Some version of me that felt like a different life. I would have been the first through that gate.

Now..?

Rachel is still talking. The plan unfolds in pieces. Talk of hitchhiking, New York City, a ‘fresh start’ somewhere loud and anonymous and vast enough to swallow a person whole. No record. No file. No one who knows you as someone else’s problem. Start from nothing and build something real, amazing. The kind of plan that sounds like freedom when you say it fast and don’t think about risk.

“Well…” Rachel says finally, eyes bright, barely breathing. “What d’ya think?”

I look at her. The words she wants are right there, obvious, the ones that fit. I should be nodding. Should be feeling it light up inside me like it clearly has for her.

“That’s…” I hear myself. “That’s genius.”

Rachel makes a sound that is less human being and more small animal discovering joy for the first time, and throws herself at me. Her arms wrap tight, the force of it slightly off-balance, and I absorb it, all whilst unintentionally going stiff in the embrace.

Lauren notices. Of course she does. Lauren notices everything with the quiet, careful attention of someone who collects details like currency.

“You okay, Lydia?”

I pull back. Forcing a smile. “Yeah. Uh-” I push a hand through my sweat dampened hair. “It’s just a lot to take in, that’s all.”

Jackson makes a short, dismissive sound, a soft ‘pssshht’ accompanied by a head shake. He returns back to the gate. There’s something in the movement that makes me feel uncomfortable, uneasy.

My mind is already scrambling. Racing the realisation that has settled fully in my chest now, the one I can’t pretend is anything other than what it is. I’m not going. I know it the same way I know when I’ve made any of my other decisions, absolutely certain. I’m not going, no. I need time, I need a reason that isn’t the real reason-

“What about your bags?” The words come out in a rush. “You haven’t got anything-”

“That’s okay, look what we found.” Lauren says easily, and before I can follow it up, she reaches into her jacket and pulls out a wad of bills, fanning them out in her hand with practiced, deliberate pleasure. The notes catch the fractured light between the trees and I stare at them in awe.

Never in my lifetime have I set my eyes on so much money.

Rachel claps her hands and literally bounces on her toes.

“Where did you get all that?!”

“We’ve been saving up since you’ve been gone,” Lauren says, a warm smile threading through the quiet pride in her voice. “Turns out the rich kids’ parents give them quite the bit of pocket money.”

“And when we get to the big city-” Rachel, of course, can barely contain herself, “-we’re going shopping!”

My mouth is hung open, I’m left dumbfounded. These three have always seemed a little reckless, a little impulsive - hell, maybe they are - but underneath that there’s something else entirely, something I keep underestimating. In my world, you fend for yourself. Full stop. You don’t save for someone else. You don’t build a plan and hold it quietly until the right person arrives. You take what you need and you move on, and nobody calls it anything other than survival. But this… this is different. They did this with me in mind. They cared enough to wait.

Fuck.

“You’ve really got this all figured out, haven’t you?”

“Mhm.” Rachel tilts her chin, satisfied. “What else did you think we were doing since you’ve been in isolation?”

Before I can respond, a loud metallic groan splits the air between us.

Jackson straightens. The gate hangs open wider now, enough to squeeze through. He looks at it for a moment and then to us.

“It’s time.”

Rachel and Lauren look at each other, and the look they share in that half-second is everything. Weeks of planning and saving all comes down to this very moment. Escape.

“Come on.” Rachel is already moving. “We’ve not got long until that train comes.”

They line up at the gate. Jackson goes first, ducking his frame through the gap. Lauren is soon to follow, one hand on the old metal as she begins lowering herself. Rachel turns back, reaching for my hand, already pulling-

I freeze.

My feet stay on the ground. The space between me and the gate is about six feet of dry earth and dead leaves, and it might as well be a continent. My eyes lock with Rachels, pricking with tears that threaten to fall. I open my mouth to speak but fail to find the words. The paralysis is complete, total, honest in a way I almost never let myself be.

They stop.

Jackson doesn’t turn around immediately. He stands with his back to me, weight on one leg, and there is something in the set of his shoulders that tells me he already knows I’m not coming… and has known for a while.

“Are you coming or what?”

“I…”

Lauren turns. Her expression is soft, careful, readable. “Lyd, come on before someone sees.” A beat. The softness doesn’t shift but there’s an urgency underneath it. “Lydia?”

Jackson straightens. Still doesn’t turn. His back is a wall.

“It’s him, isn’t it?”

The silence that follows is absolute. Even the birds have stopped. I can hear my own heartbeat, feel it in my throat.

“It’s… who?”

“Hargrove.”

No. No, no, no, no. Fuck! How does he-

“I don’t know what you’re-”

He turns.

And he walks back toward me, slow and deliberate, and his expression is not angry, it’s worse. It’s the look of someone who has been holding something in for a long time and has just decided he’s done holding it. He stops close. Close enough that I have to hold my ground on instinct.

“Don’t act stupid with me.” His voice is low. Controlled. “You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”

Behind him, I hear Rachel’s breath catch. Lauren goes still.

“I-” My throat closes. The denial forms and dies before it reaches my lips. “I… no. It’s not like that!”

“Then what is it, Lydia?” He spreads his hands, a short frustrated gesture. “What could possibly be the reason you’re staying in his cabin?”

Lauren’s voice comes over his shoulder, quiet and careful. “Lydia… is that true?”

“How-”

“I saw you both.” Jackson’s eyes don’t move from mine. “Kissing.”

Rachel makes a sound ,sharp and involuntary and almost comically surprised.

My mind races through ‘whens’, ‘hows’ and ‘whys’. We were always so careful, it’s impossible that he could’ve known unless he was there-… he was there. But, when?!

Nothing can hide the wave of embarrassment as heat crashes on my cheeks. I’m guilty. So fucking guilty, there’s no way out of this but through.

He takes another step. I don’t move. My heart is hammering so hard I feel it in my fingernails, behind my eyes, everywhere at once, but I keep my chin up and my eyes level and I do not flinch.

“Is that what got you sent here in the first place? Are you just some-” The word that comes out of his mouth lands like a physical thing, low and vicious, “-slut who likes to sleep around with older-”

“Jackson.” Lauren is between us in an instant, her hand firm against his chest. Her voice doesn’t rise but it has an edge in it I’ve never heard before. “That’s enough.”

The silence that follows is awful and ringing.

I hold very, very still. The word is still sitting in the air between us. I let it sit there. I let it settle. And then, quietly, with every controlled thing I have,

“You don’t know anything about me.”

He meets my eyes. His jaw works. “Then what is it, huh? What- do you love him?”

The question is intended as an accusation. I hear how he means it as something ridiculous, something damning, something that will make me flinch back and correct him. He fires it like a shot.

Lauren and Rachel both turn. Their faces are angled toward me, though theirs are much softer and more bewildered, brows slightly furrowed, heads tilted. Waiting for my next word.

“Lydia?” One of them presses softy, though I’m too overwhelmed to register who.

“I- I…”

I open my mouth.

Just lie, come on it’s right there. It’s the obvious move, the clean exit, a one syllable word and a dismissive laugh and we move on. I am very good at lying. I have been lying since before I could even write my own name. It is one of the most reliable tools I own. So, just say no. Say he’s got the wrong end of the stick and we can get over this… but then what? What’s next?

My mouth stays open.

Nothing comes out.

I look to the girls and watch their expressions change. Rachel’s hand clasps over her mouth, looking at me with a set of large, widening eyes. “Oh my god,” she breathes. “You love him.”

All three of them are looking at me.

And I shake my head lightly, the smallest possible denial. The words that should come are not there. The machinery that has always produced the right deflection at the right moment is silent, stalled, gone offline entirely. Because you can lie about nearly anything. But you cannot lie about something that is this undeniably, irrevocably true and have the lie mean anything at all. Not when it’s in your face like this. Not when they’re all looking at you and waiting.

Jackson’s nose crinkles, a sharp, involuntary expression of what I can only assume is disgust, or pain, or both tangled together. He turns away. Walks to a tree a few metres off and leans there with his back to the group, arms crossed, shoulders closed.

“Jackson-”

“Leave him.” Lauren’s voice is quiet. “He’ll come around. He’ll have to. We’ve only got a few minutes left.” She steps toward me, and there’s nothing in her face except a kind of steady, honest concern. The anger isn’t there. It never was, for either girls.

Rachel has gone still for the first time since this started. Her eyes on me are soft. Searching.

“So you’re… staying?”

The word is barely a question by the time she finishes it. She already knows. They all do.

“Yes.”

It comes out clean and simple and I’m surprised, briefly, by how unambiguous it is. Just yes. No hedging. No apology built into it.

I look over at Jackson who is still not facing me, that familiar defensive posture of his, the one I’ve seen before when he doesn’t want to be seen feeling something. He mutters to himself, I know he heard me.

“You guys have been the only friends I’ve ever had.” The words come out before I’ve decided to say them, and I don’t stop them. Some things are too true to edit. “When I first came here I thought I’d be on my own. And then Rachel, you just…” I look at her, words cannot describe how grateful I am that she saw me. “You just took me in. Right from the start. Like it was nothing.” I swallow. “And then I met you, Lauren. And Jack-…”

I turn back towards him. He doesn’t move.

“I genuinely, honestly wish you all the best.” My voice holds. Barely. “But I’m sorry... I’m not coming with you.”

Lauren’s eyebrows furrowed, the light of hope fading from her eyes. “Is there… no way you’ll change your mind?”

I look down at the ground between us. Shake my head. “I’m sorry.”

Rachel moves. She crosses the space between us with that particular intensity she applies to everything she cares about, and she throws herself over me. Arms wrapping, face pressing into my shoulder, and I feel her shaking slightly. Just slightly. I wrap my arms around her and hold on.

“Ugh.” She whines, though it’s muffled against me. “I hate goodbyes.”

When she finally pulls back, her eyes are bright and wet at the corners, and she makes a face at herself for it, the kind of face you make when you refuse to fully cry but your body is not cooperating. She reaches out and takes both of my hands. Her grip is warm and firm and real.

“When you get out of here.” She says it like it’s not a question, like it’s a scheduled thing, a matter of dates and logistics. “You promise you’ll visit?”

“Of course.”

“And you’ll bring Billy too?”

I blink. The name in her mouth is so unexpected and yet so ordinary, just a name, just a person, that for a second I don’t know what to do with the surprise on my face. “You… you mean that?”

Rachel tips her head to one side with an expression that is almost affectionate in its exasperation. “Oh come on. He’s a total dick. But I see the attraction.” A beat. The ghost of a grin. “The man is built like a-”

“Rachel.”

“I’m just saying.” She releases my hands, steps back, and something in her expression settles into something more honest, more unguarded than usual. She looks, for a moment, like she loves me. Straightforwardly and without ceremony.

We both look to Lauren as she lets out a breath and crosses to me. Her hug is different from Rachels, it’s quieter, tighter, more contained. The kind of hug that says everything without the dramatics. When we pull apart, she holds me at arm’s length for a moment and looks at me with that clear, particular gaze of hers that sees more than she usually says.

“I have absolutely no idea how you two came to be,” she says. “But I am going to need every single detail over drinks one day.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “Agreed?”

“Count me in.” Rachel’s voice from behind her, prompt as a reflex.

Something loosens in my chest, warm and helpless. “Agreed.”

Lauren squeezes my arms gently. “I hate to cut this short, but…” she glances toward the gate, “we really do have to go.”

The three of us close the distance, and for a moment it’s just that, three people who found each other in the least likely of places, arms around arms, heads together. Someone is holding their breath. Maybe all of us are.

Then they’re moving. Rachel first, then Lauren, ducking through the gate, straightening on the other side. The chain rattles softly as they clear it.

Jackson is last.

He starts to follow them, refusing to look at me, his stride carrying that deliberate blankness he uses when he wants to seem unbothered, and I reach out and catch his hand and catch his arm. He stops, and thankfully doesn’t pull away.

“Look...” My voice is a low sigh, just for him. “I know about your feelings. Toward me.”

He turns his head, not quite all the way and on comes the defence. “No I- how?”

“Rachel.”

He exhales through his nose. One short, helpless sound. “Of course.” He spits out.

“Please.” I tighten my hand around his arm, just briefly, just enough to mean it. “Don’t hate me for this.”

“Lydia-”

“Jack.” I wait until he finally, fully turns to look at me. His eyes are difficult to read. “I’m happy. So fucking happy. I’ve never felt this good before. Please, please try to understand.”

He looks at me for a long, loaded moment. The birds have come back, somewhere above us. The wind moves through the upper canopy with a soft, continuous sound like breathing.

Then, slowly, the tightness in his face shifts.

“I do.” He says it like it costs him something. “I’m just… protective of you.”

“I know. And, you’ve done so much for me along the way. I don’t even know how to thank you for what you’ve done-” I stop. Take a breath. Then start again. “Look. I promise I’ll find a way to see you - all of you - again. One day.”

“I hope so.”

A thought surfaces. A concern that has been sitting with me quietly for longer than I’ve given it direct attention. “Are you sure about this? Leaving your Dad and all?”

Something complicated morphs across his face, the kind of expression that belongs to a longer story than we have time for right now. “He knows.”

“And…?”

“We’ve got family in Manhattan.” A pause. “I’ll be fine.”

The knot in my chest loosens a fraction. “That’s good. I feel better knowing that.”

“Lydia.” Jackson’s voice drops, loses its defensive armour, goes down to something unguarded and honest and young in a way he almost never allows. “I want you there. I’m… I’m crazy about you.”

“Jackson...”

“I know. Don’t tell me. I know.”

We stand in that for a moment, and it’s tender and sad and honest, which is more than most endings get to be. Then, I remember something, it’s only a theory but a likely one at that.

“Have you ever noticed,” I say carefully, “anyone else’s feelings? For you?”

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

I don’t answer with words. I just move my eyes past the gate, to where the girls are waiting. Laurens standing slightly apart, her hand raised to shield her eyes from a shaft of light coming through the trees, her head turned slightly away from us, completely oblivious.

Jackson follows my gaze. Looks for a moment. Then his brow creases. “What, Rachel? No. Not my type.”

“Lauren.” I say it flatly, resisting to let out a huge ‘duh!’ sound. “You absolute idiot.” That’ll do.

He looks again, and I watch it happen, the penny drops. “Lauren..?” He says her name like he’s testing it on his tongue. “Really, you think?”

“Jackson. I know. C’mon have you seen the way she looks at you?”

He is quiet for a moment, the gears visibly turning, recalibrating. A new configuration of something that was always there, just unexamined. And then, softly, almost despite himself, “Well. You’ve really given me something to think about.”

I step forward and wrap my arms around him. He’s stiff, only for a second, then returns it, one arm around my back, genuine and brief and solid.

“Be careful Lydia,” He says into my hair, planting a friendly kiss against the top of my head. “I mean it.”

“You too. Look after the girls for me. I know you will.”

He pulls back. His eyes on mine are complicated and real and the things in them that will never be said have already been said.

Then, cutting clean through the trees, the sound of a train. Low at first, building, unmistakeable.

“Go.” I say.

He goes. Ducks through the gate with one long stride, straightens on the other side, and then all three of them are moving fast, pulling away, the sound of their footsteps crackling through undergrowth before the trees swallow them.

I’ll never forget that final look he gave me, the look they all gave me. Those weren’t just my friends, in them I’ve found a family.

The gate hangs loose.

I stand there.

The train sound swells and then begins to fade, moving away through the distance, taking them with it. And I stay completely still in the gap in the trees, in the thin green light, in the morning that has gone very quiet now that there is no one left in it but me.

It hits without warning. The way these things always do. The moment the noise stops and there’s nothing left to focus on and your body catches up with what just happened. My throat tightens. My eyes sting. I press my lips together and stand there with the chain gate swaying gently in the breeze and something in my chest coming apart in the quiet, honest, unavoidable way that things come apart when you’ve been holding yourself together through something difficult and now there’s no longer any reason to hold on.

I’m not crying about not leaving. I know that. I know exactly what this is.

I’m crying because they’re gone. Because the three of them walked through a gate and onto a train, and wherever they end up, they will be moving forward. They will be living a story I’m not in.

I turn away from the gate before I can dwell on it anymore and I start running. Knowing exactly who I’m running towards.

The one I choose.

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟒,𝟕𝟕𝟕

___

“It was the best birthday ever.”

Billy’s entire body goes still beneath me, his hand freezes in my hair, fingers caught mid-stroke between one strand and the next, and the silence stretches long enough that I become acutely aware of every point of contact between us. The solid warmth of his chest under my cheek. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat, slightly faster than it should be for someone supposedly at rest. The particular weight of his arm where it rests across my back, heavy and unhurried, like he belongs there. Like I belong there.

When he speaks, his voice carries a note of disbelief that’s almost endearing in how genuine it is. Like he can’t quite locate the correct response and has defaulted, helplessly, to the obvious question.

“Wait-” He blinks down at me with this boyish look about him, like a kid that’s just found out they’ve missed Christmas. “Yesterday was your birthday?”

I can’t help it. I smile. It starts small, just a twitch at the corner of my mouth, but it spreads before I can stop it. “Uh huh,” I confirm, letting my voice carry all the sarcasm I can muster at this hour. “Same as every year.”

“Fuck. Baby.”

He says it like a wound. His hand comes up to cover his face, dragging across his forehead and into his hair, and I can see the exact moment the guilt hits him. Genuine, unperformed guilt, the kind that doesn’t have anywhere comfortable to land. It moves across his features in layers. Shock first, then something like dismay, then a helpless kind of frustration that’s directed entirely at himself.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, and the distress in his voice is so real it almost makes me want to laugh. “I would’ve- we could’ve-” He fumbles over his words. “Jesus, we spent your birthday fucking in a storage shed.”

“And against a wall,” I add helpfully, watching his expression do something complicated. “And on the couch. And the kitchen counter. And-”

“Lydia.”

He groans my name in a way that does things to me it absolutely shouldn’t, given that I’ve been awake for less than twenty minutes and I am genuinely, physically exhausted in ways I will not be detailing to anyone. But there’s a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth despite everything it’s reluctant, fighting itself and losing badly.

“I’m being serious.” He drops his hand, and his eyes find mine, and there it is, that thing he does where he looks at me like I require his full attention. Like I’m actually worth it. “I would have done something special. Made it more than just-”

“Would you relax?”

I push myself up before I think better of it, rising until I can look at him properly, until there’s nothing in the way. My hand finds his jaw on instinct and I feel the drag of weekend stubble against my palm.

“Listen to me,” I say, and my voice comes out soft and honest. The smile is still there but it’s quieter now, carrying something underneath it that I haven’t quite named. “It was special. All of it.” I pause. Let myself feel how true that is for a second before I continue. “Every single second of it.”

He opens his mouth.

“I mean it,” I cut him off, because I can see the argument forming and I need to get there first. I need him to understand this - really understand it, not just hear the words. “Besides…” My thumb traces an absent path along his cheekbone, a gesture I don’t fully sanction but can’t seem to stop. “I’ve never had a proper birthday before. Or celebrated it with anyone.” I take a breath that comes out steadier than I feel. “And yesterday, without even knowing that’s what you were doing, you gave me the best one I’ve ever had. You gave me the only one I’ve ever actually had.” I let my hand drop before the tenderness of the moment swallows me whole. “So would you please stop looking at me like you owe me an apology.”

There’s a silence. I watch something shift in his expression, something behind his eyes, behind the practiced ease he wears like a second skin. His shoulders drop, and the guilt on his face softens into something I don’t have a name for. Something that looks, if I’m being honest, dangerously close to the thing I’ve been trying not to name for weeks now.

He’s studying my face like he’s memorising it. Like he’s hoping it’s not true and he’s checking for the lies but not finding any.

Before I can fill the silence with something stupid, he pulls me in, and his mouth finds mine, and every coherent thought I had evaporates on contact.

It’s nothing like the kisses from last night. Last night was hunger, urgent and consuming and lit through with desperation. This is something else entirely. This is slow. This is deliberate. Both his hands come up to cup my face warm, certain and achingly careful, drawing me closer like I might startle, like he’s got nowhere else to be and no intention of rushing. I feel the gentle pressure of his thumbs against my cheeks, his fingers threading back into my hair, and I stop being able to think about anything except the specific texture of this, the unhurried way he kisses me like it’s the whole point, not a means to an end.

The rest of me melts completely.

“Happy birthday, baby,” he murmurs against my lips when we finally, slowly surface. His forehead tips forward to rest against mine, something I’ve grown used to now, and I can feel the warmth of his breath and the slight curve of his smile. “Even if I’m a day late.”

“Thank you,” I whisper back. Meaning it. Meaning it more than the two words are anywhere near capable of carrying.

His thumb passes across my cheekbone one more time and then that familiar look settles over his face. The decisive one. The one that means the wheels have been turning quietly and everything’s now clicked into place.

“I’ve figured out what we’re gonna do today.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?” Wariness and curiosity are currently splitting my attention roughly fifty-fifty. “What’s that?”

He says it like it’s settled. Like it’s already done. One single word, dropped into the morning air with the unassailable confidence of someone who has never once in his life been told no and retained any real belief in the concept.

“Celebrate.”

I laugh before I can stop myself. It bubbles out of me, genuine and a little helpless. “Billy-”

“No.” He’s already moving. Untangling himself from the sheets, from my limbs, from the warm gravity of the bed that’s been holding us both hostage all night long. “We’re gonna celebrate. Starting now.” He swings his legs over the side of the mattress and stands in one fluid motion. “I’m gonna make you pancakes. Meet me in the kitchen.”

Pancakes. The word lands and I experience, in rapid succession, the memory of the last time he attempted to cook me anything and a very acute awareness that I am naked and warm and the bed is soft and his absence from it has already made it noticeably less appealing.

“After last time?” I reach out and wrap my fingers around his wrist, gripping with little means or strength. “Yeah, no thanks. Come on.” I tug, gently, uselessly. “Let’s just stay here. We can stay here all day and-”

“Don’t make me drag you, Westbrook.”

He looks back at me over his shoulder. There’s a smile at the corner of his mouth that I feel in places that have no nerve endings. His eyes are lit up in a way that still catches me off guard no matter how many times I see it, because Billy Hargrove’s eyes when he’s genuinely amused at something are a weapon of extraordinary effectiveness and I’m not entirely sure he knows that. Or maybe he does. Maybe that’s worse.

“I’m naked!” I protest, and I’m smiling back at him despite myself. Despite every better instinct I possess.

He doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t deliberate. He reaches down, grabs the hem of his white tank and, in one smooth motion, pulls off it off and chucks it at me. It hits my face with a soft impact - gentle enough to be a joke, deliberate enough to be a statement - and drops into my lap. I sit there with it for a moment, looking down at the fabric, then up at him: shirtless, unhurried, the early morning light doing absolutely unconscionable things to the lines of his torso.

This is not fair. None of this is fair. He shouldn’t be allowed to look like that in regular lighting, let alone in the particular gold of an early morning, let alone standing there with that half-smile and those eyes and-

“Put it on,” he says. Somewhere between a request and a command, in the specific tone he deploys when he’s certain he’s already won.

I pull the tank over my head with as much dignity as I can manage. It falls over me like a dress, the armholes gaping wide, the fabric hanging off one shoulder, the hem somewhere around my mid-thigh. I am probably look absolutely ridiculous, in fact I know I do… but it smells so much like him and it’s warm from his body and I am immediately, helplessly, embarrassed by how much I like it.

The way he looks at me also suggests the shirt was never really about solving the nakedness problem.

I don’t have time to say anything.

His hands are on me before I’ve registered the movement, one under my knees, one firm against my back and then I’m effortlessly airborne. The world tilts sharply, and I feel as I land across his shoulder like I weigh absolutely nothing. I feel the blood rush to my head and the cool air on my exposed thighs and the shirt riding catastrophically upward.

“Billy!” I shriek.

It comes out half-laughing, half-genuine terror, my hands scrambling for purchase on his back so that I don’t fall. His skin is warm under my palms. I am very aware, in a way that is deeply undignified, that my bare ass is now exposed to the open air with nothing but a prayer and the hem of a too-large tank top standing between me and full visibility.

“Put me down now!”

“Nope.” His voice is steady and entirely too pleased with itself. “You had your chance to come willingly.”

“I swear to God, Hargrove-”

He’s already moving, carrying me out of the bedroom with long, easy strides, his hand resting possessively on the back of my thigh in a way that’s so dangerously close to the curve of my ass it makes me shiver. I can feel every step he takes reverberating through my whole body, and I’m laughing now despite my best efforts. Real laughter, the helpless kind, the kind that comes from somewhere that hasn’t had quite enough practice. I hate how easy he makes this feel. I hate how much I don’t actually hate any of it at all.

He sets me down on the kitchen counter with a care that is entirely inconsistent with the barbarism of the transportation method, and I immediately swat at his chest with my palm. Open-handed, zero actual force, maximum theatrical outrage.

“Idiot.”

Billy shakes his head, laughing at my pathetic comment. He crosses over to the stove and pulls out a large frying pan. He sets it on the burner with a metallic clang, then starts opening cabinets, rummaging through them for ingredients.

The granite is cold against my bare thighs, making me suck in a sharp breath, and suddenly I’m hyperaware of where I’m sitting, the exact spot where just hours ago he’d spread me open and buried his face between my legs until I was screaming. The memory hits me like something physical, heat blooming low in my belly despite my exhaustion.

Oh… okay that’s not helpful at all.

I press my knees together and stare at the back of his head, trying to be a functional human with normal blood pressure and a brain that operates on logic instead of vivid, high definition sense memory.. But oh, how amazing it was. I remember how his hands spread my thighs so wide I almost slipped off this counter, the cold of the granite under my palms as I’d braced myself. That beautiful heat of his mouth against my inner thigh like a promise before he’d made good on it. The sounds he’d pulled out of me that I’d been absolutely, mortifyingly certain half the camp could hear from all the way over the lake. The way I’d gripped a fistful of hair when he’d finally, finally put his mouth exactly where I needed it.

‘Focus’.

I tell myself.

‘He is making pancakes. You are watching a man open a bag of flour. This is a normal morning. Nothing about this should be even remotely sexy-‘

“So,” Billy says, glancing back at me as he sets a mixing bowl on the counter with a satisfying clunk. “You’ve really never celebrated your birthday? Not even once?”

The question shouldn’t sting. It’s just curiosity. He’s just trying to understand, and there’s nothing in his tone except genuine interest, but the subject itself has edges I’ve stopped expecting to feel until I feel them. I wrap my arms around my knees, pulling them to my chest.

“Nope.”

The word comes out with more bite than I intend. I soften it, or, at least try to.

“If I’m honest, I wasn’t even sure I had one until I got old enough to pretty much figure it out myself.” I watch him go still for a second with his back still to me, the way people go still when they’re absorbing something. “Foster homes don’t really do birthdays. Not the ones I was in, anyway. And even after I knew, it just felt-” I search for the right word and land on honesty instead. “Pointless. I’m just a bit older than I was yesterday. That’s all.”

Years of buried resentment seep into my voice despite my best efforts, something sour and old that I’ve gotten very good at pretending doesn’t exist until someone asks the right question and it surfaces before I can catch it.

Billy turns from the cabinets and looks at me fully, and his face is doing something that I’m not quite prepared for. Not pity, or… not only pity. Something more layered than that.

“Baby, that’s-”

“Sad?” I cut him off before he can finish, forcing a smile that I know doesn’t reach my eyes but deploy anyway because it’s the closest thing I have to armour at this particular moment. “I know. I get that a lot.”

He looks at me for a long moment. Long enough that I want to fidget, look away, make a joke. I do none of these things. I hold his gaze and let him look, because I’ve had enough practice at being looked at like this, like a problem without a clean solution, that I know the only way through it is directly.

He shakes his head, just slightly, and there’s something in his expression that’s past pity. More personal than that. Like the information has landed somewhere specific in him, like it’s found something to sit next to.

“So… what do you usually do for yours?” I ask, because I need the conversation to move and because I’m genuinely curious and because I’d rather hear about his life than excavate more of mine.

Deflection as a survival mechanism. Extremely functional, would recommend.

Billy turns back to the cabinet and starts moving things around with renewed purpose, like having his hands occupied makes talking easier. I understand that instinct deeply.

“Drink. Party.” he says. “Though… not so much anymore, but I’ll grab a few beers if I can.”

There’s a long pause. Until finally, “When I was younger, my Mom would throw me the best parties.” His voice shifts when he says it. It’s a tonal change so subtle that someone not paying close attention would miss it entirely. But I’m paying close attention. I’ve been paying close attention to Billy Hargrove for longer than I’ve been comfortable admitting. The wistfulness is there, and underneath it, threaded through like something structural, the pain. Not fresh pain. Old pain. The kind that’s been carried so long you stop noticing the weight except in unguarded moments when someone says the right word and the breath catches.

He finds a mixing bowl and sets it on the counter with more force than strictly necessary.

Then he laughs.

It comes out of nowhere. Real and genuine. A bright and sudden thing that breaks the surface of whatever he was sinking toward and it makes me smile before I’ve decided to. The automatic, helpless kind of smile that happens when you hear someone else laugh like they mean it.

“I remember one year,” Billy says, and his expression shows the past excitement that comes with nostalgia. “She stayed up all night making me this cake. It was supposed to look like a race car.” He grins, and the grin is a younger thing than his usual smile. Less performed, less aware of itself. “She didn’t have red food colouring, so she used crushed raspberries instead. The whole thing came out pink.” He shakes his head. “My dad said it was too girly. Said ‘What kind of six year old boy wants a pink cake?!’.” The grin flickers, something complicated moving through it that he doesn’t acknowledge, just lets pass. “But I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I cried when it was time to cut it because I didn’t want to ruin it.”

The image of a smaller version of Billy, six years old, crying over a pink race car cake because he loved it too much to eat it hits me somewhere in the chest with the force and specificity of something entirely too real. Something I wasn’t prepared for. I want to sit inside it for a moment, the bittersweet sweetness of it, the gulf between that small boy and the one standing in this kitchen, the things that got lost in between.

“Oh my god.” I say all whilst smiling so hard it hurts. “Billy, that is the most adorable thing I have ever heard.”

He cuts me a look over his shoulder that’s caught somewhere between embarrassed and pleased. “Yeah, well. I was six and dramatic as hell, even then.” He clears his throat. “Still am, apparently.”

I watch him cross to the refrigerator, still half-smiling at the mental image he’s painted me. He pulls the fridge open and starts scanning the shelves with the focused energy of someone on a mission. Moves a few containers. Checks behind something. Checks again. The smile slowly dissolves into focus, which dissolves into a small frown.

Then, “Shit!”

The word detonates. I jump, slightly, despite myself.

“What’s wrong?”

Billy straightens up and turns to look at me, and he is genuinely frustrated in a way that is, objectively, far more endearing than it should be given the mild nature of the disaster. “We’re out of milk…” he takes another look in the fridge, “and eggs!” He shuts the fridge door harder than necessary and places one hand in his forehead, stressing himself out for no reason at all. “Can you even make pancakes without milk and eggs?” He turns to ask me, then groans as I shake my head ‘no’ with a small amused smile.

Dramatic as hell alright.

Billy crosses back to me in a few long strides and both his hands come to rest on my thighs. His thumbs move in slow, absent circles against my skin, soothing in that specific way only physical touch can be.

“I’m sorry, baby.” He says with actual disappointment in his eyes. “Looks like we’re going to have to celebrate another way.”

My mind does what my mind has been doing on a fairly regular basis whenever I’m this close to him, which is to evacuate the premises of the present moment and furnish me with a high-definition replay of the recent past. His hands in this exact position, but with very, very different intentions.

Even now, I imagine the lengths of his fingers deep inside me, hitting every spot, curling in just the right way. Or maybe even those same hands cracking down hard on my ass, sharp and stinging, painting fresh red marks over the fading ones. Or wrapping tight around my throat while he-

“-does that sound good?”

Fuck yes it does, Wait-

I blink. The present moment reassembles itself around me with the faint indignity of someone returning to a room they left without fully leaving.

“Does what sound good?” I ask, and my voice comes out slightly breathless, and I just know from the way Billy’s lips curve into that particular slow, knowing smile that he knows exactly where I just was. That he is in possession of complete information regarding the detour my brain just took.

“Pizza.” He lets the smile sit for a moment before he says it. Lets me understand that he knows, and that he enjoys knowing, and that he’s going to be insufferable about it exactly as much as is charming and no more.

Pizza... Right. “The cafeteria does pizza now?” I grab onto the mundane topic like a lifeline and hold on.

“No, but there’s a place that delivers to the main gate.” His hands do not leave my thighs. “One of the perks of being staff.”

I nod absently, still lost in the slow, maddening circles his thumbs keep tracing on my inner thighs, each pass sending little sparks straight between my legs. My fingers twist nervously in the hem of his tank top, tugging it down like that might somehow help me focus, but it’s useless.

I give him my usual order, the words tumbling out under my breath, soft and distracted, barely above a whisper. Billy watches me the entire time, eyes dark and amused, like he knows exactly how much effort it’s taking me to string coherent words together. When I finally finish, he gives my thighs one last gentle, possessive squeeze then steps back.

The sudden absence of his hands feels like a physical thing. I almost chase the warmth.

I watch as he dials the number before taking the phone off of the wall and holding it to his ear. The call connects quickly, and he launches into the order with the ease of someone who’s done this many times before. When he hangs up and sets the handset back he turns to catch me staring and raises an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Seriously? A Margherita?” The disbelief in my voice is genuine. I can’t help it.

He looks puzzled in the specific way of someone who doesn’t understand what they’ve done wrong. “What’s wrong with that?”

“That’s like the vanilla ice cream of pizzas.” I’m grinning now. I can feel it all over my face.

He crosses his arms over his bare chest in a gesture of mild defensive affront, and I try not to be entirely derailed by the way the movement shifts the lines of his torso. I give myself a passing grade on the attempt. Barely.

“So?” he says.

“After last night?” I let my eyes drag deliberately down his body and back up, making my point obvious. “I didn’t take you for a vanilla type of guy.”

Understanding dawns in Billy’s eyes, followed immediately by amusement. He uncrosses his arms. Takes a step toward me. Then another. Comes to stand with his hands braced on either side of my hips on the counter’s edge, close enough that I have to tilt my head back slightly to hold his gaze, and when he speaks his voice has dropped into something that does what it’s doing to me entirely on purpose.

“I think we’ve got some time before the food arrives.” His mouth curves into a smirk. “How about I prove to you exactly what kind of guy I really am?”

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟒,𝟏𝟎𝟒

___

Sunlight streams through the gaps in the curtains, painting golden stripes across the rumpled sheets and the two bodies tangled within them.

Lydia is in a deep sleep, her face pressed into the pillow, dark hair messily spilled across white cotton. She’s positioned on her stomach, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, the other stretched out across the mattress toward where Billy should be. The sheet has slipped down to her waist during the night, exposing the pale expanse of her back, and even in the forgiving morning light, the souvenirs from last night are impossible to miss.

Faint red scratches run in thin, angry lines down her spine, evidence of the sheer desperation through the heat of it all. Between her thighs, where the sheet has ridden up, the skin is marked in the same way. Small claw marks and bruised imprints trail along every inch, commanding to the world that she’s his. Used, wrecked, and still dripping with the proof.

Lydia shifts slightly in her sleep, a small sound escapes her lips and her brow furrows as some dream or sensation pulls at her consciousness. But she doesn’t wake. Not yet. She’s too exhausted, too wrung out from the previous night’s activities to surface easily from the deep, well needed sleep she’s fallen into.

Billy stands in the doorway of the bedroom, freshly showered and dressed in comfortable weekend clothes. Soft grey joggers hang low on his hips paired with a classic white drop armhole tank. His hair is still dripping wet and clinging to his temples, messed from his poor attempt at drying it with a towel. In his one hand he holds a glass of water and a small white pill in the other. He’s been awake for a few hours, unable to sleep past his internal alarm clock despite having every reason to stay in bed.

He’d spent that time watching her sleep, studying the rise and fall of her breathing, cataloging every mark he’d left on her skin with a mixture of pride and concern. Then he’d forced himself to get up, to shower, to take care of the practical necessities that come with what they’d done.

The morning after pill had been tucked away in his bathroom cabinet since he’d moved in, not that he’d ever plan on using it. It’s a ‘just-in-case’ purchase he’s made every year after his first pregnancy scare when he was a lot younger. The thought of his Dad’s reaction and how he’d literally kill him has forced him into the necessary habit ever since. Call it paranoia but after a night like that, it’s necessary.

They’d been reckless. So completely, utterly reckless in ways that went beyond just the shed.

Billy’s mind flashes back to the moment they’d stumbled through his cabin door, barely managing to close it before they were on each other again. The walk back from the archery range had been a blissful torture. He relished in every step Lydia took, seeing the concentration on her face as she fought to keep his cum inside her exactly as he’d commanded, knowing that beneath that innocent looking skirt she was bare and dripping and completely his.

They didn’t even make it to the bedroom.

The memory plays behind his eyes, Lydia’s back hitting the wall just inside the door with enough force to rattle the picture frames, his hands already under her skirt, finding her slick and swollen and still full of him from earlier on. The desperate, hungry kiss. The way she’d wrapped her legs around his waist and he’d fucked her right there against the wall, adding more of himself to what was already inside her, mixing and claiming and marking her as thoroughly as ever before.

They’d left a trail of destruction from the front door to the couch. Her skirt discarded on the floor. His shirt torn in her haste to get it off him. Throw pillows scattered when he’d bent her over the armrest and taken her again from behind, slower this time but no less intense.

The bedroom had eventually became the setting to their passion, but only after they’d christened nearly every surface in the apartment. Including the kitchen counter where he’d lifted her up and buried his face between her thighs until she screamed. Finally, finally, the bed, where they’d collapsed into something that was equal parts fucking and making love. Slower, deeper, face to face with their eyes locked and their fingers interlaced.

Billy shifts his weight in the doorway, his body responding to the memories despite the thorough workout it received last night. He’s sore too, though nothing compared to what Lydia must be feeling. His back stings where her nails had raked down it, his shoulders ache from the positions he’d held her in, and there’s a bite mark on his collarbone that he’d discovered in the shower - evidence that he hadn’t been the only one doing the claiming.

He watches as Lydia stirs again, this time more substantially. Her hand moves across the sheets, clearly searching for him in her sleep, and when she finds only empty space her eyes flutter open slowly, confusion crossing her features.

“Billy?” Her voice is quiet with sleep and thoroughly wrecked from last night. “Right here, baby,” he says softly from the doorway, not wanting to startle her. She turns her head on the pillow to find him, wincing slightly at the movement, and a slow smile spreads across her face despite the obvious discomfort. “What time is it?”

“Almost one.”

Her eyes widen slightly. “Fuck, seriously?”

“Mhm.” Billy hums, pushing off from the doorframe and crossing over to the bed then setting the water glass on the nightstand before sitting carefully on the edge of the mattress.

“You must’ve really needed it after…” he trails off, voice rough around the edges, unfinished thought hanging in the air like smoke.

His gaze drops to where the sheet has slipped, exposing her breasts in the soft morning light. Her nipples hardened, skin soft and flushed. His eyes darken, a faint smirk tugging at his lips as he takes it in.

Heat rushes to her face. She makes a small, flustered sound and scrambles to sit up, one arm crossing her chest while the other yanks uselessly at the sheet. Her face contorts with discomfort as various muscles protest the sudden movement.

“Hey, easy,” Billy says quickly, his hand coming to her shoulder to gently press her back down. “Don’t try to move too fast. You’re gonna be sore.”

“No shit,” Lydia mutters, but she’s smiling despite the grimace. She settles back against the pillows more carefully this time, pulling the sheet up to cover herself with a sudden flash of modesty that Billy finds endearing considering what they spent the entire night doing.

He reaches for the small white pill and the half-full water glass on the nightstand, holding both out to her. “Here. You should take this, It’s a Plan B.”

Lydia’s gaze drops to the tiny tablet resting in the center of his palm. Her brows lift slightly as understanding clicks into place. A slow, mischievous smile curls the corner of her mouth.

“Unless…” she drawls, “…I want your little ‘mullet babies’. Right?”

Billy’s brows furrow but the smile tugging at his lips gives him away. “Yep.” He nods, “If you want ‘mullet babies’, then that’s your call.”

Lydia lets out a soft laugh with half parts amusement and half parts disbelief, the question ‘How on earth did we get here?’ playing on her mind. She takes the pill from his hand with two fingers. “Hmm…” She scrunches her nose in that way he finds absolutely adorable. “Not today.”

Lydia pops the pill onto her tongue then takes the glass from him. She takes a heavy gulp to force it down, draining half of the water out of the glass before coming up for air.

“Thank you,” she says, handing the glass back. Her voice is quieter now, more sincere, the playfulness giving way to genuine gratitude.

Billy sets the glass aside and studies her face for a moment, the flush still lingering in her cheeks, the way her hair falls messy and wild around her shoulders, the vulnerability in her eyes that she only ever shows him. “It’s alright,” he says gently, reaching out to brush a strand of hair from her face. “Do you want me to find you some painkillers too or…?”

Lydia shakes her head, leaning slightly into his touch. “No, I think I’ll be alright.”

Billy smiles, something soft and warm spreading through his chest at the simple domesticity of the moment. His hand cups her cheek, thumb stroking across her cheekbone with tender precision, and he leans in to place a small kiss on her lips. It’s chaste compared to the bruising kisses from last night.

They stay like that for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same air, neither wanting to be the first to pull away.

Finally though, Billy shifts, carefully maneuvering himself back onto the bed beside her. Lydia immediately adjusts, the sheet slipping down slightly as she turns to curl into his side. She’s completely naked beneath the thin cotton, and Billy is acutely aware of every point where her bare skin makes contact with his clothed body. The press of her breast against his ribs, the way her leg hooks over his, the warmth of her radiating through the fabric of his tank top.

He slides one arm behind her head, providing a pillow of flesh and firm muscle for her to rest on, while his other hand comes to rest on her back, fingers splaying possessively across her spine. Lydia settles her head against his chest with a content sigh, and almost immediately her fingers begin tracing idle patterns on his torso through the thin material of his shirt, circles and swirls and shapes that have no meaning beyond the simple pleasure of touching him.

The silence that falls between them is comfortable, weighted with the intimacy of everything they’ve shared. Outside, the camp continues its Saturday routine, though the sounds of laughter and activity are too far away to be audible, leaving the two in peace. In this cabin, right here, time feels sacred.

“I really, really enjoyed last night,” Lydia admits quietly, her voice slightly muffled against his chest. “I want you to know that.”

Billy’s hand stills on her back for just a moment before resuming its gentle stroking. “You did?” His voice carries genuine relief mixed with gratitude and wonder. “God, me too… although I was worried I went a bit too far.”

Lydia lifts her head slightly to look at him, her eyes serious despite the smile playing at her lips. “No, honestly. It was perfect. All of it.”

The sincerity in her voice pulls at Billy’s heartstrings. He hugs her tighter to his chest, burying his face in her hair as he places a long, lingering kiss on her forehead. The gesture is tender in a way that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the dangerous thing growing between them that neither of them wants to name yet.

When he pulls back, Lydia is looking up at him, her chin resting on his chest now, and they’re both smiling that stupid, giddy kind of smile that makes you feel like a teenager experiencing their first real crush.

Billy’s hand comes up to cup her face, thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone with devastating gentleness. “You look so beautiful when you smile,” he says, voice gone soft and honest. “You know that right?”

The words hit Lydia harder than any dirty talk from last night. Her smile turns shy, almost vulnerable, and she drops her gaze, moving her head back down to press her face against his chest. But Billy can feel that beloved smile against him, can sense the way his words have affected her in the slight tremor that runs through her body.

They fall back into comfortable silence, Billy’s fingers resuming their gentle path through her hair while Lydia’s continue their aimless patterns on his chest. The moment feels fragile somehow, like speaking too loudly might shatter whatever this is they’re building together.

But then Billy breaks the silence, his voice carrying a weight that makes Lydia’s hand still against him. “You promise you were okay with yesterday? Like… all of it?”

The question hangs in the air between them, and Lydia can hear what he’s really asking. ‘Was I too rough?’, ‘Did I go too far?’, ‘Did I hurt you in ways I shouldn’t have?’

Her mind flashes back to the shed. The way he’d bent her over, the sharp crack of his palm against her ass, the filthy words he’d growled in her ear. ‘Filthy slut’. ‘So desperate’. ‘Look at you begging me’. Words that should have made her feel degraded, diminished, but instead had made her feel powerful in her surrender, wanted in a way she’d never experienced before.

She thinks about how he’d held her wrists pinned above her head, how he’d pulled her hair, how he’d made her choose where he would finish and then praised her for picking what he wanted.

The dominance, the control, the way he’d completely owned her body for those stolen moments.

And then after, the long walk back through the camp with no panties to shelter her. The wrongness of it, the risk, the absolute filth of it all should have made her feel like every other cheap slut in Hawkins.

But it hadn’t.

Because underneath all the dirty talk and degradation and roughness, underneath the spanking and the claiming and the possessive words, Lydia had felt something else entirely. Something that made her chest ache in the best way. She’d felt seen. Desired. Wanted with an intensity that matched her own hunger.

Every mark he’d left on her skin, every bruise and bite and scratch, wasn’t just evidence of being used, it was proof that he’d been just as desperate for her as she’d been for him. That he’d lost control because of her, because she drove him that wild, because what was between them was too powerful to contain in neat, acceptable boundaries.

And this morning? The tenderness in his touch, the concern in his eyes, the way he’d thought ahead to give her the pill, the soft kisses and gentle words - it all proved what she’d sensed last night in the moments between.

That underneath the primal claiming, something truly special was brewing between them.

Something real and rare and worth whatever risks they were taking.

Lydia lifts her head to meet his eyes, and Billy can see something shift in her expression. “More than okay,” she says firmly, her voice steady and sure. Then she pauses, her smile turning soft and genuine, eyes bright with emotion.

“It was the best birthday ever.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟐,𝟓𝟐𝟗

___

The kiss doesn’t start soft. It never was going to.

Billy’s mouth crashes against mine like he’s been barely holding himself together all morning, like the second our lips touch the carefully maintained facade finally shatters, crumbling away in the dim, dusty air of this shed that’s too small, too forgotten, too dangerously close to the world continuing on just outside these weathered wooden walls.

It’s messy and desperate, all teeth and tongue and unfiltered heat. I can practically taste adrenaline on his breath, it’s mixed with that faint smokiness that always clings to him, the ghost of every cigarette he’s ever snuck on his break now transferred to me through this kiss. It feels less like affection and more like claiming, sheer unfiltered, relentless claiming.

His hands are everywhere all at once, one knotting roughly into my ponytail with a sharp tug that sends sparks rushing through my body, the other bracing hard against the rickety workbench behind me, fingers digging into scarred wood like he’s trying to anchor himself before we both get swept away completely.

The space is suffocatingly cramped, so claustrophobic that every breath feels stolen from air that’s already been claimed. Every shift of our bodies brushing against something is a constant reminder of how exposed we are, how one wrong sound, one moment of carelessness could shatter this fragile bubble of secrecy and bring the entire camp crashing down on us.

We’d be ruined.

He breaks away from my mouth only to drag his lips down the line of my jaw with bruising intensity, then lower. Not to the front of my throat where anyone could see, but to the side, and further still, until he’s working just beneath my ear and along the hidden curve behind it. His mouth travels slowly, deliberately, teeth grazing into skin that will be concealed by my hair and turned shoulders. He sucks there, firm and possessive, but careful, always careful, as if he’s mapping out the places no one else will ever notice. His breath burns against the column of my neck, but he keeps to the shadows of me, marking only the territory that won’t betray us in daylight.

The desperation that’s been building since the archery range, since that whispered ‘good girl’ that still echoes in my mind, comes flooding back with devastating force. I remember the way he’d spread my legs with his boot in front of everyone, the way he’d pressed against me like a promise of exactly this. The memory alone makes my thighs clench with want.

The worst part? We’d done all of that in front of twenty people and not a single one of them suspected a thing.

And here, trapped in this reckless predicament we’ve gotten ourselves into, I can’t think straight, can’t catch my breath without feeling the crushing weight of risk pressing in from all sides. The distant chatter of campers heading to lunch filters through the gaps in the walls, the rustle of leaves outside could be wind or footsteps approaching. The door isn’t even locked, just latched, a flimsy barrier between us and exposal.

My hands scramble desperately for purchase on his shoulders, trying to steady myself against the sensation. My nails dig into the navy polo that clings to his sweat-dampened skin, pulling him impossibly closer as if I can somehow fuse us together, hide us both in the press of our bodies from the world that exists so near.

“I want you,” Billy growls, “Right here. Right now.”

Before I can even respond, I’m being lifted. He hoists me up and sets me down on the hard edge of the workbench. The wood is cold and unforgiving under my bare legs, edge digging sharply into the backs of my thighs. I part them, instinctively wrapping around his waist and pulling him in, our bodies perfectly slotting together. His concealed bulge presses insistently against me through the layers of fabric separating us, grinding with deliberate pressure that makes arousal pool hot and slick in my panties.

The shed amplifies every sound to excruciating levels. The protesting creak of the bench under my weight, the clatter of arrows scattering from the impact of our collision, the way my breath comes in short, ragged bursts that echo off the close walls. It all makes me hyper-aware of how loud we could be, how one moan pitched too high could carry through the cracks in the wood and betray us to anyone passing by.

Billy doesn’t waste precious time. His hands slide under my skirt with purpose, fingers brushing up the bare skin of my inner thigh, the fabric bunching at my hips as he traces higher and higher toward the place I need him most. He hooks his fingers under the elastic of my panties and tugs them down roughly - not all the way off, just enough to bunch them around my calves.

Billy’s gaze drops between my legs, his eyes darkening with a hunger that looks almost feral in its intensity. Before I can draw breath to speak, to warn him again about the monumental risk we’re taking, he drops to one knee with a heavy thud against the dirty floor. His large hands spread my thighs even wider, holding me completely open and exposed as his mouth descends.

He places one quick, devastating kiss directly against my center, lips pressing firmly against my slick wetness for a breathless moment before his tongue darts out for a single, long lick that sends lightning arcing through every nerve ending in my body.

It’s criminally brief, almost cruel in its short duration, just enough to make me absolutely desperate and trembling for more.

His tongue dips barely inside before flicking upward over my clit with practiced precision. My hips buck violently off the bench, a sharp gasp tearing from my throat and echoing off the walls like a confession I can’t take back.

I find my hands automatically gravitate to his thick mullet, tangling desperately in the soft strands as I try to pull him back, but he’s already rising to his feet, hands fumbling at his belt with urgency. His mouth is glistening with evidence of me, and a smirk curves his lips, cocky with that annoying charm that’s authentic to only him.

“You know I couldn’t resist,” he says wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in a gesture that’s deliberately casual, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world when we both know with absolute certainty that we don’t. Lunch could end any second. Activities could resume. Someone could come looking for the missing equipment we’re currently scattered across the floor.

Despite the ticking clock of risk, Billy’s hands move to his jeans with methodical focus, unbuttoning them with fingers that shake slightly from restraint, shoving the denim down along with his boxers just far enough to free himself. The fabric bunches at his thighs, mirroring my own state of hurried undress. He’s impressively hard, cock thick and flushed and visibly throbbing. Just the sight of him in the dim, dusty light makes saliva pool in my mouth, makes my inner walls clench with fierce anticipation. The tip is already leaking, precum glistening, prominent veins standing out in stark relief against flushed skin.

He positions himself at my entrance, the blunt force of him teasing through my folds, sliding through the mess he created with agonizing deliberation that has me whimpering desperately, my hips bucking forward in silent, desperate plea. The workbench creaks ominously under the shift of our combined weight.

Our eyes lock in the dimness, his gaze so intensely feral, time seems to momentarily slow, like the quiet before the storm. Then he thrusts forward, filling me completely in one powerful stroke that punches the air from my lungs. The stretch borders on painful, that exquisite burn that blooms almost immediately into pleasure so intense it whites out my vision. I cry out sharply, the sound raw and desperate and far too loud, quickly muffling it by biting down hard on his shoulder. The fabric of his polo bunches between my teeth as I taste salt and cotton, his body seated so deeply inside me it feels like he’s fundamentally reshaping me from the inside out

“Fuck, Lydia,” Billy groans against my temple, his voice absolutely wrecked. His forehead drops to press against mine as he holds perfectly still for one agonizing heartbeat, letting us both adjust to the overwhelming sensation. His breath comes in harsh pants that fan across my face, mingling with my own ragged breathing in the heavy, dust-thick air.

“You feel so fucking good,” he rasps out. Then he’s moving, pulling back slowly only to slam in again with an intense force, immediately setting a rough, desperate rhythm that has the old wood rocking beneath us. Each powerful thrust is absolutely punishing, his hips snapping against mine, hitting that devastating spot deep inside me over and over and over until I’m seeing actual stars, my vision tunneling down to just him, just this, just the overwhelming pleasure threatening to split me apart.

My trembling fingers lift my shirt, bunching the fabric up to expose my bra. The lace cups do absolutely nothing to hide how peaked my nipples are, straining almost painfully against the delicate material. Billy’s eyes fall to my chest with undisguised hunger and he doesn’t hesitate for even a second. His hand shoves roughly under the fabric, palm calloused and warm against my sensitive skin, gripping my breast with a possession that makes me arch desperately into his touch, a loud moan spilling uncontrollably from my lips and echoing off every surface.

His thumb circles my nipple before pinching it sharply, the burst of pleasurable pain making my walls clench tight around him, drawing a hissed curse from between his clenched teeth. His other hand grips my thigh, fingers digging in deep enough that I know I’ll see the marks for days. The position makes every single movement hit deeper, harder, the friction both beautiful and completely overwhelming.

“Yes, fuck, just like that,” I gasp out desperately.

The sounds escaping me don’t even feel like they belong to me anymore. They’re too raw, too loud, too unrestrained for this dangerously hidden pocket of camp, filling the shed with echoes that seem to amplify my desperation, making my cheeks burn with a confusing mix of intense lust and fear.

What if someone hears us? What if someone’s walking past right now?

Anxiety roams through my mind like a warning beacon, but instead of dampening my arousal it only seems to intensify everything, the sheer wrongness of it, the exposure, the recklessness making everything feel sharper and hotter and more desperate. My body responds by clenching even tighter, drawing louder, more broken whimpers from deep in my chest.

Billy’s hand leaves my breast abruptly to clamp firmly over my mouth, his palm warm and slightly rough against my lips, fingers splaying across my flushed cheek in a grip that’s simultaneously silencing and unbearably intimate.

“Be quiet,” he warns, voice rough with command topped with a barely restrained groan. But there’s absolutely no mercy in his rhythm - if anything he drives even deeper, even harder, making obedience completely impossible as another muffled cry vibrates desperately against his palm.

I nod frantically, eyes wide and silently pleading, but the pleasure building inside me is far too intense, my body betraying me. He shushes me again, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear as he leans in, his solid body completely caging mine in the cramped, airless space.

“Shh, baby. Someone might hear- we can’t- fuck, Lydia~”

The fractured words send shivers cascading through my entire body, the very real risk wrapping tighter around the pleasure like constricting vines, making everything feel more intense, making my walls pulse and throb around him in response. But he keeps going with seemingly endless stamina, pounding into me, the obscene sound of our skin slapping together filling every corner of the shed.

Then, without any warning, he suddenly slows.

His thrusts become torturously deliberate, agonizingly languid, each one a slow, dragging pull that forces me to feel every single inch of him sliding in and out with excruciating clarity. I can feel his prominent veins pulsing against my sensitive inner walls, can feel the way he throbs and twitches inside me with barely restrained power.

The abrupt change is absolutely torturous, the hypersensitivity it creates completely overwhelming. The drawn out friction building until it’s genuinely unbearable, my body clenching around him completely involuntarily, squeezing even tighter than before.

“Why?” I gasp desperately when he shifts his hand just slightly, giving me barely enough room to speak. My voice comes out muffled and pleading, my lips brushing against his palm in what feels almost like a kiss. “Why slow down? Billy, please- I need-”

“Baby, you’re-” he starts, then cuts off with a long, broken moan as he pushes all the way in with devastating slowness. “We’re being too loud. We can’t risk it… not here, not like this.” His voice cracks badly on the last words, completely betraying how much this restraint is costing him, how the agonisingly slow pace is systematically unraveling him just as much as it’s destroying me.

He lets out a beautiful whimper and it absolutely ruins me.

I bite down hard on my lip, desperately trying to stifle the moan building with each deliberate stroke, but it’s completely futile. The slow, grinding rhythm somehow makes everything worse, more intense, more sensitive. The mounting pleasure builds like a violent storm being held back by nothing but rapidly crumbling willpower.

Billy’s eyes squeeze shut so tightly it creates deep furrows across his brow as he steadies himself by placing both hands on the table.

“Fuck,” he hisses out, voice absolutely strained and breaking apart. “You’re so tight like this. I can’t- god, Lydia, you’re killing me. I need you.”

Suddenly, the prolonged torture finally snaps. “Fuck it,” he snarls, the words a guttural release of pent-up frustration, and he pulls out abruptly, the sudden loss of him leaving me feeling desperately empty and aching. A high whine escapes my throat despite my bitten lip, my body instinctively chasing the warmth that’s been ripped away, inner walls clenching frantically around nothing in desperate, futile protest.

His hands are on me instantly, picking me up and spinning me around with a rough urgency that makes my head actually spin. My hip collides painfully with a shelf in the impossibly tight space, sending a bow clattering loudly to the floor with a rattle that echoes far too clearly.

Fuck, we’re being way too noisy, taking far too many risks, but the spike of fear only seems to fuel the raging fire consuming us both.

He presses me face-first against an empty stretch of wall with commanding force, the wood startlingly cool and rough against my overheated cheek. Splintered grains bite into my palms as I instinctively brace myself, the shock of cold seeping through my thin shirt and contrasting sharply with the fever raging inside my body.

“Hands up,” he commands, voice gone dark and authoritative in a way that is so fucking sexy it shatters my stubbornness and ego. He captures both my wrists together above my head with one hand holding me stretched out and completely vulnerable. My body is forced to arch and bend at the waist, ass pushed out toward him in utterly shameless offering. The position leaves me feeling totally exposed and at his mercy.

Billy’s free hand comes down hard across my ass without any warning whatsoever, the sharp crack of the impact echoing loudly in the confined space. The sting blooms immediately into radiating heat. A shocked gasp tearing from my throat, high-pitched and startled. My body jerking forward reflexively against the wall, rough wood scraping against my flushed skin.

This is completely new territory. He’s never done anything remotely like this before, never shown me this commanding, dominant side of himself. A thousand questions race through my mind. Do I want this? Am I okay with this?

The answer comes swift and certain:

“Yes- Fuck, Billy, please-”

“Filthy slut,” he growls in immediate response, his voice dropping impossibly low and laced with degradation that somehow feels like the most intimate form of worship. His hand soothes the stinging heat for one brief moment before delivering another sharp, precise slap that makes the noise reverberate off every surface, making my knees go genuinely weak and punching the breath from my lungs.

“You’re so desperate, aren’t you?” he continues relentlessly. “Bent over in this dirty shed, completely exposed like this, begging me.”

The filthy words sink into me like barbed hooks, pulling at the tangled mess of shame and overwhelming desire churning in my chest. The absolute wrongness of everything - the very public risk we’re taking, how exposed I am, how easily we could be discovered - only makes everything burn impossibly hotter, my flushed skin prickling with an intoxicating mixture of humiliation and raw want.

“Begging me for what?” he questions, voice hard and uncompromising. “Tell me exactly what you want.” His hand comes down yet again, the sharp sting blooming into deep, throbbing heat that makes me arch back desperately toward him, actively seeking more even as overwhelmed tears prick at the corners of my eyes.

My mouth hangs open uselessly, lips parted but no coherent words emerging. I’m completely shocked and speechless by this sudden surge of dominant control from him. I fumble desperately for words, my brain unable to string together a single coherent sentence.

“It’s okay, baby,” he says, voice gentling just slightly even as his grip remains iron. “Don’t be shy now. Tell me exactly how much you need this.”

“I need it,” I finally choke out, my voice breaking badly on the words, half-muffled against the rough wall as another sharp spank lands with devastating precision. “So fucking much. I need you inside me, Billy, please… please, I’m begging-”

He releases a dark, satisfied chuckle that vibrates through the air, clearly pleased with my broken, desperate submission. Then he’s right where I want it. The blunt head of his cock pressing against my entrance from behind, hot and demanding. He thrusts in without any warning whatsoever, filling me completely in one brutal stroke.

The new angle allows him to somehow go even deeper than before, hitting spots inside me that make my vision actually blur and white out, my body contorting in helpless ecstasy. I cry out, the sound absolutely raw and primal yet muffled against the unforgiving wood as he starts truly railing me, hips slamming against my ass with punishing force that literally drives me forward with each powerful thrust. The wall scrapes roughly against my cheek, my breasts pressing harder into the cold surface through my rumpled shirt with every impact.

The cramped space makes absolutely everything feel more intense, our bodies pressed so desperately close there’s zero escape from the completely overwhelming sensations flooding my system. The shed’s close walls seem to press in even further, amplifying every obscene slap of sweat-slicked skin colliding.

Billy grabs my ponytail, wrapping the length once around his fist like a leather rein, yanking my head back sharply until my spine arches at an almost impossible angle. My body tilts into an absolutely obscene position that makes every impact devastating. Broken moans escape in ragged waves as I contort helplessly under his complete control, every muscle straining and trembling, pleasure bordering dangerously on pain in the absolute best way.

Time becomes completely meaningless in the overwhelming haze of pure sensation. After what feels simultaneously like hours and mere seconds he pulls me back from the wall, moving to bend me over the workbench.

My upper body sprawls limply across the surface, the wood bruising my hipbones as he drives into me with renewed intensity.

“Good girl,” he praises breathlessly, his wrecked voice punctuating each brutal thrust, the approval washing over me like a benediction.

Another sharp spank lands and I let out an involuntary cry. “Shh, I know, baby, I know- it’s too much, but you’re doing so fucking good for me.” The words thread praise through the degradation in a way that makes my legs shake.

He continues fucking me with the entire workbench shaking violently under our combined force and frantic movements. Then he pulls me completely upright by my hair, until my back is flush against the solid wall of his heaving chest, his cock still buried inside as he holds me pinned close.

His thrusts slow to deep, grinding rolls, each one perfectly deliberate as his free arm bands tightly around my waist, holding me steady and secure against him.

“You’re so fucking perfect.” he murmurs against my hair, placing a kiss on my head.

“Here’s the thing,” he continues, his hand slides up to firmly cup my jaw, tilting my head back even further against his solid shoulder. His hips roll slow and devastatingly deep, grinding relentlessly against that spot that makes my legs shake uncontrollably. “I’m getting close, and we can’t make a mess in here. So you’re gonna have to choose.”

His thrusts punctuate each word with devastating precision, making it almost impossible to focus on what he’s saying.

“Either I pull out and cum in that pretty mouth of yours, and you’ll swallow every last drop.” he continues, breath hot against my ear, “Or… I fill you up and pump you so full you’ll be dripping me for the rest of the damn day. Your choice, baby. Where do you want it?”

The absolutely filthy question drives me completely wild, the sheer audacity of making me choose, of putting this decision in my hands when I can barely form coherent thoughts. The idea of both options are to die for, but there’s only one thing I’ve craved most of all since our first time together.

“Inside,” I gasp out desperately, my voice trembling on the single word as mounting pleasure coils impossibly tighter, threatening to release. “Please- inside me-”

Billy lets out a pleased breath that’s so close to a laugh it makes his chest vibrate against my back. “Good choice,” he hums with dark satisfaction, his pace immediately quickening, building back to that absolutely relentless rhythm that’s driving me steadily insane. “Let me tell you exactly what’s going to happen,” he continues. “Once I’m finished, it’s gonna stay deep inside you and you’re gonna’ keep it there. Then you’re gonna walk that pretty ass of yours back to my cabin and we’re gonna pick up exactly where we left off. Isn’t that right?”

The scenario he’s painting is absolutely obscene, the idea of carrying him inside me as I walk through camp past dozens of completely oblivious eyes is dizzying.

“Come on,” he urges, his arms hugging me tighter. “Let me hear you say it. Tell me how badly you want me to fill you up.”

I gasp out, every nerve ending burning bright and alive with sensation, all I can do is moan and nod my head ‘yes’.

“Good girl,” he growls with fierce approval. “Cum for me, baby. Do it all over my cock.”

A high pitched sound tears violently from my throat but his hand clamps over my mouth just in time, barely muffling it as overwhelming ecstasy crashes over me in devastating waves. My entire body convulses almost violently, locking up tight around him in powerful rhythmic pulses that seem to milk him absolutely dry. He follows immediately after with one final, brutally deep thrust, groaning low and broken against my neck as he fills me with scorching heat, his whole body shuddering hard against mine in shared release.

We stay locked together in the immediate aftermath, both panting harshly in the dim, dust-filled light. The shed’s oppressive claustrophobia now feels almost comforting as the intense aftershocks gradually fade. His arms remain wrapped tightly around me like he physically can’t bear to let go yet, and the world outside becomes nothing but a distant, meaningless hum we both consciously ignore for just a little longer.

Billy’s chest rises and falls rapidly against my back, his breath still ragged and uneven against my neck. He doesn’t pull out right away, instead staying buried completely deep, deliberately letting me feel every last twitch and fading pulse as he slowly softens inside me.

“Feel that?” he murmurs, voice absolutely wrecked and low, lips brushing my ear with devastating intimacy. “That’s my load inside you. Now, when I pull out, you’re gonna’ have to squeeze that tight little cunt hard so that none of it escapes. Every single step you take, every time those pretty legs cross, you’ll feel me slowly leaking out and remember exactly how I put it there.”

A fresh shiver runs through my oversensitive body. My inner walls flutter weakly around him at the filthy words, drawing a rough, deeply satisfied hum from his throat.

He finally eases back with agonizing slowness, deliberately letting me feel the drag of every single inch as he slips free. The sudden emptiness makes me whimper pathetically, and immediately I feel the full devastating extent of it. The warm, thick slide of him beginning to drip down my inner thigh, obscene and completely unstoppable. My face burns hot with embarrassment even as my thigbs tremble with lingering aftershocks.

Billy lets out a dark, deeply appreciative chuckle. “Look at the mess we made,” he says, voice still thick with unmistakable pride. His fingers trail down between my trembling legs, deliberately gathering the evidence of us on his fingertips before bringing them up to hover just in front of my lips.

“Open.”

I hesitate for only half a second. He doesn’t repeat the command, just waits with infinite patience and unwavering expectation.

My lips part obediently. He slides his fingers inside slowly, letting me taste the salty evidence of us both. His thumb strokes my bottom lip with surprising gentleness as I suck weakly at his fingers.

“That’s my girl,” he praises, voice dropping even lower with satisfaction. “Don’t worry. I’m not even close to done with you yet.”

He pulls his fingers free with a soft, wet pop, then steps back just enough to tuck himself away efficiently. His belt clinks as he fastens it with practiced movements. My legs are still shaky and unreliable, skirt falling back into place but doing nothing to hide how thoroughly used I feel. I reach down instinctively toward where my panties must have fallen during our frantic coupling.

Before my fingers can close around the damp lace, Billy’s hand catches my wrist firmly. “Uh-uh.” He bends down himself and takes the soaked scrap of fabric from the dirty floor, holding it up between two fingers like a little trophy. “These are mine now.”

My breath catches sharply. “Billy-”

He steps close again, free hand reaching out to gently but firmly cup my jaw, then leans in to place one surprisingly soft kiss against my swollen lips.

“You’re not getting them back,” he states with absolute finality as he pulls away. “I’m gonna enjoy watching you struggle to keep my cum inside you. One wrong step and everyone’s gonna know what a messy little thing you are for me.”

I feel two of his fingers tilt my chin up firmly, forcing me to meet his intense gaze, ensuring he has my complete and undivided attention… As if he didn’t already.

“And when we get back,” he continues, voice dropping quieter and somehow even darker, “I’m gonna spread you wide open on my bed and watch as my cum slowly leaks out of you. And then?” A wicked little smile curls his lips. “I’m fucking it right back in until you’re overflowing, shaking, screaming my name. Until you’re so used up you’ll feel it for days.”

He leans in and kisses me deep and dirty tongue stroking mine like he’s already fucking my mouth, then eases back with hooded eyes.

“So be a good girl for me out there, yeah?” His thumb strokes my jaw once, soft but mocking.

“Not one fucking drop gets wasted. You’re keeping me exactly where I belong… so I’ve got plenty of lube when I fuck you stupid later.”

He finally steps fully back, tucking my stolen panties deep into his pocket where I can see the outline of the damp fabric.

I’m left standing there trembling, skirt back in place but providing zero actual protection, no underwear, no shield against discovery, just the slow, warm trickle between my thighs serving as a constant reminder of every single filthy word he just said.

Billy gives my ass one last possessive squeeze, then cracks open the shed door carefully, checking with practiced caution that the coast is clear.

“After you, Westbrook,” he says casually, his voice sliding effortlessly back into that easy professional drawl he uses around everyone else - like nothing happened. But when his eyes meet mine one final time, they’re absolutely burning with heat. With promise. With unfinished business.

I take one shaky, unsteady step toward the narrow door opening, already acutely feeling the slick slide between my thighs, already clenching as hard as I possibly can to keep him inside me where he demanded it stay.

And I know with absolute certainty, without him even needing to say it again, that I’m going to do exactly what he told me to do.

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟒,𝟗𝟑𝟗

___

𝐀/𝐍: 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞’𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐬 <𝟑

Morning comes soft and slow, consciousness creeping in through layers of warmth and safety I’m still not entirely used to. I wake with Billy’s arm heavy across my waist, his chest pressed against my back, breath steady and even against the nape of my neck. For a moment I just lie there, eyes still closed, letting myself exist in this perfect stillness before the day demands we put our masks back on and pretend we’re nothing to each other.

Last night… it changed something between us. I don’t even know what possessed me to drop out so much, to actually open up. I’ve never told anybody about that night at the restaurant, about the way it made me feel, about how hard it was to see the life I could have had. But somehow, with him, it came out so easily. I get a sense that he trusts me too. I remember reading his report and seeing the details of how he’d never open up to anyone, of how much his past angered him, and yet… he told me. It’s like knowing the worst about each other and staying anyway matters more than anything.

Billy stirs behind me, his arm tightening around my waist, pulling me closer even in sleep. I feel his lips brush against my shoulder, soft and unconscious, and something in me aches to stay like this forever. To never, ever leave this bed.

But the alarm on his nightstand shatters the moment with its awful, blaring noise, dragging us both back to reality, responsibility and the roles we have to play.

Another day, another pointless activity.

Archery, this time.

I stand in a line with a dozen other campers on the archery range, bow in hand, trying to focus on the target in front of me instead of the man standing twenty feet away pretending he doesn’t know what I look like naked. The sun is warm on my shoulders, the grass still slightly damp from a late night shower, and everything about this moment should feel normal, routine, just another mandatory camp activity to check off the list.

Except Billy’s here.

And Billy keeps catching my eye when he thinks no one’s looking, sending me these small, secret smiles that make my stomach flip. A wink when backs are turned. A barely perceptible quirk of his lips when our eyes meet across the range, so subtle anyone else would miss it but that hits me like a physical touch.

It’s distracting as hell.

Tina’s running the session, because of fucking course she has to be here too. She holds a clipboard tightly in hand, her voice carrying across the range with that particular blend of whiny cheerfulness and authority that all the others seem to adore. She’s wearing grey athletic leggings with pink shorts over top and a fitted ‘Camp Nightwing’ t-shirt. Her brunette hair is perfectly permed bouncing as she moves down the line, adjusting stances and correcting grips with practiced efficiency. Billy’s supposed to be assisting, but he’s mostly just standing there looking unfairly attractive in his navy staff polo, arms crossed over his chest, watching the campers with that careful neutrality he’s perfected.

Except when he’s watching me. Then that neutrality slips, just for a second, just enough for me to see the heat underneath.

Rachel’s beside me, fidgeting with her bowstring, and I’m grateful for the distraction of her presence. Lauren and Jackson got assigned to a different activity and honestly, I’m relieved. The thought of facing Jackson after last night, after he beat the shit out of Byron in my defense, makes something uncomfortable twist in my gut. Guilt, maybe. Or gratitude I don’t know how to express. Or the awkwardness of knowing someone cares about you enough to do something like that.

It’s easier this way. Just me and Rachel, gossiping and complaining and existing in the comfortable simplicity of a friendship that doesn’t demand anything complicated.

“Alright everyone,” Tina calls out, her voice bright and encouraging in that way that makes me want to roll my eyes. “Let’s try another round. Remember, steady breath, smooth release, follow through. You’ve got this!”

I nock an arrow, feeling the weight of the bow in my hand. Archery has never particularly interested me, in all fairness I’ve never done it to give a fair judgement. Though, I can’t deny there’s something satisfying about the focus it requires, the way everything else falls away when you’re lining up a shot.

“So…” Rachel says beside me, voice low enough that I’m hoping only I can hear. “We gonna talk about last night or what?”

I knew this was coming. Of course I did. There’s no way Rachel would let something that dramatic slide without dissecting every detail, without picking apart every moment until she’s satisfied she understands exactly what happened and why. It’s just who she is, curious, relentless, always digging for the story underneath the story.

I adjust my stance, raising the bow and focusing intently on the target ahead, using the excuse of concentration to avoid meeting her eyes. If I don’t look at her, maybe she’ll take the hint. Maybe she’ll let it drop.

“What about it?” I say, aiming for casual disinterest, like last night was just another forgettable incident and not the dramatic explosion that had the entire fire circle somewhat involved.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Rachel’s voice drips with exaggerated innocence. “Maybe the part where Jackson went full ‘knight in shining armour’ and beat the crap out of Byron? Or the part where Hargrove basically threatened to ruin Byron’s entire life? That was wild, Lydia. Like, genuinely insane.”

I pull the string back. Just drop it Rachel. Drop it. “Jackson shouldn’t have done that.”

“Please he got what was coming for him, besides Jackson did it for you.” Rachel pauses, and I can feel her looking at me even though I’m staring straight ahead. “It’s almost like he’s in love with you or something.”

“What?” The word comes out sharp and startled, my concentration shattering completely. My fingers release the string on instinct, and the arrow flies wild - not just off target, but completely airborne, sailing up and over in a perfect arc before disappearing somewhere behind the boards.

Around me, other arrows thud into targets with varying degrees of success. Mine is nowhere to be seen.

I lower my bow, turning to stare at Rachel. “What are you talking about?”

Rachel furrows her brows smiling at me, like she didn’t expect that reaction. “Are you blind? The guy never stops starring at you. He’s on about you all the time. Besides, I think you make a cute couple-“

“Bullseye!” Tina exclaims loudly, completely cutting Rachel off, and for once in my life - this is the only time I’ll ever say this - I’m glad to hear her voice.

“Great shot, Amanda! And Michael, five points. You’re improving! Ooo, Kai, only two. But don’t worry, you’ll get there!”

She continues down the line, calling out scores, and I feel my hands tighten around the bow with each name that isn’t mine. I know exactly where this is going.

“Rachel, six points, well done!” Tina announces cheerfully.

Then her attention lands on me.

“And Lydia…” Tina’s tone shifts, taking on this particular quality of false sympathy that makes my jaw clench. “Well. Looks like we might need a bit more practice, hmm?”

I grit my teeth, forcing myself not to respond, not to give her the satisfaction of seeing that she’s gotten under my skin. My knuckles go white around the bow, the only outlet for the frustration building in my chest. A few campers snicker, quickly silenced by a look from Billy that could freeze water.

Tina turns to Billy with a smile that’s too bright, too deliberate. “Billy~ would you be a doll and give Lydia a hand? She seems to be struggling. I’ve already explained what to do but I think she’s in need of some, extra, assistance.”

The way she emphasizes the word ‘extra’ drips with condescension, like I’m some incompetent child who can’t follow basic instructions. Like I didn’t just get distracted by Rachel dropping a bomb about Jackson, like I actually need remedial help instead of just one moment of lost concentration. The implication hangs there, making me feel stupid, singled out, less than.

I catch Billy’s expression, watch the micro movement of his jaw tightening, the slight narrowing of his eyes that suggests he’s just as irritated by her tone as I am. But he nods professionally. “Sure thing.”

I roll my eyes so hard it almost hurts, turning away from Tina’s satisfied smile to retrieve another arrow from the quiver.

The other campers are already preparing for their next shots, adjusting their stances, nocking new arrows, focused on their own targets and their own scores. The range is full of quiet concentration, the kind of focused silence that comes when everyone’s trying to prove they can do better than the last round.

Then Billy’s behind me.

I feel him before I hear him, that awareness that’s become second nature, like my body just knows when he’s close. He doesn’t touch me at first, just stands there, close enough that I can sense his presence like a physical thing.

“Alright,” he says, voice low and professional, pitched just for me. “Let’s work on your form.”

I raise the bow, trying to ignore the way my pulse has kicked up, trying to focus on the target and not on the fact that he’s about to put his hands on me in front of around twenty people.

“Your stance is off,” Billy murmurs, and then his hand is on my hip, adjusting my position with a touch that’s firm and efficient and sends electricity racing up my spine.

Before I can process that contact, I feel his foot hook around my inner ankle. Without warning he slides my foot outward with controlled pressure, widening my stance. Then the other ankle, his boot gently but firmly pushing until my legs are spread shoulder-width apart.

The gasp escapes before I can stop it, quiet but unmistakable. He definitely heard it.

Heat floods through me. Not embarrassment, something darker, more visceral. The casual dominance of the gesture, the way he’s physically positioning my body in front of everyone while maintaining that perfectly professional demeanour, makes my skin prickle with awareness. It feels intimate in a way that has nothing to do with archery instruction and everything to do with the power dynamic he’s just established with one simple movement.

“That’s better,” Billy says, voice still maddeningly neutral. His hand comes up to my elbow, lifting it slightly. “Keep this up. You’re dropping your bow arm.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

He’s so close now I can feel the heat radiating off his body, can smell that scent that’s become intoxicatingly familiar. His chest nearly brushes my back, and when he shifts his weight I feel it. The unmistakable press of his crotch against my ass, firm and deliberate and absolutely intentional.

My breath catches once again.

“Draw back,” Billy instructs, his voice still perfectly professional despite the fact that he’s literally pressed against me, despite the fact that my entire body has gone hypersensitive to every point of contact. “Slowly. That’s good.”

His hand slides down my arm, adjusting my grip on the bowstring, fingers brushing against mine in a way that feels less like instruction and more like intimacy. I’m acutely aware of how public this is, how many people could be watching, how careful we need to be. But I’m also aware of the way my body is responding to his proximity, heat pooling low in my belly, my breathing gone shallow and uneven.

“Focus on the target,” Billy says, his breath ghosting over the bare skin at the back of my neck, my ponytail suddenly feeling like a terrible decision. God, of all the days to wear my hair up. “Nothing else matters.”

Easy for him to say when he’s the one making it impossible to focus on anything except the solid weight of him against me, the way his hand is still covering mine on the bowstring, the way I can feel his heartbeat through the thin fabric of his shirt. It’s almost as like he’s saying ‘focus on me’, it fits just the same.

“Archers ready!” Tina’s voice carries across the range, breaking through the bubble we’ve created. “Draw!”

Billy’s hand tightens slightly over mine. “Breathe,” he whispers, so quiet I almost don’t hear it.

“Aim!”

I stare at the target, vision tunneling, every nerve ending in my body screaming with awareness.

“Release!”

I let go of the string, feeling it snap forward, and the arrow flies true this time. Perfect arc, perfect trajectory, burying itself dead center in the bullseye with a satisfying ‘thunk’.

Billy’s lips brush against my ear, so quick and subtle it could almost be accidental. “Good girl.”

Fuck.

My knees actually go weak, and I have to lock them to stay upright, have to remind myself to breathe, have to fight the blush that’s threatening to consume my entire face.

He steps back immediately, creating professional distance, and the loss of his presence feels almost painful.

“Nice.” he declares a little louder in that same professional tone, like he didn’t just completely wreck me with two words and a whisper. “Keep it up Westbrook.”

He walks away, moving down the line to check on other campers, and I’m left standing there with my bow in trembling hands and my body still thrumming with want.

“Holy shit!” Rachel appears at my elbow, grinning widely. “Lydia, that was amazing! Dead center! I didn’t know you could shoot like that!”

I lower my bow, willing my hands to stop shaking, willing the heat in my cheeks to fade. “Yeah, neither. Good instruction… I guess.”

Rachel’s still chattering about the shot, about how impressed everyone looked, about how even Tina seemed surprised, but I’m only half listening. My eyes find Billy across the range, and for just a second he looks back, and the heat in his gaze makes it very clear that archery instruction was the last thing on his mind.

The session ends with Tina announcing scores and praising various campers for their work today. I tune most of it out, focused on returning my equipment, on maintaining the appearance of normalcy when everything inside me feels like it’s vibrating at a frequency only Billy can hear.

“Lunch time!” Tina announces cheerfully, and there’s an immediate shuffle as campers start moving over the grass toward the dining hall.

Rachel links her arm through mine. “Come on, I’m starving. I saw Jackson and Lauren heading toward-“

She stops mid-sentence, her gaze following something in the distance. I look over and spot Jackson and Lauren near the gymnasium, clearly finished with their own activity.

“You coming?” Rachel asks, already starting to pull me in their direction.

I glance over at Billy, who’s methodically collecting arrows from the targets, alone now that Tina’s wandered off to chat with another leader. The sight of him doing such a mundane task shouldn’t be as appealing as it is, but there’s something about the efficient way he moves, the focus in his expression, that makes me want to stay.

“Actually,” I say, gently extracting my arm from Rachel’s. “I think I have to go back to isolation for a meeting. Some check in thing with Dr Leslie. Don’t wait up for me.”

The lie comes easily, smoothly, and Rachel just nods sympathetically. “That sucks. Want me to grab you something from lunch?”

“Nah, I’ll figure it out. Go, catch up with the others. Tell Jackson thanks for yesterday.”

Rachel grins and takes off toward the gymnasium, leaving me alone on the archery range except for Billy and the scattered equipment that needs collecting.

I wait until she’s out of sight before I start moving, crouching down to pick up arrows from the grass where they’ve fallen short of the targets. The repetitive motion is soothing, giving my hands something to do, and I’m so focused on the task that I don’t notice Billy approaching until he speaks.

“So… you and Jackson, huh?”

I straighten up so fast I nearly drop the arrows I’m holding. “What?”

Billy’s standing a few feet away, arms full of equipment, and there’s something carefully casual about his tone that immediately puts me on alert. “Looks like you’d make quite the couple.”

Understanding dawns, and with it comes a mild annoyance. “Oh, that. God, Billy, must you eavesdrop on all my conversations?”

His lips quirk into a small smile. “Mmm, only the ones that interest me.”

I roll my eyes, bending down to grab another arrow. “Well, it’s never gonna happen. Just Rachel spreading gossip again. You know how she is.”

Billy doesn’t respond, just continues collecting equipment in silence, and the quiet stretches between us until I can’t resist filling it.

“Though I can’t say the same for you and Tina,” I say, keeping my voice light, teasing, even though there’s a genuine edge of curiosity underneath.

Billy laughs, actually laughs, and drives an arrow into the ground with more force than strictly necessary before pulling it free. “Ha, no way.”

“Oh, please.” I move closer, gathering more arrows. “She’s head over heels for you. ‘Billy~ Would you be a doll’” I mimic Tina’s voice, adding extra sugar to it, and Billy’s smile widens as I mock her. “Go on, give her a chance.”

We both reach for the same arrow at the exact same moment, our hands colliding, fingers interlocking around it. The contact sends that familiar jolt through me, and when I look up Billy’s already watching me, his expression shifting from amused to something darker, more intense.

“That’s a shame for her,” his thumb stroking across my knuckles in a gesture too intimate for the public setting. “I’ve got eyes for someone else.” He wispers.

Heat floods my cheeks, and I’m suddenly very aware of how exposed we are, standing in the middle of the archery range where anyone could see. I clear my throat awkwardly, pulling my hand away and straightening up. “We should… we, uh- let’s put these away.”

I glance around the camp, scanning for observers, for anyone who might have noticed the moment that just passed between us. The range is empty, most campers already halfway to the dining hall, but paranoia makes me cautious.

Billy follows my gaze, understanding the unspoken concern, then jerks his head towards where they go. “Storage shed’s this way.”

The shed is tucked away from the main pathways, partially hidden by the cabins and a thick line of trees. It’s small and weathered, the kind of structure that’s been here so long everyone just accepts its presence without really seeing it anymore.

Billy pulls out a key and unlocks the padlock, shouldering the door open with a creak of protesting hinges. Inside it’s dim and dusty, smelling of wood and canvas and the particular mustiness of things stored and forgotten. Bows and quivers line one wall along with various sporting equipment organized with surprising efficiency.

I follow him inside, arms full of arrows, and help him sort them into their proper containers. The space is cramped enough that we keep brushing against each other, shoulders bumping, hands colliding as we reach for the same shelf.

“Here, let me-” Billy reaches around me to grab a quiver, his chest pressing briefly against my back, and the contact makes my breath hitch.

“I’ve got it,” I say, but my voice comes out breathier than intended.

We continue working in silence, the air growing thicker with each passing moment, with each accidental touch that feels less and less accidental. I’m hyper-aware of every movement, every breath, every time our eyes meet in the dim light filtering through the gaps in the wooden walls.

Billy hangs the last bow on its hook, and I set down the final arrow, and suddenly there’s nothing left to organize, no task to keep our hands busy and our attention divided.

Suddenly, Billy shuts the door behind us with a soft click, and darkness descends.

Not complete darkness - thin streams of light cut through the gaps between boards, creating stripes of light that pattern the small space - but enough to make everything feel suddenly more intimate, more removed from the world outside.

“Billy,” I start, but I don’t know how to finish the sentence.

I hear him move in the darkness, feel rather than see him step closer. “Yeah?”

My heart is hammering so hard I’m sure he can hear it. “We shouldn’t-”

“I know.” His voice is closer now, right in front of me. I can feel the heat of him in the small space between us.

“Someone could-”

“I know.”

“This is-”

“Lydia.” His hand finds my waist in the darkness, and the touch makes me stop mid-sentence. “Stop thinking for a second. Just let me...”

And then his mouth is on mine, and thinking becomes impossible.

___

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫: 𝟑,𝟓𝟔𝟎

___