Chapter 3
Lincoln
Lincoln opened his eyes to a stripe of light slicing across the ceiling.
The guest room curtain filtered the sun, turning it gray before it reached the walls of his bedroom.
He was alone in his bed, the sheets cold everywhere his body wasn’t touching, but the door to the adjoining room stood slightly ajar.
A jagged line of shadow in the gray morning.
Through that narrow gap, he could hear the heavy, rhythmic shift of Malik in the other bed. Malik was only ten feet away, separated by a thin panel of wood.
He was certain Malik would have slept in the same bed with him last night if he’d asked, but they’d already crossed a boundary they shouldn’t have yesterday.
His skin still registered the shape of Malik’s hand. The phantom weight of a wrist, the roughness where Malik’s thumb had rubbed up and down his ribs against the cold metal of the stacks.
He shifted, his own bedsprings complaining in the quiet house.
Lincoln pressed his lips together and waited, listening for any change in the breathing from the next room.
It remained steady. Malik was still asleep, his presence filling the adjoining space with a gravity Lincoln could feel through the ajar door.
Lincoln’s own body ran tight, not from fear of discovery by the world, but from the fact of being discovered at all. Even by the man in the next room. His cock ached, the tension translating up his spine and out through his stiff neck and shoulders.
He sat up, legs over the side, toes digging into the threadbare carpet, then bare wood.
The cold surprised him. For a second, he let his hands dangle between his knees, head bent.
He wanted to blame the ache on age, or the desperate friction they’d managed in the stacks, but the truth was deeper.
The library hadn’t been an ending. It had been a beginning he wasn’t prepared to manage.
He stood and moved to the dresser. In the second drawer, he found clean underwear folded on top. Proof of how Malik had quietly integrated into the household to keep the ruse of their engagement alive. The movement of pulling them on scraped the fabric over his sensitized skin.
He forced himself to move fast. No lingering, no fantasy replay of the way Malik had looked at him while commanding him to look at him.
He buttoned his shirt quick, found his pants, and shoved one leg through before he realized he’d grabbed yesterday’s pair.
The waistband cut into his hips in a way he didn’t recognize.
He slipped into the hall, pointedly not looking through the crack of the connecting door. The stairs creaked under his weight. At the bottom, the kitchen greeted him with the burnt smell of coffee from the cheap drip machine.
He poured a cup. Steam smacked his face, a reminder he was still alive and not a figure in a cautionary tale.
Lincoln sipped, the bitterness scraping at the soft places inside his mouth.
He leaned against the counter and waited for the guilt to arrive, but it was overshadowed by a twisting low in his gut.
A hunger that the coffee couldn’t touch.
He managed to avoid Malik all morning. Even snuck out of his childhood home when he finally heard him get up. Lincoln drove to campus with the window cracked an inch, the heater running on high.
He parked in the faculty lot, wiped his hands dry on his slacks, and walked toward the symposium hall. Inside, the air had a wet-wool smell. The name badge station looked like it had been raided by hungover undergrads, lanyards tangled in a heap.
Lincoln’s badge still hung crooked around his neck. He straightened it as he wove through the atrium, and headed for the main lecture room. Academics clustered in knots, voices raised to compete with the crowd.
The names drifted past, each one a history lesson he’d rather skip. He nodded at Monique, one of Emmy’s colleagues, who smiled back and scanned him up and down.
“Rough morning?”
He didn’t answer.
Let her make up whatever story she liked.
Victor, a department chair, intercepted him by the entryway, hand outstretched.
“Lincoln,” he said.
The handshake went long, Victor’s fingers squeezing just past polite. He wore his conference uniform. Wool vest, paisley tie, wire-rim glasses.
“You look preoccupied,” Victor said, his eyes searching Lincoln’s face for the cracks Malik had made.
Lincoln met his eyes. “I am. Last-minute edits.” He tried to pull free, but Victor held another beat.
“You always were a perfectionist,” Victor said. “You could try enjoying the panels for once.”
“I’ll work on that.” Lincoln kept his voice flat, pulled back, and slipped past.
The lecture hall buzzed with noise. Malik’s seat was already reserved. Back row, center, perfect view of the stage and exit. Lincoln found his spot two seats over, maintaining the professional distance he preferred.
He set down his bag, scanned the schedule, then looked up just in time to see Malik arrive. Their eyes met. Malik gave a small, sharp nod. It wasn’t the nod of a colleague. It was the nod of a man who knew exactly what Lincoln looked like when he lost his breath.
The panel started. Julia, an associate professor, took the podium, her energy sharp enough to cut the noise down to a low murmur. She welcomed the crowd, then introduced the first speaker, a visiting scholar with a nervous tick and a PowerPoint that kept skipping slides.
The talk blurred past, Lincoln barely tracking it. He studied the lines of Malik’s face instead. The set of his jaw. The way he wrote in the margin of his program with a black pen, left-handed.
Questions followed.
Julia called on Lincoln first.
“Would you say,” Lincoln asked, “that the translation challenges you described reflect a deeper cultural erasure, or simply a lack of effort on the part of prior editors?”
The speaker blinked, surprised by the bluntness. Lincoln kept his voice mild, eyes on the podium, but he caught Malik’s smirk out of the corner of his eye.
After the applause, Malik took the podium. He walked to the front, papers in hand, and began with an unscripted joke that loosened the room. Lincoln braced himself for the sound of Malik’s voice, the way it dropped low when he addressed the crowd.
Malik’s presentation ran tight, each point linked to the next. Lincoln tracked the slide order, the subtle shifts of emphasis, the offhand reference to a joint paper they’d coauthored a decade ago. Malik shot him a look as he said it, the words hanging a little longer than necessary.
Julia steered questions to the audience. Shelly, Emmy’s fiancé, spoke up from the side aisle.
“Dr. Okonkwo, would you argue that institutional memory is more critical than the individuals who perpetuate it?”
“Memory is nothing without a witness,” he said, “and nothing’s more dangerous than a witness who believes himself above the story.”
It stung. Lincoln’s ears burned, but he smiled for the audience. When he looked over at Shelly, she didn’t smile back.
The panel closed with a clatter of applause. Lincoln rose, making for the exit, when a hand caught his elbow. He turned, expecting Malik, but found his sister, Emmy, standing there. She looked immaculate, her coat draped over her arm, her eyes narrowed with a terrifyingly keen intelligence.
“Lincoln,” she said, her voice a low, melodic chime. “I didn’t expect to see you looking so...unraveled.”
Lincoln’s mouth dried out. “It’s been a long morning, Emmy. The symposium is demanding.”
Emmy stepped closer, pulling him away from the flow of exiting scholars toward a quiet corner of the lounge. She looked toward the podium where Malik was still surrounded by a small crowd of admirers.
“Interesting dynamic, the two of you,” she said, her gaze returning to Lincoln. “I know I’m the one who suggested this little arrangement for the mom’s sake, but I wasn’t aware it was going to be quite so...effective.”
“I wasn’t aware it was a topic,” Lincoln said, trying to regain his professional footing.
Emmy’s expression became unreadable, a small smirk playing at the corner of her mouth. “It’s always a topic, Lincoln. You know that. But up there? During the Q&A? You two didn’t look like colleagues playing a part. You looked like a fuse that had already been lit.”
“We’re colleagues, Emmy. This fake relationship is for you and mom. It doesn’t bleed over into our professional surrounding. That’s all.”
She tapped her finger against her chin, scanning his face.
“I hope that’s true for your sake. Because you look at him like he’s the only solid thing in this room.
And he looks at you like he’s trying to decide whether to cite you or devour you.
You’re supposed to be ‘faking an engagement, Lincoln. But when he touched your arm earlier? You didn’t move away, you leaned in. ”
She gave him a look that lasted too long. A look that saw right through his repression.
“Just be careful. Lies are easy to manage. It’s the truth that ruins people.”
She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving Lincoln standing in the wake of her words.
He left the lounge, found a quiet corner in the stairwell, and sat on the steps. He pressed his thumb into the bone of his wrist, let the pain settle him. It was better than thinking.
By the time he returned, the announcement for lunch was made. He found the closest table and took a seat.
Malik slid into the seat across from him. “You okay?”
Lincoln nodded, kept his gaze on the snow outside. “Fine.”
Malik’s knee found his under the table. The pressure was definite, not subtle. Lincoln didn’t move.
“You sure?” Malik asked, voice low.
“I said I’m fine.”
Malik set down his fork, reached under the table, and placed his hand on Lincoln’s knee.
The touch was gentle, but the weight of it said everything.
Lincoln froze, unsure if he wanted to pull away or lean into it.
He did neither. He sat, unmoving, as Malik’s thumb stroked once, then twice, over his pants.
Lincoln’s heart hammered in his chest, a hard and stupid drumbeat.
He waited for Malik to let go, but Malik didn’t.
Instead, Malik lifted his hand and set it on the table, next to Lincoln’s. Their pinkies overlapped for a second, then parted. Lincoln’s skin stayed hot long after. He finished his meal in silence, then stood to leave. As he passed Malik, their shoulders brushed, a slow friction that lingered.
A door he’d had no intention of opening had been thrown wide and he realized he no longer had any desire to close it.