Chapter 10 #2
“Not part of your New Year’s resolution?” he asks. His tone’s dry, but his eyes linger, disapproving.
“Maybe,” I reply, and without thinking twice, I stub it out on the railing.
The ember dies with a hiss. I tell myself it’s because smoke ruins my throat, because the filter tastes like ash anyway, but the truth is simpler: He frowned, and I moved.
I don’t do that for anyone. Not professors, not my parents, not even the guys I’ve played with for three years.
But for him? My hand’s already acting before my brain catches up.
He leans beside me, arms folded, posture rigid. The silence between us is as thick as the smoke I just killed, except this time it’s him filling my lungs, not nicotine.
“Why’d you say yes to come out tonight?” he asks finally.
I think about lying. About saying “free booze” or “band morale.” But the truth slips out before I can stop it. “Because it meant I could see you.”
His eyes widen. His breath catches.
We stand there, close but not touching, the noise of the party muffled behind the door. His shoulders look tense enough to snap, but he doesn’t step away.
“You don’t even know me,” he says softly.
“I’m starting to.” And honestly, from the secret kisses we shared, I suspect I know him a lot better than most people in his life.
His head jerks, like the words hit harder than I meant them to.
For a second, I think he’s going to leave. Instead, he exhales slowly, eyes flicking toward the yard. “You’re not what I expected.”
I grin. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
He huffs a laugh. One of his real ones.
The air cools my skin, but my chest is still burning. He keeps leaning on the railing like it’s the only thing holding him steady. I watch the tight set of his jaw, the way his eyes keep darting toward the yard, then back to me, like he’s fighting himself.
The noise inside swells—someone’s chanting “chug, chug, chug”—and he shakes his head. “This is insane.”
“Yeah,” I say, but also fuck it. “Come on.”
I don’t give him time to argue. I push off the railing and nod back at the house. He hesitates, just a fraction, then follows. We head inside, cut through the crowd, and slip into a narrow hallway lined with closed doors. One’s cracked open, empty except for coats piled high on the bed.
Safe enough.
I step inside, close the door behind us, and flick the lock. The music dulls, the chaos outside muted. For a second, we just stand here, the glow from the string lights spilling through the blinds striping his face.
“Rafe….” His voice is low, a warning, but it doesn’t sound like no.
“Yeah?” I step closer. “You gonna tell me to stop?”
His breath catches. His fists flex at his sides. And then he shakes his head.
That’s all I need.
The kiss hits like a dropped amp—sudden, heavy, buzzing through every nerve.
He has a good four inches on me, all long lines and basketball muscle, and when his hand fists in my shirt to drag me closer, he has to bend, easing down so our mouths line up.
The shift makes the wall take some of his weight, his shoulders hunching just slightly as if he’s trying to fold all that height into me.
His lips are firm, controlled like everything else about him, but there’s a tremor underneath, like he’s holding back a storm.
I angle closer, testing, and when his mouth parts, the world tilts. Our tongues brush—quick, electric—and he jerks just slightly, like the shock caught him off guard. Then he leans in harder, and I taste him. Warmth, heat, the faint tang of beer still on his breath.
My hand slides down to his waist, fingers splaying against denim stretched over muscle, solid and tense under my touch.
He shivers, the sound of it breaking in his throat as his fingers leave my shirt to curl at the back of my neck.
His grip isn’t rough, but it’s desperate, a tether pulling me deeper into him.
The world narrows to heat and breath, to the slick glide of tongues tangling, to the scrape of stubble against my mouth.
Every inhale is his. Every exhale burns like fuel poured straight into fire.
The muffled bass from the party vibrates through the floorboards, through my body, through his, like the song belongs to us alone.
We kiss again, tongues finding rhythm, giving and taking until my pulse is everywhere at once—temple, chest, fingertips pressed to his skin.
I’m dizzy, burning, every nerve ending lit and screaming for more.
His blush is still visible, but now it’s smeared across both of us, heat and want and something raw neither of us names.
When we break, his forehead tips to mine, both of us panting, breath hot between us. His hand lingers at my neck, mine at his hip, neither of us letting go even though the air between us is charged enough to spark.
“This is….” Ollie stops, shakes his head.
“Hot?” I supply with a smirk.
He huffs something halfway between a laugh and a groan. “Yeah.”
“And intense,” I say, brushing my thumb over his hip.
His eyes flick open, dark and conflicted. “Don’t—don’t make me promises.”
The words hit sharper than I expect. Promises.
Like that’s the danger here, not the kissing, not the fact that he’s bent down to meet me in this sliver of night.
It makes sense, though. Promises are permanent, public.
Promises get you tied down, caught, and exposed.
He’s not asking me to stop; he’s warning me not to make this bigger than it is.
I don’t argue. I don’t push. I just kiss him again, quick, enough to taste the warning on his lips and the want underneath.
When we finally pull apart again, he looks wrecked and steady all at once. Like a guy who’s held too tight for too long and just let something slip.
The air between us is thin. His breath stutters against my mouth, and mine shoves back in return. His fingers flex at the back of my neck, like he’s not sure if he wants to drag me closer or shove me away before this goes somewhere he can’t take back.
I don’t give him the choice. I press in close, my hand sliding under the hem of his shirt until my fingertips graze warm skin. The sound he makes is small but sharp, and it shoots straight through me, hardening my cock, making me jerk toward him.
A moan spills from his lips, and we kiss again, rougher now, teeth scraping, like we’re both trying to bite down on something unsayable.
My hand at his waist tightens, memorizing the hard lines beneath cotton and denim.
He’s solid everywhere, but there’s a tremor under it—as if he’s fighting himself as much as me.
His forehead drops to mine when we break again, both of us panting. “This is…” He swallows hard, eyes shut tight. “This is—we shouldn’t.”
“Then why are you still holding me?” My voice comes out low, ragged, a dare.
His grip tightens. That’s my answer.
My lips find the edge of his jaw. He tilts his head just enough that I can taste the salt of his skin.
I slide lower, kiss his throat, and his breath catches. His free hand fists at my shoulder, not pushing me back, not pulling me closer, just caught.
And it’s there—right there—that the thought claws through me: I could keep going. Sink lower. Kneel. Take this all the way. The idea burns hot and reckless, a fuse already lit.
I pull back just enough to meet his eyes. They’re dark, stormy, undone. His lips part like he’s about to speak, but nothing comes out.
The space between us is charged and so fucking dangerous. We’re a single breath away from breaking open.
The room feels too small for the heat between us.
I notice it first in the way the air hums—like summer powerlines—then in the way the walls seem to inch closer, as if they’re watching for the moment one of us breaks.
It could be the lamplight, it could be the cheap AC doing nothing, but the truth is simpler: I’m burning from the inside out, and Ollie is the match.
I don’t let myself think anymore. Thought is where I’ve always lost him, where I’ve told myself the rules, the reasons, the tight little speeches about good sense and not ruining a life that isn’t mine to ruin.
If I let sense speak now, I’ll be silent again for years.
So I let gravity do what it’s been trying to do to me since the first time I saw him and imagined a hundred impossible futures.
My knees hit the floor. The sound is too loud in this small room, a clean clap that ricochets up my spine. Pain blooms, sharp and bright, and I welcome it because it makes me certain this is real. I’m not dreaming. I’m here, the breath moving in and out of me like I earned it.
“I want to taste you,” I say before I can tuck the truth away. My voice comes out heavy and deep; there’s a scrape in it. I’m not performing—God, I couldn’t perform if I tried. This is me with the lid off. “I want to see you come undone.”
Above me, he’s still, and… not. His body reads like sheet music I’ve been dying to play: the set of his shoulders, tight and squared; the tense lock of his jaw; the faint tremor that runs through his thighs as if every muscle is arguing with the next.
“Ra-fe—” The word breaks. That warning note fractures on my name as if the syllable is too sharp to hold.
He could step back. He could sit down and bury his face in his hands and give me a speech about what we are and what we aren’t, about closed doors and how safe the dark is if you never reach for the handle.
He’s good at speeches on the court, for the press, no doubt the careful ones he’s practiced in his head.
But he doesn’t move. He stands there like a cliff I’ve decided to dive from, his hands fisted at his sides, his eyes bright in a way I’ve only ever seen when he thinks no one is looking.
I’ve spent too many hours looking in just a few short weeks.