Chapter Ten
LINE OF DUTY
Wes
I shift over him, my knees bracketing his hips, feeling the way his body responds to mine without hesitation.
His hands come up to frame my face, pulling me down until our foreheads press together.
"Wes," he breathes, and it's everything—the surrender, the trust, the raw vulnerability that makes my chest ache.
"I've got you," I promise against his mouth before claiming it again.
This time it's slower, deeper. I take my time exploring him, learning the places that make him gasp, the spots that draw out soft, needy sounds that drive me wild.
My thumb traces the sharp line of his jaw while my other hand slides down his side, feeling the way he trembles beneath my touch.
When I brush against the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, his back arches off the bed.
"Please," he whispers, and it's not just about the physical need anymore. It's about everything we've been holding back, all the fear and uncertainty dissolving in this moment.
I position myself between his legs, my weight settling over him in a way that feels both protective and possessive. "Look at me," I murmur, and his eyes, dark with desire and something deeper, lock onto mine as I slowly push inside.
The groan that escapes him is pure surrender. I pause, giving him time to adjust, watching as his pupils dilate, and his lips part around ragged breaths. "You okay?" I ask, my voice rough with my own control fraying.
He answers by wrapping his legs around my waist, pulling me deeper. "Don't stop," he begs, and that's all the permission I need.
I start moving, building a rhythm that's both punishing and reverent.
Each thrust is deliberate, each movement designed to rewrite every insecure thought he's ever had with the undeniable truth of how much I want him, how completely I'm his.
His fingers dig into my shoulders, his head thrown back, exposing the long, vulnerable line of his throat that I can't resist tasting.
And when he finally breaks, when his control slips completely and he comes apart beneath me with my name on his lips, I stay right there. I don't pull back. I kiss him through the shudders, through the tears that track down his temples. Then I fall myself.
When it's finally over, there's no scramble for distance. I stay half over him, my head resting on his shoulder, our breath coming in synchronized waves. His hand comes up to stroke my hair, and I press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart.
"You still think I'm leaving?" Jules asks quietly after a long silence.
"No," I whisper, my hand finding his and squeezing.
My thumb brushes his jaw, a slow and careful movement that feels like a vow.
Outside, the last fireworks crack through the sky, a final explosion that fades into the night. Inside, it’s just the two of us. For a moment, it feels like the world has finally stopped spinning. Like maybe we actually figured it out.
The vibration of a phone against the nightstand cuts through the quiet like a gunshot.
My heart, which had finally found a steady rhythm against Jules’s skin, kicks into a frantic gallop.
I reach out, my palm landing on the cold glass of the screen.
The blue light of the phone screen is a harsh glow in the dark of the bedroom.
I shouldn't look. I know I shouldn't. But the name at the top of the screen freezes the air in my lungs.
Chief.
“What?” Jules asks. His voice is thick with sleep, his hand still resting heavy and warm on my hip.
I stare at the words. My hand is trembling—just a microscopic twitch, but I know he feels it. The air in the room suddenly feels thin, like it’s depressurizing. I’d spent my whole life waiting for the other shoe to drop, and here it is, glowing in the palm of my hand.
I look at Jules, the look already taking over my face—that old, guarded mask I thought I’d finally cracked.
“It’s a text from the Chief,” I say, my voice sounding like it’s coming from a long way off. “I didn’t mean to read it.”
I hand the phone over to him, the screen still lit up with the words that feel like a death sentence: I know it’s late. Saw the scene at the park. We need to talk about the transfer request on my desk first thing Monday. Get some sleep, son.
The word transfer sits on the screen like a live grenade.
I feel the old familiar walls slam back into place.
My throat is so tight I can barely swallow.
I want to pull away. I want to roll out of this bed, find my shoes, and go back to being the man who doesn't need anyone, because needing someone is how you get your heart broken. It’s easier to be the one who left than the one who watched the taillights fade into the distance of Sleighbell Springs.
“Wes?” Jules sits up, the sheets pooling at his waist in the dim light.
I wait for the apology. I wait for the speech about how he was just waiting for the right time to tell me he’s moving back to the city, or to a bigger house, or just..
. away. I wait for the landslide to finally take me out.
I look at the ceiling, tracing the faint cracks in the plaster, imagining them as maps of all the places I’d been alone.
I’m already mourning us. I’m already halfway out the door in my head, mentally packing the toothbrush he’d left in my bathroom.
Jules reads the text, his brow furrowing into a deep V. Then, he lets out a breath that sounds dangerously like a laugh.
“Is this why you have that look on your face?” he asks, tossing the phone back onto the nightstand. It skids across the wood, the screen finally going dark.
“That’s exactly why,” I say, my voice sounding hollow and metallic.
“He’s talking about your transfer, Jules.
The one you said wasn't happening. The one that proves I’m just a stop on the way to your next rotation.
Just another story you’ll tell at a bar in the city about that one time you spent a year in that Christmas town with the grumpy coffee guy. ”
Jules doesn't look like a man caught in a lie. He looks like a man who is incredibly annoyed with me for ruining a perfectly good moment. He shifts, crawling across the mattress until he is looming over me, pinning me down not with force, but with the sheer weight of his presence.
“Wes, look at me.” He grabs my jaw, his grip firm enough to stop the world from spinning. “I told you I wasn't going anywhere. Do you think I’d go through all of... this... just to put in for a move to another place? Do you think I’m that bored?”
“Then what is the Chief talking about? Why is he calling you son and talking about paperwork on a Sunday night?”
“The transfer request on his desk is for a permanent position here,” Jules says, his voice dropping into that low, steady register that usually makes my brain short-circuit.
“I put it in three weeks ago. It’s a request to move my permanent file to Sleighbell Springs. To stop being a floater. To stay.”
The silence that followed is deafening. The impact never comes. The ground stays exactly where it’s supposed to be. I feel like a man who had spent his whole life bracing for a punch that turned out to be a hand on his shoulder.
“Permanent?” I whisper, the word feeling foreign in my mouth. It was a word I’d use for property lines and equipment, never for people.
“Permanent,” he confirms, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone.
“I didn't tell you because I didn't want to assume. I’ve lived my whole life waiting for people to tell me they wanted me to stay, Wes.
I didn't want to be the guy who signed the papers for a maybe. I was waiting to see if you were going to let me in or if you were going to keep the door bolted. I was waiting to see if there was a version of us that existed outside of the little bubble we got ourselves in.”
“And?” I ask, the air finally returning to my lungs in one long, shaky exhale.
“And I think tonight proved the bolts are off,” he says, leaning down to kiss the corner of my mouth. “Now shut up and go to sleep. You have a shop to open in four hours, and if you're grumpy, the customers will blame me.”
I don’t shut up. I can’t. The adrenaline from his words are still humming in my veins, but it’s shifting into something else—something heavier, thicker, and far more dangerous. I reach up, my fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him back down before he can roll away.
“You’re not getting off that easy,” I murmur against his lips and roll on top of him again.
Jules lets out a low, rough sound—half-laugh, half-growl—and I sink back into him.
The late-night heat hasn't cooled an inch, fueled by the relief of knowing he isn't a flight risk. His hands wander under the duvet, his fingers finding the sensitive skin of my inner thigh and tugging me flush against him with a slow, agonizing possessiveness that makes my breath hitch.
“You want to play, Jules?” I whisper, my teeth grazing the shell of his ear. “I thought you were the one worried about getting up in four hours.”
“Sleep is overrated,” Jules says, his voice dropping an octave as his palm slides flat against my stomach, pressing down, grounding me to the mattress. “I’d rather spend the four hours like this.” Then smirks at me.
He moves with a sudden, fluid strength, flipping us until I am pinned beneath him.
The light from the streetlamps filters through the blinds, casting stripes of shadow across his shoulders.
He looks like a predator who has finally caught what he’d been chasing, but the look in his eyes isn't hungry—it’s settled.
“Look at me,” he commands softly.
I do. I let him see the wreck he’d made of my composure. I let him see the way my chest is heaving, the way I am completely, utterly undone by the idea of him being permanent.
“You’re mine,” he says, his voice a vibration I feel in my bones. “No more bracing for impact, Wes. Just feel this.”