36. 36 #2
“Shh, freckles. You’re gonna need to stay quiet,” he rasps into my ear, and then he’s pushing my G-string aside.
I barely register the fabric moving before two fingers slip inside me, filling me with such ease and confidence that my head tips back instinctively.
My breath catches, the moan trapped in my chest.
I grip the edge of the table so hard my knuckles ache.
A waiter walks past. I freeze.
Michael doesn’t.
To anyone passing by, we look like a couple cuddled close in a booth. No one can see what’s happening beneath the table, but the idea that someone might, that someone could know what he’s doing to me under white linen and candlelight—it makes my blood run hot. Makes my thighs tremble.
“Wanna feel you come without a sound,” he murmurs, fingers stroking deeper, curling ever so slightly. And God help me, I do too. I want it so badly my eyes sting.
The tension builds in one blinding wave. Fast. Relentless. My muscles clamp down around his fingers as the orgasm rips through me without warning. A silent quake. I bite into my bottom lip, smothering the cry rising in my throat as my entire body shudders beneath the table.
Michael doesn’t stop.
He rubs me through the aftershocks with a kind of reverence, until my legs shake and I sag into the booth, boneless and breathless. Then, with a maddening calm, he pulls his fingers from me and lifts them to his mouth.
And sucks them clean.
His eyes never leave mine as he does. My cheeks flush, and my heart pounds against my ribs.
He then leans back, lifts his beer to his lips, and sips it like it’s the most ordinary night of his life. And later, when I kiss him, I do it like he hung the fucking moon.
Because the idea that I just let him finger me in public is absurd.
Reckless. Insane. But I don’t feel ashamed.
I don’t feel small. I feel alive. I love the person I am when I’m around him—uninhibited, wild, wanted.
Like maybe I haven’t lost myself at all.
Maybe I’m just becoming someone new. Someone who doesn’t apologise for wanting more.
We showered together for the first time when we got home. I couldn’t tell you who reached for who first. What I do remember was the thick heat from the steam, the sharp bite of tiles against my skin, and the feeling of his hands on my hips as the water poured over us.
His mouth between my thighs, my nails scraping over his buzzed hair. Heated skin against skin, slick and desperate, like we couldn’t get close enough, no matter how tightly we clung. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t rough.
It was everything.
Tucked in bed now, we’re both tangled beneath the quilt, still damp and flushed from the shower.
The soft glow from my bedside lamp—courtesy of Michael, because he insisted I ‘needed’ one—casts golden shadows across the room.
My cheek rests against his bare, solid chest, and his fingers trace lazy circles along my spine.
Sprinkles is sprawled at the foot of the bed, unbothered by the emotional intensity in the air.
She’s stretched out, her now too-big paws twitching in her sleep like she owns the damn place.
“She’s too clingy for her own good,” I murmur, eyes fixed on her.
Michael shifts slightly beside me, his voice low and amused. “She’s basically a weighted blanket with a superiority complex.”
A soft laugh escapes me. “She’s also huge. Had I known she’d get this big, I would’ve given her right back. In passing, she could be mistaken for a small dog.”
He snorts, and for a moment, we both go quiet again. But not the heavy kind of silence.
Just… stillness. My gaze drifts, trailing over his features, until it lands on the faint line that cuts through his left eyebrow. A deep, pale scar, slicing clean through where hair should be. I’ve seen it before, always assumed it was intentional—some edgy, half-shaved detail.
But under this light, at this distance, I see it clearly for what it is.
A wound.
“How did you get that?” I ask, voice hushed.
He doesn’t answer right away. His body stills beneath mine. “It’s a… long story,” he says eventually, his tone carefully neutral.
“Michael.” I shift up slightly so I can see him better. “You’re always asking me to open up. Fair’s fair.”
He meets my gaze, then huffs a breath through his nose. “Touché.”
I wait, patient but steady. “Besides,” I add, brushing my fingers gently across his chest, over the short dusting of hair. “I have time to listen.”
He stares up at the ceiling for a moment, his chest rising and falling beneath my palm. Without looking at me, he says quietly, “My father.”
Just two words, and yet they feel like a stone dropped into water, rippling outward.
“When I was twelve, he threw a glass ashtray at my head.”
My breath catches, lodging in my throat, and I struggle to swallow the lump. I stare at him, but he doesn’t look back. Just keeps his eyes fixed on the ceiling like it’s safer than meeting mine.
“He was pissed about something, probably nothing. Harrison wasn’t home. Mum was asleep on the couch.” His jaw tightens, and something flashes behind his eyes. “Or passed out. Honestly, I couldn’t tell anymore by then.”
I blink at him, stunned. There’s a ringing in my ears, a pressure building behind my ribs.
But before I can say anything, he lets out a soft huff of laughter.
It’s raspy and so painfully out of place that it stops me cold.
“You know,” he murmurs, the corners of his mouth curling in something that isn’t quite a smile, “I’ve never told anyone that before. Not even my brother.”
My heart twists. “Didn’t he ask? Wonder how you got it?”
“I told him I got into a fight at school. Typical bullshit.”
I shake my head slowly in disbelief. “And what did he do?”
Michael lets out a hollow laugh. “He marched into school the next day and beat the shit out of a group of boys.”
My eyes widen. “Wait—what?”
“They might not have been the ones to hit me, but they were assholes, nonetheless. Bullies. Had a rep for going after younger kids. Harrison knew they deserved it, even if they hadn’t touched me.
” There’s something about the way he says it that’s so matter-of-fact, it makes my stomach turn.
“He got suspended from school for a week,” he continues.
“And he smiled the whole damn time. He was proud of it.”
I press a hand to my chest. “And you never told him?”
Michael finally looks at me again. His eyes are glassy now, unfocused. “He doesn’t need to know. He did everything he could for me back then. He was a kid, too. Just trying to protect me however he knew how. I wasn’t about to add to what he already carried.”
A silence settles over us, and it’s heavier than before. The kind that pulses with things unsaid.
His voice lowers, gaining a rasp that sends a shiver through me.
“You have no idea what it’s like, Zoe,” he says, sitting up, rubbing the back of his neck like the words physically hurt, “to grow up in a house where every room feels like it might turn on you. Where love’s used to shut you up.
Where silence isn’t peaceful, it’s fucking survival. ”
He sits up slowly, dragging a hand through his hair as though the memory weighs too much.
His jaw tightens as he swallows hard. “You’re lucky,” he says, quieter but no less intense.
“You’ve got parents who give a shit. Who would protect you.
Who fucking choose you, even when they screw it up. You don’t know how rare that is.”
He doesn’t say it to hurt me. He says it because it’s true. Because it’s real. Because he’s lived the opposite. I don’t speak. I can’t. My thoughts are caught in the storm of his words—twisting, crashing, trying to find somewhere safe to land.
Because how do you respond to something like that?
What do you say to the boy who learned to live in a house made of landmines?
Who mistook silence for safety and pain for attention?
Michael tenses beside me. Just slightly. Like he’s bracing himself for rejection. For discomfort. But he doesn’t pull away when I shift closer to him, pressing my body to his, letting him feel my warmth.
“Michael, I—” I start, but my voice cracks.
This man. This beautiful, broken, impossible man—he’s been holding all of this in for years. Folding it neatly into the corners of himself, where no one could see. And now, somehow, he’s placing it in my hands. Gently. Like if I hold it wrong, it might break.
He glances at me, and something in his expression softens—just for a second—before confusion flickers behind his eyes.
“Hey, hey… don’t cry,” he says, brow furrowing as he reaches for me. “Why are you crying, Freckles?”
I don’t even realise I’m crying until my vision starts to blur.
I blink hard, confused at first, and swipe the back of my hand across my cheek, only to find it wet.
“Because everything you said yesterday…” My voice is uneven.
“It makes sense now. Why you wanted me to try. Why you asked me not to give up.” I breathe in shakily.
“I’m sorry for sounding like such an ungrateful bitch. That was never my intention.”
His fingers brush my cheek, tucking a damp strand of hair behind my ear with a gentleness that guts me. “You’re not ungrateful,” he murmurs. “You’re hurting. We all carry things, Zoe. Some of us just got better at hiding them.”
I swallow hard, my throat tight, but I don’t look away. “Thank you,” I whisper. “For sharing that. For trusting me with it.” I shake my head, eyes fixed on his. “You didn’t have to, but you did. And that means something.”
His gaze drops for a moment, lashes brushing his cheek as he exhales.
“I’ve lived with it for so long, it barely feels real anymore,” he says.
“Just these pieces I carry around. Shit I don’t talk about because it doesn’t change anything.
But it’s not all bad. My mum… she got better.
She pulled herself out of it. Harrison and I, we’ve found our footing.
We’re solid now. We’ve built something indestructible. ”
There’s a quiet pride in his voice when he says it.
“I’m okay now,” he adds. “Not perfect. Not fixed. But okay. And that’s more than I ever thought I’d be.
” Michael hesitates, just for a second, and his thumb brushes the inside of my wrist. “I, uh… need to be honest about why I bought you the lamp,” he adds.
My eyes flick to the small lamp sitting on the worn-out bedside table, then back to him.
“Okay.” I nod.
“It’s for me. So I’ve got a light on when I sleep over.”
My heart cracks wide open.
He swallows hard, gaze flicking away. “I know it sounds stupid. I just… I don’t like the dark. Not fully. Not all the time. I don’t like not being able to see what’s around me.”
The realisation dawns on me, suddenly. A child’s fear that never fully left.
“Michael,” I whisper. “That’s not stupid.”
He still looks like he might shrink into himself. Like saying it aloud stripped him bare. I run my fingers across his cheek, over the stubble that dusts his face. “It’s not weak to need something that makes you feel safe. It’s brave to know it, and even braver to say it.”
His eyes lift to mine, a little glassy, a little surprised. And I mean every word when I tell him softly, “I think it’s admirable. That you can open up. That you can face your fears and still show up. Still try.”
And the way my words come out so easily makes me truly see him in a different light.
Really see him. Michael is not just the man who kissed me first. He is not the one who made me laugh when I forgot how.
But the man who kept walking forward, even when the world tried to break him.
Because I know now. And I won’t forget. I’ll never forget what it cost him to let me in.
And that he still chose softness.
Chose me .