Chapter 15 Liam #2
I found it. The USB drive icon. Opened it.
One file. cleanup.bat.
I double-clicked.
A black command prompt window opened. Text started scrolling past—white letters on black background, moving too fast to read. Technical commands. File paths. Progress indicators.
“It’s running.”
“Good. This should take about five minutes. Don’t touch anything. Just let it work.”
Five minutes. I stepped back from the terminal. Turned.
Alex was facing away from me, standing by the door, watching the hallway through the small window.
I let myself look.
His shoulders were tense under his jacket. Hands shoved in his pockets. The fabric pulled tight across his back when he shifted his weight. And lower—
Fuck.
His ass looked good in those jeans. Really good. The kind of good that made heat shoot straight through me before I could stop it.
I’d thought about Alex plenty, thought about the way he kissed me, the way he held me tight that summer. But this was different, dirtier—more immediate.
I wanted to cross this room, press him against that door and feel his body against mine. Feel my dick against—
The thought hit so hard I had to look away.
What the hell was wrong with me? We were breaking into a building. Security could show up any second. And I was standing here getting turned on watching Alex look out a window.
Get it together.
But the heat was still there crawling under my skin, making everything feel too tight, but good at the same time. The server fans hummed around us. The only other sound was the quiet clicking of the script running.
We were alone.
My pulse was loud in my ears. Adrenaline making everything feel sharp and hyper-real. The pressure in my chest.
This was insane. Breaking into a Kingswell building in the middle of the night. Tampering with their servers. If we got caught—
Don’t think about that.
But I couldn’t stop.
Coach Hale’s face when they told him. The disappointment. The anger. My scholarship gone. My spot on the team gone. Everything I’d worked for, destroyed.
Mom’s voice on the phone. What were you thinking, Liam?
I wasn’t thinking. That was the problem. I was just... reacting. Trying to fix this mess before it exploded. Trying to protect Alex. Even though he’d left me. Even though he’d chosen Kingswell and his father’s expectations over whatever we’d had. Even though I should hate him for it.
I didn’t.
That was the worst part. I didn’t hate him at all. Instead, I was standing there wanting to wrap my hands around his waist and start kissing his neck.
“Liam.” Alex’s voice. Quiet. Urgent. “Someone’s coming.”
My stomach dropped.
I moved to the window. Flashlight beam moving down the hallway toward us, steady and methodical, sweeping across doors and walls with practiced precision.
“Noah, security’s here and he’s coming this way,” I said.
“Shit. How close?”
“Thirty seconds. Maybe less.”
“Abort. Abort.”
“The script’s not done and we can’t leave or he’ll see us!”
“Liam, you need to—“
I looked at the terminal, at the progress bar crawling across the bottom of the command window with agonizing slowness.
Forty-two percent. If we left now, it wouldn’t finish. The file would still be there. The video would still exist. And whoever sent it would know we’d tried to delete it.
We’d lose our only shot at this.
The flashlight was getting closer, the beam brighter now, and I could hear footsteps—heavy boots on concrete, unhurried but inevitable.
Twenty seconds.
Alex left the window. Started moving around the room, checking the walls, his hands running along the surface like he was searching for something.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
He didn’t answer. Just kept searching, methodical despite the panic I could see in the set of his shoulders. His hand ran along the back wall, fingers finding the gap between a server rack and the corner.
“Alex—”
His hand found something. A door handle. Small. Almost hidden in the shadow behind the equipment.
He pulled.
The door opened to reveal a closet—tiny, barely visible in the dark, just a storage space. Then, the door handle to the server room rattled.
Fuck.
He was coming in.
“Go,” I said.
We moved fast. Alex slipped into the closet first, his body disappearing into the darkness. I followed, pulling the door shut behind us just as the server room door opened with a soft click that sounded deafening in the silence.
The space was impossibly small.
Not even a closet, really. More like a storage nook someone had carved out of dead space. Shelves on one side. Cleaning supplies stacked haphazardly.
And Alex.
Right there. Right fucking there.
Our bodies pressed together in a way that made it impossible to think about anything else—his chest against mine, his breath on my neck, his shoulder digging into my collarbone, his thigh wedged between my legs.
I couldn’t move without touching him more.
Couldn’t breathe without breathing him in, without catching that expensive cologne mixed with sweat and adrenaline.
Heat rushed through me down to my dick. I was getting hard fast. It was all overwhelming and completely inappropriate for this moment when we were seconds away from getting caught and expelled and losing everything.
But it happened anyway.
Through the crack in the door, I could see the security guard’s flashlight beam sweeping across the server room in methodical arcs. Could hear his boots on the concrete floor—slow, careful, the sound of someone who had all the time in the world to check every corner.
He was checking everything.
“Noah,” I whispered, barely audible. “We’re hiding. Security’s in the room.”
“Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.” His voice was tight. Worried in a way that made my chest clench.
I held my breath.
Alex did too. I could feel it—his chest rising against mine, holding, not releasing. Could feel his heart racing through the layers of clothing between us, fast and hard and perfectly in sync with my own.
The flashlight beam swept closer to our hiding spot, painting thin lines of light through the crack in the door.
My pulse hammered in my ears, blood rushing so loud I could barely hear anything else. Adrenaline screaming at me to run, to fight, to do something other than stand here frozen.
I couldn’t do anything.
Just stand here. Pressed against Alex in the dark. Trying not to breathe. Trying not to move. Trying not to think about how every inch of him was touching me, how I could feel the tension coiled in his muscles, how his breath was warm against my neck.
The beam stopped on the terminal screen.
The command prompt was still running, progress bar crawling forward with damning visibility.
Oh god.
We were done… this was it.
The security guard moved closer, his shadow falling across the monitors like a death sentence. He was right there. Right in front of the evidence that would end both our futures.
My whole world, ending right here in a storage closet at Kingswell, pressed against the one person I couldn’t stop thinking about no matter how hard I tried.
The guard reached for the mouse. If he moved it he would see the script running.
Then his radio crackled.
“Unit Three, we’ve got a situation at the north entrance. Possible break-in.”
He paused. Hand hovering over the mouse for one agonizing second.
“Copy. On my way.”
The footsteps retreated—fast now, urgent, boots pounding against concrete as he headed for the door.
The door opened. Closed.
Gone.
I exhaled, a shaky breath that did nothing to slow my racing heart or ease the tension still vibrating through every muscle.
Alex didn’t move.
Neither did I.
We were still pressed together in the dark, too close, way too close. The danger had passed but neither of us stepped back. Neither of us tried to put distance between us, and I couldn’t tell if it was because the space was too small or because neither of us wanted to.
“Liam.” Noah’s voice in my ear, distant and tinny. “What’s happening? Talk to me. Is he gone? Are you clear?”
I couldn’t answer.
Couldn’t form words.
Because Alex was looking at me.
His eyes had adjusted to the dark enough that I could see them now—wide, breathing hard, pupils blown from adrenaline. But something else underneath all that fear and relief. Something I recognized because I felt it too, burning through me like I’d touched a live wire.
The same pull. The same impossible attraction that had been there since that summer when everything felt possible.
His face was inches from mine, close enough that I could count the breaths between us, could feel the warmth of him soaking into me like sunlight breaking through clouds.
This was dangerous.
This was the exact thing I’d been trying to avoid—the reason I’d deleted his number, the reason I’d told myself that summer was just confusion, just something that didn’t mean anything.
But it did mean something, it had always meant something.
Then, Alex’s gaze dropped to my mouth.
Everything stopped.
The server room. The script. The video. Noah’s voice asking questions I couldn’t hear anymore through the rushing in my ears, through the pounding of my heart that felt like it was trying to break through my ribs.
All of it disappeared.
There was only this. Him. The impossible pull between us that I’d been fighting—the thing that kept me awake at night, the thing that made me look for him across the water during races, the thing that made my chest ache every time I saw him.
I should step back. Should put distance between us. Should remember why we were here, what we were risking, everything we stood to lose if anyone found out.
But I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
Alex leaned in.
Just slightly. Just a fraction of an inch. Just enough that I knew—if I closed the distance, he wouldn’t pull away. He’d meet me there. He wanted this too.
My heart was going to explode out of my chest.
Every nerve ending in my body was on fire, every instinct screaming at me to close the gap, to take what I wanted, to stop fighting this and just—
I leaned in too.
The space between us collapsed.
Our lips were almost touching. Almost. One more breath. One more second.