Chapter 16 Alex
His lips were right there.
Right. There.
Close enough that I could feel his breath, could taste the anticipation hanging between us like electricity about to arc, could feel the heat radiating off his body and soaking into mine until I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.
Every nerve ending in my body was screaming.
Kiss him. Kiss him. Kiss him.
Over a year. A year of pushing this down, locking it away, pretending Brackett Lake was just a summer mistake—telling myself I could be who my father wanted, who Kingswell expected, who the Harrington name demanded.
But I couldn’t.
Not anymore.
Not when Liam was looking at me like this, not when we were pressed together in the dark with hearts racing and breathing hard, not when the thing I’d been running from was right here and undeniable and burning and so fucking real.
I wanted him.
God, I wanted him so badly it hurt.
I closed the distance.
Our lips crashed together.
Nothing gentle. Nothing tentative. Just desperate and hungry and a year’s worth of denial breaking open all at once.
Liam groaned against my mouth and the sound went straight through me, hot and raw. His hands were in my hair, pulling me closer like he couldn’t get enough, like he’d been starving for this too.
I kissed him back harder.
We’d done it. We’d fucking done it. Deleted the video. Avoided capture. Survived the impossible.
And now—now we were here, finally letting this thing between us break free, and it felt like coming up for air after drowning for a year.
His tongue swept into my mouth and I made a sound I’d never made before—something desperate and needy that should have embarrassed me but didn’t because Liam was making the same sounds, his body pressed against mine so hard I could feel every muscle, every breath, every inch of him.
“Guys?” Noah’s voice crackled in my ear, distant and easy to ignore. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”
I didn’t answer.
Couldn’t answer.
Liam’s hands slid down my sides, gripped my hips, pulled me harder against him and—fuck.
I could feel his dick.
Hard. Right there. Pressed against my thigh in a way that made my brain short-circuit and my body respond immediately, heat pooling low in my stomach as I ground against him without thinking, without caring about anything except more.
“Liam? Alex? Hello?” Noah again, more insistent now. “Did you guys die? Should I be worried?”
Liam pulled back just enough to gasp against my mouth, “We’re good.”
Then he pulled out his phone and turned off the call with Noah before kissing me again, deeper this time, his teeth catching my bottom lip in a way that made me groan.
I reached down.
Ran my hand down Liam’s stomach—felt the muscle there tense under my palm, felt him suck in a breath—and then lower, until my hand was on him, gripping him through his jeans.
He was so hard.
“Fuck,” Liam breathed against my neck, his hips jerking forward into my hand. “Alex—”
I wanted him. Wanted this. Wanted to feel him without the layers between us, wanted to know what he sounded like when he came apart, wanted everything I’d been denying myself for a year.
Liam spun us.
Pinned me against the wall with his body, his mouth finding mine again as his hands slid under my jacket, under my shirt, hot against my skin. His thigh pushed between my legs and the pressure made me gasp, made me rock against him, made me forget where we were or why this was dangerous.
Something clattered.
A mop fell. Then a bucket. Cleaning supplies tumbling off the shelf we’d knocked into, hitting the floor with dull thuds that would have been funny if I could think, if I could focus on anything except Liam’s mouth and his hands and the way he was grinding against me like he was as desperate as I was.
We were smiling.
I could feel it against his lips—this stupid, breathless, impossible happiness breaking through everything else. Like we’d finally stopped fighting. Like we’d finally admitted what this was.
Like we were free.
“I missed you,” I said against his mouth, the words spilling out before I could stop them. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. This whole time.”
Liam pulled back just enough to look at me, his eyes searching mine in the dim light.
“Me too,” he said.
The words hit me like a physical thing—hot and desperate and everything I’d needed to hear for a year.
Something in me snapped.
I grabbed him, spun us, pinned him against the wall with my whole body. Kissed him harder, deeper, my hands everywhere at once—his chest, his shoulders, his face—trying to touch all of him, trying to make up for a year of not touching him at all.
This is what honesty feels like.
This is what it means to stop lying.
This is what I want.
Liam groaned and the sound went straight through me. I kissed down his jaw, his neck, tasting salt and skin and the faint smell of soap. His pulse hammered under my lips and I wanted to mark him there, wanted everyone to know he was mine even though that was impossible, even though we couldn’t—
I didn’t care anymore.
I kissed lower. Down his throat. Down to his collarbone. Down to his chest through his shirt, my hands working under the fabric to feel the muscle there, the way he tensed and gasped when I touched him.
“Alex—“ His voice was wrecked. “What are you—”
I dropped to my knees.
Fuck it. Fuck everything. I want this. I want him.
My hands went to his belt. His zipper. I looked up at him—his green eyes wide and dark and full of want—and waited.
Liam nodded.
I unbuttoned his jeans. Pulled down the zipper. His cock was hard through his boxers and I pressed my mouth against it, felt him jerk and groan above me.
“Jesus Christ,” Liam breathed.
I pulled his dick free from his boxers.
He was big. Perfect. Already leaking precum at the tip.
I wrapped my tongue around the head, lapped up the salt and bitter taste of him, and Liam made a sound I’d never heard before—broken and desperate and so fucking hot I thought I might come just from hearing it.
His hand found the back of my head. Not pushing. Just there. Fingers threading through my hair.
I took him into my mouth.
Started slow. Then faster. Finding the rhythm that made his breath hitch and his hips jerk forward.
This is honest. This is real. This is what I’ve always wanted.
My cock was throbbing in my pants, so hard it hurt. I could feel precum soaking through my boxers, making them wet and sticky, but I didn’t care. Didn’t care about anything except the taste of him, the sounds he was making, the way his body responded to me.
I could feel him getting close—his breathing ragged, his hand tightening in my hair, his whole body tensing.
“Alex—I’m—fuck—”
I didn’t stop.
He came with my name on his lips, and I swallowed it all, kept working him through it until he was shaking, until his hand in my hair went gentle, until he was pulling me up to kiss me again—messy and grateful and still desperate.
“Holy shit,” Liam said against my mouth. “Holy fucking shit.”
Something clattered behind us—a mop falling, cleaning supplies shifting on the shelf we’d been pressed against.
We both froze, then started laughing softly against each other’s mouths, the absurdity of it all catching up with us.
Liam’s phone buzzed in his pocket.
Reality crashed back. Slowly. Reluctantly. Like waking from a dream I didn’t want to end.
Liam pulled back, breathing hard, his forehead resting against mine. His eyes were dark in the dim light—pupils blown wide, lips swollen, hair completely wrecked from my hands.
He looked perfect.
“We have to go,” he said, his voice rough.
“Yeah.” I couldn’t quite catch my breath. “Yeah, we should—“
He stepped back pulled up his boxers and zipped up.
The cold air rushed in where his body had been and I felt it like a loss, like something vital had been ripped away.
But he was right. We had to move.
Liam opened the closet door carefully, checking the server room. Empty. The terminal screen showed white text on black background: PROGRAM COMPLETE.
We’d done it.
We’d actually fucking done it.
Liam pulled the USB drive, pocketed it, then looked at me. His expression was complicated—want and fear and something else I couldn’t name all tangled together.
“Ready?” he asked.
No. I wasn’t ready. I wanted to pull him back into the closet, wanted to finish what we’d started, wanted to live in the moment where we were just two people who wanted each other instead of everything else we had to be.
But I nodded.
We slipped out of the server room.
Back down the hallway. Up the stairs. Moving fast and quiet, adrenaline still pumping through both of us but different now—not fear of getting caught but the buzzing electricity of what we’d just done, what we’d just admitted.
We crossed Kingswell’s campus in silence, but it was different now—charged with something new, something dangerous and real.
I hadn’t felt this happy since that summer at the lake. And I didn’t even care what the implications were or what happened next. I wasn’t going to control this.
I was going to let this be even if it ruined every other aspect of my life.