Chapter Three Tristan #2
I kicked my trousers down, shoved my underwear off, and stood there naked, dick already leaking in my fist. I pumped hard, desperate, hips snapping into my hand as I mouthed against the cotton.
The shirt bunched under my teeth, damp with spit, and all I could think was more.
Harder. Rougher. The way he’d manhandled me. Made me beg without ever asking.
The pressure built, sharp and blinding, until it broke. I came so hard my vision blurred, hot strings spilling across Oliver’s perfect shirt, soaking the fabric in ruin. My body shook, chest heaving, knees weak.
Desecrated, like I’d promised.
Only it wasn’t revenge leaving me trembling.
It was the filthy, inescapable truth. I wanted the man in the alley again.
But trapped here, all I had was my fury.
So I let it consume me. I tore Oliver’s shirts to ribbons, shredding silk and cotton until my hands ached.
And when anger wasn’t enough, I used them.
Worked myself raw into those perfect clothes, over and over, until I was wrung out and stinking, and I felt the mess I really was.
Spent. Disgusting. A pathetic, desperate thing clawing for anything to drag me out of myself.
Then I went to work on the rest of his stuff.
When footsteps creaked outside my door, I collapsed in a heap on the bed, sweat-soaked, bleary-eyed, and hollowed out.
I couldn’t even muster the strength nor dignity to drape the sheet around me as the door swung open.
Needn’t have bothered though, the man standing at my door had seen me in every position imaginable.
Perhaps not wallowing in self-pity as such but fuck it. First time for everything.
“Jesus Christ, Tris.” Ollie stepped in, leaving the door ajar as his gaze swept the wreckage.
His shirts torn to threads. Shoes scuffed beyond repair.
Charger, AirPods, laptop, iPad, all broken, all useless.
I’d gutted his presence from my room, destroyed every trace of him.
He bent, lifted a ruined shoe, then let it drop. “Are you fucking insane?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because I was unsure.
I’d certainly lost hold of my senses last night, and the wreckage around us testified to it.
So I stayed where I was. Face down on the bed, cheek pressed into twisted sheets, bare arse exposed, greasy hair falling like a curtain over my face. A picture of collapse.
Then Henry, Zara, and Benji all coaxed from their rooms, crowded the doorway, silent witnesses to the ruin.
And me—wreckage at the centre of it.
Ollie’s head snapped round at the sudden audience. “Fuck off.”
“Not your house, Montgomery.” Henry folded his arms, spine ramrod straight, his voice sharp with authority learnt from being a Harrow prefect.
He still spoke in surnames, as though handing out punishments after lights out.
“And with nothing left here that belongs to you, you’ve got no right to be in it.
In fact—” he nudged Zara with his elbow “—hand your key to Zara and get out.”
Ollie sneered, digging into his back pocket.
He tossed the key, Zara catching it neatly, then stalked a few steps closer, eyes blazing.
“Believe me, I don’t want to spend another minute in this mausoleum with you, Henry bloody Redmayne.
You pompous, posh little prick.” He swept a hand wide, accusing all of them.
“None of you are real. You think you’re slumming it, playing house with Daddy’s money, but you wouldn’t know the street if it spat in your face. Pathetic, the lot of you.”
I pushed up from the bed, bare and unapologetic.
Zara made a noise and looked away, Henry’s ears burnt crimson as he half-shielded his face, and Benji laughed and I didn’t know if he was laughing at my shrivelled cock after my indulgent marathon, or just the sheer audacity of me standing there starkers.
Either way, I didn’t care. Boarding school had burnt the shame out of me years ago.
Flesh was flesh, everyone had seen everyone’s, and most of us had tugged each other off at some point. Rite of passage.
“Fuck you, Oliver.” I shoved him hard in the shoulder. “You’re not exactly council estate yourself.”
He swept his gaze down me, scathing. “Christ, Tris. Put some clothes on, and maybe we’ll talk.”
“I’ve no interest in talking to you.”
Ollie’s mouth twisted into a smirk, cruel and familiar.
“Fine. We can just fuck, then. If that’s what you want.
” He slammed the door so hard on my mates the walls rattled, then twisted the lock, shutting them all out and maybe me in.
“You’re a fucking mess.” He strode back in, his fingers clamping my chin, tilting my face as if I were something to be examined under a light.
“What did Benji feed you last night? Did he give you anything?”
I slapped his hand away. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Barging in here and looking down on me after what you did. Then pretending to give a fuck about me.”
“Oh, come off it, Tristan. I do care about you. Care what Rothwell has put inside you, at least. And to defend myself even a little here, we never said we were exclusive.”
The words landed like a punch, but not in the way he intended.
Not heartbreak. But rage at the sheer audacity.
Because, fine, technically he was right.
That conversation hadn’t happened. It was implied.
Assumed. A mutual understanding. Or so I’d thought.
And if I wanted to be the little lawyer my father expected, I could have made a case for it.
Not written, no contract signed, but oral agreements can still bind parties where intention is clear.
Common law principle. Implied terms. Breach of trust. Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself.
A gentlemen’s agreement, if you will.
Though Ollie was far from a gentleman.
But in love, or whatever counterfeit version I’d convinced myself I had with Ollie, there’s no recourse. No remedy. Just humiliation.
I dropped back onto the bed; the frame creaking beneath me. “I didn’t apply for pupillage for you.”
“Oh, fuck off, Tris.” Ollie’s laugh was sharp, but not cruel. Tired, maybe. “That wasn’t for me. You wanted an excuse to prolong your father’s plan for you. I was the neat little excuse you could wave in his face. You know that. I know that.”
He was right. But I was training to be a lawyer. Meant to argue against evidence even when it was clear-cut. “If you believed that, why move in? Why stay?”
He looked around at the wreckage of his things, lips twisting.
“It’s a nice place. At least when you haven’t…
fucked every surface.” His grimace was genuine, almost sad.
“Come on, Tris. It was fun. Could still be fun if you’d let it.
But it would never last. Not once you landed your pupillage.
Us? Exclusivity and marriage? You never wanted it. ”
I clenched my jaw. “You don’t get to say what I wanted.”
“Don’t I?” He snapped his gaze to mine, sharp as glass. “I’ve seen you when I’m inside you. You close your eyes, and you’re gone. Somewhere else. With someone else. You think I don’t notice?”
I froze, throat tight.
Ollie huffed a laugh, but it was brittle. “So I took what I wanted too. A little fantasy of my own. Can you really blame me?”
I wanted to argue. Spit venom. Deny it. But my silence betrayed me.
Because he was right again. Even before the alley.
Even before the stranger. Ollie had never been enough.
I’d never wanted him the way I should have, the way I convinced myself I did.
And the worst part was knowing I’d used him as much as he’d used me.
“Why not just tell me?” I shoved damp hair back from my face, still raw with fury. “Why make me follow you, watch you, like some fucking spectacle, with half the gang standing there?”
“You dragging your co-dependents into this isn’t my fault.
” Ollie perched on my desk, folding his arms, the picture of casual contempt.
He looked knackered. Probably from being up all night fucking someone else.
Lucky bastard. “Honestly? I didn’t expect you to follow me.
But when you did, I wasn’t even surprised.
It’s your way out, Tris. Same as mine. You get to play the wounded party, dump it all on me.
But deep down? You wanted this over. You needed it. ”
“That’s bollocks.” The words came out harsher than I intended, because what cut wasn’t the accusation. It was the truth I didn’t want to hear.
“Is it?” Ollie’s smile barely curved, faint, almost weary.
“You’ll let your little housemates fuss over you, soak up their sympathy, and come out of this blameless.
Free of me without ever having to admit you never wanted me.
You can pin late pupillage on me too. Poor Tristan, giving up the family legacy to slum it with me, only to be cast aside halfway through.
Makes for a good story.” He narrowed his eyes, softer but more cutting for it.
“But the reality? It was never about me. It was about you, finally making a choice of your own.”
I looked away.
Ollie tried to get back into my line of sight.
“I didn’t tell you because this is where it had to end.
I didn’t want to have to talk to you about how I felt.
That I was merely your excuse. Maybe I was waving a flag.
A bloody cry for help. I couldn’t just walk out, could I?
Not from this.” He gestured to the room.
“You. The Mayfair golden boy. Future paved in gold. I’d be mad to walk away from you, wouldn’t I?
So maybe that was me—blinking once for a rescue.
Either way, here we are. The ending we both wanted, even if you won’t admit it. ”
I pushed up, fury burning straight through the exhaustion in my bones.
Not because he was dumping me. Not even because he’d always wanted to.
But because he used me. What I was, what I was destined to be, as the excuse.
And it cut deep, right into the part of me that despised it.
Hating how my life had been mapped out before I could even choose.
And loathing at how blind I’d been to my own ignorance.
Before I could think better of it, I seized one of Oliver’s bags, half-zipped and sagging on the floor, hauled it to the sash window, and shoved it open. Cold night air poured in, the iron fire escape groaning under the rush.
Oliver lurched away from the desk as I tipped his uni books, his tablet, everything he was working towards in his stupid Economics degree, spilling down into the yard. They hit the alley below with a scatter and thud echoing up the walls.
“For fuck’s sake, Tris!”
“You want to play at being top dog?” I reached for another of his books, sending it tumbling after. The fire escape clanged, rattling like a warning bell. “Then go fetch.”
From below came a sudden whoop, then Benji’s unmistakable warble: “It’s raining men!” He danced in the alley, Zara and Henry hovering behind him, Henry no doubt chalking up the charges we’d wrack up for fly tipping in a communal area. Fuck it. It was worth it.
Oliver caught my wrist. “Christ, you’re mental.”
“Am I?” I wrenched free and fisted his collar, dragging him in and crushing my mouth to his. Teeth, bruises, bitterness. He melted fast, like I knew he would, sliding his hands around my waist to plant his greedy palms on my bare arse, hungry for one last fuck to glue us together.
If there was one thing we’d ever been good at, it was that.
But there was nothing left in me for him now. Nothing at all. I tore back, laughter spilling out. “You’re right, Ollie. It’s gone. All of it. Out of the window.”
He tilted his head. “One last break-up fuck?”
I shoved him hard towards the door. “Fuck off, Oliver.”
For a heartbeat, relief soared through my chest. Not freedom, not yet, but the faintest taste of it. Because whatever I’d found in that alley, however filthy, however wrong, it had shown me what Oliver never was. What he could never be.
Not my saviour.
And as Ollie jumped out the fire escape, trying to salvage the wreckage of his things, I knew I wouldn’t stay caged in this room. Not tonight.
Freedom smelt of sweat and brick dust.
And I craved it.