Chapter 33 #2
Mom plays a coin pusher game with the focus of a general in battle. Ashton spends ten dollars trying to win her a shitty stuffed dolphin from a claw machine and fails every time.
“I litigate complex contracts for a living,” he mutters at one point, staring down the machine. “How is this legal?”
Miguel laughs so hard he has to lean against me.
We ride the Giant Dipper because it should be illegal to come to the Boardwalk and not. The old wooden coaster creaks and rattles and smells like history and faint terror.
“Front or back?” Miguel asks as we get in line.
“Back,” I say. “I wanna feel like my soul is leaving my body.”
“Same,” he says easily.
Mom and Dad opt to sit it out, watching from below like the responsible adults they pretend to be. We climb into the car, Miguel’s thigh pressed against mine, his arm along the back of the seat. The bar drops. The chain clanks.
As we climb, Santa Cruz spreads out around us—ocean silver-blue, houses tiny, Boardwalk suddenly small.
“You okay?” he yells over the clatter.
“Depends,” I yell back. “If we die, I’m haunting you.”
He grins, the wind whipping his hair. “Deal.”
The drop hits a second later, and my stomach flies up into my throat. I scream, laugh, and grab for his hand. He laces our fingers together on instinct, our knuckles white with grip, and for those few seconds, it’s just speed and air and him, solid at my side.
When we roll back into the station, I’m breathless and a little high. He looks the same, eyes bright and cheeks flushed.
“Again,” I say, dizzy.
He laughs. “Later,” he promises. “Let your adrenal glands recover, baby.”
We get funnel cake and sit on the sand, backs to the boardwalk, watching waves roll in.
Mom tucks her feet into the warm top layer of sand and sighs like she’s in a commercial.
Dad takes off his shoes and murmurs something about sand in his car and then…
shuts up. Just sits there, tie-less, toes buried, looking at the horizon.
Miguel leans back on his hands, knee touching mine, squinting at the water. “If you could live anywhere,” he asks suddenly, “no rules, no money problems, nothing… where would you pick?”
“Here,” I say, without thinking.
He glances over, surprised. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe not this exact beach. Maybe… like, a little house a few blocks back. But… yeah. Here. Or somewhere like here.” I shrug. “Ocean, basketball court, you. That’s the math.”
His mouth softens. “Good answer,” he says. “Very correct.”
He doesn’t push further. Doesn’t say “and a ring” or “and a kid.”
But the picture from this morning is still curled in the back of my brain, warm and vicious. I let myself touch it again for half a second, us on a day like this, but older. Rings. Maybe small sticky hands tugging at our sleeves.
My chest does that weird achy thing again.
Then Mom is shouting about seagulls trying to steal the funnel cake and Dad is up, clapping his hands at them like a man in a nature documentary, and the moment stretches into laughter.
By the time we get home, my skin is sun-warm and my muscles loose in that pleasant, tired way. We pile onto the couch after dinner—some random movie on, Mom half-asleep against Dad’s shoulder, Miguel’s fingers lazily tracing patterns on the back of my hand where it rests on the cushion between us.
It feels… normal.
Like, a new kind we’re building from scratch.
Mom conks out first. Dad turns off the TV and nudges her, and they shuffle off to bed with murmured goodnights.
Miguel and I linger on the couch, staring at the blank TV screen in the dim light. The house creaks softly around us.
“Curfew?” I whisper.
He snorts. “Pretty sure we’re our own curfew now.”
“Okay, but like… walls,” I say. “Your mom’s threat level was high.”
“So it’s Operation Stealth,” he agrees. “Come on.”
We slip down the hall, quiet, half-suppressed giggles making it worse. In my room, I close the door gently, my heart beating too fast for the level of crime we’re about to commit. Miguel leans against it once it clicks shut, watching me. The lamplight makes his eyes look almost gold.
“What?” I whisper.
“Nothing,” he says. “You just… look happy. I like it.”
“I am happy,” I say, surprised to realize how true it is. “Like… scared. But happy.”
He pushes off the door and closes the space between us in two steps. “Scared and happy is very us,” he murmurs, cupping my jaw. “You sure you’re not too tired?”
“For you?” I say, heat is already unfurling. “Never.”
Smirking, small and soft. “C’mere, then.”
The kiss starts slowly, just mouths and the soft press and slide that says, “I missed you,” even though we never really stopped touching all day. My hands find his hips. His fingers bury themselves in my hair, tilting my head just right.
It doesn’t stay slow.
It never does.
Within a minute, I’m backed toward the bed, knees hitting the mattress, breath coming faster. Miguel’s body slots between my thighs, the heat of him radiating through both our sweats.
“Shh,” he murmurs against my mouth when I let out a soft sound. “Remember the holy water threat.”
I snort into the kiss, then gasp when he rolls his hips, slow and deliberate.
“Okay, that’s not fair,” I whisper.
“Sure it is,” he says.
He pushes me gently until I’m sitting on the edge of the bed and drops to his knees between my legs and my heart does a full cartwheel.
“Wait—” I reach for him. “If you go down on me, I’m gonna be loud.”
He huffs a quiet laugh. “Would that be so bad?”
“Yes!” I whisper frantically. “Your mom is right there. She will actually get the holy water.”
Miguel pauses, considering, then smirks. “Okay. New plan.” He stands, pulls his shirt off in one smooth motion, and tosses it aside. My brain short-circuits for a second while I take in his muscles.
“Pants,” he says. “Both of us. Bed. We keep it even.”
My mouth goes dry. “Mutual destruction?”
“Mutual relief,” he corrects. “Side-by-side. Or…” His eyes flick up and down my body. “We could try that thing you like where we both—”
A full-body shiver hits me. “Okay,” I breathe. “Yeah… That… Yes.”
We strip fast but quietly, like teenagers doing something forbidden, even though we’re fully grown and technically allowed. Miguel stretches out on the bed and pulls me in, rearranging us until we’re a tangle of limbs and heat. Then he nudges my hip. “Turn around, hermoso.”
I swallow and do as I’m told, swinging my leg over his chest until we’re in that messy, intimate tangle—both of us on our sides, mouths near each other’s hips, his breath ghosting over the inside of my thigh.
I take him in my hand first, just to hear that low exhale. He’s already half-hard, skin hot under my palm.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Hi.”
He huffs a laugh and wraps his hand around me in answer. Just that contact alone makes my hips jerk.
“Quiet,” he murmurs, breath hot against the base of my cock. “Think of… statistics.”
“I’d rather die,” I hiss, then bite my lip when he strokes, slow and firm.
The first lick of his tongue along the underside of my cock nearly takes my soul with it. I muffle the sound in the inside of his thigh, teeth scraping gently over soft skin. He shudders.
“Careful,” he mutters, voice rough.
“Do you really want that, though?” I whisper, then close my mouth over the tip of him, letting my tongue glide down each ridge of his seven piercings.
He groans, low and broken, and for a second I’m terrified the sound carried through the wall. But then his hand tightens on me, my pace stutters, and all I can think about is him.
We find a rhythm—messy, real, ours. Hands and mouths, both of us trying not to make noise, both of us failing a little. His cock is heavy and hot on my tongue, the taste of him familiar and dizzying.
He twists his fingers just right on the upstroke and my knees go weak anyway. I have to grab his hip to ground myself, fingers digging into the muscle.
“Baby,” he rasps, muffled against my skin. “You feel… fuck.”
I hum, the vibration making him curse quietly in Spanish.
“Así… mi amor, despacio,” he breathes. “Te ves tan rico así… tan entregado.”
Heat flares, my whole body tightening. I pull off him long enough to whisper, “If you keep talking like that, I’m gonna—”
He cuts me off by taking me deep into his mouth, sucking hard, and yeah, that’s it.
I bite down on the inside of my own arm to keep from yelling, vision going white around the edges as I come, hips jerking despite my best effort. Miguel doesn’t stop until I’m shaking, until the aftershocks make me whine quietly against his thigh.
He slows, gentles, and then lets me slip from his mouth. I rest my forehead against his hip, panting, fingers still curled around the base of him.
“My turn,” I whisper, voice wrecked. He’s not far behind me, I can tell by the way his breath stutters when I lick him again, by the twitch of his muscles under my palm.
“Caleb,” he warns, low.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur, taking him as deep as I can, stroking what I can’t fit. “Come on, baby. Give it to me.”
Miguel mutters something filthy and beautiful in Spanish I can’t fully catch and then he’s gone, hips jerking, hand in my hair, trying not to thrust. I hold him through it, swallowing around him, hand splayed on his thigh to steady him.
He comes with a quiet, broken sound that I feel more than hear.
When it’s done, we’re both shaking and boneless. I turn carefully, rearranging us so we’re face-to-face again, legs tangled, breath mingling. He looks wrecked with his hair a mess, cheeks flushed, and lips kiss-bruised.
Happy.
“Hi,” I whisper, smiling helplessly.
“Hi back,” he echoes, voice hoarse. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Very okay.”
Tucking a stray hair behind my ear, he kisses my forehead. “Good.”
We breathe there for a while, letting the world shrink to the sound of the fan, the distant hum of the fridge, and the beat of his heart against my chest. In the dark, the future curls at the edges of my thoughts again—rings, boardwalks, maybe small feet in these hallways someday.
It still scares me. But it doesn’t feel impossible.
“Hey, Miggy?” I murmur.
“Mm?”
“If we ever… you know.” My face goes hot. “Got married or whatever. I think I’d want it here. Or… near here. Santa Cruz.”
His breath catches. Just a little.
“Yeah?” he asks, voice soft.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s home.”
He presses his forehead to mine. “We’ll see,” he says quietly. “One day at a time, hermoso.”
One day at a time.