Chapter 44
Dmitri
Eric bursts through the door, fragile as spiderwebbed glass holding on by threads. Tears track his cheeks and the quiver of his lips looks ready to shatter us both.
I launch off the bed, closing the distance in two urgent strides. “Eric, baby, what’s—”
His palm slams into my chest, pressing a piece of paper against me with enough force to push me back. “What is this, Dmitri? What the fuck is this?” His eyes are wild, pleading and furious at once. When he doesn't give me anything else, I pull the sheet free to read it.
Blood drains from my face in a cold rush.
“Where did you get this?” Hysteria floods through me while panic roars in my ears, and the world tilts as I blindly scan the words.
“It was left in my bunk.”
My breaths come in shallow, ragged pulls that never seem to reach my lungs. “Eric.” The name rasps out in a thick plea as I look at him again, and the ruin in his eyes echoes mine. It cracks me wider open.
“Tell me I’m reading this wrong,” he pleads with a desperate waver in his voice. “Tell me it’s a mistake, and it isn’t what it looks like.” He steps forward until there's no space left between us, grabbing my arms as he shouts, “Tell me, D.”
My eyes dart back and forth between the paper and his face, trying to read both at once. When I force myself to hold his gaze, my eyelids are so heavy it takes all my strength to keep them open.
In them, he finds his answer.
He grabs my left wrist and twists it upwards. “No, no, Eric, please don’t,” I plead, tears filling my eyes and spilling over in an instant.
He tightens his grip and pulls it closer, searching the dark ink of my tattoo. As soon as he finds what he’s looking for, a soft, choked sob breaks free from his lips. A feather-light fingertip drags up my wrist as his tears fall on my skin.
Next, it’s my right hand, and I don't fight him this time. He examines my skin until he uncovers my shame, buried underneath the pictures that cover my flesh.
“Eric,” I beg.
His hold on my arm loosens with numb detachment, and he stares at me like I’m a stranger.
“Eric, please say something,” I choke out, stuck in a state of paralysis.
Desperate to reach for him.
Terrified he’ll pull away.
“Why?” he demands.
I shake my head, heart breaking straight in half at the devastation on his face. “Don’t make me do this, Eric. I can’t… I can’t do this.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demands. “How could you keep this from me?”
My arms wrap around my torso and hug tight, like I can keep myself intact if I squeeze hard enough. “What good would it have done?”
“What good would it have done?” he repeats, then cuts himself off with a shaky, indignant scoff. “It would’ve let me know what I put you through, Dmitri! All these years, all this fucking time, and you never told me you—”
“Don’t!” I shout, lunging toward him and shoving him against the wall. “Don’t say it.”
“Then you say it!” he pleads, his chin lifted defiantly even as it trembles.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“It doesn’t matter!” My palms slam the wall with enough force to rattle the shelves, causing picture frames and trophies to shake in time with the chaos inside me. “It’s not your burden to bear, Eric. Just let it go.”
“Not mine?” he demands. “You think it's not mine? That’s exactly what it is, Dmitri! How could it not be?”
He snatches the paper from my hand. “Intake Date: May 21, 2016. Not that you need the reminder, but that’s the day I moved out of the dorm room. That’s the day I left you.”
My eyes squeeze shut. Visions of empty rooms and shaking razors flood back. “Please stop.”
The paper trembles in his grip as he reads on. “Twenty-one-year-old male found unresponsive. Patient flat-lined in ambulance en route, CPR administered until pulse was detected.”
“Please, Eric, please don’t.” My fingers clamp my wrists as phantom pains slice across the skin and ghosts of crimson rivers pour down my arms.
“Self-inflicted wounds to interior of both wrists, approximately six to seven inches in length. Blood loss severe…”
“Stop!” I bellow, ripping the paper free and crumpling it in my fist. Sobs tear through me as I slump against him, forehead dropping to his shoulder while I come undone. He holds me to him with a bruising grip that feels like my only anchor.
“Just tell me why,” he pleads.
I suck in shattered, gasping inhales as my ugly truth spills out. “Because I wanted to die rather than live my life without you, Eric. I didn’t see the fucking point. Even then, I knew you were mine, and when you were gone, when I realized I could never have you…”
“I’m sorry,” he rasps into my shoulder. “Fuck, all of this is my fault. If I would’ve just talked to you… if I hadn’t been such a goddamned coward…”
I press my nose into his hair and breathe him in as he quietly sobs into my shoulder. “Please, stop, baby. This isn’t on you, okay? I didn't tell you because I knew you’d blame yourself.”
“Of course I’d blame myself,” he argues. “It’s my fucking fault!”
“None of this is your fault,” I insist as I grip his hair and pull his eyes to meet mine again.
They’re tortured—tragic and grief-stricken.
“I made this choice on my own. Me. I'm the one who shoulders the responsibility for my actions. No one else gets to share the blame. Not you. Never you. You don’t get to carry this, too.”
“What if you’d succeeded?” he whispers as he pulls me closer. “I’d never have known.”
“Known what?”
“Known you.”
My grip on him tightens as I shake my head, jaw tensed until the tendons in my neck draw tight. “What wouldn’t you have known, Eric? What part of my story would you have missed out on? The one where I drank too much and forgot the most important night of my life? Threw away my chance to be happy?”
“Dmitri—” he starts.
I cut him off, my volume building because I won't allow him to shoulder this, too. “No, let's talk about it, Eric. Let’s talk about what I did to you. Broke your heart? Ruined your life? Because I did that! All of that!”
My fingers dig into his skin, daring him to flinch or run away from the ugliness he’s brought to light.
“Or would you not have known that I was a coward? That I tried to end it all in my fucking bathtub? That my last thought, lying there swimming in my blood, was that I never got to tell you how I felt?”
He whispers another broken utterance of my name.
I pause to swipe the tears from his cheeks, and my voice softens.
“My life was slipping away through the cuts in my wrists, but even then, I just wanted one more second in your presence. I’m no fucking hero, Eric, and I’m not some goddamned martyr.
All I am, all I’ve ever been, is a stupid, greedy man that’s desperately in love with you. ”
Eric takes a few shuddering inhales as he inches forward, questioning me with his eyes as he presses the softest kiss to my lips.
“If you'd done it, I’d never know what it’s like to have you in this way.
I'd never find myself, and I'd never understand what it really means to love. My life would be empty without the other half of my fucking heart. You are everything that’s good in this world, and without you, it would be so much darker.”
He pulls me to him, wrapping me up in the strength of his arms. My hands claw at his back, feeling and touching as I hold him against me. Our heads turn as one, and our lips find each other in a desperate kiss.
Eric pulls away, one hand gripping my jaw as he searches my face. “You want to know what I would’ve missed? Everything, baby. I would’ve missed out on everything.”
We collide, two stars burning in this endless night sky.
The weight I've carried for so long falls off my shoulders, and my lungs fill for the first time in years. I force his lips apart and slide my tongue into his mouth, crying or laughing, and maybe both. His hand stays firm on my chin as he guides me, tilting my head to kiss me deeper.
Needing to be closer.
Needing to never be apart.
“Make me a promise right now,” he demands as he rips his lips from mine. “Say it’ll never happen again. Swear to me you won’t leave me like that.”
“Never,” I whisper, fresh tears hot in my eyes. “I’ll never leave you again.”
He crushes me against him with a broken, relieved exhale. “Okay,” he whispers.
“But you can’t leave me, either, Eric.”
“I won’t, I swear.”
I pull back and rest my forehead against his as the weight of the past few days hits me right in the knees. Memories flicker through me—the empty space beside me where he should have been, the ache of his distance after the club, the panic of searching the woods, the public exposure of our words.
My voice shakes as I fight for calm. “But you have. You’ve left me, Eric.
You’ve put this divide between us, and I don’t know how to close it.
I don’t know how to get you back.” I lift my eyes to his, begging him to hear me.
“There isn’t a single part of me that wants to do this life without you.
Please, baby. Come back to me. Come home. ”
“I’m here,” he swears, holding my gaze so I can read the truth behind it. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. None of it matters. Not a fucking thing matters except us.”
His mouth meets mine and we snap together, every line of us pressed tight.
Hands claw like we’re starving, and his fingers gouge into my back while mine rake his shoulders.
His lips part from mine and his neck arches with a sharp hiss as my nails sink in.
Fabric rips through the quiet as I drag his shirt off and shove him hard.
His eyes flare as he lands on the mattress, and then I’m over him, crushing my mouth to his like oxygen only lives in his lungs. My teeth catch his lip, and he pulls away with a yelp. His hand swipes across the bleeding cut, staring at the red on his fingers.
“Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?” I rasp, voice scraped raw, then I’m on him again.
The sharp tang of blood hits my tongue as my mouth slants over his. We kiss like it’s the first time, like we’ve never known this level of need for one another.
And maybe we never have.
I break the kiss, fighting the pull to stay locked against him forever, and slide down his body until my mouth surrounds his nipple. He cradles my head as a moan rolls through him, and I suck harder. Hazel eyes find mine, bright with a fire that’s been gone too long.
I draw his skin between my lips with enough force to hurt, tugging until a red mark blooms beneath.
Once it’s there, dark and perfect, I lick a wet trail down his stomach.
My fingers shake on the button of his jeans, and the zipper parts with slow, audible clicks.
His hips rise as I strip the denim off in one swift motion and fling it aside to crumple on the floor.
Eric breathes my name as I take him in one deep swallow, sliding until he fills the back of my throat. I don’t relent, pulling long, wet draws as he jerks up into me.
“Slow down,” he gasps, breaths ragged and open-mouthed while I devour him with a hunger that burns through both of us.
He howls low and guttural, head thrown back into the mattress while his hands clamp the base of my skull in desperate need.
He’s such a beautiful contradiction—driving up into my mouth even as he pleads for me to take my time.
“Too much,” he says, ass flexing as he drives his hips upward.
His cries become involuntary as I take him fully, throat muscles rippling and squeezing around him, pushing him right to the brink.
Release crashes through him all at once, and his body bows off the bed like he’s been struck by lightning.
“Fuck!” he shouts raggedly as hot pulses flood my throat.
Whimpers and broken whines bounce around the room while his cock jerks against my lips, but I keep going, drawing out every shudder until he’s shaking beneath me.
When he collapses, panting hard, I ease off with a gentle kiss to his sensitive tip.
I slide up his body and claim his mouth again.
The salty taste of him lingers on my tongue as it slides against his.
The denim of my jeans scrapes over his exposed skin, and he reaches between us, impatient fingers working to free me from the last layer.
“That wasn’t playing fair,” Eric says as I stand to strip my pants, but then he gives me a grin, and it's bright and devastating, the kind that still stops my heart. As I settle over him, I pause at the fresh hickey blooming on his chest and drop a slow, tender kiss there.
“When it comes to me and you, I will never fight fair. I’ll fight dirty, and I’ll use any advantage I can.”
“That was pretty dirty,” he says with a blissed-out grin.
I kiss the rest of the way up his body, slow and deliberate, until my mouth reaches his. “That was your prep,” I say against his lips.
He’s momentarily lost in the heat of the kiss and the solid weight of my cock resting against his hip, but his brain catches up. “My prep?”
I nod, rocking my hips into him because the friction is too good to resist. “I had to give you some relief. Can’t have you coming the second you get inside me.”
His sex-dazed mind takes a few seconds to process, then he grips my hair and tugs me back far enough to meet my eyes.
“This isn’t something we have to do. It’s not something I need, D.
I told you I’m happy with what we have, and I meant it.
As long as I have you, it’s enough. It’s always going to be enough. ”
The smile I give him is soft. “This has always been about trust for me. I’ve never allowed myself to be vulnerable enough with someone to hand over the power.
” I drop a gentle kiss to his lips. “But you are my exception. I trust you with all of me, and I’m comfortable doing this with you. I want to.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he whispers.
“And I’m sorry I hurt you,” I whisper back. “Never again, Eric. Whatever life throws at us, you swear to me we’ll handle it together.”
He nods, eyes shining. My kiss cuts him off before the words can form, sealing the promise into the heat between us. I already feel it in every line of his body.
It’s an oath. A vow.
My lips linger on his, worshiping until his cock swells thick and heavy again. I slide off him, grab the lube, and flip the cap open with a quiet click. I drop back onto the bed and tug his arm until he kneels beside me.
“Give me your hand.” I squeeze a thick dollop of lube onto his fingers. “And get me ready.”