Chapter 19
nineteen
Liam
Two Months Later
The air’s heavy with uncertainty.
The ghost of last night’s bullshit.
Linus is sprawled beneath me, eyes half-open like he needs me to fuck him back into the moment.
I’m the man for the job.
I push into his tight rim. Heat grips me. Swallows me whole. The sound he makes, broken, beautiful, lands somewhere deep in my chest and detonates.
Every inch is a fight between restraint and ruin. I breathe through it, one hand braced beside his head, the other on his hip, holding him still as I drive deeper until our skin’s flush. There’s no space left to pretend this is anything less than everything.
“Look at me,” I demand.
When he does, I realize this is truly the end. His eyes glisten with unspilled tears. The sound he emits when I cant my hips is a prayer with its throat cut.
I drive into him so abruptly the bed creaks. My hips roll, find their measure, then pump vigorously. His breath catches every time I push forward. One of his hands slides down between us. He starts to stroke himself and I swear the visual nearly undoes me.
His cock comes alive again, filling before my eyes.
The sound of me fucking him, wet, rhythmic, indecent, fills the small room. His head tips back, mouth open. His heartbeat races under my palm, and he meets every thrust now, desperate, his hand moving faster.
I want to tell him he’s beautiful and I love him more than life itself, but the words stay trapped behind my teeth. Instead, I suck on his neck and bite him, anything to leave proof I was here.
His skin burns against mine, damp and trembling.
We’re on borrowed time. The clock’s ticking down and I’ll spend every last second we have together like it’s currency. I fuck him like I can fuse us together. Carve us into something permanent with muscle and sweat since I can’t do it with words.
Linus is close. I can tell by the way his voice fractures. The way his body arches up to meet me. How his hand moves faster. His ass muscles flex around my cock, gripping, begging, taking.
The sound he makes is half gasp, half sob, the most beautiful goddamn thing I’ve ever heard. The man’s recovery time is unprecedented, he spurts across his stomach, causing me to lose the rhythm entirely.
My thrusts falter and I bury myself in him to the hilt as I erupt, spilling into him with a guttural yelp tearing its way out of my chest. It’s not pretty.
It’s raw and feral. I can’t tell if I’m praying or apologizing.
He clings to me through it, fingers digging into my ass, blunt nails catching on my skin.
I feel every beat of our hearts as I collapse over him. The room smells like us now. Sex, salt, loss. My forehead rests against his cheek, his breath is ragged against my lips. For a moment we stay locked together. Listening to the quiet hoping it might give us something to hold on to.
“I don’t want it to end like this,” I whisper.
His hand slides up my back, soft, shaking. “Neither do I.”
I savor his lips as I pull out, hating how the air between us cools too fast. I watch the way he looks at me. Demolished. Still mine, for the moment. I smash my lips against his before I can think better of it.
I’ve told him the truth. I really don’t want our relationship to end like this.
Burying my face against his neck, I let the familiar warmth do what it always does.
Distract. Soothe. Convince.
Linus may read my body language better than anyone ever has but he doesn’t realize how truly damaged I am. Allowing him to believe we’re circling toward a future instead of stalling at the edge of one is wrong.
Cruel.
“This could work.” He wipes my cock with a warm washcloth, hope threaded through his words.
I nod into his shoulder, even as I begin the work of closing a door inside myself, inch by careful inch.
My reality is, I chase intensity when times are rough. I default to sex in order to outrun parts of me I don’t want to face. Fidelity turns into pressure, then panic, then escape.
Linus deserves a man—or a woman—who doesn’t fracture under his love. Someone who doesn’t need turmoil to feel normal.
There’s no way to have this conversation with my cock in his palm, however, so I stroke his body to memorize every inch. Allow another moment to stretch and deepen and feel real.
For him, it is.
To me, it’s goodbye disguised as devotion.
He exhales against my temple, content. Trusting. “You’re distracted.”
“Nah, baby.” I tighten my arms. “I’m here.”
It’s not a lie. Not exactly.
I give him everything I can in the present tense. I let him believe I’m choosing the possibility of us again.
If I pull away now, he’ll ask questions. Offer solutions. Fight for something I already know I won’t honor.
So I stay warm. Close. Convincing.
Later, when he sleeps, I lie awake beside him and think about how this is gonna go.
I’ll let him go slowly.
Try to make it gentle.
Loving him means knowing when to stop pretending I’m capable of giving him what he deserves. Surviving means choosing restraint over truth, at least for now.
I close my eyes and breathe him in. Commit every part of him to memory.
He thinks we’ll try.
I know I’m already letting go.