Chapter 22
22
GAVIN
W hen we got home from the gym the following evening, Anya delivered the amazing news that she was having a sleepover. She made chicken Florentine for me and Beck, then flitted around the house, picking up here and there, preparing the family room for a movie night with her friends. Now it was a little past nine and there were five teenage girls giggling and talking loudly just down the hall.
I didn’t want to be around a bunch of annoying teenage girls, so I was hiding out in Beck’s room.
He was there too.
And we were arguing.
“I don’t want a fucking phone!” I said for the tenth time.
“Too bad,” he shot back.
He was trying to give me his old phone, and he’d added it to his plan already, the bastard. I told him I would never use it, and I didn’t need to anyway because he was always lurking around. Who would I even call or text?
“When did you do this? You’re literally my fucking shadow,” I said, scowling at him.
Beck was leaning back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest as I snapped at him from the armchair. We’d both showered, and he’d changed into a black shirt and black sweatpants, and fuck me, he looked fucking good in all black. His feet were bare on the carpet, and why was that so goddamn sexy?
“You were in the shower,” he said, shrugging one big shoulder. “There will be times when I’m not with you, like when you got your cast off, and I’d like you to be able to call me if you need to.” He pushed off the wall and started to walk toward me, and I tensed up.
All evening I’d been feeling like a firework about to go off. All day I’d been weighed down by an anxious apprehension, and all I wanted to do when I looked at Beck was get closer .
As close as I could.
But he was getting closer now. My eyes bounced over the shifting lines of muscle under his shirt as he approached me, and my face began to heat when I remembered just how firm he was, how safe he was.
And, of course, I could see his dick moving behind the sweats as he walked. I tried not to stare, I really, really did, but I failed.
Miserably.
He’d rubbed that dick all over mine just a week ago. I needed him to do it again—without clothes this time.
I wanted to get up and run to the bathroom—well, limp to the bathroom—but he was already right in front of me, crouching between my legs and spreading his hands over my thighs. The contact made me jump a little, and I slapped my hands on top of his.
“What are you doing?” I said breathily, overwhelmed with the nearness of him. I could smell him now. God, could I smell him. He’d taken all of my senses hostage, and there was so much comfort in that.
Beck looked up at me through those pretty, curled lashes, a small smile on his perfect lips. “Are you sulking because I got you a phone, princess?”
“No,” I rasped, not able to really grasp what he was saying. “You’re sulking.”
His smile widened, and he squeezed my thighs. I tried to curl my fingers under his, but his hold was too tight. Then he turned his hands over and clasped mine before I could yank them away. He pulled my left hand up to his mouth, never breaking eye contact, nipped at my index finger, then sucked it into his mouth.
The need that flooded my system from that one tiny action was dizzying. I lurched forward as a helpless whimper escaped my throat, and then I was ripping my hands away from him, trying to shove him back. He stood up and let me wobble to my feet, let me catch my breath as I avoided his eyes.
“I need some water,” I said, inhaling deeply, then moved toward the door.
“All right,” he replied softly.
I didn’t look back, stepped into the hall and shut the door behind me. Stood there for a long minute.
Of course I didn’t really need water, Beck had a ton of it in his room. I needed air—because Beck was showing me that the time I attacked him in his office—his response to me—wasn’t a mistake.
I wasn’t…afraid, I didn’t think. Not entirely. It was all just so overwhelming, like being deprived of water for a lifetime and then falling into the ocean.
With a sigh, I started making my way down the hall. I didn’t know what was happening between me and Beck, but I knew I needed to get over these moments of panic and just let him…let him in, if that’s what he wanted. It seemed like it, despite what my darker thoughts were telling me. He was right here, giving me a kindness I’d only ever received from him before. One I didn’t deserve, but I couldn’t stop myself from taking it.
Beck was and always would be the only thing in my life ever worth trying for, and if he needed me to find my courage—if I even still had any—then I would spend a lifetime searching for it.
As I got to the turn in the hall, I heard a familiar voice.
It was my voice. Only, it was a recording of my voice.
“I lost everything because of you!”
There was a gasp from the family room, and then the voice of a girl I didn’t know said, “Told you. He’s a fucking psycho.”
My breath hitched in my throat, and I felt like I was being buried alive. I couldn’t breathe, and a sickening wave of something dark and oozing slowly permeated every molecule of my being.
“It’s all your fucking ? —”
There was a thud in the recording, then a scream, and I heard Anya say coldly, “Turn it off.”
My heart began to race so fast I was sure it would burst, and I took the last few steps to the bathroom and slammed the door.
I was wheezing now, leaning my palm against the counter as I hunched over, trying to breathe. I shoved the shower curtain aside and clumsily climbed into the stall, sitting down hard, folding my arms around myself and turning toward the wall.
I focused on getting air in and out, in and out, staring at a crack in the tile. Imagining myself slipping into it. Disappearing.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but there was a knock at the door, and then Beck’s voice. “Gavin? You okay?”
I couldn’t remember if I’d locked the door or not, but it didn’t matter.
“Yeah,” I whispered, but he couldn’t hear me. I heard the door open and shut, heard the lock click into place, and then Beck’s hands were on me.
“Hey,” he said softly. Soothingly. He brushed one hand through my hair and stroked up and down my leg with the other. “What happened?”
I opened my mouth, and it felt like dust came out. There was another knock at the door, and Beck’s hands paused.
“Hey, Beck? Can I talk to you?” Anya said through the door.
“Can it wait?” he called.
“Not really…”
“Fuck,” he muttered. He splayed his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to look at him. “I’m not leaving, okay? I’ll be two feet away. You’re okay. Keep breathing for me, you’re doing so good.” He kissed my forehead—hard—then got to his feet and pulled open the door.
“What?”
“I told everyone but Sara to go home,” she said, and there was a sadness tinged with anger in her tone. “Because they were showing videos of some kind of fight Gavvy got in a couple years ago. They weren’t being very nice about it. I just thought you should know. I don’t know where they got the videos, it was on some social media site. I’ve never wanted to hit anyone before but I really wanted to smack some decency into them. I didn’t know they were such jerks or else I never would’ve brought them here.” And then, as if just seeing me lying in the shower, Anya gasped. “Oh, is he—what happened?”
I closed my eyes, as if that would make me invisible.
“I’ve got it, you should go be with Sara. We can talk more about this later, okay?”
“Yeah, of course. We’ll be in my room if you need me. Love you B. Love you, G!” she said a little louder, and my heart flipped over.
Beck shut the door and engaged the lock again, then kneeled by my side and put his hands on me. My soul settled with his touch.
“Is that what upset you?” He was petting my head like I was a dog, but I didn’t care because it felt so good. “Did you hear something?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. I heard the most awful version of myself.
“Did you hear the video?”
That was the thing about living in the twenty-first century. Everything you did—all your successes and all your mistakes—were recorded somewhere. And the biggest mistake I’d ever made—attacking another student on campus—had been recorded. Multiple students had captured the entire exchange on video. One video in particular had the best shot, the best angle, the best sound, and that one lived forever on every single social media site in existence.
“Yes.” It was a whisper.
“Okay. You know you only acted like that because of the steroids, right? You wouldn’t have attacked someone like that if you weren’t on them. You don’t do that, and you never did. You were just an asshole sometimes, and mostly to me.”
I didn’t agree. I was horrible. I’d done horrible things, said horrible things. I didn’t deserve anything good.
“I wasn’t on steroids then,” I whispered.
Beck’s eyes searched mine, his lips parting. “I heard it can take a while for them to get out of your system. That the withdrawal can be really bad.”
I didn’t say anything. There was no excuse. I lowered my eyes to his chest, my bottom lip quivering.
“Gavin,” Beck said, and the sternness in his voice had me shifting my gaze to his and leaving my thoughts behind. “That’s not you anymore, is it? It never really was in the first place. Everyone on this fucking planet makes mistakes. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. And if people only see you for who you were, if they don’t realize that you are not your mistakes, then they’re not worth a single fucking thought. You hear me?”
I stared into his eyes as his words drifted into every blackened corner of my mind. Beck threaded his fingers into my hair and tugged. The sensation was sharp and sent a wave of heat through my lower body. I closed my eyes, humming in contentment.
Or maybe that was a moan. Probably. I was getting hard now. Fuck, I couldn’t get enough of the way he touched me.
The fingers of his other hand worked their way into my hair, and I opened my eyes to find him so close I could kiss him if I just leaned forward an inch.
“Do you hear me?” he murmured, his eyes searching mine.
“Yes,” I whispered. I swallowed past the growing thickness in my throat. “But…I fucked up, Beck. I really fucked up and now…I don’t know how to make any of it better. I don’t know how to fix it.”
He kissed my cheek, so softly I barely felt it. “You can’t fix it,” he said, and the truth of that brought tears to my eyes. “There’s no going back and undoing the past.” His thumb brushed along my bottom lip, and the tenderness in his gaze sent those tears spilling over. “All you can do is what you’re doing now—try. Try to be better than you were. Try to give yourself some grace and focus on right now, when you can actually do something about it. Try to not hate yourself so much. You’ve always been a stubborn bastard, and you need to be stubborn about this now. Dig your heels into the idea that you can change, you can be better, and that you deserve good things. Okay?”
He brushed away the tears, then slipped his fingers into my hair.
“Okay,” I whispered, clutching his shirt.
“I’ve always wondered…” he started, his eyes drifting up to watch his fingers tangle through my hair. “Why you took steroids in the first place. You didn’t need them.” His gaze fell back to mine. “You were great all on your own.”
I licked my lips, trying to focus on his hands. His smell. The way he was looking at me. “Because…” I could tell him. It wouldn’t change anything. He already knew so much, and he still kept being kind. He’d seen me at my worst, and he still wanted to be near me. “Because my dad told me to. Said he would stop paying for school if I didn’t do better. If I wasn’t the best. He…he hated that you were better than me, and even though I was captain, it didn’t matter. You had more wins and in his eyes, I was a failure.”
He hummed like he’d thought as much, and a wave of relief rolled through me. For some reason, it made it so much better that he knew about my dad. It was like…like some of the blame was taken off my shoulders and placed where it belonged. Like I didn’t have to carry so much, hide so much. Not around him.
And still, I didn’t want him to know everything. I didn’t want him to know the finer details. I especially didn’t want him knowing that my performance had started to suffer because I couldn’t think about anything but him. Being so close to him all the time, not being able to have him, started to really wear me down and fuck with my mind, and I couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t even muster up the will to care about wrestling anymore. What was the fucking point? Who was I doing it for? Myself? I hated myself.
“All right,” Beck said, dragging me from the darkness of my mind. “But you’re not a failure. You’re not a bad person, either. You’ve just done bad things.”
He sighed and pressed his forehead to mine. “Why don’t we get you up, okay?” His hands left my hair as he stood. He held one out to me, and I took it, letting him pull me up and help me out of the shower. And just when I started to reach for the doorknob, he stopped me.
He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, so tight I couldn’t move. I felt his cheek on my head, and when he put us in front of the mirror, my eyes found his immediately in the reflection.
“Let go,” I said, my voice shaking. I didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, but I didn’t want to be in front of a mirror right now. Or ever. Dr. Varu’s homework was never getting done.
“Look,” he murmured. I could feel him pressed against me from behind, could feel the solid lines of his body, the strength in those lines. He was completely surrounding me, as if he somehow knew that I was so ashamed of what I’d become that I couldn’t bear to look at myself. As if he was protecting me from this, too.
“Look,” he said again with a patience I would never have. He started moving his right hand, his hold looser, but I knew better than to try and get out of it.
Didn’t mean I wouldn’t try, but…but, god, his fingers were trailing along my abdomen, making every muscle in my stomach contract and firing overwhelming bolts of lust to my cock. My balls felt so fucking heavy, and those fingers were sliding even lower now, and then he brought his other hand up to my jaw, curling his fingers around it in a firm but gentle hold.
“Beck, I need you to let go of me right the fuck now.” I tried to sound mean. Angry. Intimidating.
I just sounded small and scared.
Beck ignored me. “Look at yourself, Gavin.” His lips were right beside my ear now, his voice curling inside me, coiling around my chest and constricting. I shivered against him.
He’d never taken his eyes off mine in the mirror, not once, and the intense eye contact was only making me more aroused, his attention like an aphrodisiac, and a small sound slipped past my lips.
“Go on,” he murmured. “I’m right here with you. Nothing bad is going to happen. You’re safe with me. Always.”
Yeah. I was. But I wasn’t safe with me .
He slid his hand beneath the hem of my shirt and pressed his palm against my stomach, and I grabbed onto his forearm.
“What are you doing,” I breathed.
“Trying to show you how beautiful you are when you shed those outer layers,” he said softly.
I couldn’t focus on anything but his hand. His voice. Precum leaked from my cock as he brushed his thumb back and forth on my skin, his fingers so close to the waistband of my pants, and the anticipation of not knowing what he was going to do or say next was all-consuming.
“Beck,” I said, and it came out as a needy, terrified whine, a pathetic sound that had humiliation replacing the building lust.
This wasn’t like when I attacked him at the gym. I’d been so overcome with pent-up need and anger that I hadn’t been able to control myself. Now…now Beck was in control, Beck was initiating, and I didn’t know why that scared me so much more even though I’d been wanting it all along.
“Shh,” he said. “I’ve got you. Nothing bad is gonna happen, I promise. You’re okay. This is okay. Nothing has ever been more okay than this moment.”
“I can’t…I’m not…”
“You can, and you are. You are, and there’s nothing wrong with who you are.”
Fuck, but I believed him. Because I could feel it in every long-forgotten piece of my soul. He was collecting them all, gathering them up and showing me they weren’t lost after all.
Or maybe he’d been holding onto them all this time. Keeping them safe.
He rubbed his cheek against mine, scratchy against smooth, and I closed my eyes and moaned. He had me in a fucking trance right now, and I could barely think past the way he was touching me, the way he smelled, how he’d moved even closer against me until my thighs were hitting the countertop. The press of his erection was right at the top of my ass, and I’d never felt anything like it in my entire life. I wanted him to use me how he wanted, to take from me what he needed, and to see his face when he finally got it. I wanted him to make me repent for every moment I’d hurt him.
All those times I’d imagined something exactly like this, and then punished myself for it, paled in comparison to how it really felt to be in Beck’s arms.
“Can you see how good you look, princess?” His whispered words slipped past my eardrums and settled in my soul, and then his fingers tightened on my jaw. “You look so good when you try. Look.”
I wanted to do everything he told me to.
I opened my eyes, found Beck’s, then let my gaze shift to my reflection.
I looked awful.
Haggard.
Thin.
Pale.
My hair was longer than it had ever been, curling over my ears and covering my forehead. My muscle mass had severely depleted these past few years, and though I still retained some, I wasn’t nearly as big as I used to be. My eyes…god, my eyes were wide and fearful. I was sure that, if I still had the beard, I’d look like someone who’d lost his mind. Maybe I had.
I looked terrible.
My eyes slid back to Beck’s, not able to stand myself any longer, and the reality of my appearance had stifled my arousal.
“Beck, let me go. Please,” I begged, not wanting to be here for another second. I was about to start breaking down, about to start fighting him, and I didn’t want to do that. Not anymore.
Beck stroked his thumb just under my jaw, slid his fingers across my stomach, and said, “Why would I let you go when you just came back to me? You begged me to never leave you again, do you remember that? And I promised you. I promised you I wouldn’t.”
I was trembling uncontrollably now, like all my atoms were vibrating beneath my skin. I was barely holding myself together. Beck was the only thing keeping me from completely falling apart, and when he tilted my head and pressed his lips to my neck, a raw, anguished sound broke from my throat. The kiss he placed there was gentle. Soft. The sweetest thing I’d ever been given.
I wanted more. So much more, and it felt wrong to want that, but it didn’t. No. It felt right. It felt more right than anything ever had, and I was seconds away from begging him to never let me go. To keep me forever, to keep making me feel like this forever.
To keep making me feel.
“Do you know what I see when I look at you?” he said. “I see a boy who used to hold me at night so that I wouldn’t be afraid of the monsters, so that I wouldn’t have to face them alone. I see someone who was abused by a small man with bad ideals, and is suffering greatly from that abuse. I see a man who wants to be himself, but doesn’t know who that is and is terrified of what he’ll find when he figures it out. You don’t need to be afraid, Gavin. But even if you are, I’ll be right here by your side. You don’t have to face this alone. I’m right here, and I won’t ever let anything or anyone hurt you again. Not your dad. Not you.” He lifted his eyes to mine in the mirror, and the almost ruthless resolution in them sent a thrilling flare of heat down my spine. “Especially not me.”
He lowered his lips to my neck again, placing a series of small, tender kisses up my throat. When he got to my jaw, he turned me toward him, sliding one hand down to my lower back and pressing me into him. I fisted his shirt above his pecs as his other hand cradled the back of my head, fingers grasping my hair tight.
He stared into my eyes with so much raw emotion that it stole my breath. “I missed you so much,” he whispered raggedly.
His words shattered me, and all I could do was hold onto him and think I missed you too .
His eyelids lowered as his gaze trailed down to my mouth, and he pulled on my hair, tilting my head back even more and making me gasp as a flare of pleasure zipped down my spine, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
“You like that, don’t you? You like it when I pull your hair,” he murmured, and his voice was thick with desire, low and deep and embedding itself right under my skin. “You like it when I get rough with you.” He tugged again, harder this time, dragging a loud moan from my chest. My eyes rolled back as he lifted the shirt at my back and slipped his hand under the waistband of my pants, sliding down until he was cupping the curve of one ass cheek. “Do you want to find out what else you like, princess?”
I was pressing myself against him now, shamelessly, my throbbing cock pulsing with every word he spoke.
“Yes,” I choked out, unable to say anything but that. Unable to feel anything but that.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes .