Never Let Me Go (Inevitably You #2)

Chapter 26

26

BECK

E xcept nothing was ever simple, was it?

My lawyer, Jeff Lockhart, told me unless we could get the skirt-wearing mustache guy to confess to the police, there wasn’t much we could do. There just wasn’t any evidence outside of that little rat’s word, and I already knew he wouldn’t tell the cops a thing.

I asked him to look into that guy’s background, see if he could find anything that might show a pattern of behavior, but I wasn’t hopeful. Still, I wasn’t giving up. I would find a way to get justice for Gavin, and now that I knew just how far his dad was willing to go to hurt him, I wasn’t letting him get away with this.

And Gavin…he was willing to press charges if we were able to get enough evidence. I was so fucking proud of him because I knew that wasn’t an easy decision to make. He never wanted to deal with the police again if he didn’t have to. But he wanted his dad to be punished on some level, wanted to fight back, wanted to stand up for himself and what he deserved, and fuck was that beautiful.

There’d been a subtle change in Gavin, too, and I didn’t think he even noticed. It was like he’d finally let go of something, or found something he’d lost.

He’d almost completely let his guard down now, and I wanted to worship him for that. The courage it must have taken to open that door he’d been keeping shut tight for so long made me want to kneel at his feet and promise him a lifetime of servitude. Whatever he wanted, I would give to him. Because when Gavin shrugged off the weight of all he’d been carrying—alone—for so long, he deserved everything.

He was working out with me every day at the gym now before we opened, and he was eating more, too. He was getting his definition back, and was actually willing to look in the mirror to see his progress.

To see himself.

His confidence was growing, and he was trying— really trying—to improve himself.

We’d even gone and gotten tested for STIs together because both of us wanted to ditch the condoms, so now we were just waiting on the results. Everything with him was starting to feel normal, or what normal with him might feel like, and I was happier than I’d been in a long, long time.

But guilt was beating a distant drum that echoed in the back of my mind, like some fucked up rendition of Jumanji . It wasn’t new or foreign; I’d been feeling this guilt ever since he came back into my life. Since I saw those scars. It was growing, festering like a rotten wound, and I didn’t want to address it. Not yet. I was so caught up in just having him again, in being with him and living in his ever-increasing happiness. It was infectious, that happiness. Beautiful, too.

God, was it beautiful.

“What are you thinking about? You’re doing that thing again.”

I turned my head to find Gavin watching me with keen eyes. “What thing?” I asked.

It was well after midnight, and Anya was sleeping over at Sara’s. We were sitting on the couch watching a cheesy action flick from the eighties. I had one arm around his shoulders, elbow bent and my fingers in his hair, playing absently with the strands. He’d thrown a leg over mine and was leaning into me, the fingers of our left hands linked on my thigh.

It was everything I used to dream about when we were younger. Just being with him. Existing in the same space without any hostility. It was everything I never thought I’d have again.

He smiled a little and said, “That thing where you purse your lips and frown at the same time. Super attractive, by the way.” He ran the index finger of his free hand across my bottom lip and I caught it between my teeth. When my tongue pressed against the tip, he sucked in a soft breath as he watched my mouth. His eyes looked like shards of amber that stars had gotten stuck in.

I let go of his other hand to pull his finger from my mouth, then brought it down to my heart. “I was thinking about you,” I said. I watched his throat muscles ripple as he swallowed.

“What about me?” There was a hint of wariness in his tone, and I knew I had to be careful with my next words. Gavin’s temper hadn’t magically vanished, and he still had moments where it got the best of him. It would take time to learn how to funnel his stronger emotions into a healthier outlet.

“I was thinking about…” I tightened my grip on his hair, my cock pulsing when he made a sound dripping with need. “Fuck, baby. The noises that come out of you.” I pulled his hair and shoved at his chest, making him lie flat on his back as I got over him, pinning him to the couch with my body. He arched his back and thrust his hips up, grinding his hard cock into mine as he speared his hands through my hair and stared into my eyes.

“I was thinking about you, too. There’s something I want to do, to see if I like it,” he said, voice deep and husky.

“Anything, princess,” I murmured, lowering my mouth to his neck and sucking hard. He jerked against me with a small cry, and I immediately pulled off his throat and covered his mouth with mine, muffling the sounds he couldn’t help making. His hands drifted down my ribcage, along my back, until he was grabbing my ass and urging me to rut into him. I rolled my hips and watched his lashes flutter, his lips part, and then he tipped his head back and moaned. I ate it up and pulled his hair, devouring the whines and shuddering whimpers that came next. When I started kissing and biting my way down his jaw, I slid my hand over his mouth. He moaned and shuddered against me.

Oh, he fucking liked that.

He met every thrust, every pump, with a frenzied fervor that was making precum leak from my cock, pulsing waves of heat crashing through me and leaving me panting against his neck.

One of his hands left my ass, and he started tugging at the hand I had over his mouth. I moved my fingers to the side and lifted my head. His irises were practically nonexistent as he stared up at me, and he wrapped his fingers around mine, holding tight.

The way he looked was devastating to my heart. He had me firmly wrapped up in him; I was completely obsessed with this version of Gavin—because it was his truest self, the man he was always meant to be, and that was as beautiful as it was heart-rending.

“What?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head. “Nothing, I just can’t believe you’re really here sometimes.”

He kissed the tips of my fingers. “It does kinda feel like a dream, right? Although this—” he thrust his cock against mine, making me grunt. “—feels very, very real.”

I lowered my lips to his, but he said, “Wait, I—I wanna know what you wanted to talk about. Before we do anything.”

I pulled back again and saw what I’d missed before—he was anxious. I’d made him apprehensive, and I didn’t want him to be uneasy about anything, not with me.

I was glad I was lying on top of him so he wouldn’t be able to rush out of the room or out the front door when I said my piece.

I kissed the corner of his mouth. “I wanted to talk about you…about you and me. The fact that I’m a guy.” Fuck me, I was botching this—badly—but I felt like saying the word would instantly have his guard back up.

He looked confused, and rightly so. “Yeah, I can feel that,” he said.

Wiseass.

“No, what I meant was—your issues with…queer people.”

Any humor on his face and in his eyes was snuffed out in an instant. Fear crawled through those eyes now, and even though part of me wished I’d never asked, it was a conversation that needed to happen. I just wondered if my timing was completely off.

Gavin let go of my hand and pushed at my shoulder. “Get off me,” he said, but there wasn’t any anger in his voice, which was what I’d expected. Only fear.

“No,” I said softly, resolute in this. I wasn’t going to let him run away from himself anymore. I loved him too much to let him flounder in his fears forever.

“Beck. Get off me. Please get off me.”

“No. I’m not gonna let you run from this, Gavin. You can tap out if you really can’t face this, all right? I’m proud of you for everything you’ve done, for how much you’ve accomplished, but this is a conversation that’s been a long time in the making. A long time. I’m not trying to hurt you right now. I only want to help you. You’re in a safe space where no one can hurt you. Okay?”

Gavin closed his eyes, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled a long, loud, and deep breath. The corners of his mouth were pulled down, and when he opened his eyes again, they locked onto mine, something sad and fierce in their depths.

I pressed my forehead against his and whispered roughly, “Talk to me, baby. Please. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m right here.”

“Yeah,” he rasped, like his throat was too thick. “I can feel that, you fucking elephant.”

I huffed a laugh and kissed his cheek. “You can do this. You’re so much stronger than you think you are—even for a baby hippo.”

A small sound vibrated in his chest, and he slid his fingers into my hair. He was quiet for a long time, just looking back and forth between my eyes, like he was siphoning some of my strength to help get him through this. When he finally spoke, it was with a softness that had a hard underbelly. “I’m not gay, Beck.”

He believed those words. I could hear it.

“It’s okay if you are. There’s nothing wrong with who you are.”

“But I’m not.”

I sighed. This was along the lines of what I was expecting, and maybe I should just drop it. Try again later, when he’d had more time to try and accept himself. “Okay, baby. Let’s just?—”

“No, I’m—you’re not listening, asshole. I’m not gay. But I don’t think I’m straight, either. I don’t know what I am. I’ve never once felt any kind of attraction to anyone—guy or girl or anyone .” He paused, sucked in a stilted breath, and said, “Except you.”

I was stunned. Blown to pieces that scattered messily across the floor. I swallowed hard and said, “So you’re…maybe you’re demi?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, and I don’t really care. All I know is that you are the only person whose clothes I ever wanted to rip off.” He gave me a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“What about…your girlfriend? In high school?”

He shook his head, disgust with himself evident on his face. “I only dated her because that’s what people expected. It’s what my dad expected, and I thought that maybe it would make him think that I was normal, keep him off my back. But I wasn’t. I…I couldn’t even get hard for her. I think she felt sorry for me, thought I had a problem getting it up, and I let her think that. But any time I saw you…” The heat in his eyes was unmistakable. “Any time I saw you, I couldn’t get it to go down.”

His admission floored me. All this time, he’d been living in a kind of hell I couldn’t even fathom, reflecting the hate his dad threw at him back onto the rest of the world. And all the while, when I thought he hated me with every fiber of his being, he wanted me.

Only me.

The guilt that had been steadily growing ignited into an unbearable grief, and the remorse that accompanied it became heavier and heavier, until I let myself sink down on top of him and buried my face in his neck, pressing my nose against the soft skin behind his ear.

I should have known. I should have seen . If I let myself look back on those miserable eight years before he got arrested, I would probably be able to point at certain memories and say, “There. That right there wasn’t hate. It was fear and a longing so deep it was oppressive.”

The real Gavin had been buried miles beneath the surface, screaming into a void that no sound could ever escape from.

And I’d just left him down there.

Gavin kept speaking, stroking a hand down my back as if I was the one who couldn’t handle this conversation.

I wasn’t sure I could anymore.

I was glad he couldn’t see me. Couldn’t see the horror and misery washing over me.

“I never really hated you or anyone else. I hated myself. My circumstances. That I couldn’t be happy like everyone else and I had to hide something but they didn’t. I was so, so jealous of every single person that got to love whoever they wanted, and the steroids only made all of it a hundred times worse. Every time I had to see you, it only reminded me of everything I lost. Everything I couldn’t have. It didn’t feel right, or fair, but there was nothing I could do to change any of it. And I tried to make you hate me because you just kept trying to talk to me, kept looking at me with all that fucking hurt in your eyes and—if my dad ever found out I was talking to you or hanging out with you, the punishment would be worse than anything he’d given me before. He said he was going to send me away to a place that wouldn’t be as nice as he was. I didn’t want him to send me away because then I wouldn’t even get to see you. I was so scared that anything would be the last straw for him, and he would send me away or kick me out for good, like he kept telling me he would.

“And…after the day you kissed me, he never let me forget for a single second how wrong it was. But it never felt wrong. Not to me. No part of the time I spent with you, the things we did, the way we were, ever felt wrong. But I kept my mouth shut and did what he wanted because I was so afraid of being left by the only remaining person in my life. So afraid of being left alone.” He laughed humorlessly, bitterly. “Guess it didn’t matter in the end, because I wound up alone anyway, no matter what I did to try and prevent that outcome.”

I swallowed, my mouth so dry there was an audible click. I would kill his fucking dad if I ever saw him again. I would fucking kill him. “You’re not alone anymore. You don’t ever have to be alone again.”

His hand paused, and then he started tracing my spine with his fingers. “Yeah. I want to believe that. But it’s…it’s hard. It’s hard when I feel like I don’t deserve to be anywhere near happy. All the things I did and said, I felt like the trajectory of my life was as good a punishment as any.

“And I really don’t want to face all the things I did. I’m scared to face them. I can’t fucking stand myself, Beck. I can’t stand the things I did. I don’t know how to live with it, so I just bury it. I’ve been working with my therapist and trying to come to terms with it all, but it feels so fucking overwhelming that I don’t know if I ever will. I don’t think I can ever make any of this right.”

I closed my eyes and pressed a soft kiss to his neck. “You can’t. All you can do is try and accept that you did those things, forgive yourself, and do better. That’s all you can do, baby. And that’s okay.”

Something wet hit my cheek, and when I lifted my head, Gavin had his eyes closed and tears were spilling fast from the corners. I wrapped my arms over his head, brushing his hair back with both hands, and kissed him. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “You’ll be okay. I’ve got you now.”

Gavin’s hands trailed up my spine and slid into my hair, pulling me in for a hard kiss as he cried, as his body shook with his silent sobs. His tears were like acid, burning a hole in my heart and making me wish I could take his pain and give him something better. When he let his head fall back onto the cushion, he cracked his eyes open, the watery amber shining in the low light.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said, his voice cracking on the last word.

I nuzzled my nose against his. “Yeah, you do. You really do. And I deserve you, too. I think after ten years of bullshit, we should at least believe that, don’t you?”

He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he wanted to say no.

“Can you promise me something?” I asked, rubbing my thumbs over his temples in lazy circles.

“What?”

“Promise me that you’ll keep on trying. Because you are so fucking beautiful when you let yourself try. You deserve the world, Gavin. I’m gonna kill that vicious inner voice that’s been hissing nothing but lies at you. I’m gonna talk to you until all you hear is my voice inside your head. Mine and yours. The way it always should have been. Just me and you.”

A few more tears escaped. “Fuck. Yeah, I fucking promise, Becky.”

This was Gavin at his most vulnerable. He’d cracked his chest open and lain himself at my feet, trusting me not to stomp on his heart. His trust was the most precious gift, given to me in shaking hands with an incredible show of courage. He might not be able to see all the ways he was beautiful and deserving right now, but I would spend a lifetime guiding him into that light until the strong-hearted person he was exploded in vivid colors around him.

I sealed that promise with a kiss and a silent promise of my own: that I would never let him be alone again.

And then something occurred to me, as if it had taken a backseat until now.

“Wait. Hold up. You’ve had sex with someone before, right?”

The nonresponse he gave me was as loud as a shout, and my ears started ringing in the silence. He stared up at me as his cheeks flushed a bright red, and my heart started pounding in my chest.

“Gavin? You’ve had sex, right? Like…any kind of sex?”

He ripped his eyes from mine and turned his head, but I grabbed his jaw and turned it right back, forcing him to look at me.

“Are you telling me you’ve never done anything until last week? That I was your first time doing anything? At all?”

I was his fucking first? I’d be his last, too. His everything. Forever his.

His anger returned in full force, shoving all his vulnerable parts back inside and locking them up. He looked so fucking sexy with his tear-stained cheeks and fury in his eyes, and my pulse skyrocketed. “What the fuck does it even matter! Just—” He shoved at my shoulders again, but I only put more of my weight on him, making him grunt.

I grabbed thick handfuls of his hair and yanked his head back as he bared his teeth at me. My feral fucking animal. “What the fuck , Gavin! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because then you wouldn’t have fucked me! It’s fine, it’s not a big deal and I knew you would make a big deal out of it. Like you’re doing right fucking now. It’s just sex, Beck. Who cares if it’s the first time or the second or hundredth!”

I sputtered. “Just sex? You gave me your fucking virginity!”

“Ugh, gross, don’t fucking call it that,” he said with disgust, shoving at my face.

“What, virginity?” I shook his hands off and smirked, then bit his scowling lip. “Are you mad that I loved fucking your tight virgin hole, princess? Does it piss you off that I’m the only one who’s ever gotten to see how fucking sexy you are when you come?”

He had both hands on either side of my face, and I could see his pupils dilating, his breathing picking up. He licked his lips, and then I licked them too, grinding my hard cock into his and slipping my tongue into his mouth when he opened on a groan. He angled his head and fucked his tongue into my mouth, moaning as he arched into me and Jesus fucking Christ, I didn’t think I’d ever get enough of him.

Then he was pulling my head back, ending the kiss way too fucking soon. “Wait,” he panted, staring up at me with half-lidded eyes that made me want to slowly slide my cock into him an inch at a time and watch them get wider and wider until they rolled back. “Wait—I—I want to try that thing. You can’t come yet.”

Those words from his lips were like a hand on my cock, and I bucked into him, feeling dizzy with the amount of lust he was wringing from me. “Fuck,” I groaned, pushing up on my hands. “You can’t say shit like that.”

“What? That you can’t come?”

I rolled my hips, making both of us moan at the delicious friction. “Yeah. I don’t know why, but fuck, that really turns me on.”

The slow, cat-like curl of his lips lifting into a mischievous smirk ratcheted my arousal even higher. “Oh yeah? You like it when I tell you not to come, Becky?”

I dropped down onto him and shoved my face into his neck, biting hard as I mindlessly drove my cock into his, waves and waves of pleasure crashing through me relentlessly. Gavin’s hands were on my waist and he was moaning, then whining in my ear, and Jesus fuck, those sounds, I was about to?—

“Stop!” he gasped, grabbing my ass and trying to still my thrusts. “Stop, stop, stop, Beck, I don’t want to come like this, please. Oh, fuck.”

After one last hard grind, I stopped moving. My mind was spinning with nothing but thoughts of him, how he made me feel, how I wanted to be skin on skin so fucking bad .

“Fuck me . Can I do that thing now?” he murmured in my ear.

“What thing?”

He tapped my hip and said, “You have to let me get up.”

Very begrudgingly, and not before giving him a long, slow kiss, I moved off him and sat on the other end of the couch. I watched as he sat up and slid to the floor, walking over to me on his knees.

Oh, holy shit . Images of Gavin crawling to me on his hands and knees flooded my mind, and my fucking god, I needed that.

I spread my legs and let him come between them, and when he ran his hot hands up my thighs, scorching me through my sweatpants, when he turned his head up and hit me with those wild amber eyes, when a slow smile spread across his cheeks and his fingers crept higher until they were at the waistband of my pants, I whispered, “Fuck.”

Gavin looked up at me and said, “I wanna see if I like my lips around your cock, Becky.”

“Fuck,” I said again, my vocabulary reduced to the only thing I wanted to do with him.

He slid his fingers into my sweats, letting them curl around the waistband, then leaned forward and mouthed the length of my cock through the pants. I couldn’t help thrusting, pressing myself harder against those filthy fucking lips, and when he moved higher and his hot tongue slid along my crown, my hands flew to his hair.

“Oh, fuck,” I rasped as he flicked his eyes up to mine, and it was like a bolt of lightning hit me right in the balls. He drew away, taking all that heat with him, but my disappointment quickly changed to a heady anticipation as he started dragging my pants down.

“You should take these off,” he said, tugging at them. “I want to feel every inch of your skin, Beck.”

I would do anything he wanted. Fucking anything.

I lifted my hips so he could pull them down my thighs, my cock bouncing free and hitting my stomach, hard as steel and leaking precum. Gavin’s eyes were riveted to my dick, even as his hands kept yanking the pants down. When he got them off, he flung them carelessly to the side, then spread his hands over my thighs. He hummed contentedly as he nuzzled his cheek and mouth against my inner thigh, and my body was heating up everywhere he touched me, spreading outward until I was an inferno of need.

My heart got involved when he began pressing tiny kisses up my thigh, and a groan vibrated through my chest as his hands moved higher.

“I love your fucking thighs,” he murmured as he reached the sensitive crease between my thigh and groin. He licked a flat line up to my stomach, fingers dancing lightly across the vee of muscle. He kissed his way back down until he buried his face in the short curls at the base of my dick, moaning and nudging his nose against my cock.

I couldn’t think anymore. Could barely breathe. He’d reduced me to a buzzing hive of wicked sensations that licked along every nerve-ending and pulsed headily through my groin. I was so fucking hard that I felt like I would come before he’d even gotten his lips around me.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Gavin looked up at me again, his expression filled with a lazy lust that made me suck in a breath. He drew his head back, holding my gaze, then wrapped his hand around my cock.

I bucked, my fingers tightening in his hair. “Oh, fuck, baby.”

His lips tipped up at the corners. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this? To you and only you?” He slid his hand up in a loose hold until he was right below the crown, then stroked his thumb over the dripping slit, smearing precum around the entire head. When he swirled his thumb around the sensitive underside, I grunted as sparks of pleasure curled through the pit of my stomach. “I wanna make you feel good,” he murmured, sliding his hand down and gripping the shaft tight, pumping it a few times. “Really fucking good.”

I brought my hand down to his jaw. “You already do,” I said.

His expression shifted to something darker, something that filled me with excitement and raw need. “I want to make you feel better than anyone else ever fucking has. I want you to forget every single piece of shit you’ve ever been with.” He squeezed my shaft, pulling a groan from my chest, his eyes lit with fire and determination.

I didn’t tell him that he was miles above anyone that had ever come into my life. No one stood a chance, not against Gavin.

“You’re gonna make me come before you’ve even gotten me in your mouth, princess.”

“No,” he growled, tugging sharply on my balls with his other hand.

“What the fuck!” I barked, yanking his hair and pulling his head back. His hand tightened on my cock as he moaned, and then I moaned, bowing over him and shoving my forehead against his. “You little shit.”

His moan devolved into a laugh painted with lust. “Yeah, but I’m your little shit.”

Fuck me, he was so fucking perfect and he didn’t even know it. I tilted his head and slanted my lips over his, giving him a punishing kiss and taking his perfect words with me as I pulled away. “Yeah, you fucking are.”

Without another word, he swallowed me down, and the surprise of being fully encased in his throat without any kind of prelude made me shout.

He took me as far as he could go, then closed his lips around my length, pressed his tongue flat against the underside, and sucked as he slowly came back up.

I fell back into the cushions, my hands slipping from his hair as a debilitating euphoria rolled through me in pounding waves. He pulled me from his mouth, tongued my slit with a needy sound, then wrapped his lips around me again, swirling his tongue around the crown.

I could feel the pressure building rapidly, and I got myself together enough to tug at his hair. “I’m gonna come—baby, I’m?—”

He popped off my cock and squeezed the base. “No,” he said firmly, slightly out of breath. “You can’t come yet.”

Those words only made it worse, and when he grabbed my balls and squeezed—too hard—I growled and flew forward, fisting his hair in a painful hold. “Stop squeezing my balls, you fucking asshole!”

Gavin was too busy moaning to respond, but he’d let go of my balls, thank fuck.

“You just fucking wait until it’s your turn,” I said, but my threat only sounded like I was desperate for it to be his turn.

“Oh my god, yes,” he groaned, ripping his hair from my hands and falling back onto my cock like he was in a race and had to finish first.

I was definitely the one who’d be finishing first, with the way this was going.

I watched him bob on my cock, listened to him moan like he’d never known true pleasure until this moment, and the slurping sounds, the spit that was pooling at the base, the tears in his eyes, threw me over the edge.

“Gavin—”

He dragged himself off me, breathing hard and squeezing the base of my dick again, staving off the orgasm. It was so frustrating it bordered on painful, and I glared down at him while he smirked up at me.

Fuck, but I was loving every second of this.

Every time we’d had sex, I was always the one in control, always the one leading—which we both preferred. But right now, with this one thing, Gavin was in control, and we were both fucking loving it. I could see in his eyes just how satisfied he was, proud of himself, even. He really loved this.

“You can come when I let you,” he said hoarsely, and it only made him sound even sexier and made my cock jerk in his hand.

Gavin proceeded to suck me down and bring me right back to the brink, stopping before I could come, and I was so fucking aroused that my brain was short-circuiting. I thought I spoke a few times, but none of it sounded like real words. My chest was heaving as he tortured me, my heart expanding at the delight in his eyes, and after the sixth time he brought me right to the edge and then stopped, I could tell he was also edging himself. He needed to come almost as badly as I did, lust etched in every line of his face.

And then my mind malfunctioned completely when he said, “I want you to fuck my face, Becky. I want you to use me and come down my throat.”

Those panted words had me groaning, and I threaded my fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. “Say please, princess.”

He wanted it so badly he didn’t even glare at me or protest. “Please. Please fuck my face. Fucking use me.”

This man owned every inch of my soul.

“You are so fucking perfect,” I murmured. “Keep your eyes on mine, baby. Don’t you dare look away.”

Gavin fixed those honey-colored eyes on mine and opened his mouth, his tongue sliding out like the filthiest offering.

I took his offering and pushed slowly inside while dragging him closer with a hand on the back of his head. I slid my cock to the back of his throat, groaning when it pressed against the resisting muscle.

“Christ, you look so fucking good with my cock in your mouth,” I rasped, letting go of his hair with one hand and trailing it down to his jaw, reverently stroking the back of my fingers along his skin.

Gavin whimpered as I moved my hand back to his hair and slid both around his skull. “This mouth is mine and only mine. I am the only one who ever gets to see you like this, you hear me? Mine .” I pumped into the back of his throat, gently at first, testing what he could take. He kept his eyes on mine, his hands wrapped around the back of my calves. I started thrusting harder, my cock slipping deeper and deeper, his mouth stretched open and his eyes watering. With every inch I gained, Gavin’s hands squeezed tighter and tighter.

I pulled out, my cock covered with his saliva. He gasped in a few panting breaths, and I couldn’t help sliding my fingers inside, feeling that wet warmth. “You feel so fucking good, baby. So fucking good.” Gavin closed his lips around my fingers, moaning when I pushed them to the back of his throat. He was trying to keep his eyes open and on mine—I could tell he was trying—but they rolled back a few times, the lids dropping to half-mast as his started to lose himself in what he was feeling.

I pulled my hand out and replaced it with my cock. “Hold onto me, princess.”

The eager anticipation in his eyes almost had me blowing right there. He let me push myself deep, holding his head in place, and when I finally slipped past the tight muscle and bottomed out, I almost came. Gavin’s eyes were streaming with tears, his face getting redder and redder. I held him still and pumped a few times, the sensation so fucking good, and then I realized something else, something that shot all the ecstasy I was feeling into dizzying heights.

He didn’t have a fucking gag reflex.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, voice hoarse and deep. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I couldn’t stop myself from fucking into him with rough, hard thrusts, couldn’t stop myself from using him like he wanted me to. The wet choking sounds he was making as he moaned and whined around my cock were fucking intoxicating. His eyes were in the back of his head now, and he shoved his hand into his pants, stroking himself furiously as I fucked his throat. The orgasm exploded through me, and I pushed my cock as deep as it could go, my cum spurting down his throat in heavy bursts as I groaned. I felt him tense up, and when he let out a long whine, his body bowing forward, I moved my hips back, dislodging myself from his mouth and letting him breathe.

His gasps were sharp and deep, and he rested his head on my thigh, breathing hard. His eyes were closed, but he opened them when I brushed his hair back.

“Am I gay now?” he panted, eyes glinting with humor.

At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But when I realized he was referring to the comment I made about magically turning gay with your first blow job, the laugh that barreled out of me was deep and full. I leaned over and pressed a kiss to the corner of his eye. “I think you’re in a league of your own, princess.”

If anyone were to ask me when I started loving Gavin Forster, I’d tell them I was six years old and he’d come barreling out of his house, tripping over himself with a huge grin on his face and a joy in his eyes I’d never seen on anyone before—a joy that was all for me.

If anyone were to ask me when I fell in love with him, I’d tell them I was thirteen years old and one day, when we were just lying in his backyard watching fat, lazy clouds roll across the blue, blue sky, I realized my regular old love had shifted into something more powerful than I’d ever felt before, something that made my chest ache any time I looked at him. I never looked away if I could help it. I grew addicted to that feeling.

If Gavin himself were to ask me, I’d tell him I’d always loved him, even before we ever met.

But if someone were to ask me why I ever thought I could rid myself of that love, I wouldn’t have an answer. When you loved someone as deeply as I loved Gavin, when that someone made up every single memory of your youth, when they were so deeply embedded in you that you could feel them press against your heart with every inhale, it took a lot more than time and bad feelings to destroy it.

I tried to convince myself over the years that I didn’t love him anymore, that he was just a distant memory I would’ve lost sight of at some point. I tried to tell myself that it was for the best, because he’d changed so drastically and I’d just have to live off the good moments we’d shared. I’d just have to be grateful we’d shared any moments at all.

I tried to lie to myself over and over again, and all it did was make me blind to the fact that the one person I loved the most was suffering.

I wasn’t sure how Gavin didn’t hate me for not fighting for him. The guilt I carried began to root itself into my psyche, and those roots began to grow and grow and grow until every time I looked at him now, every time he smiled at me, or touched me, or laughed…every time he was his true self, it only reminded me that I could have tried harder to help him. I could have looked past his harsh words in high school and college and seen them for what they were: the ugliness of his father.

Instead, I coddled my own hurt at his newfound hatred of me. I nurtured it, clung to it, let it overshadow every truth that was right in front of me.

“What’s the matter?”

I looked up to find Gavin walking toward me with two mugs in his hand and a small smile on his face. My heart began to race, and I took in the small lines by his eyes, the softness of his features.

He was beautiful. For all he’d endured, for how far he’d come. For every tiny change he made that chipped away the bad parts of himself.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, feeling like a boulder had settled in my stomach.

He set a mug down in front of me and took the other chair at the patio table. “Anya made it, not me,” he said, almost defensively.

I glanced at the hot chocolate with mini marshmallows floating in the foam, then back at him. “No?” I said, lifting a brow.

“No,” he said, glaring at me now.

I smiled at him, savoring the way it made his cheeks flush. That I could have as much of an effect on him as he did on me was heady, and we both took advantage of that. We took every chance we could to put our hands on each other. Doing anything at work was forbidden, but it didn’t stop him from giving me heated looks and touching himself when no one was watching. Sucking on a finger, palming his dick. He was a fucking tease, and I loved it. I hadn’t seen this playful side of him since we were kids, and it was starting to make me feel like I had then—like there was a fire being stoked beneath my skin, spreading slowly and waking up the life lying dormant inside me.

Plus, the teasing only made it all the more satisfying when I punished him for it later, and I knew he was doing it just so I would take out all that pent-up sexual frustration on him.

But the guilt…it gnawed at me. Scrabbled around and chewed at the membrane of my sanity like a rat in the walls. And it didn’t help that an undercurrent of anxiety had begun whirring in the back of my mind. I was terrified that Gavin would pull away from me at some point, and never knowing if or when it might happen was awful.

“How’s therapy going? You don’t really talk about it,” I said, hoping this wouldn’t make him withdraw from me. Sometimes I felt like I was walking on eggshells around him, but it was me who was throwing them onto the ground.

I tried to keep my expression neutral as he looked at me. He took a sip of his hot chocolate, licked his lips, and said with a shrug, “It’s good. She’s kind of growing on me.”

“Good,” I said, wanting to ask a million questions. I wanted Gavin to tell me things he didn’t want to tell me, and that made me a selfish bastard.

His lips quirked up at my lame reply, and then he gave me so much more than I ever thought he would. “Yeah, it was hard, at first,” he started, staring down at his drink and trailing a finger over the rim. “But I think…she’s been helping me see things how they really are. See me as I really am. Or at least, see someone I don’t hate as much.” When he raised his eyes to mine again, all the breath whooshed from my lungs. There was so much trust in his eyes that it floored me, and I knew he was only able to tell me this because of that trust. “You help me do that, too.”

“Gavin…” I was overcome with so many different emotions that I couldn’t parse through any of them, so I just said, “I’m really fucking proud of you. You know that, right?”

He looked down at his drink again. “Yeah. I think so.” When he lifted his gaze again, the boulder in my stomach sank deeper. “But what I don’t understand is why you lied to me just now.”

I swallowed hard as my mouth dried up. “Gavin, I?—”

“I know you’re scared and it has something to do with me, and that’s the only fucking reason I’m not losing my shit,” he said with a little scowl. There was a hard edge to his tone. “You’ve been moping around for days. And I know I don’t really talk to you about any of my shit, but…something’s been bothering you, and I’m not letting you get up until you tell me what it is. I know you, Beck. It doesn’t matter how many years come between us. I fucking know you.”

The fact that he’d noticed at all made my chest feel tight, so I rubbed a hand over my sternum. Gavin’s eyes darted down at the movement, then back up to my face. With a heavy sigh, he pushed his chair back and walked over to me. My heart started to pound when he put his hands on my shoulders and straddled me, settling his ass on my thighs. My hands immediately came up to cup his ass, and when he splayed his hands on either side of my face and stared into my eyes with a solemn sincerity, I found it hard to breathe.

“What’s wrong, Becky?” he asked softly.

The weight of him began to ease some of the anxiety, and I let my hands move up his back. I wanted to slip them under his clothes and feel his skin so badly, but he still wasn’t ready to let me see his scars again. We’d come so far in the three months we’d been together, but there was still so much more of this mountain to climb.

But every journey began with a single step, right?

“I’m scared,” I admitted. He nodded, because he’d already guessed as much. I sucked in a breath and said, “I’m scared that you’ll take yourself away from me again. And every time I look at you, the guilt of not helping you sooner eats away at me more and more. I don’t know how to make it stop, and I don’t know how to get rid of this dread that something bad is gonna happen.”

“Okay,” he said patiently, rubbing his thumbs in circles on my cheekbones.

“I’m sorry I ever called you a coward, because you’re not. You are so fucking brave, Gavin. No, you weren’t a good person for a long time, but it’s not your fault that you were stuck with someone as evil as him. It would change anyone , you hear me? And I should have known. I knew you better than I knew myself, and I still chose to put my own pain above yours. I let you down, and?—”

Gavin slapped his hand over my mouth, and I looked at him with wide eyes. “Are you done feeling sorry for yourself?” he asked, leaning closer. He waited for a response, so I shook my head, then quickly nodded. “Good. I’m pretty sure I told you not to apologize to me anymore, but you keep fucking doing it. And Beck? You have nothing—fucking nothing —to feel guilty about. We were kids . Both of us had zero power in a situation like that. Even if you did somehow find out what my dad was doing, even if you did go to the police or another adult, I would have lied and lied and lied. I would have lied up until two years ago. Because I was more afraid of that man than anything else, and I knew that no one could help me. Not even you. It had to be me.”

He slowly moved his hand until he was holding my cheek, rubbing his thumb absently along my cheekbone. His gaze strayed to watch his thumb, and he said, “But in the end, I wasn’t strong enough to help myself. I just got lucky that he finally abandoned me. And I can’t promise anything about what will happen with me. I don’t really know myself very well these days, and yeah, being so close to you again really fucks with my head, mostly because of how I treated you. I struggle with it.” His eyes cut back to mine, making my heart jolt. “But you are worth every moment of that struggle, Beck. Every fucking moment. I don’t know what will happen in the future, but I do know that the only place I want to be is by your side.” He glanced down between our bodies and said, “Or sitting on top of you.”

I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. “Thank you,” I said softly, in awe of this man. I pressed my forehead to his chest and said thank you again. I wanted to thank the universe for bringing us together again, for letting Gavin have this time to heal, to grow, to change for the better. For letting me have the chance to hold him again.

“I’m serious, though. Stop apologizing to me. You’re such a self-sacrificing asshole,” he said, grabbing my face and tilting it up so he could see me again.

“Hmm. I think you should start punishing me every time I apologize,” I said, letting a slow smile spread across my cheeks. “I have a feeling it’s going to happen again…” I kissed his neck. “…and again…” I kissed his jaw. “…and again.” I pressed my lips to his, tasting all the honesty that had poured from them moments ago.

I’d never tasted anything sweeter.