Epilogue
OLIVER, TWO MONTHS LATER
I look over at Niko in the driver’s side seat. “Would you still fuck me if I was a warm apple pie?”
“What is this, a teen comedy? Sure, baby. I’d fuck you if you were a pie.”
“Would you fuck me if I needed to be fucked twelve times a day?”
“Your ass would be aching if I gave you my cock that much, but yes, I’d try my absolute best.”
“Would you still love me if I was a worm?”
“Too easy. Obviously.”
He’s smiling as he takes the final turn onto my childhood street, and I can see my house off in the distance.
He’s in a light grey hoodie and his dragonfly necklace is out in front, glinting in the sun.
“Is it weird that I’m nervous to take you home again?” I ask him.
“You’ve got zero reason to be nervous.”
I reach over, squeezing his leg. “I’m taking my boyfriend home for the first time.”
“Ollie, I know we’ve been through a lot, but I didn’t think you had memory loss. I’ve been home with you before.”
“Not as my real boyfriend.”
He bites his lip, then slowly lets it go. “I’m nervous about something, too.”
The car pulls up outside the front of my parents’ house and he cuts the engine, taking a deep breath.
“Oh no,” I say. “What is it?”
He turns to me, running his hand along mine. “I got an email this morning, and I’ve been too afraid to open it. It’s from that agency in New York City.”
I lift my eyebrows. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
Over the past month, Niko’s finally had the courage to start reaching out to agents, going out for model casting calls, building a new professional portfolio, and contacting independent professional editorial photographers, without any help or connections.
At times it’s been brutal. He’s gotten rejections, from people saying he has the perfect look, but their roster is completely full.
He had a very promising call last week with an NYC agency, but didn’t want to get his hopes up.
I glance down at his phone, currently lodged in the upper console where we used it for GPS directions.
“Do you want me to read it first?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “No. It’s got to be me.”
I pull in a breath. “Well, take your time. We can go inside first, if you want to—”
He reaches up and pulls the phone down, navigating to his email app. “I’m ripping the Band-Aid off.”
I watch his eyes scan the email as he reads it.
“Fuck. Fuck, Ollie, they… they want to set up an initial shoot with me.”
“Let’s fucking go!” I shout, leaning over toward the driver’s seat and wrapping my arms around him in a hug. “This… this doesn’t mean you have to quit school, right?”
“They said I can go out to the city as needed. I could probably get more gigs if I quit school, but I’m not doing it. It’s a non-negotiable.”
Something smolders in my heart.
I know that at this point, Niko doesn’t need the degree from Crimson. He doesn’t need the money, and he mostly wants to be there for me.
Because I matter that much to him.
And I have no clue why or how, but I’m not going to question my luck.
“You’re fucking incredible.”
I watch as he leans his head back on the headrest, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, he almost looks like he could cry.
“I never thought I could do anything without connections to the industry,” he says. “Fuck. Fuck, this is insane.”
“And I’m so proud of you.”
He smiles again and takes off his seatbelt. “Let’s go inside. I love you so goddamn much.”
As soon as we’re out of the car he stops me on the walkway to kiss me.
And then he kisses me again in the garage, before we push open the door to head inside.
Everything feels new, all of a sudden.
Like finally, Niko got the complete fresh start that he’d been searching for. And nobody deserves that more than he does.
“Boys!” Mom calls out from the kitchen as soon as she hears the door open. It smells like orange in the air, and as usual, Mom and Dad are cooking something together.
We head in and greet everyone, exchanging hugs.
But I’m also noticing things I wouldn’t usually notice.
I purposely look down, checking to see that my parents are still wearing their wedding rings.
Of course they are.
It’s silly to think they wouldn’t be… right?
“Niko, they just came out with a new racing game,” Aaron’s already telling him, showing him a video on his phone.
Emily looks a lot happier than the last time we saw her. I talk with her a little bit and find out that she’s seeing a new guy, and it sounds like her frenemy Cheyenne and her last crush are old news, by now.
We’re swept into helping out with dinner, then eating and getting stories from Aaron and Emily. My siblings drag Niko out into the living room afterward while I stay with my parents in the kitchen, helping to clean up.
“How are you guys doing?” I ask Mom as I rinse off dishes and hand them to her near the dishwasher.
Dad glances over at me as he’s sliding Tupperware into the fridge nearby. “If you’re asking about what I think you are, your mom and I are in couples counseling.”
My heart twists a little in my chest. “So you’re not…”
“We’re not splitting up, sweetie,” Mom tells me. “Emily caught us in some bad moments, when we were fighting about things around the house. But we were never intending on a split. She was having a really hard time, and I think she was worried about us.”
I feel the slight sting of a tear near the corner of my eye.
It takes me by surprise.
The idea of my parents potentially divorcing had been something I shoved away to a dark corner of my mind, filing it away into a box labeled just don’t fucking think about it.
Now, it’s cracked open.
And I realize just how strange it would have been if my parents had been about to split up.
Until now, I’d never given much thought to the idea of family. It had always just been a given. Now it feels like more of a gift. A privilege I’ve had for my entire life but had been invisible to me until now.
I hug Mom and then Dad, too, and help them finish cleaning up.
When I look over at Niko in the living room with my brother and sister, something tugs at my heart.
Niko never had this sense of family to begin with. Never had a father in his life at all, and a mother with no warmth.
And barely any sense of love at all, for most of his life.
“Hey,” I tell Aaron as I walk over to the living room and the two of them finish a round of the racing game. “I’m stealing Niko for a minute.”
“We’re about to do the death battle!” Aaron protests.
“I’ll bring him back, I’ll bring him back,” I tell him.
I take Niko upstairs and lean him back against the wall in the hallway, kissing him.
“You take me upstairs just to kiss me, Ollie?” he murmurs, looking at my lips as I break for a breath.
“You don’t seem that upset about it.”
“I’ll kiss you anytime, anywhere,” he says, dipping to kiss me on my neck, too.
“I just wanted to be with you. Only you. Just for a minute. Niko, do you know how much I fucking love you?”
“I love you, too.”
“But I really love you. I love seeing you out there with my family. Love seeing you in Onyx House, or down the aisle when we go to the grocery store, or even across the fucking quad at school.”
“Too many compliments. Too much love. I’m shutting down.”
I suck in a breath. “I know, I know.”
It’s going to take a while before Niko feels like any of this is normal. For him, it never has been.
But that doesn’t mean I’m ever going to shut up about it, either.
He leans in and bites my lower lip.
“I’ve never felt like this before, Oliver. I’m not always good at being vulnerable, and you know that. But I promise you that in my mind, I feel like I’ve won some kind of lottery. Being with a family that accepts me isn’t something I ever thought I’d get to experience.”
“Well, you have ‘em now. They all like you more than they like me, I think.”
He puffs out a laugh.
“I think it would be impossible not to love you, Ollie. Which reminds me. I’m filming you tonight.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Filming me? Here?”
He holds up a finger then shimmies off toward my bedroom, coming back out with his black backpack in hand.
He pulls out something shiny and silver, and I realize it’s a pair of handcuffs.
“Want a video of you cuffed to your bedpost. For my personal collection.”
My cock throbs and a tingle goes down my back. “Everything we do is for your personal collection now. Filmed or not.”
He squeezes my bulge and drags the edge of the metal cuffs along my chest. “Later tonight.”
“Fuck, don’t get me hard when I need to go downstairs again in a minute.”
“Fine,” he says, giving me one last squeeze before putting the cuffs away again. “But you are fucking mine tonight.”
He goes off to put the backpack in my room again then joins me in the hall again, putting an innocent look on his face.
“Not buying that innocence,” I tell him.
“What?” he says with a shrug. “See you downstairs, Ollie.”
He winks at me then heads back downstairs, leaving me aching and tortured up here. I think about math class and baseball and anything to get myself to stop being hard, and finally, I’m in good enough shape to head down again.
“Hi, my love,” Niko says as I arrive in the living room again. He holds out a game controller. “Aaron says you can’t beat him in this game. I told him you’ll knock him out. Settle the bet?”
“Give me that.”
I grab the controller and plop down on the couch next to Niko.
“Did you hear they reopened the old indoor hockey rink down the highway, by the way?” Emily asks.
“You’re kidding,” I tell her. “Where we went as kids?”
“Yep. We should all go. See which one of you two is the better hockey player still.”
“Oh, I would absolutely annihilate Ollie,” Niko says with brazen confidence.
“Excuse me?” I ask.
Niko gives me a smoldering look.
And I have to fight not to get hard again.
Aaron snickers. “Here comes a fight. Now we’ve got to go to the rink.”
I can’t even imagine being out on the ice with him again. The way we used to be, when both of us thought we hated each other. Niko was an incredible player, no doubt.
But was he better than me?
Guess we need to fuck around and find out.
As the night goes on, I realize that I’m already thinking of so many versions of the future.
In a way I never used to let myself dare to dream.
It’s still too soon to say it out loud, but I’m thinking of everything, with Niko.
I can picture this life with him forever.
Him, as my husband, when we come back home for the holidays and hang out with everyone. Maybe with kids of our own, if he wants them.
And I don’t picture ever being bored for a goddamn moment with this man.
With all his scars.
His cracks.
The broken, beautiful person who I’m certain is the love of my life. He’s possessive like nobody else would be… but I am, too. When it comes to Niko, at least.
We push and pull in the way I wanted for so long.
And I realize now that I feel lucky that he was my first.
Because he’s my whole fucking world.
And I want to spend the rest of my life proving to him exactly how much he’s worthy of being loved.
Thank you for reading!