CHAPTER 28
Becker
"MORNING," I MUMBLE, eyes still closed, smile already spreading across my face like butter on hot toast.
Must be early as shit. I don't remember hearing any of Kane's seventeen thousand precisely timed alarms. Instead, I got woken up by the delicious soreness in my ass—the best and only appropriate wake-up call, if you ask me.
Nothing says "good morning" quite like the physical reminder that you got spectacularly fucked last night.
Silence answers me.
I crack open one eye, then both, blinking against the sunlight streaming through the cabin's cheap blinds.
Kane's sitting on his bunk—not beside me where I left him after we passed out in a sweaty, satisfied heap—already dressed in a plain gray t-shirt and basketball shorts.
His eyes are glued to his phone, thumbs hovering over the screen like he's composing a message he can't quite commit to.
"Hi. Hey," he finally says.
There’s something different in his tone.
His voice sounds like it's been run through a meat grinder and reassembled by someone who's only heard human speech described second-hand. It's the robot voice—the one I haven't heard since before... well, before everything.
I sit up, suddenly feeling exposed despite the fact this man literally had his dick inside me not eight hours ago. I yank the sheet around my waist, a flimsy shield against whatever hurricane is brewing.
"You okay?" I ask, even though it's painfully obvious he's about as okay as a goldfish in a blender.
Kane finally looks up, and Jesus tap-dancing Christ, his face.
It's like someone hit the factory reset button overnight.
The warm, passionate man who whispered filthy encouragements in my ear as he fucked me senseless has been replaced by Cold Robot Kane 1.
0—face completely shut down, expression locked up tight.
"We need to talk," he says, and my stomach plummets faster than my career prospects after the podcast incident.
"That's never good." I try for light, but it comes out strangled.
He can't even look at me. His eyes dart everywhere—the floor, the window, the ugly moose painting on the wall—anywhere but at my face.
It's not that he won't look at me. He can't.
And suddenly I get it. The realization slams into me like a blindside check.
"I knew it," I say, something hot and ugly rising in my chest. "I fucking knew it."
"Knew what?" he asks, still doing his best impression of a man who finds the cabin's floorboards absolutely fascinating.
"You regret it," I spit out. "I knew—"
"I don't." he interrupts, finally meeting my eyes for one brief, electric moment. "I don't regret it. I don't regret a single second. I want you to remember that."
His words should be comforting, but they land like a grenade with the pin already pulled.
"Remember that?" My voice rises. "What do you—"
"Riley."
First name fucking basis.
Anger bubbles inside me, molten and vicious. I know what's coming. I don't know how I know, but I know it before Kane can even form the words. It's written in every rigid line of his body, in the careful distance he's maintaining, in the way he's already dressed like he's planning his escape.
"I don't think..." Kane starts, then trails off. Coward.
I stand up, keeping the sheet wrapped around my waist like the world's saddest toga. "Say it, then," I challenge, my voice harder than I've ever heard it.
He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders like he's about to block a slap shot. "I don't think we should do this. You and I? We're... teammates. It would—"
"Well, that's some fresh bullshit." I cut him off, unable to stomach another word of what is clearly a pre-rehearsed speech. I start frantically searching the cabin floor for my pants—any pants, at this point. I'm not having this conversation with my dick out.
"Riley—" he tries again, and hearing my name in his mouth just makes everything worse.
"Don't Riley me right now, Kane," I snap, locating a pair of sweats under the bed and yanking them on.
Kane rises to his feet, hands spread in that placating gesture people use when they're trying to calm down someone they think is being irrational. "Look, all I'm saying is—"
"All I'm hearing," I cut in, voice trembling with rage, "is you're a coward. Your father got in your head and you're too fucking scared to fight back."
A flash of something I can’t name crosses his face. "This is me fighting for what I want," he says, voice so low I almost miss it.
I turn around, half-dressed, fully furious. "Yeah? And what's that?"
***
Kane
THE HURT IN Becker's eyes is a knife twisting in my chest, carving out pieces I didn't know I could lose.
I've taken hits that cracked ribs. Blocked shots that left bruises for weeks. Fought guys twice my size and walked away bleeding.
Nothing—nothing—has ever hurt like this.
Because I'm the one holding the knife. I'm the one doing the cutting.
"My career," I force the words out, each one tasting like ash. "Without complications."
The words hang in the air between us, ugly and false. Becker blinks once, twice, like he's trying to process what I've said.
"I'm a complication?" His voice cracks on the last word, and it takes everything in me not to reach for him.
Every instinct I have screams at me to take it back. To tell him the truth. To explain that he's the least complicated thing in my life, that everything makes sense when I'm with him, that complicated is my father and his threats and this fucked-up situation I can't figure out how to fix.
But the words stick in my throat because if I start talking, I'll tell him everything. And if I tell him everything, he'll try to fight this battle for me. He'll put himself in my father's crosshairs, and I can't—I won't—let that happen.
So instead, I force myself to meet his eyes and say, "Yes."
He steps back like I've physically shoved him, and the silence that follows is deafening. Minutes. An eternity compressed into heartbeats.
Then he moves, sharp and sudden, grabbing his t-shits from where it’s crumpled on the floor. He dresses with jerky movements, yanking his hoodie over his head, and I watch because I'm a masochist who needs to memorize every detail of this moment for future self-torture.
His duffle bag appears from under his bunk. He starts throwing things in—shirts, socks, his toothbrush from the bathroom, his phone charger still plugged into the wall. No order, no organization, just controlled chaos that matches the storm building behind his eyes.
"Fine," he says, and the word lands like a verdict.
I open my mouth. Close it. My hands are shaking, so I shove them in my pockets. "I don't know what else to say."
Becker stops, his hand frozen on a hoodie he was about to stuff into the bag. He straightens, turns, and looks at me with an intensity that makes me want to confess everything—every lie, every fear, every desperate reason.
"Why won't you just tell me the truth?" His voice cracks again. "What did he threaten you with? What hold does he have?"
Everything. You. Your career, your future, everything you've worked for.
"He doesn't have any hold," I lie, and I hate myself for how easily it comes. "I'm making my own choice."
"Then you're making the wrong one."
He goes back to packing, movements more violent now, and I watch him destroy the small space we'd started to build together. The sheet we fucked on last night is still on the floor. His t-shirts crumpled in the corner.
Few hours ago, I was inside him. Then was falling asleep on top of me, his weight comfortable and right.
Now I'm watching him leave, and I'm the reason why.
My eyes burn with unshed tears, and I blink rapidly to keep them at bay. I will not cry. Not yet. Not until he's gone.
The duffle bag zips shut with a sound of finality.
"Where are you going?" I sound desperate.
"Literally anywhere but here." He shoulders the bag. "Just because you don't have any feelings doesn't mean other people don't."
The words knock the air from my lungs.
I have feelings. Too many of them. They're drowning me, pulling me under, and I don't know how to surface without dragging him down too.
But I can't say that. So I stand there like the coward I am and take it.
He moves to the door, hand on the handle, and for a wild moment I think this is it—he's going to leave without another word.
But then he pauses, looking back over his shoulder. His expression softens just a fraction, and it hurts more than his anger did.
"When you figure out what you actually want, I'll be here. But I'm not waiting forever."
The door opens. Closes. The sound echoes in the suddenly too-large space.
I stand there for I don't know how long. Could be seconds. Could be hours. Time does this weird thing where it stops meaning anything, and I'm just existing in this moment where Becker was here and now he's not.
My legs give out.
I don't remember deciding to sit, but suddenly I'm on my bunk—the bottom one, the one I claimed that first day because I needed control over something. The mattress smells like him. Like us. Like the mistake I just made.
My phone is in my hand. I don't remember taking it out.
The screen is too bright. My father's last message stares back at me: Tick tock.
My fingers shake as I type. Delete. Type again.
Me: It's done.
I hit send before I can second-guess myself, then power off the phone completely because I can't handle whatever response he sends. Can't handle the satisfaction I know will be in his words.
The phone goes dark in my palm.
I lie down on my side, curling around the empty space where Becker should be, and finally let myself break.
The first sob catches me off guard, ripping out of my chest with enough force that it hurts. Then another. And another. Until I'm crying so hard I can't breathe, or think, or do anything but feel the weight of what I just did crushing down on me.
I destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me.
I pushed away the only person who made me feel like I could be something other than Kane Marcus's son.
I chose my father over the man I'm pretty sure I'm falling in love with.
For his own good, I tell myself. To protect him.
But the justification feels hollow now, echoing in the empty cabin where Becker's absence is louder than any words.
My face is wet. The pillow is wet. Everything is wet and messy and wrong, and I can't stop crying long enough to care.
This is what protection feels like, apparently.
It feels like dying.