Chapter 17 Trapped #2
I come fast, embarrassingly fast, and he swallows, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and grins up at me. “Told you you’d like it.”
He slides up, kisses me again, and his tongue tastes like whiskey and salt and a little bit of me.
He doesn’t stop there. He rolls me over, spoons me, presses his dick against my ass, but doesn’t try to go further.
He just holds me, one arm across my chest, mouth at my neck. I can feel his heart pounding against my back.
I lie there, staring at the blank wall, and count the seconds until I fall asleep.
When I wake, he’s still there, arm heavy across my ribs, breathing slow and regular. My phone is on the nightstand. No new messages.
I get up, careful not to wake him, and stand in the bathroom, staring at my reflection in the cold white light.
My hair is a mess, my lips are bruised, and my eyes are bloodshot. I look like a guy who’s trying to fuck his way out of a problem and failing.
I run the tap, splash water on my face, and dry off on a towel that smells like bleach.
Back in the bedroom, Vincent is awake, watching me.
He pats the bed. “Come back,” he says, and I do, because it’s easier than arguing.
We lie there in silence, his hand tracing lazy circles on my chest, and I wonder if this is all I’ll ever be: a warm body, a half-empty space for someone else to fill.
But for now, it’s enough.
———
Vincent keeps his apartment at 68 degrees, which is apparently the optimal temperature for both whiskey and seduction. I’ve been here so many times the doorman stopped asking my name.
Vincent always texts “just come up,” and by the time I make it to the twelfth floor, he’s waiting at the door in a fresh shirt and a smile you could bottle and sell as a Schedule I controlled substance.
It always starts the same.
Takeout, ramen, tacos, whatever’s trending in some food blogger’s Instagram that week, eaten cross-legged on the cold marble countertop, two sets of chopsticks and a single bowl, because “sharing is more intimate,” which is Vincent-speak for “I want to watch you eat.” He tells a story, makes me laugh, pours the drinks.
He always pours; I’ve never so much as twisted a bottle cap in his kitchen.
It hits me, somewhere around the third week, that I never chose any of this. Vincent pursued me. Vincent pushed the first kiss.
Vincent escalated every time, set the pace, decided when and where and how.
I've been a passenger in my own relationship, just along for the ride, saying yes because I forgot what it felt like to want something enough to reach for it myself.
Then the move. It’s so smooth I don’t see it coming, even now. Hand on my thigh, just above the knee, thumb tracing invisible circles, until I flinch and he leans in to brush his lips against the spot just below my ear.
He whispers something, sometimes my name, sometimes nothing, just the hush of breath and the implication of want.
Every time, I go with it, because saying no feels like flicking a switch that could kill the only lights left in the room.
The first time, I thought he was just enthusiastic.
Now I know it’s choreography. He guides me to the couch, the bedroom, the shower, always on his terms, always with that same calculated intensity.
He undresses me like he’s solving a puzzle, slow, piece by piece, every button a riddle, every zipper a test.
When he kisses me, it’s with purpose: lips, teeth, tongue, never too much, never too little, just enough to make my pulse jump and my brain empty out.
But there’s a line I won’t cross, and every time we get close, I dig in my heels.
The excuses are automatic now.
“I’m tired.” “Long day at practice.” “Can we just… not tonight?”
Vincent never pouts. Never gets angry, never complains. He just adjusts.
Switches to a different routine, hands, mouth, the familiar territory mapped since night one.
He makes me come twice in twenty minutes, then curls up behind me and strokes my arm, like he’s tracing the border of a country he wants to annex.
After, we lie there, still naked, the sheets twisted under our legs and the city reflected in the window like a dead TV channel.
Vincent rests his head on my shoulder, breathes in slow, then starts with the questions.
“Did you ever think Darius would freeze like that? After the shooting?”
It’s always like this. No small talk, no transition. Just a straight line to the heart of the thing.
“I don’t know,” I say, because what the fuck else is there.
He hums, low, like he’s tasting the answer. “Was he always so… contained?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s his thing.”
Vincent doesn’t write it down. He just nods, closes his eyes, and keeps going.
“Who on the team actually liked Cap? Like, really?”
I roll over, half on my side, half turned away. “Everybody,” I say, but he hears the lie in it.
“Come on,” he says. “There’s always a rivalry. You were both fighting for first line, right?”
I stare at the ceiling. “Not really. Cap was captain, and I was the joke. You don’t compete with someone like that. You just orbit them.”
Vincent slides his hand across my stomach, rests it just above my hip. “You’re not a joke, Ash.”
I almost laugh. “You’re the first person who’s ever said that.”
He kisses my shoulder. “That’s why I like you.”
It’s supposed to be reassuring, but it sounds like a research note.
The questions don’t stop.
“How did you find out about Caleb?”
“What did Darius say to you that night?”
“Who told the coach first?”
Every answer I give, he files away. Sometimes he repeats it, like he wants to hear how it sounds out loud, how it fits with the last thing I said.
After the third or fourth round, I catch him reaching for his phone, thumbing something in before setting it facedown on the nightstand. He’s quick about it, never long enough to read, just a tap or a flick, but it’s always after I say something that makes the back of my neck itch.
The weird part is, I don’t even care. Not enough to stop coming here, anyway.
In the morning, he makes espresso in a chrome contraption that looks like it was designed for astronauts.
He drinks it black, then brushes his teeth with surgical precision and heads out for a run before work.
I dress, find my own way out, and sometimes I’ll see him lacing up his shoes in the lobby, nodding at me like we’re old college friends who hooked up once at a party and now pretend it’s a secret.
I don’t tell anyone.
Not Dr. Sharma, not Maya, not even the group chat with Tommy and Raz, who would never believe I could land a guy who reads The New Yorker for fun.
I try to talk to Vincent about other things, about the book I’m reading, about the bakery, about how I once nearly lost a finger to a bagel slicer.
He lets me, for exactly thirty seconds, before pivoting back to the real topic.
“Tell me about the night you scored the hat trick,” he says one time, when we’re both high on his couch, a documentary playing muted in the background.
I shrug. “It was a fluke.”
“Bullshit,” he says, and I wonder how he’s so good at calling me out.
“Darius set up every play,” I say. “He’s the reason I got half those shots.”
He tilts his head. “You talk about him a lot.”
I snort. “Yeah, well, old habits.”
He smiles, and there’s a sadness to it that makes me feel briefly like I’m the one in control.
But then he starts in again, and I answer, because the only thing worse than talking is silence.
After the third or fourth visit, I realize I’ve told Vincent more about the shooting, about the aftermath, about my own panic attacks, than I’ve told anyone. Not even Dr. Sharma. Not Darius.
Not myself, if I’m being honest.
The realization makes me queasy, like I swallowed a shot glass and it’s just sitting there in my gut, unbreakable.
But I tell myself it’s fine. Vincent’s a reporter, that’s how he is. He just wants to understand.
I try to convince myself it’s normal, that maybe this is what intimacy is supposed to feel like, an endless game of questions and answers until there’s nothing left but the core of who you are.
I should know better.
But I go back anyway.
Every time I step into his apartment, I feel lighter, like maybe he can extract the parts of me that are still haunted. Maybe if I answer all the questions, the ghost will finally shut up.
But every night, as I drift off with his arms around me and the city lights bleeding through the window, I feel the weight in my chest grow.
And every morning, when I walk out of his building, my phone is still empty, and I’m still waiting for a message that will never come.
That’s the real joke.
And I’m the punchline.
———
It’s been three weeks since I saw Darius in person. Not counting the seconds at the rink, when we pass in the tunnel and our eyes slide right off each other like we’re ghosts wearing someone else’s faces.
I’ve rearranged my entire life around the simple goal of not running into him.
Gym? Only after nine p.m., when the after-work crowd has gone home and the cleaning guy just wants to get it over with. If I see a familiar car in the lot, I go back to my building and do pushups until my arms give out. Morning runs are solo, earbuds jammed so deep I can’t hear my own breath.
I take the old route, the one by the water, but it’s different now: no second set of footsteps, no one to match stride with, just the slap of sneakers and the snot-freeze cold.
This is what I wanted, right? Someone who wants me, who says it out loud, who texts “when can I see you again” instead of waiting for me to break first.
But even as Vincent’s arms wrap around me, even as I let him mark up my neck like he’s laying claim, the only thing I feel is the echo. The missing.
After the third straight Saturday night at Vincent’s, my body finally stops fighting. The sex is routine now. He tries to make it new, different positions, new music, a silk tie around my wrists that leaves faint red lines for days.
He narrates every move, tells me how good I taste, how hard I make him, how he wants to keep me all to himself.
I let him say it, let him do everything he wants with his hands and his mouth, let him push me to the edge and pull me back, but every time he tries to go further, every time his hips angle and his breath gets sharper and his hand reaches for the nightstand drawer, I stop him.
"Not tonight." "I'm not ready." "Can we just—" The excuses are automatic now, and I don't even know why I keep saying them. He never pushes. He just adjusts.
But the line holds, and I don't know what I'm saving or who I'm saving it for.
Tonight, I hit the wall earlier than usual. He’s on top of me, sweaty and focused, whispering “come for me” into my hair, and I’m halfway there when my brain just…stops.
Like someone hit mute on the inside of my skull. My body keeps going, but my mind is on a seventeen-hour delay.
I finish with a sound I barely recognize, and when Vincent kisses me, I bite down a little too hard.
He laughs, breathless. “Easy, tiger. Didn’t know you liked it rough.”
I fake a grin, wipe my mouth, and flop onto my back, letting him settle into his victory sprawl. I say I have early practice, that I need sleep, and he buys it, which is the only miracle left in my life.
He pulls the sheets over both of us, tugs me in tight, and falls asleep with his hand draped over my chest like a trophy.
I wait until his breath gets regular, then slide out from under him and sit on the edge of the bed, naked, cold, staring at the blue light from his wireless charger.
I pick up my phone and scroll.
The last real conversation with Darius is from twenty-one days ago: “good game man” and a thumbs-up. Before that, it was a stream of inside jokes, shit-talk, late night rants about Netflix shows we both claimed to hate but secretly binged.
I scroll back further, the day we broke the running PR, the night at the beach, the time he sent a photo of a cat sleeping on a baguette with the caption “remind you of anyone?” My eyes go fuzzy reading it. I forget to breathe.
Somewhere behind me, Vincent shifts, mumbles my name, then quiets again. I feel the weight of his arm still on my skin, like a bandage that won’t stick.
I tell myself what I always tell myself: Darius lost interest. That's why he pushed me toward Vincent. That's why the gym changed, the runs stopped, the texts dried up.
He saw whatever he needed to see and decided I wasn't worth the risk. Why else would he have told me to go?
I keep scrolling.
All the way to the top of the thread, back to the first message he ever sent: “You really think you can out-skate me?” I read it twice, then close my eyes, letting the tears pool before I wipe them away.
It sneaks up on me, the crying. It doesn’t feel like anything at first, just an itch behind my eyes, a prickling at the base of my nose. But then my throat locks up, and the sob comes out so quiet I’m not sure it even happened.
I don’t make a sound, don’t move, just sit there in the dark, phone cradled in my hand, letting the tears fall onto the bedsheet like spilled gin.
Vincent doesn’t wake. I could be anyone in this bed, in this city, in this world. I could be a mannequin for all he knows.
When the tears finally stop, I look at myself in the black mirror of the phone screen. Eyes puffy, lips raw, hair sticking up like I’ve been struck by lightning.
I look like a guy who lost a fight with the only thing he ever wanted.
I put the phone down, crawl back under the sheets, and let Vincent’s arm find me. I lie there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for morning.
And when it comes, it’s still just me, and the echo, and the empty space where a voice used to be.