Chapter 14 #3
The mirror is fogged, but that’s a mercy. I don’t want to see the look on my face right now. I grab a towel and scrub myself roughly, then wrap it around my hips.
My entire body shakes, not from the cold, but from the sheer velocity of panic ripping through my chest.
This isn’t just a racing fuckup.
This is everything else cracking all at once.
Toulouse is still in his hammock when I walk out, licking his paws, completely oblivious to my bi panic under the spray nozzle.
“I’m going to figure this out,” I tell him like a vow. My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “We’re doing research.”
He looks utterly unconcerned.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” I grab my towel from where I’d slung it, eye the cage, and toss it over the top like a curtain. “You don’t need to see this. I’m not paying your therapy bills, mon fils.”
I sit on the bed and flip open my laptop, my legs splayed like I’m not seconds from falling apart. My fingers feel numb as they hit the keys.
Gay porn.
The words look wrong on my screen, a dare I didn’t mean to accept, but I hit search anyway.
Thumbnails blur past—twinks, jocks, leather, sweet, rough, different bodies, positions, and dynamics.
Some of it even looks good. I can see why people would like it.
Hell, I can even imagine myself in some of those scenes.
Bent over a couch with a body beneath me.
Knees spread on a hotel mattress. Pushing him up against a wall.
But only if it’s him.
I click. A video loads. Another. Then another.
I try to settle into one, to let it happen, to feel something, and find whatever it is that’s tearing through my chest and name it, but it’s all just noise, like I’m watching through glass.
Nothing stirs, not really. There’s just this hollow ache and a strange, creeping sense of distance from my skin.
Then one thumbnail flashes by. On it is a tanned, broody, pretty boy with tousled hair and that same quiet, coiled fire Payne carries around. The kind that sits in his shoulders, his eyes, the way he never lets himself soften.
I hesitate.
What the hell was that?
I shake my head, try to move on, but my stomach twists. Maybe it’s not just Petit. Maybe there’s something else in me I’ve never looked at too closely, something that twitches around certain types. It’s the fire, the tension, and that heavy silence that makes you want to break it with your mouth.
Merde!
I swallow hard as my pulse kicks. No. That’s not what this is. I’m not thinking about Payne right now. Fuck, no. I scroll faster. Dismiss it. Bury it.
I’m about to slam the laptop shut when a video catches my eye. It’s a bigger guy, muscled and tattooed, pushing a smaller, wiry one against the wall, kissing him like he’s the only thing that exists. The smaller guy has wild hair and wide brown eyes.
They almost look like us, Petit and me.
“Okay,” I mutter, nodding. “It’s just a test. For science. I’m a biologist now.”
And yeah, I know it’s bullshit to treat it like a lab test, but right now, I’m grasping at anything that makes this less real.
I click.
I stroke.
But the movement feels empty, like someone else’s hand on someone else’s body. Like I’m not even here. I slam the lid shut and toss the laptop aside, not sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed.
Maybe I’m not bi after all.
I close my eyes to block it all out, but the moment they shut, he’s there, with his cheeks flushed, hiccupping, half-wrecked, every breath a question. I remember the scar on his hip. The warmth of his weight against my back when I carried him, the defiant fire in his eyes.
I’m hard again in a heartbeat, no porn needed, no fiction. Just him. Every broken, breathtaking piece of him.
My hand moves again before I can stop it, and science offers no explanation for why one stroke turns into two.
For why I picture the way his breath caught when I touched his forehead.
His little scoff when I flicked his nose.
His thighs clenching, his hoodie sliding up just enough to flash bruised skin and sharp hips.
The way he said my name in outrage when I picked him up.
One more stroke, and I come harder than I have in my entire fucking life. My eyes roll back, and my whole spine arches off the mattress like I’ve been struck by lightning.
Panting, I blink down at myself, the mess spread across my stomach, and the hand responsible, still twitching between my thighs.
And then the horror hits.
Fuck.
I grab the nearest cloth—maybe a shirt or a towel, I don’t even look—and wipe myself off in a rush. Then I scramble for my phone on the nightstand, heart pounding so hard it feels like it might bruise the inside of my chest. My fingers jab the screen until the call rings through.
“Maman.” I gasp when she picks up.
“I saw it, mon soleil,” she says softly. “I watched it on TV. I’m so sorry.”
For a wild second, my post-orgasm brain thinks she means my explosive masturbation.
Shaking myself, I take a deep breath. No. My racing failure is not why I called my closest confidant.
“Maman,” I blurt, voice cracking as I sit naked in my shame. “Am I… bi?”