Chapter 10
I woke before my alarm went off, harder and hornier than I’d ever been in my life.
But then I’d thought that yesterday and the day before, and the one prior to that too.
Hell, I’d thought it every day for the past two weeks I’d avoided Atticus.
The evasive maneuvers hadn’t been easy to pull off.
First, I needed a reasonable excuse for why I’d wanted to take the night shift at Silver Maple, when I was usually the one who disliked working third shift the most. When we’d originally planned a schedule, the five of us rotated between first and third shifts with our staff.
We’d never ask our team to do a job we wouldn’t do ourselves.
That didn’t mean we wouldn’t grumble about the jobs or shifts we didn’t like, and I was the chief whiner about working overnight.
But one of our employees had a newborn at home with some health issues that made nighttime extra hard on his wife.
Volunteering had been the right thing to do, shooting down offers from the guys to pick up some of the slack had earned raised eyebrows and too many smirks to count.
While their smug, knowing expressions annoyed the hell out of me, it wasn’t the hardest part about avoiding Atticus.
I just fucking missed him. It had taken me a week—maybe ten days—of grunts, growls, and terrible moods, resulting in more than one side-eye from the guys, to recognize the truth, which only made me snarlier.
Who the hell was Atticus to come along and disrupt my life?
The pining, moping, and frustration did nothing to cool my lust. If anything, it made me want him more.
I dreamed of Atticus, waking up with my hard dick in my hand most afternoons.
I thought of his lips, his banging body, and his pert ass while fucking my fist. It wasn’t enough.
I needed more, but I couldn’t—wouldn’t act on the feelings Atticus stirred.
Maybe I could have if I’d only felt lust, but sharing one lunch with Atticus made me crave something more than just a physical release.
He was interested too. I saw it in his gorgeous eyes and by the way he leaned toward me as if magnetically drawn. And that was the rub.
I groaned at the thought and blindly reached for the lube I didn’t bother returning to my bedside table drawer.
If I’d only wanted sex, I would’ve claimed Atticus.
But he made me crave companionship with someone who knew me better than I knew myself.
I wanted to experience comfortable silences with him and discover his various reactions to the food I created.
I yearned to lose hours just from kissing his mouth.
I wanted to share insider jokes with him that only we would understand.
Atticus made me want things that scared the fuck out of me.
And so I ignored the urge to go into work early and find any excuse to accidentally run into him or take one of the guys up on their offer to swap nights for days, even sporadically.
I needed to stay as far away from Atticus as possible for my own good.
But in the privacy of my bedroom, in my dreams, or in my shower…
I was all his, and he was all mine. There was no room for fear or remorse.
Tired of my hand, I grabbed a silicone sleeve out of the drawer and drizzled some lube inside.
It didn’t trick me into believing it was Atticus pleasuring me with his ass or mouth, but it was a nice change from my callused fingers.
Behind my closed eyelids, Atticus looked up at me from his knees, eyes shimmering with lust as his mouth stretched wide around my cock.
It didn’t take me long to get off with the steady glide of the toy up and down, the slick friction, and my vivid imagination.
I removed the sleeve at the peak of orgasm and finished with my fist, imagining my release painting lush lips and the sexiest cupid’s bow.
Afterward, I lay there in the center of the bed with my spent dick lying against my stomach and the sheets tangled around my calves.
My body felt great with my lust temporarily slaked, but my mind was in a sudden tailspin.
I was both overstimulated and underwhelmed, restless and lethargic.
Recognizing the anxiety response, I reached for a tool I’d learned from past therapy sessions, books, and mental health podcasts.
Instead of ignoring the emotions, it was better to close my eyes and sort through them, naming each feeling before placing it in an imaginary box.
I’d felt downright ridiculous the first few times I tried the container method, even though I’d been alone.
Over time, I’d learned to start my sessions by boxing up the traits that resisted a mindfulness practice.
Toxic gender and societal norms were the first to go in the containers, giving way to an unexpected type of cleansing, which made it easier for me to relax and lean into healing.
Because I’d wanted better for myself than living in a constant state of numbness.
My emotions since meeting Atticus weren’t harder to name, but they’d become twisted and tangled around one another like strands of Christmas lights.
It seemed impossible to separate lust from fear and loneliness from curiosity.
Guilt had become a multistrand beast, wrapping itself around hope, joy, and happiness like a deadly python that choked out what little air I’d allowed them to breathe since Javi died.
My head pounded, and my chest felt impossibly tight.
I couldn’t just wrap them all up in a tight ball and throw them into one imaginary container or ignore them because that avoidance would only lead to bigger problems. I switched to grounding exercises, focusing on what I could see, touch, hear, and smell.
The tightness in my chest eased, and the chaos quieted in my brain.
Cycling through a series of breathing techniques eased the remaining tension in my body, and I reached for the gnarly strands of guilt that threatened my peace of mind.
But my alarm went off before I could separate the survivor’s guilt from the standard variety of shame that came from avoiding my friends and taking the easier road instead of going after what I wanted.
Who I wanted.
Healing my trauma would have to wait. I had work to do.
Slamming my hand down on the alarm to shut it up, I eased out of bed so I didn’t drip cum everywhere.
The discarded towel from my morning shower-and-jerk session was nearby, so I snatched it off the floor to wipe my stomach and hand.
Carrying the silicone toy with me to the bathroom, I cleaned it and brushed my teeth while waiting for the water to heat.
My days and nights were turned around, but my routine remained the same, no matter the time of day.
Wake, jerk off, eat, work, eat, jerk off, and sleep.
The normalcy of the ritual should’ve given me comfort, but an ever-present agitation softly hummed beneath my skin and wouldn’t allow me to find solace in the ordinary.
No true peace to be found, no quarters given.
Something had to ease up before I did something stupid.
I’d set my alarm early so I could have time to enjoy a nice meal and return the book I’d borrowed from Silver Maple’s impressive library before my shift started.
The choice between tacos and burgers for dinner and what book to read next were supposed to be the toughest battles I faced on a Friday night.
All I had to do was get out of the building without running into any of the guys.
The third-floor corridor of our renovated warehouse was funeral-parlor quiet when I stepped outside my apartment, so I assumed my best friends were either in the offices on the first floor or on a jobsite somewhere.
I thought Lady Luck was smiling down on me until I noticed the elevator was stuck on the second floor, the communal space where the five of us gathered as a group to eat, hang out, and watch television.
Since it was almost dinnertime, I suspected the other four had gathered there to wait for me since I’d been a no-show more often than not the past two weeks.
The four people who meant the world to me got caught up in my selfish coping mechanisms, and it seemed they’d run out of patience with me.
Which one of them locked the elevator in place and forced me to use the stairs?
And how many of them were waiting to confront me on the second-floor landing?
Most people thought our work-life setup was weird, and some assumed it was kinky.
One therapist defined our relationship as trauma bonding, while another labeled it an unhealthy, codependent relationship.
We called it surviving and didn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought.
The five of us healed in the way that worked best for us.
And I loved our arrangement ninety-nine percent of the time.
This bullshit fell into the rare exception when I wondered if something else might be better for me.
How dare they force a confrontation? I had plenty of opinions about their coping mechanisms, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
Maybe not for long. I growled my frustration and headed down the corridor to the emergency stairs, cursing each of my best friends with each step.
It was hard to say which chafed more, my guilt or their fucking gall.
I expected to hear murmurs or snickers as I approached the second floor because we could easily revert to childhood pranksters, but the only sounds in the stairwell were my footsteps.