14. Crossing Lines #2
“Those are good reasons,” she said gently. “But you can't carry both your grief and his. You'll drown.”
She was right. I'd been trying to save Rowan from his own self-destruction while barely keeping my own head above water. Trying to be the father figure he'd never had while struggling with feelings that were anything but paternal.
“So what do I do?”
“You start by being honest about what you want from him. Not what you think Elaine would have wanted, not what you think you should want. What you actually want.”
I left her office with more questions than answers, the gray afternoon pressing down on me like a weight.
I found myself driving toward town, taking the long route past the bookstore where Rowan lived.
I told myself I was just checking on him, making sure he was okay. Making sure he was alive, really, given his talent for finding new and creative ways to destroy himself.
The narrow hallway outside his apartment smelled like dust and someone's burnt toast, with an underlying mustiness that spoke of too many years and not enough maintenance. My footsteps echoed in the quiet, each one sounding too loud, too obvious.
The door was ajar. Just enough to notice, just enough to make my pulse quicken with something that might have been concern or might have been anticipation.
I knocked once, twice. “Rowan?”
Silence.
I should have left then. Should have respected his privacy, gone home, minded my own business like a rational adult. Instead, I pushed the door open a fraction more, telling myself I was just making sure he wasn't passed out drunk or worse.
The air inside hit me immediately. Thick with the sweet-sour smell of alcohol and something else, something musky and intimate that made my stomach clench with recognition. The apartment was dim, late afternoon light filtering through cheap blinds, casting everything in shades of gold and shadow.
Clothes were strewn across the floor: jeans, a t-shirt, shoes kicked haphazardly against the wall. The detritus of people in a hurry to be naked, to lose themselves in each other's bodies.
I stepped inside, the quiet broken only by the muffled sound of voices from the bedroom. My heartbeat was suddenly too loud in my own ears, a rhythm that seemed to fill the entire apartment.
The bedroom door was open just enough for a sliver of view. I told myself to leave, to respect whatever was happening behind that door, to stop being a creep who spied on people in their private moments.
I didn’t leave.
I couldn’t.
Through the gap, I could see the bed.
Rowan lay sprawled across rumpled sheets, half-covered in shadows and fading winter light.
Naked from the waist up, his skin glowed gold, kissed by sun and sweat and something more primal.
The sheets were pushed low—dangerously low—clinging to the sharp jut of his hip bones.
One arm was thrown above his head, wrist slack, fingers curled slightly like he' d been gripping the edge of a dream.
The other rested on the chest of the man beside him.
The stranger was talking, low and easy. Something that made Rowan laugh—a real laugh, not the barbed smirk he wore like armor, not the hollow chuckle he gave me when I said something too close to the truth. No, this sound was open. Unfiltered. A sound I'd never earned from him.
My breath caught. Heat curled low in my stomach, snaking lower before I could shove it back down.
No. Fuck. Don’t.
It was instinctual, primal. I felt it bloom between my legs, wrong and fierce, the slow throb of want rising against the wall of shame already tightening in my chest.
I shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be looking. Shouldn’t be cataloging how the muscles in Rowan’s stomach flexed when he shifted, how the light caught in the hollow of his throat, how one pale thigh peeked from beneath the sheet as he twisted toward the other man.
But I couldn’t stop.
The sheet slipped lower. Just a breath. Just enough.
My mouth went dry.
I could see the faint dusting of hair trailing down from Rowan’s navel, the shadow of his cock beneath the thin cotton, half-hard and resting against the crease of his thigh.
The fabric clung, the outline clear enough that I could imagine the rest. He shifted again—stretching like a cat after a long nap, lazy and comfortable and completely unaware of being watched—and the sheet pulled further down his hip, revealing the swell of one ass cheek, bare and smooth and fucking perfect.
My cock pulsed in my jeans.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Shame hit me hard—immediate, electric, laced with something that felt dangerously like guilt’s twin. Not just because I was hard watching this. Not just because I was old enough to know better. Not even because he was Elaine’s son.
But because I wanted it.
I wanted him .
Not the idea of him. Not the obligation. Not the ghost of the boy I’d met at Elaine’s funeral.
I wanted the man in that bed.
I wanted to run my hands down the line of his spine, to mouth at the bruise on his shoulder, to bury myself in the warm space where his thighs met and make him forget every stranger who’d ever touched him like he didn’t matter.
The thought turned my stomach—and hardened me further.
What the fuck was happening to me?
I shifted my stance, trying to ease the pressure in my jeans, but even the smallest movement felt like betrayal.
I didn’t deserve this arousal. Didn’t want it.
But my body didn’t care about right or wrong, not when the sight of Rowan—flushed and fucked and content—was burning itself into memory like a brand.
The stranger murmured something, leaning in to press a kiss to Rowan’s shoulder, and Rowan laughed again—tilting his head back, exposing the column of his throat like an offering. He was beautiful in that moment. Truly, viciously beautiful. And it gutted me.
My cock ached.
My jaw was tight from clenching, and I felt a sting in my eyes that I couldn’t blame on the light.
This was not who I was.
And yet here I was.
And I couldn’t fucking look away.
Rowan shifted again, rolling halfway onto his stomach, dragging the sheet with him until it barely covered anything at all.
His ass was round and firm, marked faintly by fingernails—someone else’s claim.
His legs stretched out, one bent at the knee, giving me a glimpse of his cock nestled between his thighs, half-hard and curved toward the mattress.
I swallowed hard. My hand twitched—wanting to reach for the bulge in my pants, to ease the pulse building with every second I stood there, watching something I had no right to see.
I curled my fingers into a fist instead.
The man beside him was stroking Rowan’s lower back now, tracing lazy patterns over his skin. Rowan made a soft, pleased sound—a hum that tightened everything inside me. It was too intimate, too casual, too easy .
I’d never seen him like this.
Not guarded. Not angry. Not self-destructive or flippant or baiting. Just... young. Alive. Soft.
He looked nothing like the man who snapped at me in doorways and accused me of projecting my shame. He looked like someone who knew what it was to be wanted and took pleasure in that knowledge.
And I hated that it wasn’t me.
I hated how easy it seemed for him—how unburdened he was in this moment, this life, this bed. I hated the stranger’s hands on him, the way Rowan accepted touch without flinching. I hated the quiet, almost reverent way the man pressed his lips to Rowan’s shoulder, like he couldn’t believe his luck.
And most of all, I hated the way I couldn’t look away.
I told myself to step back, to walk away with whatever shred of dignity I still had left, but my body refused to move.
Every sense was pinned to that narrow view, to the flickering candlelight inside the room, to the sounds of sheets rustling and breath catching and Rowan’s voice dropping into a soft, teasing murmur.
Then movement. Sudden, decisive .
The stranger sat up, his silhouette a blur, and Rowan followed, rising to his knees.
His cock hung heavy between his legs, already hardening, flushed at the tip. My breath caught. I didn’t mean to make a sound, but I felt it—felt the hitch of something primal in my chest. I gripped the doorframe hard, my nails pressing crescents into the wood.
Rowan leaned in, slow, deliberate. The stranger’s legs opened to welcome him, and Rowan moved between them like he belonged there. Like he’d done it a hundred times before.
And then—God help me—he bent forward.
I could only see parts of it, the angles and shadows shifting as they moved, but it was enough. I saw Rowan’s lips part, saw him lower his mouth, heard the man’s soft, stuttered gasp as Rowan took him in.
I froze. The heat that had been coiled in my gut burst into wildfire. I was hard—painfully, angrily hard—and I couldn’t pretend it was just tension anymore. Couldn’t rationalize it as misplaced affection. This wasn’t fatherly. It wasn’t anything that could be buried beneath excuses.
This was want. Raw and immediate.
I watched Rowan’s head bob slowly, reverently.
The man’s hand fisted in his hair, and Rowan didn’t flinch, didn’t resist—he moaned.
Soft and low, like he liked being used like this.
My cock pulsed against my zipper, leaking, aching.
I could feel the wet patch forming at the front of my jeans, sticky and humiliating.
Rowan pulled back briefly, laughing softly at something the man said, then licked a stripe up the length of his cock before swallowing him again. This time, the sound that broke from the stranger’s throat was loud—almost a sob. His hips lifted, and Rowan didn’t stop him.
I could hear it now .
Wet, obscene sounds. Breathing, ragged and desperate. The creak of the mattress. Rowan’s low, throaty hums of approval.