Chapter 17 #2
Trevor doesn't speak either. He looks straight ahead, jaw set, one hand gripping the armrest hard enough that the knuckles have gone white.
His breathing has slowed to something measured — the rhythm of a man feeling too much who's decided the feeling stays where it is, behind the wall, because the wall is the only thing keeping him upright.
I let my hand sit there. One beat. Two. The fan turns. The cicadas scream. Outside, a car passes on Cembrook and its headlights sweep the living room wall in a slow arc that touches neither of us and moves on.
Then I shift. My hand moves down his arm, finds his hand on the armrest, takes it.
His fingers are warm. Calloused. The roughness of hands that have done real work, the kind that leaves marks and doesn't apologize.
He doesn't pull away. Doesn't lace his fingers through mine either — just lets his hand sit in my grip, passive, waiting, the surrender of a man who's decided whatever happens next is outside his control and he's okay with that.
I stand. Pull gently. Trevor follows. Not right away — there's a beat where he stays seated, his weight in the chair, his eyes on mine with that focused attention that makes my chest do something I refuse to name — and then he's up, and we're moving toward the hall, and the stairs creak under our weight because they've always creaked, and the sound is so familiar it almost hurts.
His room. The narrow twin bed against the wall, the water-stained ceiling, the smell of Trevor's skin on the sheets.
The bed is made. Military corners. Of course.
Trevor Hollander could make a hospital bed in a hurricane and the corners would still cut paper.
I lead him to the edge of it. Make him sit.
The mattress gives under his weight, the frame creaks, and the sound is so domestic, so ordinary, that something in my chest tightens in a way I didn't expect.
I kneel. Boots on the hardwood, knees on the floor, my face level with his chest. His skin is warm — I can feel the heat coming off him before I touch him, that furnace quality that belongs to Trevor alone. I lean in. My mouth finds the scar.
I kiss it. Once. Slow. My lips against the raised tissue, smoother somehow than the skin around it, which is rough with a day's stubble and salt from dried sweat.
I kiss the length of it. From the collarbone down, following the ridge with my mouth the way my thumb followed it before, learning the geography through a different sense.
His breath catches — I feel it against my hair, a sharp pull through his nose — and his hand finds the back of my neck.
Not pushing. Not holding. Just resting there, his fingers in my short hair, his palm warm against my scalp.
I keep going. Down his chest. The planes of muscle there, defined and hard, the architecture of a body rebuilt after damage and come back stronger.
My mouth on his sternum. His ribs. The flat of his stomach, where the muscle tightens under my lips and his breathing goes shallow.
I can taste him — salt, soap, something underneath that's Trevor alone.
I work his belt one-handed. The buckle gives.
The button pops. I drag the zipper down slow, the sound obscene in the quiet room, and then his jeans are open and his cock is there, hard against his stomach, flushed dark and thick, and Christ, the sight of it does something to my stomach that borders on religious.
I take him in my mouth. Slow. No preamble, no teasing, just my lips around him, taking him deep, the heat and weight of him against my tongue.
He twitches. Once. Hard. A full-body response that travels from his hips to his throat as a sound — low, choked, barely there — and it goes straight to my own dick, so hard it hurts, trapped against my jeans with nowhere to go and too much want to carry.
I set a rhythm. Not fast. Not rough. The opposite of the garage, the opposite of the bedroom wall.
This is slow. Deliberate. My mouth on him, my hand on his thigh, my thumb tracing circles on the inside of his knee where the skin is softer.
I can taste every inch of him. The salt at the base.
The musk in the crease of his thigh. The precome bitter and sweet at once on my tongue, and I swallow around him and feel him pulse against the back of my throat, and the power of it — Trevor Hollander coming apart in my mouth, because of my mouth, because of me — is almost too much to hold.
His hand is in my hair. Gripping. Not controlling, not directing, just holding on, his fingers tight against my scalp, his knuckles white.
His hips roll up in short, desperate thrusts I match with my mouth, and the rhythm we find is filthy and tender at once, the kind of fucking that comes from a place deeper than anger and lasts longer than rage.
"Cole." My name in his mouth. Rough. Broken. The kind of broken that means he's close, and knowing I'm the one pushing him there does something to my chest I've got no language for.
I don't pull off. Don't slow. Keep my mouth on him, my hand on his thigh, my thumb on that soft spot behind his knee that tenses his whole leg when I touch it.
His breathing goes ragged. His hand tightens in my hair.
His hips stutter, lose the rhythm, find it again, and then he's coming — hot and thick down my throat, his cock pulsing against my tongue, his whole body going rigid from the hips up while his hand holds my head in place like he's afraid I might float off if he lets go.
I swallow. Once. Twice. The taste is bitter and salt and Trevor, and I hold him in my mouth until the pulsing stops and his grip goes slack and his body collapses back against the mattress with a sigh that could be relief or surrender, and right now the difference doesn't matter.
I pull off slow. My jaw aches. My lips are wet.
Trevor's sprawled on the narrow bed, one arm thrown over his eyes, chest heaving, jeans still open, his cock soft against his thigh.
The lamplight from the hall catches the sweat on his skin and turns it gold.
He looks wrecked. Used. Good in the way that only comes after someone has taken you apart and put you back together with more care than you knew you deserved.
I sit back on my heels. Wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
My own dick is so hard it's painful, straining against my jeans, and I don't touch it.
Don't need to. Not now. Now is about Trevor, and Trevor is lying on his childhood bed with his eyes closed and his breathing slowing and his hand finding mine on the mattress without looking, his fingers lacing through mine with a certainty that feels both new and ancient, like we've been holding hands this way since before either of us knew what hands were for.
The house is quiet. The fan turns downstairs. The cicadas scream. Somewhere a car passes on Cembrook and doesn't slow.
I squeeze his hand once. He squeezes back. That's the whole of it. No speeches. No tearful confessions. Just two men who've learned that most of what matters lives below language, in a place that doesn't have words yet.
I can't say the things I need to say. I can't tell him I love him.
Can't tell him I'm sorry. Can't tell him that every door I've knocked on for two years has been about making right what I made wrong when I pushed him out of this town and into a war that put a scar on his shoulder and a blankness in his eyes I catch sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking.
But I can do this. I can kneel between his legs.
I can take him in my mouth. I can swallow him down and feel him come apart because of me, for me, and maybe that's enough.
Maybe it has to be. Maybe the words come later, or they don't come at all, and either way we keep finding each other in the dark on this narrow bed with the water-stained ceiling and the military corners and the weight of everything we've carried for ten years pressing on us both like something that might, with time, become bearable.
His hand is still in mine. His breathing has slowed to something almost steady. The scar on his shoulder catches the lamplight, pale against his tan, and I look at it without looking away, because looking away costs more than I can afford, and right now affordable is the only currency that matters.