14. Leo - Trespassing
The rain tonight isn't poetic; it's a freezing lash that bites into your bones and turns the asphalt into a dark mirror.
But as I walk up the driveway of Nate's apartment complex, I don't feel the cold.
I only feel that steady, furious thumping hammering in my chest from the moment I managed to sneak a peek at his address on the office terminals.
It was almost embarrassing how easy it was: one of my signature smiles, a few jokes about a forgotten phone charger, and a wink at Mrs. Higgins—who probably hasn't received a sincere compliment since 1998.
One moment of distraction, an excuse to lean toward the screen, and Nathan Sterling's address was burned into my memory.
I carry two pizza boxes under my arm, trying to shield them from the water with the hem of my soaked hoodie.
It's an almost absurd touch of normalcy, a disguise as just a regular guy visiting a friend, but I know damn well there's nothing normal about what I'm about to do.
I climb the stairs to the second floor, the sound of my footsteps muffled by the hallway carpet.
When I reach door number 24, I take a second to fix my wet hair, letting a few blonde strands fall over my eyes in that calculated mess I know drives him crazy.
I pull out the keys I took from Nate. I know, I shouldn't have.
But it's too late now. I slide them into the lock, open the door, and there he is—and the sight is better than I dared to hope.
Nate is standing right there in the entryway, wearing nothing but a white towel wrapped tight around his waist. The skin of his chest is still covered in tiny droplets that glisten under the faint light from the landing.
His brown eyes go wide, shifting from suspicion to total shock in less than a second.
"Nate," I whisper. "I knew you'd be sitting in the dark."
He looks at me; he seems to be trembling.
"Surprise," I say, flashing my cockiest grin as I hold up the pizza boxes. "Thought you might be hungry. School cafeteria sucks, right?"
He stays paralyzed. I see him swallow hard, his Adam's apple bobbing along his strained throat. It's a vision of absolute vulnerability: the Coach, the man who manages thirty athletes with a single whistle, reduced to silence by a soaking-wet eighteen-year-old with dinner under his arm.
"Leo? What the hell... how did you find this place?" His voice is a strangled whisper, loaded with a paranoia that desperately tries to mask his arousal. He looks around frantically, checking if any neighbors are watching. "Leave. Now. You can't be here, I told you."
He tries to pull the door shut, but I'm faster. I plant my foot against the frame, preventing him from sealing off his sanctuary. I have no intention of leaving. Not after spending the whole day at school watching him pretend I was nothing more than a name on a roster.
"Come on, Nate. I bring you dinner and you slam the door in my face?" I take a step forward, forcing him to back up into the entry hall. "You seem tense. Maybe because that pact you invented in Santa Barbara is springing leaks everywhere?"
He shakes his head, trying to reclaim a shred of authority, but it's hard to be authoritative when you're half-naked and the person who made you scream God's name three days ago is eight inches from your nose.
"What happened at the beach was a mistake.
A moment of weakness. We're at my home now, Leo.
There are rules, there's my career, there's decency. .."
"Decency?" I chuckle, setting the pizzas on the foyer table near the entrance.
I step closer to him, closing the gap until I can feel the heat radiating from his damp skin.
"You can't go back to pretending, Nate. Not after touching me like that.
You can't erase what we did in that room just because you're wearing the official polo again.
Especially when you're looking at me like I'm your favorite dessert and you're starving. "
My words hit him like a slap. I see the rage wrestling with desire in his eyes, a battle I already know the outcome of.
Nate grabs my shoulders—maybe intending to push me out—but his grip is too tight, too desperate.
His fingers dig into my wet hoodie and for an instant we stay like that, suspended in a silence heavy with everything he doesn't have the courage to admit.
"You're an arrogant little bastard," he growls, but his voice is broken.
"And you're a man who is dying to let this bastard ruin him all over again," I shoot back, challenging him with my eyes.
That's the final spark. Nate breaks. It's not a gradual surrender; it's the total collapse of a dam.
He grabs me by the collar of my hoodie and hauls me inside with a force that steals my breath, slamming the door behind me with a crash that makes the pictures on the walls quiver.
We don't even make it to the bedroom. He pins me against the wood of the door, his lips seeking mine with a ferocity that tastes of long-overdue hunger and months of repression.
The kiss is bitter with rain and sweet with urgency. His hands, large and calloused, move up under my hoodie, heedless of the water soaking my clothes. I feel his scorching skin against mine and a moan escapes my throat—a sound he immediately smothers by pressing his mouth against mine.
"Quiet," he pants between kisses, his voice reduced to a hoarse breath. "The neighbors... the walls are thin, Leo. If someone hears you..."
"Then you make me be quiet," I provoke him, helping him pull away the towel that's already slipping from his hips.
I pull him down to the floor, right there on the entryway rug, between the forgotten pizzas and my wet shoes.
Nate looms over me, his massive body crushing me with a weight I adore.
It's a tangle of limbs and broken breaths.
He peels off my jeans with a haste I've never seen in him, his eyes locked on mine, charged with a tension bordering on madness.
When we are finally skin to skin, the risk of being caught acts like an accelerant.
Every sound from the landing, the hum of the elevator, the ticking of distant footsteps, makes us jump, making every caress more electric, every touch more forbidden.
Nate explores me with a desperation that is anything but methodical.
His fingers trace trails of fire along my thighs, moving up until he finds me, and the way he grips me makes my back arch.
I bite my lip until I taste blood to keep from screaming, while he devours me with his eyes, as if he were trying to brand my image into his mind for the days of loneliness ahead.
"You shouldn't have come," he whispers, as he positions himself between my legs, his arms lifting me to pull me tighter against him.
"But you're glad I did," I retort, sinking my fingers into his short, damp hair, guiding him toward me.
When he joins me, the impact is so intense that for a moment I see only white spots.
He cups my face with his hands, forcing me to look at him as he moves inside me with a rhythm that is a confession of total submission to desire.
There is no Coach anymore, no man worried about his reputation; there is only Nate, naked and vulnerable, seeking redemption in the body of the boy he's supposed to keep at a distance.
The reverberation of our bodies against the door produces a dull thud, a dangerous counterpoint that could attract the attention of anyone passing in the hall.
Nate covers my mouth with his hand when my breathing gets too loud, and I respond by biting his palm, feeling the jolt of his arousal double.
It's an act of rebellion against everything that is right, a fire burning every bridge behind us.
The pleasure hits us together, violent and ungraceful, leaving us hollowed and trembling on the cold entryway floor.
Nate stays on top of me for a few minutes, his heavy breath against my ear, his heart galloping like an athlete at the finish line.
I feel his weight like an anchor, a bond I know he won't be able to break easily.
The risk of being heard by the neighbors added an electric charge to every touch, transforming a desperate act into something unforgettable.
After an eternity, Nate slowly pushes himself up, running a hand over his face as if he'd just woken up from a dream that was too vivid.
He looks around, sees our clothes scattered, the now-lukewarm pizzas on the table, the door that separates us from the world that could destroy us.
Reality is resurfacing, but this time I don't see the usual terror in his eyes. I see a sort of luminous resignation.
He stands up and offers me a hand to help me up. He doesn't run to the bathroom to wash away the guilt; he stays there, naked before me in the dim light of the hall.
"The pizzas will be freezing," he murmurs, and there's a note of ironic exhaustion in his voice that makes me smile.
"We can heat them up. Or we can ignore them and move straight to whatever's in the fridge," I reply, retrieving my jeans.
Nate looks at me, then looks at the door, and finally sighs, letting his shoulders drop.
The Coach mask is left on the rug along with his towel.
He steps closer, takes my face in his hands, and gives me a chaste kiss on the forehead, a gesture so unexpectedly tender it steals my breath more than the sex did a moment ago.
"You're a disaster, Sinclair. Do you have any idea what would happen if someone saw you climbing those stairs?"
"But they didn't. And now I'm here." I wrap my arms around his waist, pulling him to me. "I'm sleeping here tonight, Nate. No arguments."
He looks like he wants to argue, his rational mind is surely listing thirty-four reasons why this is a terrible idea, but then his eyes drop to my lips and his resistance vanishes. He gives me a playful swat on the back of the head and leans down to pick up one of the pizza boxes.
"The couch it is, then. But tomorrow morning, you vanish before the sun comes up. And no weird messages during class, clear?"
"Yes, sir," I reply, mimicking him.
We move into the living room, navigating this new shared space with a naturalness that both scares and excites me.
Nate turns on a small mood lamp and sits on the sofa, inviting me to tuck myself between his legs.
We eat cold pizza straight from the box, laughing like two kids who just pulled off the heist of the century.
For the first time, we aren't the Coach and the athlete, and we aren't even two strangers using each other in a hotel room.
We're Nate and Leo, in an apartment that smells of rain and complicity.
Later, as we lie on the big bed, the one he used to share with Vanessa and that now feels like it belongs only to us, Nate holds me from behind, wrapping me in his heat. I feel his breathing steady as he drifts into sleep, and I stay awake a bit longer, savoring the victory.
Just as I'm about to close my eyes, I feel his arm tighten around me a bit more, an unconscious reflex in his sleep.
I realize that despite his fears, Nate isn't just letting me into his house.
He's letting me in everywhere. And as I fall asleep, I know that from tomorrow on, school won't be a track field; it'll be a minefield where every look we share will be a silent explosion.