58. Graham
58
GRAHAM
O bviously I never went to Homecoming or any other dances in school, but I never really understood the concept either. But coming home— that I finally understand when I sink back inside Silas and reconnect my mouth with his. When his arms and legs wrap me up, when his cock leaks between our abs, I feel like I’m exactly where I belong.
He’s been crying off and on since I came up, and it’s so unlike him—or the him I used to know. I was usually the wreck. The overstressed, hypersensitive, rejection panicked one who needed soothing.
He got overwhelmed a handful of times during our relationship—especially when something was going on with his mom’s health, or he had a particularly bad date, but he rarely shed a tear. So as perfectly right as all this feels, there’s a wrongness to it, too. Something’s off. Very off, and I’m determined to fuck him for as long as possible if only to delay the inevitable realization that this is probably never going to happen again.
I’ll keep being a Republican senator, he’ll go right back to hating me, and I won’t blame him.
Being out of chastity for the first time in more than a year is a learning experience. It took fucking forever to get hard when by all rights, I normally would have come three times with the way he was making me feel. And now, I feel both years away from coming, and like I’m orgasming with every thrust. I’m sweating all over him, it’s that intense.
We move slower, intimately close and kissing deeply. It has me questioning everything, even more than that conversation with my sister over buttered pecan did. Could I have a conversation with my father? Could I beg on bended knee for this man—the love of my fucking life to please forgive me?
Could I live on this love alone?
It certainly feels like I could die from it.
We go on and on, fucking, panting into each other’s mouths between wet, greedy kisses until Silas clamps a hand on my ass, holding me still inside him and grinding his cock into my stomach. “ Fuck…I…Fuck…unh… ” His dick throbs, and his ass squeezes me tight as he comes. I glance down, spotting two things at once—cum shooting from his gorgeous cock and me buried inside him.
When he throbs and clenches again, a supernova of an orgasm splits me straight down the middle. My dick erupts with full force for the first time since the last time I was inside Silas. I lose my hearing, my vision—a complete white-out of sensation blasts through me. I swear the only reason I stay in one piece is because Silas is still wrapped around me.
“I love you, I love you, I love you.”
I’m so out of it, I think I’m the one saying it, but it’s his deep voice in my ear. His warm breath and hushed whisper, over and over like a prayer.
“I love you.”
My God. I grasp his face and press my forehead to his. Our noses touch. His eyes are closed, and his lips are still moving on the words. I can’t catch my breath. All my cells are offline. By the time I’m coming back together again, he’s fallen silent, and I have no idea what to say. What’s safe to say.
I brace myself for him to ask me to leave or tell me to get the fuck out, but he doesn’t. At least, not yet. “Anyway…” he sighs.
I pull out, a flood of semen coming with me. Silas makes a noise that sounds like a purr, but then he clears his throat, shutting off the involuntary tell.
“Get me a towel?” he asks quietly.
If I can walk . Silently, I move off him, find my footing, and bring a damp hand towel back from the bathroom. I go to wipe him up like I ordinarily would, but he takes the towel from me to do it himself. When he’s done, he turns over, displaying his perfect backside. He runs his hands over his face before resting his head on the pillow and staring at me. I don’t know whether to get back into bed or grab my pants off the floor.
“Where do you want me?” I ask.
“Where do you think?”
Not helpful. I glance at the space next to him, and he gives me a subtle nod, which is an amazing surprise. And then the second I sit, he says, “I’m moving to Florida.”
I frown, not sure I heard him right. When I replay it, though, it sounds and feels the same. Horrible. “Why are you telling me that now?”
“Why am I telling you or why now?”
“Either. Both.”
“Because if you come looking for a booty call in a few weeks, I won’t be here. Or on the Upper East Side. I’ll be gone.”
“I didn’t come here to have sex with you. If you turned me away on the sidewalk, I’d have understood. I really just wanted to see you.”
“Why?”
“I think I wanted to have a semi-pleasant interaction with you.”
“What made you think you might get one of those?” Silas asks .
“I didn’t, but I thought it’d be worth a try.”
“You must have heard about the lawsuit. Was Avery worried about me? She looked like she was.”
“She was, but that’s not why I came, either.”
“Why then?”
“I miss you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep.”
“I get that,” he says, an exact echo of my response earlier. I hope it sounded nicer when I said it. “It feels a little unfair, I guess.”
“What feels unfair?”
“You left me, Graham.”
“I miss the house I lived in when I was a kid, too. Am I not allowed to miss it just because I was the one who left?”
“I guess you are. Do you like your new house?”
I stare at him, reading the question behind the question. “No,” I answer honestly. “I wish I could have stayed.”
“Are you still sad?”
Are we talking about the house? Or are we talking about us? I ask myself this because I know we’re talking about us, but the answer either way would be the same. It was my father’s decision. I didn’t get a say, so I have to get over it.
What’s fucked up about that is that I was in second grade when I moved. When I broke up with Silas, I was a prosecutor and a United States senator. Arguably one of the most powerful people in the country, and I say arguably because it’s all kind of a joke, isn’t it? Politicians are like remote control cars, going wherever the guy with the remote—the money—wants us to. Why? So we can wear a patriotic pin and spew bullshit on the evening news.
“I dream about that old place at least once a week.” I mean Chelsea. Our kitchen. Our bed. Our couch. Him .
“I don’t think I’m gonna miss this place at all,” he says .
“What’s in Florida?”
“My aunt.”
The one I never met the same way I never met his mother whose grave I’ve laid flowers on. I swallow through my tightening throat. Every time I think about the way he was there for me after the miscarriage and the way I distinctly was not there when he lost his mother, I want to beg someone to bury me alive.
“How’s she doing?” I ask.
His gaze goes from thoughtful to wary. Like he’s not sure he wants to have this kind of conversation with me after all. “She’s good. Making a lot of new friends.”
I want to ask him a million things. If Avery and Roger paid up, would you still be going? If you still had a job with Katia would you stay? If I had a real spine instead of a piece of straw and were able to turn my back on my family would you still want to be with me? Is this all my fault?
“What will you do there?”
“I’m still looking,” he says. “Not sure yet.”
“Personal training?”
“Maybe. But I need health insurance, too, so…I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”
I can’t say either of the things I want to say—I’m sorry, or do you need any money—so I don’t say anything. I also want to hold his hand again, but I don’t do that either. Honestly, I don’t know what I’m still doing here. “Should I go?” I finally ask.
“Do you want to?”
“I never wanted to.”
He takes a moment as if he’s digesting that, and I brace for a fight. “Then stay,” he says simply.
The word sends me reeling. “I ca—I…”
“ Won’t . You won’t . I already know that. But don’t say you can’t. It’s worse than an empty apology.”
“My apologies weren’t empty, Silas.”
“But what good did they do? Make sure I knew you felt super bad about all of it, but you were gonna do it anyway? You made me think—” He shakes his head and turns to face the window. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Fuck.” I put my head in my hands. This is so frustrating. “What about this do you not understand? I spent my entire life doing exactly what my father wanted. I felt like my back was against the wall. Do I look back on it now and say well— that could have been avoided. Yes. I fucked up. I didn’t think up the whole AI bullshit. If I had that idea, I would have led with it.”
“Would have been nice if someone would have thought of me in all that.”
Holden had. But he thought it would be better to leak Silas’s name instead. “I’m gonna get dressed,” I say. If I’m going to tell him this, and I think I will, I’m not doing it butt ass naked.
Silas sits up, and I toss him his sweatpants. “What’s happening?” he asks.
I don’t answer him until my jeans are on. It feels very strange for my cock to be touching fabric, but I’m not gonna make Silas sit through watching me get the thing on. It’s a bit of a process. Plus, I don’t know where the key went. I’m hoping it shows up before he kicks me out again.
Once I’m dressed, I say, “I’m about to tell you something you won’t like.”
“Awesome. I love that for me,” he mumbles, but he also gets off the bed and puts his pants on. I stand at the foot of the bed, and he remains near the nightstand.
I force the words out. “When the video came out, Dad was furious. He was ready to hire hackers to get it offline?—”
Silas snorts. “He must not be that familiar with the internet.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not, so he called Holden—my brother who is.”
He folds his arms over his bare chest. “Okay.”
I run my hand through my hair and wish I was still inside him. Wish I could rewind and reconfigure this strange, murky aftermath. “He explained how we could call it AI and deny the whole thing. Just keep denying and shutting it down until everyone shut up about it.”
Silas’s eyes narrow. “I know all this.”
“But…”
“Jesus,” he whispers.
“He also thought it would help to shift the focus if the press had another name to run with.”
Silas stares hard at me—hard enough to shatter something. His voice is low and measured. “You agreed to that?”
“No,” I say, keeping my own words firm. I never in a million years would have agreed to that. “Of course not. Silas, I had nothing to do with it, and I know how that sounds, but you have to understand that me being a senator is so fucking important to my father?—”
“Oh, I’m aware?—”
“I know. I can tell you’ve done your damn research.”
His laugh is harsh. “Yeah.”
“So what was that?” I ask, gesturing to the bed. “And don’t you dare fucking say it was a mistake.”
His jaw sets as he glares at me. “That was goodbye.”
I nod. My head keeps bobbing up and down as I look everywhere but at him. Finally, I see it. The leather band with the key on the other side of the bed. I go to grab it and pick up the cage, shoving them both into my front pocket.
Goodbye explains all the tears, I guess. If I’d known. I probably would have cried the whole time, too. I knew something was off, but as usual, I don’t read between the lines in personal relationships all that well. I used to be better with Silas, but not anymore.
“I believe you, you know?” he says out of nowhere.
I look at him, stunned.
“Granted, you lie a lot. You lie like—all the fucking time, but I don’t think you’d sell me out like that. Even if it helped out dear old dad. This sex worker thing, though?— ”
“Didn’t come from me either.”
“Does that matter?” he asks. “If you’re the one out there defending it all the time?”
“No,” I say. He’s right. “It doesn’t.”
“And as far as that goes,” he says also gesturing to the bed, “I don’t have a lot of self-control when it comes to you. I think we can both agree on that.”
It’s my turn to get emotional. He has every reason to hate everything about me. But it’s getting harder and harder to believe he’s not still in love with me. And the thought of that is beyond devastating. I wish I could be half the man he deserves, because I’m still desperately in love with him, too. So desperate, every breath I take without him in my life is like water drowning me. “I don’t want this to be goodbye.”
“I can’t guarantee I’ll be in the mood if you show up here again before I go.”
“I don’t want you to go, either.” There, I said it. I was going to hate myself even more if I didn’t put that out there.
“Yeah, well… I can’t afford it here anymore.”
Blackmail me.
I press my lips shut so the words don’t come out, but the answer to all his problems is right there in his phone.
It’s even possible it would save me, too.
“I should go,” I whisper before I do or say anything else I can’t take back.
“Yeah, I guess you should. See you around, Senator.”
“I love you, too, Silas.”
His sharp intake of air is the last thing I hear before I leave his apartment, and the door clicks shut.