Chapter 33 #2
“One of the guys in the platoon adopted him and took him home to Ohio. Last I heard, Corporal Biscuit was living on a farm, chasing squirrels.”
“Good,” Jules said, satisfied.
The fire crackled. The stars were out, thick and bright, the Milky Way visible in a way it never was in town. Boden had his guitar out—he’d brought it to the fire without being asked—and he strummed something soft and aimless, background music for the night.
“Play ‘Wish You Were Here,’” I said. The song we’d talked about on his birthday call.
Boden looked at me, then smiled and played it. Fingerpicking, not perfect but close, the melody rising into the dark with the smoke and the sparks. Kace went quiet. Jules closed his eyes. Arek’s hand found mine between us on the log, hidden in the dark.
The music drifted up through the trees and into the stars, and I listened with my eyes open, my hand in Arek’s, and my heart doing something it hadn’t done in so long that I’d forgotten the name for it.
It was full.
When the song ended, the silence held for a moment, almost reverent. Then Kace said, “That was beautiful, man,” with a sincerity that had no filter, and Boden ducked his head and smiled.
The boys went to bed. Reluctantly, in stages—Kace protesting, Boden shepherding, Jules already halfway to the cabin before anyone noticed he’d left.
I watched the flashlight beams cross the gravel and disappear into the cabin.
The light came on inside and their voices carried faintly through the walls, the sound of three boys settling into their shared space.
Arek and I sat by the dying fire. His head on my shoulder, his beer empty, the last of the embers glowing in the ring. The mountain was quiet around us, the creek running its night song, the trees black against the stars.
“This was perfect,” he said softly.
“It was. It still is.”
I turned and kissed him. Slow, deep, tasting smoke, beer, the sweetness of marshmallow, and underneath it, Arek. The man who’d taught me that coming down the mountain was survivable. The man who’d crashed and gotten back up. The man whose boys were in a cabin with my boy, becoming brothers.
My man.
“Inside,” I said against his lips.
We went inside. The house was dark except for the bedroom lamp as we undressed each other.
Slow, familiar, the buttons and zippers we’d learned to navigate without fumbling.
Arek’s shirt over his head, my hands on his waist. My shirt pulled off, his mouth on my collarbone.
The choreography of two people who knew the steps and still found them thrilling.
In bed, I pulled him on top of me. His weight, welcome and warm, his hips settling against mine, his cock hardening against my stomach as he kissed me.
His hands in my hair, my hands mapping his back, the slow build of heat that was the deep burn of a fire with good coals instead of the flash of kindling.
“Arek,” I said. His name, the only word I needed. He lifted his head and looked at me, his green eyes dark in the lamplight.
“Yeah?”
“I want you to. I’m ready.”
His breath caught. He knew what I was asking. We’d talked about it in the shower weeks ago, and the conversation had lived between us since, unresolved, waiting for the right moment. His hand stilled on my chest. “Yeah?”
“I want to know what you feel. When I’m inside you. I want you to have that with me.”
He lowered his forehead to mine. “Tell me if it’s too much. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He kissed me. Deep, slow, his mouth communicating what his words couldn’t—reverence, desire, the weight of being trusted with this.
Then he moved down my body, taking his time, his mouth on my chest, my stomach, my hip bones.
Relearning me. Remapping terrain he knew by heart but was approaching from a new direction.
His hands were steady. Doctor’s hands, sure and precise, and when he reached for the supplies I kept in the nightstand, the competence of his movements grounded me. This was Arek. The man who paid attention, who listened, who would never rush.
“Talk to me,” he said, echoing what I’d asked him the first time. “Tell me what you feel.”
His slicked finger circled me, and the sensation—new, foreign, intimate in a way I hadn’t anticipated—made my breath hitch. Not pain. Not discomfort. Just the overwhelming awareness of being touched somewhere no one had ever touched me, of a boundary I’d never crossed being approached with care.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He pressed in. Slow, gentle, one finger, and my body tensed instinctively. The resistance was physical, not mental—muscle memory that didn’t know how to yield, the body’s default defense against entry.
Arek waited. His other hand was on my thigh, his thumb stroking a slow arc, patient, unhurried. “Breathe. Push toward me, not away.”
I breathed and tried to do what he said, and the finger slid deeper. The sensation shifted from strange to something else. Something warm and full, and entirely unlike anything I’d ever felt.
“That’s it,” Arek said, his voice unsteady, which told me more about what this meant to him than any words could. “You’re doing so well, Mac.”
A second finger. The stretch was more intense, a burn that lived on the edge between discomfort and pleasure, and I gripped the sheets, breathed, and let it happen. Arek watched my face, reading every micro-expression for signs of pain or fear.
What he found must’ve reassured him because his fingers moved deeper, curled, and found something that sent a bolt of sensation through my entire body. It was so intense that my hips came off the bed and a sound ripped out of me that I didn’t authorize.
“There,” Arek breathed, and the combination of his voice, his fingers, and the lightning in my spine made my vision blur.
“Jesus, Arek…”
“I know.” He did it again. And again. And my body, which had spent fifty-one years not knowing this existed, opened to it with a hunger that stunned me.
“I’m ready,” I said. My voice was wrecked. “Arek, I’m ready.”
He withdrew his fingers. I heard him slicking himself with lube—sounds that had become familiar from the other side.
Then he was over me, between my legs, and the blunt pressure of his cock against my hole was real and immediate.
I looked up at his face—flushed, intent, shaking with restraint—and nodded.
He pushed in, so slow I felt every fraction of an inch.
My body resisted, then opened, then pulled him deeper, and the surrender of it was the most vulnerable thing I’d ever done.
More vulnerable than jumping out of a plane.
More vulnerable than our first kiss. More vulnerable than telling my son I was sorry.
I understood now what Arek had felt, what he’d meant when he said he needed to let go. This was letting go. This was the walls coming down, every single one, and letting someone into the space behind them.
Arek stopped when he was fully inside me. His arms were shaking. His forehead dropped to mine, his breath came in ragged bursts, and his eyes, when I found them, were bright with tears.
“Mac,” he said. Just my name.
“I love you. I love you so much. Now move.”