Chapter 21
Oliver
This was bad. Really bad. The kind of bad that turned to acid in my stomach and festered. My stupid crush on Luke had metastasized into something I couldn’t control.
It made me inappropriately flirtatious. Pulling his face to within kissing distance of mine?
What the hell had I been thinking? Then the crowning moment, getting hard while in a position where he felt it.
As if that hadn’t been mortifying enough, I couldn’t overlook the sprinkle of irony on top in which he thought I’d been panicking.
He’d mistaken my arousal for a trauma response.
First when he’d demonstrated the grab from behind, and then again on the damn floor.
The way his voice gentled, the way he touched me, careful, reassuring, so damn tender, it hadn’t done a thing to alleviate the situation.
To him, I’m someone to shelter and protect.
A responsibility, not a possibility. Someone recovering, not someone to want.
Believing it could ever be more was a laughable fantasy.
Well, the joke was on me now, because my body had betrayed me in the most humiliating, spectacular way imaginable. My only defense? Duh.
When a guy as sexy as Luke—body carved from steel, voice like velvet, and a soul made entirely of soft things—straddles you, his muscles flexing, his breath warm across your skin, his baritone voice all warm and gentle, what the hell else is going to happen? Getting hard had been inevitable.
Burying my face in my hands, I willed the humiliation to seep out of my skin. The physical reaction embarrassed me enough, but it also meant I couldn’t trust myself around him anymore. I’d made something safe complicated.
What if he was disgusted? What if I’d made him so uncomfortable and violated he regretted ever letting me stay here?
I couldn’t lose this. I couldn’t lose him.
Even if I never touched him. Even if he never looked at me that way.
Even if I spent every goddamn day pretending the things in my chest reserved only for him weren’t eating me alive.
A tentative knock sounded at my door. Panic and desire swirled in me in equal measure. Part of me wanted to stay silent; the other part of me wanted to salvage this.
“Ollie? I’m not asking to come in. I know you want space, and I don’t want to push past that.
I just wanted to check if you’re okay and to say I hope you don’t regret today.
You did incredible, and it means a lot that you trusted me enough to train with me.
I’m sorry if I messed that up or made it worse somehow.
We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, or we can, up to you, whatever makes you comfortable. ”
He sounded so worried. After everything, he thought he owed me an apology. He’d done nothing wrong. That almost had me opening the door and inviting both him and the conversation we should probably have in, but I didn’t want to confront my shame or what came next for us.
“Okay. Well, I’ll be in the living room if you need anything. Take all the time you need.”
He waited a few moments for me to respond. When I didn’t, his footsteps moved away from the door.
Another hour passed before I left the sanctuary of the bedroom and wandered into the living room. Luke sat on the couch, watching a sports highlights program. He turned the moment he heard me.
“Hey,” he said, his voice soft and a little uncertain. “Dinner’s still warm on the stove if you’re hungry.”
“I . . . yeah. Thanks.” But before I headed to the kitchen I paused. “You’re not going to say anything?”
Frowning, he ran his hand through his hair. “I didn’t think you wanted me to. I’m kinda taking your lead here. What do you want me to say?”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you?”
I let out a huffy sound, too bitter and too wounded to be anything humorful. “Gee, I don’t know, Luke. Maybe because you, a straight, demi-ace man, had to feel another man’s erect cock pressing into you without your consent!”
My voice rose in pitch with each word, but I couldn’t stop, everything rushing out.
“Because you have to live with me now? Because I took something safe and respectful and twisted it into I don’t even know what.”
I began pacing, my hands flailing.
“And now what? We pretend it didn’t happen? You walk on eggshells, or worse, you avoid me because you don’t want to make it awkward? Because I made it awkward?”
Looking toward him, I thought I might see discomfort, frustration, anything that would confirm my fears.
Instead, his expression held no trace of tension.
Only quiet intensity filled his eyes, a small, kind smile softening his face.
I didn’t understand what he had to smile about but it caught me mid–free fall and yanked me back to solid ground.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out, stopping mid-stride, my shoulders slumping, all the fight leaving my body.
He gestured to the cushion beside him.
I hesitated, unsure if I deserved to be so close to him again, but eventually, I lowered myself onto the far end of the couch.
“Can I hug you?” he asked.
“Hug me?”
“Only if you want.”
“I don’t understand. Why would you want to?”
“Because it seems like you could use one.”
“I could, actually.”
“Then get in here, partner,” Luke said, scooting closer until his arms were around me. I sank into his solid frame. “That’s it. And we’re goin’ premium emotional-support hug, which means you get the forehead press for closeness and light back pats for reassurance.”
In spite of myself I snort laughed. “That’s a lot of emotional intelligence and touch affirmation coming from a man who probably owns flip-flops with bottle openers.”
“Hey, don’t be insulting my Reefs. You’re not livin’ if you don’t have shoes with a built-in bottle cap opener on the sole.”
I pulled back, horrified.
Luke chuckled, giving my nose a quick tap. “Got you. That’s what you get for knockin’ my methods. I got your brain to halt out just long enough to get you out of your spiral, and made you laugh, which was the whole point.”
Of course it was, and of course it worked.
“Alright, for real talk. Thanks for telling me all that. Seriously. Emotion like that isn’t easy to say out loud, and the fact you trusted me with it means a lot.”
This man. I’d emotionally regurgitated all over him, and here he was thanking me for it.
Thanking me for the mess and rawness, because he knew.
He knew, a few short months ago it would’ve been impossible for me.
He understood showing emotion hadn’t always been safe for me.
In the past, whenever I’d dared to raise my voice, to speak my truth, I’d been punished.
Mocked. Hurt. I’d been taught, repeatedly, that it proved better to stay quiet, that it kept me safer.
But Luke has a soul made of light and a heart as a vast as the sea.
And so help me, I’m falling for that blasted heart, for precisely this reason.
The way he held space for my mess without trying to fix it.
The way he offered gentleness without pity.
He looked at and treated me as more than the worst things that had ever happened to me.
“Second, I’m not mad,” he continued. “What happened was a totally normal reaction given the circumstances. Men have dicks. Sometimes they get hard in the least ideal situations for no reason other than to say ‘hey, I’m still here.’ If you think you’re the first guy to experience an awkward boner, I think you need a better history teacher.
You’d be more of an anomaly if you hadn’t. ”
“Yeah?” I scoffed. “What’s your awkward boner story, then? It can’t compare to this.” What!? No!? I can’t be thinking about Luke’s erect cock. That’s just asking for another ill-timed boner.
“Junior year, post-practice locker room, mildewy tile, sweaty gear, a war crime of Axe body spray. Least sexy place on earth. I’m thinking about dinner and a botched play, strip off my gear, look down and boom, I’m sportin’ a semi.
Outta nowhere. Bodies are idiots. They fire off at the wrong time and leave us holding the embarrassment sign. You’re fine.”
“That’s all you think it was?”
“Yeah, I mean, what else would it be?”
I opened my mouth, the words on the tip of my tongue. “It’s you. It’s everything you are and everything you do. It’s the way you look at me, the sound of your voice, and the strength of your hands, but the gentleness with which you hold me.”
I couldn’t say that. Instead, I went with, “Yeah, you’re right, just one of those things.
Could have happened to anyone.” Disappointment colored my voice, but what good would it do to spill my heart to a man who couldn’t return it?
What purpose would it serve, other than to make everything more complicated? It would only hurt us both.
“Right, so why would I be mad at you for something that could happen to anyone?”
“I guess you wouldn’t be.” But it hadn’t happened to just anyone. It had happened with Luke, because of him, and that made all the difference.