Chapter 7
Brent
I woke to Jason's alarm and his sleepy grumble as he fumbled to silence it. "No. Too early."
"What time is it?" My voice came out rough with sleep.
"Six." He rolled over to face me, hair mussed and eyes still heavy-lidded. "We have to be out by noon and workshop is at nine."
Six hours. Six hours left in this room, this bed, this snow-globe world where we'd built something too good to be temporary.
"Come here." I pulled him closer, threading my fingers through his sleep-warm hair.
He came without hesitation, pressing the length of his body against mine. Already half-hard against my thigh. "Brent, we don't have time—"
"I know." I kissed him anyway, slow and deep, tasting sleep and the faint mint of the toothpaste we'd shared all week. "Just want to touch you. One more time before we have to be professional and say goodbye in a parking lot."
He made a soft sound against my mouth and kissed me back, his hands sliding over my chest, my ribs, tracing the lines of muscle and bone like he was memorizing them.
Outside, someone's car started in the cold, the engine rough and protesting.
The sound of the retreat ending and real life reasserting itself.
My hand slipped beneath the sheets, wrapping around him. He gasped, hips jerking forward.
"We should stop," he breathed even as he rocked into my grip, his cock hot and hard in my palm. "We have to pack—"
"I know." But I didn't stop, couldn't stop. I stroked him steadily, learning the rhythm that made his breath catch, the pressure that made him moan. "Want to remember you like this."
"Brent—" His hand found me too, wrapping around my length with a confidence that hadn't been there at the start of the week.
We moved together in the predawn stillness, the only sounds our breathing and the quiet rustle of sheets. I kissed his throat, tasted salt and the cedar-scent of his soap, felt his pulse hammering beneath my lips.
"Look at me," I said, and when his eyes met mine—dark and dilated behind his glasses—something cracked open in my chest. Not breaking. Expanding.
His rhythm faltered. "I'm close—"
"Me too." I stroked him faster, my own orgasm building at the base of my spine, pooling hot and urgent.
He came first, spilling hot over my hand with a choked sound he tried to muffle against my shoulder. The sight of him—head thrown back, completely undone—sent me over the edge. I came hard, pleasure rolling through me in waves as he worked me through it with trembling hands.
We lay there after, catching our breath, sticky and warm beneath the sheets.
"Best alarm clock ever," Jason said eventually, his voice still shaky.
I laughed despite the ache already spreading through my chest. This was the last morning. The last time I'd wake up to his warmth beside me, to the particular way he looked fresh from sleep—vulnerable and beautiful and mine.
Except he wouldn't be mine after today. Not really. Not in any way that mattered when we lived a thousand miles apart.
"Stop," Jason said, touching my face. "I can see you spinning."
"Just thinking."
"About how this can't work?"
"About how much I want it to." I kissed his palm.
"I know." He cupped my jaw, his thumb brushing my cheekbone. "But we'll figure it out. We'll make this work."
I wanted to believe him.
***
We showered separately so we didn’t get distracted and the domesticity of taking turns made everything worse.
He emerged with damp hair and fogged glasses, water still beading on his collarbone, and I wanted this.
I wanted mornings like this to be normal instead of the exception.
I wanted to know what he looked like in February, in summer, next December with a year's worth of mornings behind us.
"Stop looking at me like that," Jason said, pulling on his jeans.
"Like what?"
"Like you're memorizing me."
"I am memorizing you." I crossed to him, still wrapped in my towel, and kissed him once more. "We'll figure this out, right?"
"We'll figure it out." His voice was certain, steady. "I'm not letting you go that easily."
"Good." He kissed me again, then stepped back before we could get derailed. "Get dressed. We have a workshop to survive."
***
The final morning workshop was bittersweet.
I'd structured it as a sharing session—each writer presenting a piece of what they'd worked on during the week.
The conference room felt different this morning, smaller somehow.
Someone had brought a tin of gingerbread cookies, and the spice-sweet smell mingled with pine from the wreaths still hanging on the walls.
Through the windows, snow blanketed the peaks, the kind of postcard-perfect scene that made everything feel both more and less real.
Rebecca went first, reading a polished but emotionally distant thriller opening. She was technically proficient, every word chosen with care, but there was no heart in it. No vulnerability. Just competence masquerading as craft.
Others followed—some strong, some still finding their way, all of them earnest and trying.
Claire read a tender scene about a grandmother teaching her grandson to bake Christmas cookies, and half the room teared up.
An older man shared the opening of what might actually become something good if he kept at it.
Then it was Jason's turn.
He stood, shuffling his pages with nervous fingers, and I had to resist the urge to go to him. To tell him he was brilliant and he had nothing to worry about. To kiss him in front of everyone and claim what was already mine.
"This is new," he said, adjusting his glasses. "Something I wrote yesterday. It's... different from my usual work."
He read.
And it was about us. Not explicitly—he'd changed details, made it abstract enough for plausible deniability.
But I recognized us in every line. The way two people could find each other in unexpected places.
The terror and joy of being seen. The question of whether something that felt this right could possibly last.
His voice was steady as he read: "He taught me that inspiration isn't something you wait for in silence. It's something you create—with your hands, your mouth, your honest words in the dark. It's the choice to be seen, even when being invisible feels safer. Especially then."
The room was silent when he finished.
My throat had gone tight. He'd just laid himself bare in front of a dozen near-strangers, and the courage that took—the trust—
"That's beautiful, Jason," Claire said softly, breaking the spell. "Really beautiful. The emotional honesty is just... wow."
Others murmured agreement, leaning forward in their chairs. Even Rebecca looked grudgingly moved, though she tried to hide it behind crossed arms and a skeptical tilt of her head.
Jason's eyes found mine across the room and I tried to communicate everything I was feeling through that look. I see you. I know what you're saying. I feel it too.
"Thank you for sharing that," I said, my voice not quite steady despite my best efforts. "That's the kind of emotional honesty we've been working toward all week. Taking risks, being vulnerable, trusting the reader with your truth." I paused, holding his gaze. "That takes real courage."
We moved on to the next person but I couldn't focus. All I could think about was Jason's words, the way he'd claimed what we had in the only way he could—through his art. Through the thing that mattered most to both of us.
When the session ended with everyone exchanging contact information and promising to stay in touch—promises that would mostly evaporate by February—I found myself at the front of the room, watching people filter out into the hall where they were playing "I'll Be Home for Christmas" too loud.
Jason hung back and when we were finally alone, he crossed to me.
"So…" he said.
"You wrote about us." It wasn't a question.
"I wrote about what it feels like to find something you didn't know you were looking for." He adjusted his glasses, a nervous tell I'd learned to read. "If that happens to sound like us, well..."
I pulled him close, not caring if anyone walked back in. Not caring about anything except the solid warmth of him and the way he fit against me like all the clichés I'd spent years avoiding in my writing. "It was perfect. You're perfect."
"I'm really not."
"You are to me." I kissed him, trying to pour everything I couldn't say into it—all the want and fear and desperate hope that we could make this work.
When we pulled apart, he was smiling. "What happens now?"
"Now we pack." I took a breath, steadying myself. "And then we figure out how to make this work in the real world."
***
Packing felt wrong. We moved around the room that had been ours for a week, gathering clothes and books and all the small accumulations of seven days together.
Every item felt weighted with memory. Jason's sweater, the green one he'd worn that first workshop when he'd caught my attention with his questions. My notebook, full of half-formed ideas that all seemed to circle back to him.
"You know what's weird?" Jason said, folding the green sweater before tucking it into his bag. "A week ago I didn't know you. Not really. And now..."
"Now you know me better than most people ever have. How is that possible in seven days?"
"We've been living in each other's pockets for a week?" He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "That's a lot of time. A lot of talking."
"Yeah. A lot of talking." I watched him pack, memorizing the way he moved, the little unconscious habits I'd collected like precious stones. The way he pushed his glasses up when he was thinking. The way he bit his lower lip when he was deciding something. "Jason?"
"Yeah?"
"Come to New York. Just for a weekend. Let me show you my world, see if you can picture yourself in it."
He stopped packing and looked at me, sweater still in his hands. "And if I can't?"