Chapter 30
Four days left.
Four days of vacation remaining and I was in love with Nathan Cross and the sun was doing its thing and the water was right there and I had approximately ninety-six hours to be a person who relaxed and I was going to use every single one of them.
This was the plan. This was a good plan.
I had never in my life successfully executed this plan, but Nathan was here and Nathan had books and sunscreen at medically precise intervals and a hat he'd researched, and if Nathan Cross could figure out how to be still then Wesley Morrison could absolutely figure out how to be still.
We were going to relax. Right now. Immediately. Starting now.
Neither of us was particularly good at doing nothing.
Nathan's version of doing nothing looked like three books in two days and sunscreen applied at medically precise intervals.
My version of doing nothing had historically looked like Broderick's four nights a week and bar tables and the transaction and fifteen thousand people telling me I was worth it. Give them the moment, get the noise back. Keep moving. Never sit still long enough for the quiet to arrive.
The quiet had always felt like something to outrun.
It didn't feel like that here.
Here it felt like Nathan in the chair next to mine with his book and his hat. It felt like something I had been moving too fast to notice was available and had finally, accidentally, stopped moving long enough to find.
I had been still for days.
I was, improbably, completely fine.
Nathan was getting there.
On day one I caught him reorganizing the minibar. He looked at me with the expression of a man who had been caught and was not going to apologize.
Eventually he left his books inside and just looked at the water with me.
Three days left.
I was aware of the three days the way you were aware of a timer running. Not anxious, I wasn't anxious, I was in love and the sun was warm and Nathan was always next to me.
But I was aware. Three days of this and then Boston and the facility and whatever came next. I wanted to use all three of them correctly, which was a new experience for me because I had never previously had something I wanted to be careful with.
That afternoon we walked along the waterfront. Not going anywhere, just walking, the warm afternoon doing its thing.
I didn't say anything. I just stayed next to him and looked at the water too and thought about obviously and the corner of his mouth and the hand on the armrest on the plane and all of it, all of it, sitting warm and settled in my chest like something that had finally found where it was supposed to be.
There was a family ahead of us. Two adults, one kid, maybe eight, in a Wardens hoodie of all things.
I saw the hoodie before I saw anything else.
Then the kid turned around and did the freeze and the recalibration and the confirmation and grabbed the nearest adult at full volume.
The parent approached with the apologetic expression of a reasonable person who could see I wasn't working.
"Sorry to bother you," the parent said. "He's a huge fan."
"No problem," I said, smiling. "Hey, buddy. You want to show me the roar?"
The kid did the Morr Roar. Arms wide, paws up, the sound coming from the chest the way I'd taught it. The kid had been practicing. You could tell.
I did it back.
The kid lost his mind.
Photo. Thanks. The parent started to move away. Then the kid looked at Nathan, who had been standing slightly to the side.
"Is that your dad?" the kid said. To me.
I opened my mouth.
Nathan opened his mouth.
We looked at each other for approximately one second.
“He’s—” I started to say.
"I'm his boyfriend."
Nathan said it with the complete certainty he brought to everything.
Like it was just information. Like the word had always been available and the child had simply asked for it and Nathan had provided it.
No corridor check. No managed expression.
Just boyfriend, out loud, to a stranger, in a warm place that wasn't Boston.
The kid nodded once and followed his parent.
I stood in the sand.
"What?" Nathan said.
"You said boyfriend," I said.
Nathan was already walking ahead of me, and I had to jog to catch up with him.
"He asked a question," Nathan said. "I answered it. You are my boyfriend. I don't see what the issue is."
Nathan Cross, my boyfriend, walking in the sand like he had said a completely normal thing and was moving on, as if he hadn't just used that word in public without checking anything first.
My hand found his.
He didn't check anything.
Just let it happen, the way things happened now, the way Nathan Cross had apparently decided things were going to happen from here on, which was without management and without checking and without the correct professional framework for what this was.
We walked like that for about thirty seconds before I stopped.
Nathan stopped too and turned back.
"What?”
Nathan Cross.
My boyfriend.
He had no idea how much I wanted him right then.
"We need to go back to the room," I said.
A beat.
"Now.”
Something happened in his expression. I could tell by the expression on his face that he was understanding what I was saying and making a decision about it in approximately one second.
"Yes," he said.
We went back to the room.
Not slowly.
The door clicked shut behind us.
We looked at each other.
Nathan put his water bottle down on the counter. Very deliberately. Like he was putting something down so his hands would be free.
Then his mouth was on mine. His hands were already at my jaw, thumbs stroking like he couldn’t stop touching.
I shoved him backward toward the bathroom without breaking the kiss.
The deep soaking tub was already filling, water roaring from the high-pressure faucet exactly like he’d noted on day one, steam curling up around the edges.
He’d planned this. The thought sent a fresh spike of heat through me.
“Nathan,” I gasped against his lips, fingers working open the buttons of his shirt with zero patience.
“Mmm.” He tasted the word more than said it, tongue sliding against mine, slow and filthy.
“You’ve been thinking about this.”
“The tub has excellent pressure,” he murmured, voice already rougher than usual. “I noted it on day one.”
“Nathan.”
He pulled back just enough to look at me, blue eyes dark, jaw tight. Sleeves already rolled up his forearms like they always were now, the sight doing ridiculous things to me.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Since the kid called us boyfriends?”
“Since before the kid.” His hands slid down my sides, tugging my shirt up and off in one smooth motion.
“I said boyfriend out loud. To a stranger. And then your hand found mine and we walked like that and I thought… this is what it’s supposed to feel like.
” He swallowed, forehead resting against mine for a second.
“And then I thought about the room. About getting you in that tub and taking my time.”
I made a low, helpless sound and kissed him harder, walking him the rest of the way until the backs of his thighs hit the tub. Clothes hit the floor in a messy trail—his shirt, my jeans, his pants, until we were both naked and the water was high enough.
He watched me step into the water like he didn't want to blink and miss it.
Nathan shut off the faucet, then stepped in too, sinking down into the deep, steaming water with a low exhale that went straight to my dick.
I was not patient. This was a known quantity about me. I had never once in my life been patient and I was not going to start now, in a hotel bathroom, with my boyfriend stepping into a bathtub.
I straddled his lap immediately, and the heat of the water and the heat of his body hit me at once. His cock was already hard, thick and flushed, pressing up against my ass as I settled on him. I rocked down once, grinding, and his hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise.
"Hi," I said.
"You said that already," he said.
"I know." I rolled my hips, once, just to see what happened. "I'm saying it again."
What happened was his hands gripped my hips and his head went back and he made the sound.
The sound. The one I had been thinking about since the first time I heard it in my apartment, the one that I was apparently going to be thinking about for the rest of my natural life, lower and more unguarded than anything Nathan let out in any other context.
I was so in love with him it was genuinely alarming.
"Boyfriend," I said, into his mouth. "You said boyfriend."
"Wesley—"
"To a child." I kissed him. "In public." Another kiss. "Without checking anything first."
He groaned, the sound deep and unguarded, hands sliding up my back to pull me closer. “Wesley.”
His voice cracked on my name, and then he was kissing me like he was starving for it—messy, open-mouthed, tongue fucking into my mouth in slow, deliberate strokes that matched the way his hips rolled up against me.
I threaded my fingers through his wet black hair, tugging just enough to tilt his head back so I could suck at the strong line of his throat.
His hands were everywhere—cupping my ass, spreading me open, one slick finger teasing my hole before sliding inside with perfect, unhurried pressure. I moaned loud, grinding down onto that single finger while our mouths crashed together again.
The kiss turned filthy fast. Tongues tangling, spit-slick and desperate, little gasps and wet sounds echoing off the tiles.
I could feel every inch of him under me—broad shoulders, hard chest, the way his abs flexed every time I rocked against him.
His free hand wrapped around both our cocks, stroking us together in the hot water, thumb swiping over the heads on every upstroke until I was whimpering into his mouth.
“Nathan—fuck—” I panted, breaking the kiss only to rest my forehead against his, brown eyes locked on blue. The steam made everything hazy and intimate, evening light slanting through the cracked window and catching on the droplets clinging to his lashes. “I love you.”
“I know,” he said, voice gravelly, finger crooking inside me to press against my prostate.
“Nathan.”
His mouth curved, that small, smug, devastating smile. “I love you too. Obviously.”
“You have to stop saying obviously.”
“It’s accurate,” he murmured, adding a second finger and scissoring them slowly, stretching me open while his other hand kept stroking us in that perfect, maddening rhythm. “And it’s true.”
“It’s smug.”
"Those aren't mutually exclusive," he said, and kissed me again before I could tell him he was right, deep and slow and thorough, the Nathan version, like he had decided this was worth his complete attention and once Nathan Cross decided something he did it right.
I laughed into the kiss, the sound bright and real and bouncing off the tiled walls from every direction. Nathan pulled back just enough to watch me, blue eyes soft and possessive at the same time, the expression I now had a word for: his.
We stayed like that for a long time—making out like teenagers who’d just discovered how good it could feel, hands and mouths everywhere, water sloshing, cocks sliding together, fingers stretching and teasing.
Hot and heavy and unhurried all at once, because we had the whole room, the whole evening, and nowhere else we needed to be.
Eventually the water started to cool, but neither of us moved to get out.
We still had the rest of the room to use for the next three days.
And I planned on using every inch of it with my boyfriend.