Chapter 10
The room is too big, too still, and every thought I’ve tried to bury is whispering at the edges of the silence. I’ve lain here for hours, staring into the dark, but the dark stares back, pressing in until it feels heavy on my chest.
In a few weeks, Christmas break will be over, and I’ll be back at St. Theresa’s, drifting through lectures like a ghost. No closer to knowing what I want, or where I’m going.
Outside of school, life used to feel like a far-off country I wasn’t ready to visit.
Now it’s here pressing against the glass, watching me.
Soon, there’ll be talk of marriage contracts again.
Paper lives drawn up by people who think they own me.
And how am I supposed to tell Jen that the only person I want is the one I can’t have?
The thought of being presented to some stranger like a gift makes my skin crawl, as though I’m being set alight from the inside.
The duvet feels suffocating, so I shove it away and slip from the bed, my bare feet sinking into the soft carpet. I head for the ensuite, thinking cold water might shock me back into something that resembles calm.
But when I catch sight of myself in the mirror, I freeze, the tap still running.
For a moment I hardly recognise myself—eyes too wide, hair a tangle, the faint shadow of sleeplessness beneath my lashes, my oversized hoodie drowning me. And then I notice it—a thin ribbon of light spilling from beneath Matt’s door.
I should turn back. Crawl under my duvet, lie still until morning.
Pretend I don’t care that I’ve hardly seen him since his birthday.
Pretend I don’t miss the smell of his cologne in the hallway, or the way we could sit outside together without speaking and still say everything.
Pretend I don’t ache for the quiet intimacy of him passing me a cigarette and tilting his head at the night sky as though the stars were ours to count.
But the silence in my bedroom feels like a blade tonight. My chest is too tight, and my thoughts are too loud. I need him, and I don’t have the strength to pretend otherwise anymore. Before I can think better of it, I lift my hand and rap my knuckles against the door.
“Yeah?” His voice comes through, low and rough, the kind of sound that settles somewhere deep in me as I push the door open.
His room is dark, swallowed mostly in shadow, illuminated only by the faint blue glow of his laptop screen and the spill of streetlight bleeding through the half-closed blinds.
The light catches on him in pieces—his jaw, the curve of his throat, the hard line of his shoulder—like he’s carved out of night itself.
He’s changed out of the suit he wore earlier.
Now he’s just in a pair of soft grey sweats slung low on his hips, his hair a complete mess, rumpled and pushed back like he’s been dragging his hands through it for hours.
A few curls have fallen across his forehead in a way that shouldn’t be devastating but absolutely is.
And his chest—fuck me.
All those taut muscles and lines of ink I’ve memorised in stolen glances and late-night fantasies.
Tattoos I’ve imagined tracing with my tongue, mapping with my mouth until he’s gasping my name.
Skin I’ve craved like something holy and forbidden all at once—an altar I shouldn’t kneel at and can’t stay away from.
The sight of him like this—unguarded, half-lit and haunting—is enough to punch the air out of my lungs.
His gaze lifts from his laptop screen, brows knitting. “Lil’, it’s late. What’s wrong?”
I swallow, the heat already rising in my cheeks. “I… couldn’t sleep.”
His expression softens in a way that makes my knees feel unsteady. “Come here.”
I shouldn’t be in his room this late. The hour is heavy, the house quiet enough that I can hear the faint buzz of the streetlights outside.
My bare feet make no sound on the carpet, but the weight of every step feels loud as I cross the room slowly, feeling every inch of his eyes on me, like his stare is hands skimming my skin.
As I draw closer to his desk, he leans back in his chair and reaches out.
When his fingers close around my wrist, the jolt goes all the way to my belly.
He doesn’t ask. He pulls me into his lap, and I go without protest, curling sideways, cheek against his shoulder.
It’s a position I’ve found myself in a hundred times and one I crave when my thoughts get too loud.
His scent—soap, leather, and something darker—wraps around me. I breathe him in and let my eyes fall shut.
We sit there, the silence stretching, until he says, voice low by my ear, “You’ve been looking at cam sites again.”
My breath catches. I lift my head, pulse skittering. “How…?”
“You should know better than to think deleting your search history actually deletes anything.”
“Oh, God.” I cover my face, heat flooding my skin. “Matt.”
“Hey. Look at me.” He pulls my hands away, not harsh but firm, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone as if to steady me. “Don’t be embarrassed. You’re curious, you want your own money. I get it.”
“It’s not just the money,” I whisper. “It’s… the control, the power. I like the idea of it.”
His jaw flexes, expression darkening at every word that leaves my lips. He’s holding my eyes captive, but out of my peripheral, I see his fist clench on the armrest of his chair.
“And maybe… I want to know what it’s like to turn people on. To be looked at like that. To… to be desired, wanted.”
His eyes darken, pupils swallowing the green. “Christ, sweetheart. You have no idea how dangerous that is.”
“Then teach me, help me. I trust you, Matty.”
He goes still underneath me. “Fuck, Lily. Don’t say shit like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Because I shouldn’t even be looking at you like this. Never mind touching you.”
“But you do. And you want to, don’t you?”
He doesn’t deny it, only grips my waist tighter, his fingertips a quiet warning against my hips.
“Cam work isn’t just flashing yourself to strangers,” he says roughly, his eyes begging me to understand. “It’s a performance. It’s a game of psychology. You’ve got to split yourself in two—the you they see, and the you they don’t. Otherwise, it will eat you alive.”
“I can learn.” If Matt has seen my browser history, then surely he’s seen the hours of research I’ve done into this. The hundreds of sites I’ve looked at and compared before starting the process of making my account on Tempt.
His voice softens. “I know you can. You’re clever and stubborn as hell.”
A shaky smile tugs at my lips. “So… will you help me?”
For a long time, he just stares, the war playing out in the tight set of his jaw. Finally, he tips his head back, exposing the long column of his throat as he lets out a pained groan before meeting my eyes again.
“Fine.” The word comes out on a slow breath, like it's costing him to give in to me. “I’ll help you. But we need to be smart about this.”
There’s a pause, not the kind where someone’s searching for the right words, but the kind where they’ve already found them and are weighing whether they should be said at all. His eyes glaze over slightly, the green darkening as he turns over the endless chain of possibilities.
“And if you change your mind…” His voice drops lower, slower, like he’s pulling me in without meaning to. “…or shit gets too risky, we burn it all.”
The last part is sharp, certain, and it pulls me out of my own thoughts. I want to ask him what burn it all actually means, but something about the way his jaw locks tells me I don’t want the details.
My heart kicks against my ribs. “Okay.”
He cups my face, and his touch feels like a confession—warm, steady, careful, as if he’s holding something fragile he’s afraid to drop. His eyes find mine, the look in them robbing me of the very air in my lungs.
“But, Lily…” His voice is low enough to make the air between us shift. “There’s something you should understand.”
My pulse stutters. “What?”
“I’m not sure I can stand other men looking at you like that. Looking at parts of you I’ll never get to see, to touch, to taste.”
The air shifts with his confession, the acknowledgment that recently things between us have been changing.
His words—and what they mean—are dangerous, because if the wrong person heard them…
but I’m past caring. Past letting marriage contracts keep us apart when I know we could be something incredible, if only we let ourselves.
“Matt…”
“I mean it.” His thumb drags across my bottom lip, feather-light, and I shiver at the touch.
“I think about you all the time. The second you walk into a room, nothing else exists. And I know—I fucking know—I shouldn’t want you, can’t want you, because…
” He cuts himself off, chest heaving with the effort of getting his words out, and at the same time holding back the words he knows neither of us can stomach to hear.
“Please don’t say it.” My voice is quieter than I intend, but it’s enough to pull his eyes back to mine.
His throat works, his jaw tight. “Yeah. Alright.”
Then, quietly, I ask, “Do you want me to show you what I’d do on my streams?”
His eyes close like the words physically hurt him, like picturing it is more than he can handle.
His hands tighten on my hips, his fingers flexing, and his cold rings press against my bare skin where my hoodie has ridden up.
Reaching up, I cup his jaw, and his eyes snap open, laser-focused on my touch.
“What if I said you could have me? That they might get to look, but only you get to touch?”
“Fucking hell,” he murmurs, almost too low to catch. “You’re killing me here.”
I shift, the air seeming to thicken around us.
Moving from his sideways hold to straddle his lap feels like stepping over a line I can never uncross.
My knees bracket his hips, the soft press of my thighs against him, and the hard, thick weight of his cock beneath me sending a ripple of heat through me.