Chapter 37 River
THIRTY-SEVEN
RIVER
We turn the lamps off one by one until the safe house exhales—hushed and warm, a place that feels borrowed and somehow already ours.
The heater ticks. The fridge hums. Outside, the river moves like a dark ribbon through the city.
Inside, Gage threads his fingers through mine and the noise in my head quiets as if he’s pressed a gentle hand over panic and said, softly, enough.
“Come to bed,” he murmurs, voice low and coaxing.
It shouldn’t undo me the way it does. But tonight I’m a constellation in his palms, and every touch draws a line I didn’t know I needed.
We don’t rush. There’s ceremony to the ordinary—teeth brushed shoulder to shoulder, his hip bumping mine in the mirror, my hair twisted up while he watches like he’s cataloging a thousand secret angles.
He steals my towel to dry my hands even though I’m perfectly capable.
I steal it back and he grins, unrepentant.
Before we leave the little pool of light, he catches my wrist and kisses the spot just below my thumb, the one you can feel your pulse through.
His mouth is warm. I swear he steadies my heartbeat with his.
In the bedroom he stops at the edge of the mattress, one hand at my waist, the other hovering at the zipper to my dress.
“I need you,” he whispers, unzipping my dress. He pushes it off and it pools at my feet.
“I need you too.”
He searches my face like there’s any chance I could be unsure and, finding none, he exhales.
He doesn’t stare, he looks, and the difference makes my throat tight.
His gaze is awe and want layered over a kind of care I’ve only ever read about.
His hands find my shoulders, skim down my arms in a slow drift that asks without demanding.
Every inch he touches feels… claimed, but only in the way I want to be.
“Tell me what you need,” he breathes, like a vow.
“You,” I say, unashamed. “All of you.”
The smile he gives me is wrecked and boyish all at once, like I’ve just handed him the thing he was afraid to ask for.
I reach for the buttons of his shirt. He stands still while I work them loose, patient as a tide. Warmth spills over my knuckles when I slide the fabric off his shoulders. He’s solid under my hands—heat and muscle and a map of quiet stories. I trace a faint line on his ribcage. “What’s this one?”
“Kitchen chair versus six-year-old me,” he says, sheepish. “Lark dared me to jump on it like a skateboard. Chair won.”
I laugh into his shoulder. “A heathen from birth.”
“Reformed heathen.” His mouth curves against my temple. “You fixed me.”
“I did not.”
“You did,” he insists. “Or maybe you just… tuned me. Like code. Same function, better outcome.”
“Now you’re flattering me in my native language,” I say, and kiss him because I can.
The kiss starts soft—gratitude, relief, the gentlest press of hello.
Then it deepens, grows greedy and slow, like we’re tasting the whole day off each other.
He kisses like he knows what I need and still asks.
My hands slide into his hair and he breathes my name against my mouth like it’s a sacred word. I feel it everywhere.
We tip onto the bed, sheets cool against my back, him warm and heavy above me.
He props himself on an elbow and takes his time, mapping the line of my jaw with his mouth, the hollow of my throat, the place just beneath my ear that makes me arch before I can think.
He pays attention. When I gasp, he notes it.
When I hum, he lingers. And when I clutch at him, he gives me more.
Questions become touches. Answers become movement. We build a language out of breath.
“You need this cock?” he asks into my hair.
“Yes. Oh, Gage. Yes..” I tip his chin up so he has to see it. “I dream about it.”
He threads our fingers together and sets our joined hands over his heartbeat, a steady drum I can count to. “I always dream of you.”
I roll him onto his back. He goes easily, eyes dark and pleased like I’ve surprised him with a skill he suspected I had. I sit astride his hips and watch the way his gaze climbs me—hungry, yes, but reverent too. I can’t decide which makes me tremble more.
“You like steering,” he says, smiling up at me.
“With you?” I drag my palms over his chest, slowly. “I like everything.”
He laughs quietly. I kiss the laughter off his mouth, then follow the line of his throat with my lips. He shivers. I feel absurdly powerful and terribly tender at the same time. When I find a faint scar under his collarbone and press my mouth to it, his breath hitches.
“Climbing wall,” he admits on a shaky exhale. “College. Thought I was invincible. I wasn’t.”
I kiss it again like I’m filing away the story and the proof. He settles his hands at my waist, thumbs tracing little circles that make my bones fizz. The world narrows to the slow grind of heat and the rise and fall of our chests. Every brush of skin is a yes. Every yes stacks into a promise.
I glide over his dick, pushing it inside me. I rock against him, riding him slowly.
We don’t rush the last inches to the edge.
We hover and approach, hover and approach—learning each other’s tells, calibrating like a pair programming session where everything clicks.
He anchors me when I need it, mouth at my jaw murmuring things that turn my spine to silk.
I take him with me when my breath breaks, and he goes gladly, like the only place he’s ever wanted to land is exactly here.
When the wave crests I say his name without meaning to. He says mine on a ragged breath, like a prayer that’s finally been answered.
After, we drift down together. There’s a long, bright quiet—the kind that makes you think maybe the universe has been trying to deliver you to this moment for a very long time.
He doesn’t let go. He kisses my cheek, the tip of my nose, the corner of my mouth.
I find the steady beat in his neck and lay my lips there, a thank you pressed to his skin.
We slide into the soft after of things, limbs a tangle under the blanket, breath syncing because that’s what our bodies keep doing without asking us. He tucks me under his chin and draws slow lines up and down my spine until the last static hum inside me goes quiet.
“Tell me something true,” I say into his chest, greedy for more of the inside pieces.
He thinks for maybe half a second. “I almost applied to art school.”
I tip my head back. “You?”
“Yeah.” He looks sheepish. “Charcoal sketching. I was bad at faces, though. Too much… feeling. Couldn’t get the eyes right.” His thumb sweeps my shoulder. “I like code because it tells you when you’re wrong. But drawing? It just sits there, daring you to try again.”
I smile. “I think you’d be good at trying again.”
“With you,” he says, no hesitation. “I want to try a lot of things again.”
It does something to me, the easy earnestness. I offer him a piece back. “When I was twelve, I taught myself to code by breaking my mom’s desktop. I cried for two days, then fixed it with a YouTube tutorial and a library book that smelled like dust and ketchup.”
He laughs, delighted. “Chaotic.”
“Correct.” I tuck my face into his throat. “Also, I’m afraid of deep water.”
His hand pauses. “Noted.”
“I don’t like not seeing what’s underneath.”
“You won’t have to,” he says. “I’ll go first. I’ll tell you where the drop-offs are.”
Something in my sternum loosens, like a knot finally untied. “I’m falling so hard, Gage,” I admit before I can be brave about it. “It scares me how much I want this. How much I want you.”
His arm tightens, drawing me closer like he’s bracing us both. “It scares me too,” he says, honest and steady. “But I’d rather be terrified with you than safe without you.”
We lie there trading small truths like currency—his need for background noise to sleep, my habit of double-knotting every pair of laces, the way he loses his train of thought whenever I tuck my hair behind my ear.
He tells me Lark used to leave sticky notes on his monitor that said DRINK WATER and YOU’RE A STAR, and his mouth tips up when he says it.
I tell him about the time I tripped in the cafeteria with a tray of spaghetti and learned humiliation can make a person allergic to attention.
He squeezes my fingers like he’s rewriting that memory line by line.
Eventually the bright quiet returns. The room is a soft dark, and the river hushes like a sound machine beyond the glass.
He tugs the blanket higher and tucks the edge under my shoulder, a small, tender habit I didn’t know I craved.
I angle my face up, and he meets me with a kiss that’s more vow than heat, though there’s still plenty of heat simmering low.
“I need one promise,” I whisper.
“Name it.”
“When it gets ugly—and I know it will—don’t let me push you away to protect you.”
His answer is immediate. “You can try,” he says, and his smile is gentle, unmovable. “I won’t let go.”
I believe him. I think that might be the wildest part.
He’s quiet a beat, then: “River?”
“Mm?”
“I love you.”
The words don’t detonate. Instead, they bloom. Warmth unfurls through me like sunrise under my ribs. I don’t flinch. I don’t run. I’ve already arrived.
“Good,” I say, because truth deserves truth. “Because I love you, too.”
He exhales like he’s been underwater and finally found the surface. He kisses my hair, my temple, the corner of my mouth again like he’s learning the cartography of yes. We tuck into each other until the line between us feels hypothetical, not actual.
“Tomorrow we hunt,” he murmurs against my skin. “We sharpen the knives. We tagged Helena. Now, we bring Psalm88 into the sun.”
“Bossy,” I mumble, smiling.
“Trained by the best,” he returns, and I feel the grin against my cheek.
Sleep comes like a tide, and for once there’s no undertow. No doors left unlocked. No shadows in the corners. Just the steady thrum of his heart under my ear and the certainty—bone-deep and bright—that when morning comes, we’ll face it together.
No masks. Only us.