Chapter 12
WALL
FREE WILL, MY ass.
People talk about wanting things like it's something you can steer. I'm taking hotel stairs at midnight with another man's key card in my pocket, and I can tell you, there's no wheel. There never was a wheel.
I didn't choose this.
Nobody chooses the thing that takes their whole understanding of self apart.
I had a life that ran clean, with order in it.
I had shit labeled. If wanting could be steered, I'd be asleep in my own bed right now.
Instead, my mouth is too dry and my heart is too loud and I'm taking stairs two at a time, toward a room where two unknowns are waiting for me.
I'd never have picked this. And I've never wanted anything more. Both of those are true, and I've stopped trying to make them agree.
Between the fourth floor and the fifth I make myself slow down. Breathe. I’ve now spent weeks arguing with myself about it, calculating, pleading with my forehead against the shower tiles. And tonight, when it counts? Tonight, the argument’s gone.
At the top of the stairwell I stop with my hand on the door bar.
Last chance to be the man I was in September.
I push through. The hallway runs long and hushed, and his door is the fourth on the left. 512, in his handwriting, on a card I've been holding since the moment he handed it to me.
As I stop in front of the door, my thumb finds the edge of the card and I look at it for the millionth time.
I could just use it, and walk in like I belong.
But…do I?
That part is still unclear, so I lift my fist instead, and then stand there, motionless for a full minute, living out the last moment tonight that belongs only to me.
Then, I knock, and it belongs to all three of us.
THEO
PATRICK MOVES THE armchair again.
That's the third time, and I can't even enjoy it properly because I'm too busy vibrating.
He requested it. For Wall. My boyfr— The man I'm fucking ordered furniture so the man we want to fuck can sit in it and watch us. I don't know whether to tease him about it for a year or kiss him until he can't stand.
Obviously, I’ll do both. But later. If tonight goes right, there'll be time for both.
"It was fine where it was," I say from the bed.
"Mm."
"It was also fine where it was before that."
He steps back, checks the angle one more time, and I hug my knees and zip it, because the truth is, watching Patrick be nervous is an experience in of itself.
He doesn't get nervous. Ever. And now look at him.
Fussing.
Some of it's for me. The rest is for Wall.
God, I hope he comes. He has to come. What if he—
Two knocks.
My whole body jolts. Patrick goes still for half a breath, then immediately recovers. He rolls his shoulders and crosses to the door, and I kneel up on the mattress because sitting is suddenly not an option, and the door swings open, and—
Wall.
He fills the whole frame. And he doesn't move. One second. Two. He stands on the wrong side of the threshold looking in at us, one hand still on the doorframe. My heart is going so hard I can hear it, because he could still turn around. He could still—
"Wallace," Patrick says, low, and steps back to make room.
Wall steps in, and I start breathing again. His eyes do one slow pass. First, he finds me, kneeling on the bed like an idiot.
Oh hi, hello, bonjour.
Then he finds the chair.
I watch him understand it in real time. His ears flood red while the rest of his face pretends nothing is happening, and I have to bite my own knee. The big scary Wolf just got shy about furniture, and if I laugh right now I will ruin the best night of my life before it starts.
Patrick turns the deadbolt, and the click goes down my spine. The room gets quiet in a new way after that sound. Smaller. Warmer.
Patrick doesn’t let it linger, and cuts to the chase. "Rules."
Rules. There are rules? Now that I think about it, there should be rules, something that would never occur to me on its own. That’s why he’s the organizer.
They stand in the space between the bed and the chair, facing each other like they’re cowboys doing a standoff, unlocking a new kink within me.
Patrick continues. "You watch. Nobody touches you tonight." He pauses, seemingly to gauge Wall’s reaction. When Wall gives him none, he adds, "And if anybody says stop, about anything, everything stops. No questions."
The last rule comes out slower than the first two, aimed straight at Wall, and my throat goes thick, because that’s not a rule. That’s promise wearing a rule's clothes. You’re safe here. Wall's chest rises once, deep, and holds.
"Agreed," he says. One word, rough, and it sounds like it cost him something on the way out.
I adore him. This is a disaster. I adore this disaster.
The two of them keep looking at each other, and the air in the room gets almost too thick to breathe in, and nobody has touched anybody yet.
Somebody has to do something before I combust.
And, as usual, that somebody is me.
I raise my hand like we’re in school.
Patrick sighs before he even looks over. "Theodore?"
"Amendment.” I point to Wall. “He should take his shirt off. For morale."
Wall's mouth twitches, barely, there and gone, and I want to frame it. Patrick pinches the bridge of his nose. "Noted."
"Noted like it'll happen? Or noted like the suggestion box is a shredder—"
"Theodore." Except now there's a smile buried somewhere under my name, and this is what I wanted. Exactly this, both of them in one room being themselves at each other while I sit in the middle of it, about to shake apart.
Wall crosses to the chair. Before he sits, he grabs the backrest and drags the whole thing four inches to the left.
I freeze.
Patrick freezes.
The chair he spent twenty minutes positioning now lives four inches to the left, and Wall settles into it, plants his forearms, gives us a face with nothing on it, and I genuinely can't tell whether he fixed the angle or just needed to win something before the night starts.
Either way, I'm obsessed.
Patrick's left eye twitches once, and he lets it go with a quiet "Fine," addressed to no one.
The chair takes Wall's weight without a sound. He sits the way you'd sit for a passport photo, spine straight, hands on the armrests, knees square. If I had to bet, and I'd bet everything I own, that stillness isn't calmness.
Calm men lean back.
Patrick watches him one moment longer. Then he turns to me, and everything in his face changes temperature. "Come here."
I'm moving before he finishes.
He meets me at the edge of the bed, takes my jaw in one hand, and kisses me slowly, like he always does when he wants me stupid, and it works, like it always works.
Except tonight, there's an extra heartbeat in the room and I can feel it on my skin.
My whole left side prickles with it, and I make a sound into Patrick's mouth that I'd be embarrassed about if embarrassment were something I did.
Patrick pulls my shirt over my head. I get one second to miss his mouth before his palm lands flat on my chest and pushes, and I go down onto my elbows, and he strips the rest off me with zero ceremony.
I'm hard already. Obviously. I've been half hard since Patrick knocked on my door, and fully hard since Wall knocked on his, and now I'm naked, in front of the man who’s been colonizing my mind for a month.
Wall’s eyes travel down my body and stop exactly where I want them. And even though the want is strong, my nerves win over and I run my mouth, because that’s how I cope. "You're staring."
His eyes never leave my cock when he says, without missing a beat, “Isn’t that the point?”
Heat shoots straight through me, because yes. Yes, it is.
Patrick's hand closes around my cock and my head drops back. He strokes me exactly twice—umm, cruel—then lets go to pull his own shirt off, and I sit up and grab his belt, because if I don't get my hands on somebody in the next five seconds we’re going to have a problem.
I take my time with the buckle. On purpose. Leather sliding through the loops nice and slow while I tip my head and look at the chair.
Wall's hands are flat on the armrests. His chest is moving faster than a sitting man's should.
Perfect.
Patrick's clothes hit the floor, and then he's naked.
I lose my own thread completely, because look at him.
Wide everywhere. Shoulders that fill doorways.
A chest I've bitten and still don't feel done with, dark hair dusted across it and trailing down his stomach.
Those arms, thick and corded, the ones the internet keeps fangirling about.
The internet doesn't know the half of what those hands can do.
Heavy thighs. Narrow hips. And his cock, already hard and flushed, thick enough that my mouth waters on sight, curving up like it's asking for me.
I could stare at this man for hours. Not tonight, though. Tonight I have better plans.
I slide off the bed, onto my knees in front of him, and take him in my mouth, because I want to. And because I want Wall to watch me do it. Both equally true. I've never claimed to be complicated.
I angle myself so the chair gets everything. My tongue flat up the underside, the way that makes Patrick's stomach jump, then deep, slow, letting my eyes drift sideways. Patrick's fingers slide into my hair, his breathing going uneven above me.
And from the chair comes nothing. Nothing at all. The man watches like breathing is optional, and somehow the silence is hotter than noise would be. I can feel his attention on my skin like sun rays.
I give Patrick’s cock my full attention, my head bobbing back and forth, rhythmic and diligent. Then something moves at the edge of my vision, and I look over mid-suck.
Wall's shirt is coming off. One hand, collar to crown, gone.
I pull off Patrick with a sound the whole floor probably hears. Coordination just leaves me. Wall's bare to the waist over there, huge, an old scar on his collarbone I want the story of, and I'm staring with my mouth open like I've never seen a man before.
His hand settles flat on the front of his jeans and presses down.