Chapter 6
The sand is too hot under my towel. I shift, wincing, and the movement sends a dull ache through my ass that has nothing to do with sunburn and everything to do with the fact that I’ve spent the last six days getting fucked so thoroughly Wyatt’s handprints still sting when the shower hits my skin.
“Did you put on sunscreen?” Mom asks, for the third time. She’s wearing a wide-brimmed hat and high-end sunglasses. Behind her, the ocean is blinding, a sheet of white-hot light that makes my eyes water. “Cade? Sunscreen?”
“Yeah,” I say, which is a lie. I forgot. I was too busy staring at the ceiling of the cabin this morning while Wyatt fucked my mouth and Jai jerked himself off onto my stomach, and sunscreen didn’t exactly crack the top ten on my priority list.
“You’re going to burn,” my dad says. He’s set up the family camp with military precision: umbrella, cooler, four beach chairs in a perfect semicircle, towels laid flat.
Lucy and Lily are on either side of him, both in one-piece swimsuits that cost more than my entire summer wardrobe plus my textbooks.
They haven’t looked at me once since we got here.
I haven’t looked at them either. I’ve been too busy trying not to think about the fact that my ass is still tender from this morning, that my throat is a little raw from swallowing, that every time the breeze picks up and brushes across my skin I think of Wyatt’s mouth on my neck and Jai’s fingers in my hair.
Six days of ports and pool decks and room-service dinners with the two of them, and somewhere in there the room stopped feeling like an arrangement and started feeling like the place I belong.
“Any word on that research position?” my dad asks. He’s squinting at me over his sunglasses, the way he does when he’s trying to seem interested but is actually just filling air.
“It’s—” I start.
“Lucy’s scholarship came through,” Mom cuts in. She does this without seeming to notice she’s doing it, like her mouth operates on a separate circuit from her brain. “Full merit, all four years. The dean’s office called her personally—”
“I know,” I say. “You told me. At breakfast. And yesterday. And the day before.”
The words come out sharper than I mean them to. Mom blinks. My dad’s eyebrows go up. Lucy looks at me for the first time all day, her green eyes, my eyes, our eyes, narrowing slightly.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “It’s hot.”
“It is hot,” Lily says. She’s being nice. Lily is always nice, which is somehow worse than Lucy’s sharpness. Lily’s niceness doesn’t turn off, even for her little brother who’s sitting on a beach towel with cum stains in his memory and two handprints on his ass.
I stare at the ocean. The water is turquoise closer to shore, deepening to a rich, impossible blue farther out. Somewhere beyond the reef, the Sapphire Empress is anchored off Nassau, a white bulk against the horizon. Our room is in there. Our bed. Our lube. Our everything.
A shadow falls across my towel. I look up, and my heart stops.
Wyatt and Jai are standing six feet away, surfboards tucked under their arms, water dripping from their chests and hair.
Wyatt’s board shorts are hanging low on his hips, his stomach ridged with muscle, his cock a thick outline against the wet fabric.
Jai’s hair is plastered to his forehead, his body lean and cut, water sliding down the grooves between his abs.
They’re both grinning, sunburned already, completely unself-conscious in that way that makes my throat dry.
“Hey,” Wyatt says. His blue eyes find mine. “Water’s fucking great. You coming in or what?”
Mom’s smile freezes. My dad’s mouth goes flat, the way it does when someone says a word he doesn’t approve of at the dinner table. “Boys,” he says. “I didn’t realize you’d be joining us.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Jai says. He’s got that look, the one that means he’s fully aware of the effect he’s having and is enjoying every second of it. “Surf’s killer today. You should try it, Dr. Brown. Good for the joints.”
My dad’s jaw tightens. “I think we’re quite comfortable where we are. Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
Wyatt shrugs. The movement pulls everything across his shoulders, muscle shifting under tan skin, and my cock stirs in my swim trunks. “We’re here for our roomie. What do you say, Cade, want to try surfing?”
“I’m reading,” I say.
“Stop being a wet blanket, Cade!” Jai says. “Get in the water! It’s like bath temperature!”
I sit perfectly still. My towel is on the border between two countries that have declared a quiet war.
On one side: my parents, their beach camp, their med school timelines, their quiet certainty that the world operates according to a plan they wrote.
On the other: Wyatt and Jai, dripping and laughing and completely, magnificently unconcerned with any of it.
Mom leans toward me. Her voice drops to that register, the one she uses when she’s being reasonable about something completely unreasonable.
“They’re a lot, aren’t they?” she says, with a tight smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
She’s looking at me like I’m supposed to agree, like I’m supposed to nod and say Yeah, Mom, they’re embarrassing, thank God we’re not like that.
Something in my chest gives way.
I stand up. The towel is still in my hand, bunched between my fingers. My knees are shaking. The sun is directly overhead now, burning the top of my head, and the freckles are standing out across my nose like somebody dotted them with a pen.
“Stop it,” I say.
Mom blinks. “Stop what, honey?”
“Stop being snobs.” The words come out steadier than I expect.
My voice doesn’t crack. My hands don’t shake.
“Wyatt and Jai are good guys. They’re kind, and they’re funny, and they’ve been nothing but nice to me, and I’m tired of watching you treat them like they’re embarrassing just because they’re not mapping out their entire lives on a spreadsheet. ”
My dad’s mouth opens. Lucy is staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. Lily’s hand has gone to her throat.
“Lucy and Lily dumped them because they’re not serious enough? Because they’re too fun? That’s complete bullshit, and you know it. They’re perfect exactly as they are. Not everyone has to be a doctor. Not everyone has to have a five-year plan. Some people are just good people, and that’s enough.”
I’m breathing hard. My chest is tight. The words are coming faster now, tumbling out before my brain can catch them, and I know I should stop but I can’t, I can’t stop, because four days in a cabin with these two men has rearranged something fundamental in me and I can’t put it back the way it was.
“And you know what else?” I say. The towel is crushed in my fist. “I’m gay. I’m gay, and I think they’re super handsome, and I’d be happy to have a guy like that as a boyfriend. If that makes you uncomfortable then that’s your problem, not mine.”
The silence that follows is absolute. Mom’s mouth is open. My dad’s sunglasses have slipped down his nose. Lucy looks like she’s been slapped. Lily makes a small, choked sound that might be a laugh or might be a sob.
I grab my things, turn and stomp off. And I don’t even realize Wyatt and Jai have followed me until Wyatt starts laughing.
It’s sudden and huge, bursting out of him like he’s been holding it back the whole time.
Then Jai is laughing too, that low, warm chuckle that makes my stomach flip, and they’re both howling, doubled over, surfboards clattering to the sand.
“Holy shit,” Wyatt says, wiping his eyes. “Holy shit, Cade.”
Jai reaches for me. He catches my wrist, fingers wrapping warm around my pulse, and tugs. “Come on, math boy.”
“Where are we going?”
Wyatt grabs my other arm. “We’ve got to return these boards, and then maybe we can give you a little treat for being so good.”
I trail after them to the rental hut and wait while they hand over the boards, assuming the treat means ice cream or something, so when they pull me into a low concrete building five minutes later, I’m a little confused.
The changing room sits between the beach and the pool, and smells like chlorine and wet concrete.
Wyatt shoves me through the door first, Jai right behind him, and the lock clicks into place with a sound that feels both final and wildly illegal.
“I thought we were getting a treat,” I say, and then it clicks. “Oh. That kind of treat.”
“Yep, that kind of treat. Let’s get in the shower,” Jai says. He reaches past me and twists the knob. Water hammers against tile, steam rising fast in the small stall. The sound fills the room, white noise, cover.
“This is a public—”
“You’re a fuckhole,” Jai says. He’s pulling his board shorts down as he says it, one fluid motion that leaves him naked, his cock already half-hard against his thigh. “Fuckholes don’t get opinions. They get fucked. That’s the job description.”
My cock goes hard so fast it hurts. The word lands in my gut and spreads, hot and liquid, and whatever protest was forming dies in my throat. My swim trunks are tented, the fabric straining, pre-cum already soaking through.
Wyatt crowds in behind me. “Unless you’re going to use your safeword.”
“No. Definitely not using that,” I yelp, pressing back against him as he laughs near my ear.
His chest is hard and warm against my back and his hands settle on my hips with a grip that makes me feel owned.
He presses his mouth to the back of my neck, right where the sunburn is worst, his lips cool against the heated skin.
I gasp. The shower is running. Steam is fogging the mirror.
My parents are on the beach and I am in a changing stall with two naked men and my cock is so hard my heartbeat pounds in it.
“Thank you,” Wyatt murmurs against my neck. “What you did out there. Standing up for us. That was… fuck, Cade. That was something else.”
Jai turns me. His hands find my face, palms warm against my cheeks, and he kisses me.