36. Damien
THIRTY-SIX
damien
NOW
We lay motionless together, tangled in the rumpled bedding.
My heart still crashed against my ribs like it was trying to escape my chest and jump into Callum’s.
I lay curled against his side, my head resting on his chest. It took all my energy to stop myself from kissing him again. But he was so close and so tempting.
“Tell me something I missed,” Callum said. The light in the room had faded to nothing. A sliver came in through the crack in the open bedroom door.
“Like what?” I asked, dragging my fingertips down his chest.
He caught my hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed the palm and my heart melted. How had I lived without this man for as long as I had? How had I remembered to breathe without him?
“Like anything,” Callum prompted.
“You go first.”
“Okay. Second year of college, I caught a stomach bug. The guy I shared a dorm with, he came from a really big family and he lived on campus to make room at home for his siblings, but he still went home to visit frequently. He brought me homemade chicken soup one day, just as I’d started to feel a little better. ”
“That was nice of him.” Instantly, I hated whoever it was that Callum got to room with. I despised him and his chicken soup.
“Well, not really. Because it gave me food poisoning. I still don’t eat chicken soup.”
“Oh, God.” I stifled a laugh. “That’s awful.”
Callum poked me in the ribs, making me flinch. “Yeah, it sounds like you think it’s awful.”
“I’m sorry.” I laughed so I wouldn’t cry. It was stupid to be upset about missing his bout with a stomach flu, but the irrational gremlin inside of me wanted to be the one to be there for him. I’d have given him soup that wouldn’t have tried to kill him.
“Okay, your turn. Tell me something I missed.”
I didn’t know how to follow up his chicken soup food poisoning story. Did I go for something silly like that? Did I dig deep and tell him something profound or meaningful? Some pivotal moment in my life that he missed?
“I took swimming lessons. Real ones. I didn’t stop until I was, like, basically a lifeguard.”
“No shit?” Callum smoothed his fingers through my hair.
“No shit. I needed something to do, you know. You were gone, and I still had to finish school and Sam wasn’t giving me the time of day anymore. So I took swimming lessons after school and on weekends.”
“Why swimming?”
“You know why.” I paused. “To feel close to you.”
I didn’t tell him the rest. That swimming gave me something to focus on because otherwise I was drowning. That I’d swim laps until I could barely stand after. That I’d go home and fall into a dead sleep in my bed.
“Damien… I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s not mine either.”
“I should have…”
I cut him off and propped myself up on an elbow. “Should have what? Looked into your crystal ball and realized that your brother was a lying psycho?”
“We just let him win.” Callum looked torn apart, and I supposed he was. The entire fabric of his life might be a lie. All things considered, he was taking it rather well.
“Did he, though?”
“Did he what?”
“Did he win? Because from where I’m sitting, he’s not here, and we are. From where I’m sitting, I’m in your home. In your bed. The last place on earth he wanted me to be.” I nestled back down against him. “It’s your turn.”
“What am I supposed to follow that up with?”
“I don’t know, but you started it.”
“I used to write you emails and never send them. I kept them in my drafts for a few years, but I deleted them when I thought I could move on. They were… cathartic, I guess.”
“When you thought you could move on?”
“I tried,” he whispered. “I tried a few times. Dated people. Tried to make myself feel for them a fraction of what I felt for you. Went to therapy when I felt broken because I couldn’t.
My therapist told me that it was normal to feel different things for different people.
And that sometimes, when we don’t get closure, we have a hard time letting go. ”
“Wow. Did you stop going?”
Callum laughed. “Yeah. I switched to a really nice woman who gave me actual coping mechanisms and exercises to help me open up to new people, but by then I was kind of tired of trying. And then Sam got sick. I know he was an asshole, but he was my brother. I wanted things between us to be different.”
“I know you did.”
“I tried to reconnect, but he wasn’t interested. He’d put on a good show if our parents were around, but it was clear that he didn’t want me there.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because he said as much.” Callum managed to laugh. “God, he was impossible. Okay, it’s your turn. Tell me something I don’t know.”
The confession was easy to make because I wasn’t looking at him.
Curled into him with my eyes closed, it made it easier to feel brave enough to be vulnerable.
And maybe it was a dumb thing to confess.
Maybe he wouldn’t think it was that big of a deal.
Maybe he’d think it was stupid. Maybe he wouldn’t care.
“I… after you… I never bottomed. Like, I’d play with toys now and then, and I’d touch myself, but I never felt comfortable enough with anyone else.”
Callum went deadly still, and then suddenly he rolled over and pinned me underneath him. There was an intensity in his eyes that made my stomach swoop. Instantly, I was back there, in his childhood bedroom. Sneaking kisses when no one was looking, unable to get enough of him.
I’d fallen in love with Callum Weeks years ago and I’d never stopped loving him.
The way I’d loved him changed. It had to.
It went from a frantic, frenetic, all-in obsessive teenage love to a quiet, stubborn, brokenhearted love that wouldn’t quit.
And now it was a softer, more hopeful kind.
It might be stupid to let myself feel this way, but I’d never been able to help it. Not when it came to Callum.
“Really?” he whispered, like he couldn’t believe it. His eyes had a softness in them, like he understood what this meant without me having to say it out loud. I never got over him. Never forgot him. Never saw myself with anyone else but him.
And I’d tried.
Like Callum, I’d tried to date. To be some kind of version of myself that could be happy with someone else. And maybe I hadn’t tried hard enough. Maybe I was so used to people giving up on me that I didn’t want to invest in someone new.
Or maybe my heart had decided a long time ago that I was Callum’s and he was mine, and it knew that no one would compare.
“I’m vers, so it wasn’t like I never had sex. I just… there were certain things I didn’t do with other people.”
“Like bottom.”
“Like bottom.” Like fall in love. Like dream of a future, even when it terrified me.
And that’s how I knew it was real. Because the thought of staying in this bed with Callum was as terrifying as it was necessary.
I needed him in my life like I needed blood in my body, and yet I was scared shitless of what might happen if we didn’t work out.
I was terrified of what might happen if we did.
“Your turn,” I rasped.
The way Callum looked at me made me feel effervescent and barely contained in my skin. He looked at me like I was the answer to questions he never dared ask.
The kiss was as sweet as it was inevitable. I couldn’t be sure who initiated it, only that I could kiss him forever. It started off like a slow dance, a gentle motion that quickly heated up the more we kissed. His tongue teased its way into my mouth and I answered back with mine.
Callum’s weight settled on top of me, and I groaned.
Eventually, we’d have to deal with the real world again.
With his parents and what we were to each other and what we wanted from each other.
It wasn’t rational of me, but I knew all he had to do was give me the word, and I’d abandon my life for a chance at one with him.
I didn’t care. I’d lived without him and that wasn’t an existence I wanted anymore.
Callum pressed his body against mine and then he moved, undulating his hips as he deepened the kiss. His hands roamed my body, slid up my arms, and pinned them to the bed over my head. I was at his mercy. Right where I wanted to be.
“Damien,” Callum’s voice cracked as he dragged his mouth up my jaw.
I turned my head and captured his mouth with mine again. I was done talking because if I said anything else, I’d tell him that I’d do anything to keep him. I’d tell him that I never stopped wishing for this. And maybe I didn’t have to tell him because he whimpered against my mouth.
He released my wrists and I wrapped my arms around him as he continued to rut against me. Our kisses grew deeper, matching the energy of our bodies as they ground against each other.
The confession lived on the tip of my tongue. I’d dreamed of this, I wanted to tell him. But I didn’t have to because Callum knew. He understood what it had been like. But another admission broke free. “I thought you hated me.”
Callum stilled, then his hands settled on either side of my face. They swept down to my neck. He rested his forehead against mine.
“Never. I could never hate you.”
“I walked away. I thought—he made it seem like the only option. Like you’d lose everything if I stayed. It was agony, but I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“We both thought that.” Callum sighed and tugged me into another kiss. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
His hands skated down my body. “Okay?”
Callum kissed my neck, then moved lower. The hollow of my throat. His hands mapped my body, leaving trails of heat wherever he touched.
“Okay,” I panted, unable to get my brain to hold a single thought.
We’d lost so much, and yet we were here. Together. It felt like we won.
Callum’s mouth closed over my nipple, his tongue flicking at the piercing there, and my cock twitched, violently throbbing as the ache inside threatened to tear me in half. He did it again.
“I like these.” He breathed against my skin, then teased the other one with his wicked tongue. Callum tortured me with his mouth, tugging at the barbell until my cock was leaking on my stomach, hard and angry that it was being ignored.
He looked up at me with a grin, then shimmied lower on the bed, his open-mouth kisses blazing a path down to my needy cock. He situated himself between my legs. His hands smoothed up my body, then down again, and he parted my thighs more.
Then, with no warning, he licked a stipe up the underside of my cock. Reaching down, I buried my hands in his hair, not to grip him or hold him down or steer him. But I needed to anchor myself to him. I needed to touch him, to prove to myself that this was real.
“Callum—” I didn’t know what to ask for, what I wanted. I wanted everything, but I didn’t know what this nebulous everything was. I wanted to stay, to be kept by him. Loved by him. I wanted him inside me. I wanted to be so entwined with him and his life that there’d be no separating us ever again.
“I know, baby. I’ve got you,” Callum said and then took me deeper, swallowing every last inch of me.
I was a fucking goner.