Hudson
I laid there, flat on my back, limbs splayed out like I’d just been sacrificed to the gods of emotional dysfunction. The ceiling fan whirred above me, its slow rotation doing jack shit to cool the sting behind my eyes or the weight sitting heavy on my chest like a damn grief-forged anvil.
The sheets felt too soft. The silence too loud. My body was home, but my brain was out back smoking a cigarette in the alley of bad decisions.
I hadn’t turned on the lights when I came back in. Just stripped off my clothes in the living room like some melodramatic twink in an off-Broadway breakup montage, shuffled to my room in my briefs, and collapsed onto the overpriced bed I’d bought, thinking it would be fun to have one nice thing that wasn’t from a designer who also did handbags.
And now? I was staring at the ceiling like it owed me answers. Spoiler alert: it did not.
Was walking away from Miles on the beach the right thing to do?
Fuck if I knew.
Maybe I thought it would be noble. That it would be better to bow out now—before I fully ruined Miles Whitaker’s beautifully coordinated, Crate-and-Barrel-on-a-cocktail budget life. Before the tabloids could sniff out the truth and turn his lemon sorbet serenity into a war zone.
But noble felt a lot like cowardly when you’re alone in your boxer briefs, wondering if you just self-sabotaged your one shot at actual human connection.
Jesus. That kiss. The way he looked at me. The way he felt—like someone you don’t just stumble into after last call at a party you weren’t invited to.
And it wasn’t just the kiss. It was everything. How he walked. How he organized pantry staples like they were the crown jewels. How he scolded me with that uptight, prissy-authoritative voice that somehow still turned me on.
Who the hell was I kidding?
I’d never met anyone like him.
And yet here I was, lying in my bed, trying to convince myself that some pre-emptive self-sacrifice was better than just… trying. Because yeah, I’ve got baggage. Not like a little duffle bag of quirky issues, either. We’re talking five-piece matched luggage, wheels busted, handle cracked, TSA sticker that reads DO NOT OPEN—TOO MUCH DRAMA.
I’m the guy you date if you want Instagram followers and unresolved trauma. Not someone like Miles. He deserves Sunday brunch with someone who irons their napkins, not someone who once got banned from a yacht party for cannonballing into the prosecco tub.
Maybe I am meant to be single. Maybe love—real love—is something other people get. People with less baggage. People who don’t come with a warning label.
I groaned, rolled onto my side, and curled into the comforter like a human burrito of regret. The scent of lemongrass fabric spray clung to the pillows, probably something Miles recommended in one of his aesthetic-as-hell YouTube videos. Of course, I had it. The man could tell me to organize my sock drawer by lunar cycle and I’d do it.
I buried my face into the pillow and let out a frustrated growl. The kind that’s half existential crisis, half horny confusion.
Was it better to have kissed Miles and walked away than never to have kissed him at all?
No. Fuck that. That kiss was everything.
But damn, it hurt to leave him there—standing in the moonlight, looking like something you’d frame and place on a shelf in a home you’d never want to leave.
I closed my eyes. Breathed in.
Maybe he’d hate me for it. Maybe that was better.
I let my thoughts swirl into that liminal space between sleep and self-loathing, the fan still circling above me like a vulture waiting for me to give up entirely.
And then—
BAM, BAM, BAM.
The knock was loud. Abrupt. Like whoever it was, they didn’t believe in doorbells, boundaries, or the sanctity of an emotional spiral.
I jolted up, sheets tangling around my legs like a ghost trying to hold me back. For a second, I thought I imagined it. Then—
BAM, BAM, BAM.
Nope. Very real.
I sat there, chest pounding, trying to make sense of it. It was late. So late it had circled back around to early. Who the hell would be knocking on my front door at—what—Two in the morning?
Another knock.
This one is slower. Like whoever it was had lost their nerve.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, my heart still racing. Bare feet against hardwood. My body still buzzing from that beach. From that kiss. From him.
Who the hell…?
I pulled on a hoodie without thinking. No pants. Just boxer briefs and the hoodie, like the disaster gay I was.
And I started down the hall.
Toward the stairs.
Toward the door.
Toward whatever the fuck this was.
I reached the bottom of the stairs with my heartbeat doing this jittery EDM remix in my chest. There was something about unexpected visitors at ungodly hours that always felt either thrilling or terrifying—like you were about to be kissed or murdered.
Same difference, sometimes.
The foyer was still and dim, bathed in that late-night gray where everything looks ghostly and quiet—like the world’s on pause, but your nerves aren’t. The glass at the front door was fogged just enough that I couldn’t make out the figure standing there. Just the vague shape of someone… slim. Slight.
I hesitated for half a second, then yanked the door open.
And there he was.
Miles Whitaker. Standing on my porch at nearly two in the morning like a tragic gay Hallmark movie got drunk and wandered into a Vogue editorial shoot.
His usually pristine hair was tousled, his eyes glassy and rimmed red. His face—flushed and vulnerable. His jaw tight, like he was trying to hold something in but failing miserably.
And there were tears. Not dramatic, heaving sobs—just quiet, steady rivers down both cheeks, catching the porch light and making him look both completely wrecked and painfully beautiful.
My entire body went still.
He didn’t say anything right away.
Neither did I.
I just stood there, barefoot in a hoodie, looking at the man I’d kissed on a dance floor, confessed to on the beach, and then promptly ran away from like the emotionally constipated dumbass I am.
And then—
“I’m so lost, .”
His voice cracked, and my knees nearly buckled.
“I want to move on. I want to move forward,”
he said, wiping his cheeks quickly like that would make this less intimate.
“I never thought I’d feel this way about anyone again, not after Owen. But you… I’m falling for. Hard. And fast. Just like you said. Just as you are. And it scares the hell out of me.”
Fuck.
I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t joke. I just felt.
And before my brain could even sign off on it, my arms were around him.
I pulled him in tight—his body folding against mine like it had always belonged there. His face pressed into my neck, warm and damp. I held him like he might disappear. Like, maybe I would.
“You came back,”
I whispered.
“I didn’t know where else to go,”
he murmured.
I rested my chin on top of his head, swaying slightly on the porch.
“Well. You’re here now. Which means either the world’s ending or I get a second chance to not completely fuck this up.”
He let out a small laugh, muffled by my hoodie.
“I vote for option two,” he said.
I kissed the side of his head.
“Good. Because I was really hoping to redeem myself before sunrise.”
We stood like that for what felt like a small eternity—just breathing each other in. His cologne had faded into something even better: a mix of ocean salt, summer air, and Miles’ own scent. Something real. Something raw.
I pulled back just enough to see his face.
“C’mon,”
I said, gently.
“Let’s drink something stupidly expensive and sit by the beach like we’re the psychologically mature gays we pretend to be.”
He nodded, eyes still shiny, and followed me in.
I padded into the kitchen and opened the wine chiller, bypassing the whispering proseccos and bitchy rosés, reaching straight for the crown jewel: a 2012 Sassicaia Bolgheri. It cost more than most people’s wedding bands and had the body of a Fellini film—brooding, complex, and unapologetically Italian.
Miles blinked at it.
“That’s a very expensive bottle of therapy.”
“Yeah, well, it’s either this or I start screaming into the ocean again.”
He chuckled, and I swear something in my chest unknotted.
I poured two glasses, grabbed the bottle, and nodded toward the patio. He followed.
Outside, the beach was ink-black under a velvet sky, the waves whispering like they were in on all our secrets. The patio couch faced the dunes, the moon casting a soft glow over the sand like powdered sugar on a crime scene.
We curled up together—me on one end, him leaning into me like the world had finally stopped spinning just long enough for us to catch our breath.
I handed him the glass.
“To breakdowns, breakthroughs, and Italian reds.”
He clinked it lightly against mine.
“To going off-script.”
We sipped in silence for a bit, the wine warming our insides like a hug we didn’t have to explain.
Then he spoke again, voice quieter.
“I’ve never done this.”
“Sat on expensive outdoor furniture with a half-naked celebrity?”
“No,”
he laughed softly, “I’ve never been this open. With anyone. Not like this. Not since—”
“Owen,”
I finished.
He nodded.
“And even with him, I don’t know if it ever felt like this.”
I wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
“Yeah. I know the feeling.”
He looked up at me, eyes vulnerable but unafraid.
“What is this, ?”
I exhaled slowly, gazing out toward the waves.
“It’s terrifying. And messy. And probably doomed. But it’s also the first time in a long damn while that I’ve felt seen. And not just by someone who wants a photo or to get off. I mean, actually seen.”
He rested his head against my chest. “Me too.”
I held him tighter, the silence between us growing more sacred than awkward.
And then I said the words I didn’t expect to ever say. Not to anyone.
“I don’t want to have sex tonight.”
Miles tilted his head, slightly amused.
“Oh? Who are you, and what have you done with Knight?”
I cracked a smile.
“Shut up. I’m serious. I just… I want to hold you. That’s it. I want this night to mean something.”
“It already does,”
he whispered.
So, we sat there. Just two broken, complicated men curled together under the stars, sipping overpriced wine and letting ourselves believe—if only for a moment—that maybe, just maybe, we weren’t as unlovable as we once thought.
No cameras. No gossip. No chaos.
Just us.
Real. Raw. And okay.
For once.